Technology Stack of the Elastic Path Ecommerce Platform

Elastic Path is a robust Java enterprise platform that is built using the best of open source technologies and adheres to many industry standards. It works with a variety of application servers and databases and provides for an SOA approach. Elastic Path provides full access to source code. We make it easy for you to extend the out-of-the-box features, create your own custom features without losing the ability to upgrade, and easily integrate with third parties. With a foundation in open technologies, enterprises can more easily find IT resources, decrease new developer ramp up time, and keep development costs down.

Open Technologies
Platform Requirements
Commerce Manager Requirements

Open Technologies

		Spring Container Framework The Spring container framework is the major underlying architectural framework in Elastic Path and is also responsible for the majority of system-level services including object life cycle management, transactions, security, and job scheduling via the inclusion of several Spring modules. Spring's Dependency Injection and Inversion of Control allows Elastic Path to be "coded to interfaces" rather than to classes. This makes it possible to customize the implementation of any class without changing the code that invokes that class provided it adheres to the same interface. This loose coupling provides a tremendous level of flexibility and simplicity to application developers looking to customize Elastic Path. Read more about Spring.

		Spring MVC Framework The Spring MVC (model-view-controller) framework is used to logically separate the presentation layer from the underlying implementation. Spring MVC makes every piece of logic and functionality highly configurable and integrates easily with most popular web view technologies including Velocity. Read more about Spring.

		Spring Security Spring Security provides comprehensive authentication, authorization, instance-based access control, channel security, and human user detection in a package designed specifically for enterprise applications built on Spring. Spring Security features easy configure and a pluggable architecture with support for a wide variety of industry-standard authorization service integrations. Read more about Spring Security.

		Apache OpenJPA Apache OpenJPA is a JPA (Java Persistence Architecture) 1.0 compliant persistence layer that features lightweight and transparent persistence of Java entities and database independence. OpenJPA combines the best features from a variety of competing persistence options, such as ORM, ODB, EJB2, and JDO, including a rich set of options for performance tuning, including a pluggable L2 cache and fetchplans. Read more about Apache OpenJPA.

		SOLR Enterprise Search Server Apache SOLR is a popular enterprise search platform based on the Apache Lucene project. SOLR is prevalent amongst cutting edge technology companies and large enterprises due to its reputation for performance and functionality, with rich support for full-text search, faceted search, dynamic clustering, distributed search and scalability. SOLR is used within Elastic Path for all in-site and Commerce Manager search functions. The Elastic Path platform also uses SOLR extensively to drive filtered search and browse capabilities. Read more about Solr.

		Apache Velocity Velocity is an open-source, high-performance templating engine that provides the ability to render dynamic front-end pages in a variety of formats using a straightforward syntax to enforce strict separation in a MVC architecture. Elastic Path utilizes Velocity in favor of competing technologies like JSP and JSF for the sake of simplicity, performance and maintainability. Read more about Velocity.

		Eclipse Rich Client Platform The Eclipse Rich Client Platform (RCP) is used as the platform for the Elastic Path Commerce Manager application, as it combines the rich interface of a desktop application with the power of web connectivity. Furthermore, it provides powerful customization capabilities via the plugin architecture, native look and feel across platforms and extensive GUI libraries and toolkits. Finally, as part of Eclipse, the most widely used Java environment, its powerful development tools and broad familiarity enable developers working on the platform to become highly productive quickly. Read more about Eclipse.

		JAX-WS & JAXB Sun's Core Web Services technologies (JAX-WS & JAXB) are used for standards-based web services. The JAX-WS is the latest Java standard for XML web services and is easier to understand and use than previous frameworks because it separates the web services definition from the data-binding components. JAXB is used within JAX-WS to convert between XML and Java. Read more about JAX-WS and JAXB.

		Direct Web Remoting (AJAX) Elastic Path utilizes the Direct Web Remoting library to facilitate AJAX components on the storefront by providing an easy bridge between client-side JavaScript and server-side Java code. DWR features integration with popular JavaScript libraries and Spring frameworks, along with advanced capabilities such as reverse AJAX. Read more about Direct Web Remoting.

Questions?
You can also take a deeper dive into our technical documentation: release notes, deployment guides, tutorials, and all sorts of other very thick reads. If you have any questions or would like to discuss anything in further detail please feel free to drop us a line. Don't like filling out forms? Email us at dev@elasticpath.com.

Platform Requirements

Hardware

The hardware required depends on various factors including the software environment, amount of website traffic, number of customers, number of products in the catalog, number of orders, etc. Elastic Path can help your team size the system if you require. Elastic Path supports 32 bit and 64 bit Intel, AMD, Sparc, and PowerPC hardware platforms.

Software

The software listed below is fully supported and tested. Other versions may work but have not passed a QA process.

Application Servers

Tomcat 5.5, 6.0
JBoss 4.2, 5.1
Oracle WebLogic Server 10, 11g (10.3.1)
IBM WebSphere 6.1, 7.0

Databases

Oracle 10g, 10g RAC, 11g, 11g RAC
MS SQL 2005, 2008
MySQL 5.0, 5.1
Derby 10.3¹

Operating Systems (Server Components)

Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Server 2008
Solaris 9, 10
Red Hat Linux ES 4.0, ES 5.0
Novell SUSE Linux 11
AIX 6.10

Browsers

Firefox 2.x, 3.x
Internet Explorer 7.x, 8.x
Safari 2.x, 3.x
Chrome 1.x

¹ Not recommended for production deployment.

Supported JDKs

Application Server	SUN JDK 1.5	JRockit JDK 1.5	SUN JDK 1.6	JRockit JDK 1.6
Tomcat 5.5	y	y	y	y
Tomcat 6.0	y	y	y	y
JBoss 4.2	y	y	n	n
JBoss 5.1	y	y	y	y
Oracle WebLogic Server 10.2	y	y	n	n
Oracle WebLogic Server 10.3.1 (11g)	n	n	y	y
IBM WebSphere 6.1	y	y	n	n
IBM WebSphere 7.0	n	n	y	y

Commerce Manager Requirements

The Commerce Manager (CM) is a desktop application that enables authorized personnel to efficiently administer all aspects of online stores as part of the Elastic Path product.

Operating Systems (Commerce Manager Client)