Sitecore Commerce (XC) Installation features cheat sheet
/When I started with commerce I was a little bit confused by the introduction of new terminologies. You'll hear/read a lot about minions for example - almost like the cute yellow ones - same same but different. I think knowing those terms are already a great step ahead in the Sitecore Commerce (XC) if you are looking into stepping into this domain because if I reflect it on myself, I have the feeling that if I knew these terminologies, it would have made my learning cycle a little bit easier.
I would not consider this article as a lecture or whatsoever but more like a cheat sheet of Sitecore Commerce (XC) roles.
Entrée
A Commerce Environment is made up of a Storefront plus a collection of roles and policies that affect how the system executes a call to the Commerce Engine. Your initial Storefront will have an Authoring role, a Shops role, a Minions role, and a DevOps role. All of these roles coupled with the Storefront determine the Environment.
La Pièce de Résistance
Storage Role
It supports the storage and collection of data. It consists of two databases
| Role | Description |
|---|---|
| Shared Environment Database | The main data store for Sitecore Commerce. It contains the client data, the shop data such as pricing, catalog information, customer records, pricing information, etc... |
| Global Database | Contains the global configuration data, the environment and policy data. |
Application Engine Role
Application Engine Role are instances of the Commerce engine that do specific tasks. There are four (4) Appication Engine roles in Sitecore XC
| Role | Description |
|---|---|
| Shops Role | It is the instance that the handles all visits and displays the shop to the public. Depending on the traffic size, this role could be potentially up or downscaled. |
| Authoring Role | It is the instance on which the content editor edits the shop data. Generally the Business tools run on this role. |
| Minions Role | It is an instance that runs independently and asynchronously. For example, one of the instance that bear a minion role move the status of an order from step to step when a customer places an order on the website. In the Minions Environment, actions, such as cleaning up abandoned carts, checking order status, and connecting to back-end systems for updated product and inventory information, take place on a regular interval. |
| DevOps Role | It is an instance that supports the production deployment, configuration, and administration of the Sitecore Experience Commerce solution. This instance usually has a higher privilege to allow the DevOps engineer to execute maintenance tasks |
Indexes
Sitecore XC comes with three (3) search indexes: Catalog Items Scope Index, Orders Scope Index, and Customers Scope Index. Those indexes help the commerce business user search the product, order and customer information within the Business Tools.
| Role | Description |
|---|---|
| Catalog Items Scope Index (CIS Index) | Helps the search of catalog item within the Business Tools. |
| Orders Scope Index (OS Index) | Allows the search of a specific order and quickly retrieve the order details within the business tools. |
| Customer Scope Index (CS Index) | It is an instance that supports the production deployment, configuration, and administration of the Sitecore Experience Commerce solution. This instance usually has a higher privilege to allow the DevOps engineer to execute maintenance tasks |
Le Dessert
Identifying Application Engine roles is key to your success when examining the Commerce Engine because these roles are fundamental to its development. Now that you've reviewed the Commerce Engine roles, you should be a little bit familiar with Sitecore Commerce (XC) terminology.
I hope that this article helped you in the same way it helped me. And if you are looking into learning more about Sitecore Commerce (XC), I would strongly recommend you to go through Sitecore's E-learning portal on which the e-learning team did a great job by structuring the courses in a way that makes learning an enjoyable and a fun process.
