Why are SAP Commerce Cloud recipes not recommended for Production, but the set-up instructions usually mentions using recipes?

Question

In Installing SAP Commerce Using Installer Recipes and Installer Recipe Reference, there is a comment that says something like:

The installer is currently only intended to install SAP Commerce in development environments or for demonstration purposes. Do not use the installer to install SAP Commerce in a production environment.

However, guides like Customizing the Accelerator with extgen and modulegen usually mention recipes:

On Windows: install.bat -r b2c_acc_plus

So, how do you really set-up a project from scratch? Do you start with recipes, or do you start with ant modulegen?

I don't see clear instructions (or best practice) on how I should build a B2C/B2B application from scratch for development and then preparing it for Production. (Maybe there is a gap in the instructions, or I just don't know where it is)

Even the Installing SAP Commerce Cloud for use with Spartacus guide mentions starting with a B2C recipe. Does this mean that the starting point of building a SAP Commerce project is to use recipes? Are there cases where you would not use a recipe, and build everything from scratch using ant modulegen and ant addoninstall?

Answer 1

It is not recommended to use recipe for direct installation on production. Reason being it installs a preset of hybris extensions which might or might not be needed for your requirements, also it might not be a allowed to use under the license you got.

However, when you start your development, you can use recipe to give your development a quick start. It generates the raw structure for your e-commerce application which you would need to customize and later deploy on your production.

how do you really set-up a project from scratch? Do you start with recipes, or do you start with ant modulegen?

Well, You can use any of those. If you are looking for difference, it has already been answered here

how I should build a B2C/B2B application from scratch and prepare for production?

For production hybris deployment procedure refer this.

NOTE :

a) recipe installation does more than what you can achieve using modulegen like complete installation, configuration and initialization for a running e-commerce example. I think once you go through above links, you will have a much better understanding on this.

b) When you go with recipe, it will install related extensions which you might not want to use or don't have production license for that. Please be considerate to review and disable such extensions,

Thanks

Answer 2

A few more points adding to the answer by www.hybriscx.com

1. Generally, the integrations in a recipe are mock integration e.g. payment integration as the purpose of a recipe is to provide a ready-to-use demo/reference application (store).
2. The data (catalog, users & password, usergroups, roles, promotions etc.) in a recipe are sample data. The same goes with the look-n-feel (logos, colour, layout etc.). Every business requires its specific data and look-n-feel.
3. The system configurations/properties (e.g. memory configuration, logging configuration etc.) may be optimised for the demo purpose but the production setup may require a different configuration. On the same line, configurations like hosts, ports, encryption etc. are general purpose configurations and a production environment may need to change them.
4. The database set up by a recipe is generally HSQLDB which is only good for development/demo.