AEM - Adobe Commerce Integration

Hi ​@nsvsrk 
adding some more detail on your follow‑ups.

1. Typical use cases / business requirements

Common AEM + Adobe Commerce (CIF) use cases:

• Experience‑driven PLP/PDP
  • Custom PLP layouts (product cards, content slots, SEO tweaks)
  • Rich PDPs with buying guides, comparison tables, videos, UGC, etc.
• Bringing external data into PDP/PLP
  • Ratings/reviews, availability from OMS/ERP, financing info, badges ("Best seller", "Eco", etc.)
• Product experience management
  • Associating products/categories with AEM Assets, Content Fragments, Experience Fragments for campaigns and lookbooks
• Multi‑store / multi‑site mapping
  • One Commerce catalog feeding multiple AEM sites/brands/locales

All of this still follows the pattern: AEM owns the glass, Commerce owns product/price/cart and exposes them via GraphQL. https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/experience-manager-65-lts/content/commerce/integrations/magento

2. Which CIF Core Components to customize?

For the examples you gave:

• Customize PLP
  • Start with the Product List and Product Carousel core components.
  • Extend their Sling Models via the delegation pattern (do not fork the component):
    • Add extra fields to the GraphQL query (e.g. custom attributes)
    • Map them into your own model interface
    • Render via your proxy component's HTL
  • Customize PDP / show external parameters
    • Extend the Product core component's model.
    • Typical patterns:
      • Enrich the GraphQL response (additional Commerce attributes)
      • Or call a separate external service in the model and merge that data into the view
    • https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/experience-manager-cloud-service/content/content-and-commerce/cif-storefront/storefront/developing/customize-cif-components

3. GraphQL vs REST – where does REST show up?

• Modern CIF (what you should use)
  • Uses Adobe Commerce GraphQL APIs only for catalog, pricing, cart, checkout, etc.
  • This is what the CIF add‑on and Core Components are built on.
  • https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/experience-manager-65-lts/content/commerce/integrations/magento
• CIF REST (older docs you saw)
  • An older set of micro‑services that exposed REST endpoints.
  • Officially deprecated; no further investment.
  • See "Commerce – CIF REST" section in: https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/experience-manager-65/content/release-notes/deprecated-removed-features
  • So for any new or current project: GraphQL only; ignore CIF REST except as historical context.

4. Performance – do we copy Magento products into AEM/JCR?

• With CIF add‑on, the recommended pattern is no catalog import into AEM:
  • Product/category data is fetched on demand via GraphQL.
  • AEM does not become a second source of truth for the catalog.
• For performance you use:
  • GraphQL response caching in the CIF GraphQL client + CIF Core Components
  • Dispatcher/CDN caching for PLP/PDP HTML
  • TTL‑based caching and selective "dynamic" client‑side bits (prices, stock) where needed
• Ref (how caching works and what's cacheable): https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/experience-manager-65/content/commerce/storefront/administering/caching
• Ref (on‑demand data vs old imports): https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/experience-manager-65-lts/content/commerce/changes

What (if anything) to keep in JCR for speed?

• Only configuration & enrichment: CIF configurations, URL mappings, templates, and AEM content linked to products (Assets/CFs/XFs).
• Do not mirror the full product catalog into JCR for performance; that's the old "CIF Classic"/import model and is explicitly moved away from in LTS.

5. Differences between AEM 6.5 and AEM as a Cloud Service (AEMCS) for this integration

• What is the same (conceptually):
  • AEM owns the storefront, Commerce is headless via GraphQL.
  • Same CIF Core Components model, same GraphQL client concepts.
  • Same authoring experience (product console, pickers, associations).
• Key differences:
  • Provisioning & operations
    • AEMCS: CIF add‑on is enabled via Cloud Manager; autoscaling, Fastly, etc. are managed by Adobe.
    • Ref: https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/experience-manager-cloud-service/content/content-and-commerce/cif-storefront/integrations/magento
    • AEM 6.5 / 6.5 LTS: You manually install the AEM Commerce Add‑On and CIF Core Components; you manage infra, Dispatcher/CDN.
  • Legacy / Classic commerce
    • On 6.5 you may still see "Classic CIF / AEM Commerce" docs that import catalog into /var/commerce. That path is deprecated, and on 6.5 LTS it is removed – use CIF add‑on (GraphQL) instead.
  • New features and SaaS tie‑ins
    • Newer capabilities (Live Search PLP, SaaS services, etc.) generally land on AEMCS first, and then selectively on 6.5 LTS.