Submitted By

Mohit Bairwa BCA III Year

Bachelor of Computer Application

Dezyne Ersquocole College Ajmer

wwwdezyneecolecom

Information Technology Electronic-Commerce

Acknowledgement

I Am Thankful To Dezyne Ersquocole College To Help In Making This Project On E-Commerce

A Special Thanks To Ms Jyoti Phulwani to Guide Us Step By Step in the Making of This

Project Report

Thanking you

Mohit Bairwa

Bachelor of Computer Application

Third Year

Contents

1 Chapter 1

Introduction

2 Chapter 2

Electronic Commerce And World Wide Web

3 Chapter 3

Architectural Framework for Electronic Commerce

4 Chapter 4

Technology Behind The Web

5 Chapter 5

Network Security and Firewalls

6 Chapter 6

Electronic Commerce Companies

7 Chapter 7

A Pictorial Representation of E-Commerce

8 Chapter 8

Conclusion

Chapter-1

Introduction

Every individual or company that wants to make money and become the next Microsoft needs to understand the market potential business implication and technological foundation of electronic commerce but what is electronic commerce everybody is talking about How does it affect the organizations way of doing business what sort of technical and business are needed to be successful

Companies and consumers are discovering that global networking and other technological innovations are powerful assists if used as competitive weapons in day-to-day activity E-commerce is associated with the buying and selling of informationrsquos products and services via computer network today

Consumer desire are very hard to predict pin point or decipher of electronic markets whose shapes structure and population are still in early stages Needs envisioned include entertainment on demand including five hundred channel TV video on demand games on demand electronic retailing via catalogs and kiosk and home shopping networks

In future viewers will decide what they want to see and when they want to participate a successful market places are expected to those that cater to consumerrsquos loneliness boredom education and career In a highly competitive society where neighbors seldom talk to one another these outlets give consumer someone to tough after going home

Letrsquos take a look at the changing conditions in the ldquonew economyrdquo with respect to the retail industry Consumers are pushing retailers to the wall demanding lower prices better quality a large section of in-season goods Retailers are scrambling to fill the order They are slashing back-office costs reducing profit margin reducing-cycle time buying more wisely and making huge investments in technology They are revamping distribution channels to make sure that warehouses costs are down by reducing their average inventory levels and coordinating the consumer demand and supply pattern

In the push to reduce prices more and more retailers are turning to overseas supplier in part because of cheaper labor costs Retail are the immediate line of fire and had to do the cost cutting They put the pressure on the manufacturer and then to the supplier end of the pipeline

Electronic commerce is forming companies to rethink the existing ways of doing target marketing relationship marketing and even event marketing Adaptation would include moving towards computerized ldquopaperlessrdquo operations to reduce trading costs and facilitate the adoption of new business process Japanese approach JIT (just in time) total quality control and quality circles are focused now for delivery of goods through electronic commerce

Chapter-2

Electronic commerce and the world-wide-web

We have broadly defined electronic commerce as a modern business methodology

that address the desire of firms consumers and management to cut costs while

improving the quality of goods and increasing the speed of services The need for

electronic commerce stems from the demand within business and government to make

better use of computing that is better apply computer technology to improve business

process and information exchange both within an enterprise and across organizations

In short electronic commerce appears to be and integrating force that represent the

digital conversions of twenty-first century business application and computing

technologies

Electronic commerce applications emphasis the generations and exploitation of new

business opportunity and to use the popular buzzword ldquogenerate business valuerdquo For

instance when buyer- seller transaction occur in the electronic market place

information is accesses observed arrange and sold in different ways in fact the

information about a product of service is separated from the physical product or

services and has become important on its own In some cases the information can

become as crucial as his actual product or services in term of its effect on a companyrsquos

in short information ways business transactions are creating new ways of doing

business and even new type of business

Electronic commerce application are quite varied In its most common form E-

commerce is also used to donate the paperless exchange of business information

using EDI electronic mail (E-mail) electronic bulletin boards electronic funds transfer

(EFT) and similar technology These technologies are normally applied in high-pay of

areas recognizing that paper-handling activity usually increase expense without

adding value On the other hand the term Electronic Commerce is used to describe

a new online approach to perform traditional functions such as payment and funds

transfer order entry a processing invoicing inventory management cargo tracking

electronic catalogues and point-of-sale data gathering More recently company have

realized that the advertising marketing and customer support functions are also part

of electronic commerce application domain These business functions act as initiator

to the entire order management cycle that incorporates the more established motions

of electronic commerce

In short what we are witnessing is the use of term electronic commerce as an umbrella

concepts to integrate a wide range of new and old applications

Despite the changes taking places business have three goals stay competitive

improve productivity and deliver quality service These goals are the guiding buoys for

firms plotting their course in the turbulent water of electronic commerce There are

other factors that companies need to keep in mind First most company have already

made enormous information technology investments to automate their key internal

processes such as purchasing invoicing and other similar functions So some aspects

of the technological infrastructure for electronic commerce are already in place The

challenge now become how to effectively leverage this investment Second prices for

computer hardware and network equipment continue to fall marking information

technology an appealing investments for many businesses especially when itrsquos used

for high-impact applications such as linking their distributed operations However

investments without a clear idea of the electronic commerce architecture being built

would be akin to driving with blinders on As a result companies that have decided that

electronic commerce applications represent one of the best strategic investments they

can make must first exert some effort to understand the technology underlying

electronic commerce applications

At first glance it appears that messaging based technologies such as EDI and mail-

enable applications combine with database and information management service

form the technical foundation for effective electronic commerce solutionsno single one

of these technologies can deliver the full potential of electronic commerce however

What we require is and integrated architecture the likes of which has never been seen

before This integrated architecture is emerging in the form of the World Wide Web

(WWW) As electronic commerce becomes more mature we are beginning to see

sophisticated application being developed on WWW Technically and commercially

the www client-server model seems poised to become a dominant technology

Electronic Transfer Interchange

ctronic Document Interchange Electronic Document Interchange (EDI)

Electronic Funds Transfer (EFD)

Corporate

Digital

Library

Information Sharing

Collaborative Work

Electronic

Publishing

Marketing Advertising

Sales Customers Support

Electronic Messaging

Fax E-mail

Chapter-3

Architectural Frame work For Electronic Commerce

The software frame work necessary for building electronic commerce application is

little understood in existing literature In general frame work is intended to define and

create tools that integrate the information found in todayrsquos closed system and allow the

development of E-Commerce applicationsit is important to understand that the aim of

architectural frame work itself is not to build new database management systems data

repository computer languages software agent- based transaction monitors or

communication protocols Rather the architecture should focused on synthesizing the

diverse resource already in place in corporation to facilitate the integration of data

and software for better applications

We propound that the electronic commerce applications architecture consist of six

layers of functionality or services (1) Applications (2) Brokerage Services Data and

Transaction Management (3) Interface and Support layers(4) Secure Messaging and

Electronic Document Interchange(5)Middleware and Structure Document

Interchange and(6) Network Infrastructure and Basic communication services

Application Services Customer-to business Business-to- business Intra-Organization

Brokerage and Data Management Order Processes ndashMail-Order Purchasing Payment Scheme-electronic cash Clearinghouse and Virtual mall

Interface Layer Interactive Catalog Directory Support Function Software Agents

Secure Messaging Secure Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Encrypted E-mail EDI Remote Programming(RPC)

Middleware Services Structure Documents(SGMLHTML) Compound Document(OLE OpenDoc)

Network Infrastructure Wireless-Cellular Radio PCS Wire line - POTS Coaxial Fiber Optic

These layers cooperate to provide a seamless transition between todayrsquos computing

resources and those of tomorrow by transparently integrating information access and

exchange within the context of the chosen application As seen in above figure

electronic commerce application are based on several elegant technology But only

when they are integrated do they provide uniquely powerful solution

In the ensuing discussion of each of these layer we will not elaborate on the various

aspects of the network infrastructure that transports information

1 Electronic Commerce Application Services The application service layers of E-commerce will be comprised or existing and future

applications built on the innate architecture Three distinct classes of electronic

commerce application can be distinguished Customer-to-Business Business-to-

Business and intra organization

Customer-to-Business Transactions

We call this category market place transaction In a marketplace transaction

customers learn about products differently through electronic publishing by them

differently using electronic cash and secure payment systems and have them

delivered differently Also how customers allocate their loyalty may also be different

In light of this organization itself has to adapt to a world where the traditional concepts

of brand differentiation no longer hold-where ldquoqualityrdquo has a new meaning where

content may not be equated to ldquoproductrdquo where ldquodistributionrdquo may not automatically

Manufacturing

and

Production

Engineering

and Research

Accounting

Finance and

Management

Advertising Sales Customer Services

Procurement Distribution and Logistic

Customer Oriented

Electronic Commerce

Customer

Global Supplier

Classic EDI

Internal Publishing Private Commerce

mean ldquophysical transportrdquo In this new environment brand equity can rapidly evaporate

forcing firms to developed new ways of doing business

Business-to-Business Transaction

We call this category market-link transactions Here business government and other

organizations depend on Computer-to-Computer communication as a fast an

economical and a dependable way to conduct business transaction Small companies

are also beginning to see the benefits of adopting the same methods Business-to

Business transactions include the use of EDI an electronic mail for purchasing goods

and services buying information and consulting services submitting request for

proposal and receives proposals

For Example the current accounts payable process occurs through the exchange of

paper documents Each year the trading partners exchange millions of invoices

checks purchase order financial reports and other transactions Most of the

documents are in electronic form at their point of origin but are printed and key-entered

at the point of receipt Current manual process of printing mailing and rekeying is

costly time consuming and error-prone Given this situation and faced with the need

to reduce costs small businesses are looking towards electronic- commerce as a

possible savior

Intra-Organizational transactions

We call this category market driven transactions A company becomes market driven

by dispersing throughout the firm information about its customers and competitors by

spreading strategic and tactical decision making so that all units can participate and

by continuously monitoring their customer commitment by making improve customer

satisfaction an ongoing objective To maintain the relationships that are critical to

delivering superior customer value management must pay close attention to service

both before and after sales

2 Information Brokerage and Data Management

The information brokerage and management layer provide service integration through

the notion of information brokerages the development of which is necessitated by the

increasing information resource fragmentation We use the notion of information

brokerage to represent an intermediary who provides service integration between

customer and information providers given some constraint such as a low price fast

service or profit maximization for a client

Information brokers for example are rapidly becoming necessary in dealing with the

voluminous amounts of information on the networks As on-line database migrate to

consumer information utilities consumers and information professionals will have to

keep up the knowledge and ownership of all these systems Whorsquos got what How do

you use it What do they charge Most professionals have enough trouble keeping

track of files of interest on one or two database services Will all the complexity

associated with large number of online database or service bureaus itrsquos impossible to

accept humans to do the searching It will have to be software programs-information

brokers or software agents to use the most popular term-act on searcher behalf

Information brokerage does more than just searching

3 Interface and Support service

The third layer interface and support services will provide interfaces for electronic

commerce applications such as interactive catalogues and will support directory

services-function necessary for information search and access These two concepts

are very different Interactive catalogues are the customized interface to consumer

applications such as home shopping An interactive catalog is an extension of the

paper-based catalogs and incorporates additional features such as sophisticated

graphics and video to make the advertising more attractive

Directories on the other hand operate behind the scenes and attempt to organize the

enormous amount of information and transaction to generate to facilitated electronic

commerce Directory services database make data from any server appear as a local

file A classic example of a directory is the telephone White Pages which allows us to

locate people and telephone numbers In the case of electronic commerce directories

would play an important role in information management functions For instance take

the case of buying an airline ticket with several stock overs with a caveat that the time

between layovers be minimized This search would require several queries to various

on-line directories to find empty seats on various airlines and them the availability of

seats would be coordinated with the amount of time spend in the airport terminals

4 Secure Messaging And Structured Document Interchange Services

The importance of the fourth layer secure messaging is clear Everyone in business

knows that electronic messaging is a critical business issue Consider a familiar

business scenario you hand over an urgent fax on Monday and find out on Tuesday

that itrsquos still sitting on your fax operatorrsquos desk What happened The line was busy

and he thought he would try again later On the number was wrong but he forgot to

laid you know Or you are in London and you need to send a spreadsheet that details

a marketing plan for a product introduction strategy to co-worker in New-York This

must be done today not tomorrow when the courier service good deliver There is a

solution to these common and frustrating problems Itrsquos called integrated messaging

a group of computer services that through the use of a network send receive and

combine messages faxes and large data files Some better known examples are

electronic mail enhance fax and electronic data interchange

Broadly define messaging is a software that sits between the network infrastructure

and the clients or electronic commerce applications masking the peculiarities of the

environment Others define messaging as a framework for the total implementation of

portable applications divorcing you from the architectural primitives of your system In

general messaging products are not applications that solve problems they are more

enablers of the application that solve problems

Messaging services offer solution for communicating non-formatted (unstructured)

data such as purchase orders shipping notices and invoices Unstructured messaging

consist of fax e-mail and form based system likes Lotus Notes Structured documents

messaging consists of the automated interchange of standardized and approved

messages between computer applications via telecommunication lines Examples of

structured document messaging include EDI

Messaging is gaining momentum in electronic commerce and seems to have many

advantages It supports both synchronous (immediate) and asynchronous (delayed)

message delivery and processing With asynchronous messaging when a message is

send work continues (software doesnrsquot wait for a response) This allows the transfer

of messages through store-and-forward methods

The main disadvantages of messaging are the new types of applications it enables-

which appear to be more complex especially to traditional programmers-and the jungle

of standardrsquos in involves Because of the lack of standards there is often no

interoperability between different messaging vendors leading to islands of messaging

Also security privacy and confidentiality through data encryption and authentication

technique are important issue that need to resolve for ensuring the legality of the

message-based transaction themselves

5 Middleware Services

Middleware is a relatively new concept that emerged only recently Likes so many other

innovations it came into being out of necessity Users in the 1970rsquos when vendors

delivered homogenous systems that worked didnrsquot have a need for middleware When

conditions changed-along with the hardware and the software the organizations

couldnrsquot cope The tools were inadequate the backlog was enormous and the

pressure was overwhelming And the user were dissatisfied Something was needed

to solve all the interface translation transformation and interpretation problems that

work driving applications developerrsquos crazy

With the growth of networks client-server technology and all other forms of

communicating betweenamong unlike platforms the problems of getting all the pieces

to work together grew from formidable to horrendous As the cry for distributed

computing spread users demanded interaction between disk similar systems

networks that permitted shared resources and applications that could be accessed by

multiple software programs In simple terms middleware is the ultimate mediator

between diverse software programs that enables them talk to one another

6 Transparency

Transparency utilize that user should be unaware that they are accessing multiple

systems Transparency is essential for dealing with higher-level issues than needed

physical media and interconnection that under line network infrastructure is in charge

of The ideal picture is one of a ldquovirtualrdquo network a collection of work ndashgroup

departmental enterprise and inter enterprise LANrsquos that appears to the end users or

client application to be a seamless and easily accessed whole

Transparency is accomplished using middleware that facilitated a distributed

computing environment This gives users and applications transparent accessed to

data computation and other resources across collections of multivendor

heterogeneous system The strategic architectures of every major system vendor are

now based on some form of middleware The key to realizing the theoretical benefit

of such an architecture is transparency Users need not spend their time trying to

understand where something is Nor should application developers have to code into

their applications the exact location of resources over the network The goal is for the

applications to send a request to the middleware layer which then satisfied the request

any way it can using remote information

7 Transaction Security and Management

Support for transaction processing (TP) is fundamental to success in the electronic

commerce market Security and management are essential to all layers in the

electronic commerce model Transaction integrity must be given for businesses that

cannot afford any loss or inconsistency in data For electronic commerce middleware

provides the qualities accepted in the standard TP system the so-called ACID

properties (Atomicity consistency isolation and durability)

World-Wide-Web as the Architecture Electronic commerce depends on the unspoken assumption that computers co-

operate efficiency for seamless information sharing Unfortunately this assumption of

interoperability has been supported by the realities of practical computing Computing

is skill a world made up of many technical directions product implementation and

competing vendors This diversity while good for information causes problem as the

E-commerce application try to impose a certain discipline on the proliferating

computers and networks It is ironic that real effect of computing is all too often the

prevention of data sharing due to incompatibility-architectures data formats and

communications protocols

What does the WEB Encompass

The web has become an umbrella for a wide range of concepts and technologies that

differ markedly in purpose and scope These include the global hypertext publishing

concepts the universal reader concept and the client-server concept

The global hypertext publishing concepts promotes the idea of the seamless

information world in which all on-line information can be accessed and retrieved in a

consistent and simple way To access information in the seamless world we will need

the ability to address many types of data- text files images sound files animation

sequences

The universal readership concept promotes the idea that unlike the segmented

application of the past we can use one application- a universal (or common) user

interface-to read a variety of documents This concepts implies that one informationrsquos

is published it is accessible of any type of computer in any country and that any

(authorized) person nearly needs to use one simple program to access it This

accomplished in the web by using a core browser or application that is augmented by

supporting applications The core browser implements only minable functionality and

attempts to off load more specialized work onto the supporting applications

The client-server concept allows the web to grow easily without any centralized control

Anyone can published information and anyone (as long as he or she authorized) can

read and download it The publishing information requires a server program and

reading data requires the client browser All the clients and all the servers are

connected to one another by Internet The various standard protocols allows all clients

to communicate will all servers In practice the web hands or a number of essential

concepts including the following

The addressing scheme known as uniform resource locator (URL) makes the hyper

media world possible despite many different protocols

A network protocol known as hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) used by client

browsers and servers of first performance and features not otherwise available

A mark-up language (HTML) which every web client is required to understand is

used for the representation of hypertext documents containing text list boxes and

graphics information across the net

Chapter-4

Technology Behind the web

Information providers (or publishers) run programs (called servers) from which the

browsers (clients) can obtain information These programs can either be Web servers

that understand the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) ldquoGatewayrdquo programs that

convert an existing information format to hypertext for a non-http server that Web

browser can access-anonymous FTP or Gopher servers

Web servers are composed of two major parts the hypertext transfer protocol for

transmitting documents between servers and clients and the hypertext markup

language (HTML) format for documents The link between HTML files and the HTTP

servers is provided by the uniform resource locator (URLrsquos)

Uniform Resource Locator

The documents that the browsers display are hypertext that contains pointers to other

documents The browsers let you deal with the pointers in a transparent way-select the

pointer and you are presented with the text to which it points This pointer is

implemented using a concept that is central to Web browsers Uniform Resource

Locator (URLrsquos) One way to think about URLrsquos is to use the library and location on a

shelf as a metaphor A URL for a digital library would be a unique call number that

provides an exact location of every book in the world including the country city street

and library shelf locations

In practice URLrsquos are the strings used as addresses of objects (documents images)

on the Web Think of them as analogous to your e-mail address Just as your address

is unique and may be used by any other Internet user to send your mail without knowing

exactly where you are a URL marks the unique locations on the Internet where a file

or services can be found

URLrsquos follow a fairly consistent pattern The first part describes the type of resource

the second part gives the name of the server housing the resource and the third part

gives full file name of the resource URLrsquos are universal in that they provide access to

a wide range of network services which required separate application in the past For

a new network protocol one can easily form an address as the set of parameters

necessary to retrieve the objects If these parameters are encoded into concise string

with a prefix to identify the protocol and encoding one has new URL scheme Take a

look at the URLrsquos formats below

FTP ftpserveraddresscompletefilename

Gopher gopherserveraddressportdirectoryfilename

TELNET telnetserveraddressport

HTTP httpserveraddressporthomepagehtml

News newsmiscstocksinvest

These are URL for Internet news articles and newsgroups (the NNTP protocol) and for

HTTP archives for telnet destinations e-mail addresses and so on The same can be

done for names of objects in a given name space For example the URL of the main

page for the web project happens to be

httpwebw3orghypertextwebtheprojecthtmlThe prefix ldquohttprsquorsquo in the preceding

example indicates the address space and defines the interpretation of the rest of the

string The HTTP protocol is to be used so the string contains the address of the server

to be contacted and a sub string to be passed to the server

As noted earlier different protocols use different syntaxes but they do have a small

amount in common For example the common URL syntax reserves the solidus () as

a way of representing hierarchical space the pound label () as a way of pointing inside

the document and question mark () as a separator between the address of an object

and a query operation applied to it Hierarchical spaces are useful for hypertext where

onerdquo work ldquomay be spilt up into many interlinked documents The allows relative

names to exploit the hierarchical structure and allows links to be made within the wok

independent of the higher parts of the URL such as the server name

URLs are central to the Web architecture The fact that it is easy to address an object

on the Internet is essential for the system to scale and for the information space to be

independent of the network and server topology

Acknowledgement

I Am Thankful To Dezyne Ersquocole College To Help In Making This Project On E-Commerce

A Special Thanks To Ms Jyoti Phulwani to Guide Us Step By Step in the Making of This

Project Report

Thanking you

Mohit Bairwa

Bachelor of Computer Application

Third Year

Contents

1 Chapter 1

Introduction

2 Chapter 2

Electronic Commerce And World Wide Web

3 Chapter 3

Architectural Framework for Electronic Commerce

4 Chapter 4

Technology Behind The Web

5 Chapter 5

Network Security and Firewalls

6 Chapter 6

Electronic Commerce Companies

7 Chapter 7

A Pictorial Representation of E-Commerce

8 Chapter 8

Conclusion

Chapter-1

Introduction

Every individual or company that wants to make money and become the next Microsoft needs to understand the market potential business implication and technological foundation of electronic commerce but what is electronic commerce everybody is talking about How does it affect the organizations way of doing business what sort of technical and business are needed to be successful

Companies and consumers are discovering that global networking and other technological innovations are powerful assists if used as competitive weapons in day-to-day activity E-commerce is associated with the buying and selling of informationrsquos products and services via computer network today

Consumer desire are very hard to predict pin point or decipher of electronic markets whose shapes structure and population are still in early stages Needs envisioned include entertainment on demand including five hundred channel TV video on demand games on demand electronic retailing via catalogs and kiosk and home shopping networks

In future viewers will decide what they want to see and when they want to participate a successful market places are expected to those that cater to consumerrsquos loneliness boredom education and career In a highly competitive society where neighbors seldom talk to one another these outlets give consumer someone to tough after going home

Letrsquos take a look at the changing conditions in the ldquonew economyrdquo with respect to the retail industry Consumers are pushing retailers to the wall demanding lower prices better quality a large section of in-season goods Retailers are scrambling to fill the order They are slashing back-office costs reducing profit margin reducing-cycle time buying more wisely and making huge investments in technology They are revamping distribution channels to make sure that warehouses costs are down by reducing their average inventory levels and coordinating the consumer demand and supply pattern

In the push to reduce prices more and more retailers are turning to overseas supplier in part because of cheaper labor costs Retail are the immediate line of fire and had to do the cost cutting They put the pressure on the manufacturer and then to the supplier end of the pipeline

Electronic commerce is forming companies to rethink the existing ways of doing target marketing relationship marketing and even event marketing Adaptation would include moving towards computerized ldquopaperlessrdquo operations to reduce trading costs and facilitate the adoption of new business process Japanese approach JIT (just in time) total quality control and quality circles are focused now for delivery of goods through electronic commerce

Chapter-2

Electronic commerce and the world-wide-web

We have broadly defined electronic commerce as a modern business methodology

that address the desire of firms consumers and management to cut costs while

improving the quality of goods and increasing the speed of services The need for

electronic commerce stems from the demand within business and government to make

better use of computing that is better apply computer technology to improve business

process and information exchange both within an enterprise and across organizations

In short electronic commerce appears to be and integrating force that represent the

digital conversions of twenty-first century business application and computing

technologies

Electronic commerce applications emphasis the generations and exploitation of new

business opportunity and to use the popular buzzword ldquogenerate business valuerdquo For

instance when buyer- seller transaction occur in the electronic market place

information is accesses observed arrange and sold in different ways in fact the

information about a product of service is separated from the physical product or

services and has become important on its own In some cases the information can

become as crucial as his actual product or services in term of its effect on a companyrsquos

in short information ways business transactions are creating new ways of doing

business and even new type of business

Electronic commerce application are quite varied In its most common form E-

commerce is also used to donate the paperless exchange of business information

using EDI electronic mail (E-mail) electronic bulletin boards electronic funds transfer

(EFT) and similar technology These technologies are normally applied in high-pay of

areas recognizing that paper-handling activity usually increase expense without

adding value On the other hand the term Electronic Commerce is used to describe

a new online approach to perform traditional functions such as payment and funds

transfer order entry a processing invoicing inventory management cargo tracking

electronic catalogues and point-of-sale data gathering More recently company have

realized that the advertising marketing and customer support functions are also part

of electronic commerce application domain These business functions act as initiator

to the entire order management cycle that incorporates the more established motions

of electronic commerce

In short what we are witnessing is the use of term electronic commerce as an umbrella

concepts to integrate a wide range of new and old applications

Despite the changes taking places business have three goals stay competitive

improve productivity and deliver quality service These goals are the guiding buoys for

firms plotting their course in the turbulent water of electronic commerce There are

other factors that companies need to keep in mind First most company have already

made enormous information technology investments to automate their key internal

processes such as purchasing invoicing and other similar functions So some aspects

of the technological infrastructure for electronic commerce are already in place The

challenge now become how to effectively leverage this investment Second prices for

computer hardware and network equipment continue to fall marking information

technology an appealing investments for many businesses especially when itrsquos used

for high-impact applications such as linking their distributed operations However

investments without a clear idea of the electronic commerce architecture being built

would be akin to driving with blinders on As a result companies that have decided that

electronic commerce applications represent one of the best strategic investments they

can make must first exert some effort to understand the technology underlying

electronic commerce applications

At first glance it appears that messaging based technologies such as EDI and mail-

enable applications combine with database and information management service

form the technical foundation for effective electronic commerce solutionsno single one

of these technologies can deliver the full potential of electronic commerce however

What we require is and integrated architecture the likes of which has never been seen

before This integrated architecture is emerging in the form of the World Wide Web

(WWW) As electronic commerce becomes more mature we are beginning to see

sophisticated application being developed on WWW Technically and commercially

the www client-server model seems poised to become a dominant technology

Electronic Transfer Interchange

ctronic Document Interchange Electronic Document Interchange (EDI)

Electronic Funds Transfer (EFD)

Corporate

Digital

Library

Information Sharing

Collaborative Work

Electronic

Publishing

Marketing Advertising

Sales Customers Support

Electronic Messaging

Fax E-mail

Chapter-3

Architectural Frame work For Electronic Commerce

The software frame work necessary for building electronic commerce application is

little understood in existing literature In general frame work is intended to define and

create tools that integrate the information found in todayrsquos closed system and allow the

development of E-Commerce applicationsit is important to understand that the aim of

architectural frame work itself is not to build new database management systems data

repository computer languages software agent- based transaction monitors or

communication protocols Rather the architecture should focused on synthesizing the

diverse resource already in place in corporation to facilitate the integration of data

and software for better applications

We propound that the electronic commerce applications architecture consist of six

layers of functionality or services (1) Applications (2) Brokerage Services Data and

Transaction Management (3) Interface and Support layers(4) Secure Messaging and

Electronic Document Interchange(5)Middleware and Structure Document

Interchange and(6) Network Infrastructure and Basic communication services

Application Services Customer-to business Business-to- business Intra-Organization

Brokerage and Data Management Order Processes ndashMail-Order Purchasing Payment Scheme-electronic cash Clearinghouse and Virtual mall

Interface Layer Interactive Catalog Directory Support Function Software Agents

Secure Messaging Secure Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Encrypted E-mail EDI Remote Programming(RPC)

Middleware Services Structure Documents(SGMLHTML) Compound Document(OLE OpenDoc)

Network Infrastructure Wireless-Cellular Radio PCS Wire line - POTS Coaxial Fiber Optic

These layers cooperate to provide a seamless transition between todayrsquos computing

resources and those of tomorrow by transparently integrating information access and

exchange within the context of the chosen application As seen in above figure

electronic commerce application are based on several elegant technology But only

when they are integrated do they provide uniquely powerful solution

In the ensuing discussion of each of these layer we will not elaborate on the various

aspects of the network infrastructure that transports information

1 Electronic Commerce Application Services The application service layers of E-commerce will be comprised or existing and future

applications built on the innate architecture Three distinct classes of electronic

commerce application can be distinguished Customer-to-Business Business-to-

Business and intra organization

Customer-to-Business Transactions

We call this category market place transaction In a marketplace transaction

customers learn about products differently through electronic publishing by them

differently using electronic cash and secure payment systems and have them

delivered differently Also how customers allocate their loyalty may also be different

In light of this organization itself has to adapt to a world where the traditional concepts

of brand differentiation no longer hold-where ldquoqualityrdquo has a new meaning where

content may not be equated to ldquoproductrdquo where ldquodistributionrdquo may not automatically

Manufacturing

and

Production

Engineering

and Research

Accounting

Finance and

Management

Advertising Sales Customer Services

Procurement Distribution and Logistic

Customer Oriented

Electronic Commerce

Customer

Global Supplier

Classic EDI

Internal Publishing Private Commerce

mean ldquophysical transportrdquo In this new environment brand equity can rapidly evaporate

forcing firms to developed new ways of doing business

Business-to-Business Transaction

We call this category market-link transactions Here business government and other

organizations depend on Computer-to-Computer communication as a fast an

economical and a dependable way to conduct business transaction Small companies

are also beginning to see the benefits of adopting the same methods Business-to

Business transactions include the use of EDI an electronic mail for purchasing goods

and services buying information and consulting services submitting request for

proposal and receives proposals

For Example the current accounts payable process occurs through the exchange of

paper documents Each year the trading partners exchange millions of invoices

checks purchase order financial reports and other transactions Most of the

documents are in electronic form at their point of origin but are printed and key-entered

at the point of receipt Current manual process of printing mailing and rekeying is

costly time consuming and error-prone Given this situation and faced with the need

to reduce costs small businesses are looking towards electronic- commerce as a

possible savior

Intra-Organizational transactions

We call this category market driven transactions A company becomes market driven

by dispersing throughout the firm information about its customers and competitors by

spreading strategic and tactical decision making so that all units can participate and

by continuously monitoring their customer commitment by making improve customer

satisfaction an ongoing objective To maintain the relationships that are critical to

delivering superior customer value management must pay close attention to service

both before and after sales

2 Information Brokerage and Data Management

The information brokerage and management layer provide service integration through

the notion of information brokerages the development of which is necessitated by the

increasing information resource fragmentation We use the notion of information

brokerage to represent an intermediary who provides service integration between

customer and information providers given some constraint such as a low price fast

service or profit maximization for a client

Information brokers for example are rapidly becoming necessary in dealing with the

voluminous amounts of information on the networks As on-line database migrate to

consumer information utilities consumers and information professionals will have to

keep up the knowledge and ownership of all these systems Whorsquos got what How do

you use it What do they charge Most professionals have enough trouble keeping

track of files of interest on one or two database services Will all the complexity

associated with large number of online database or service bureaus itrsquos impossible to

accept humans to do the searching It will have to be software programs-information

brokers or software agents to use the most popular term-act on searcher behalf

Information brokerage does more than just searching

3 Interface and Support service

The third layer interface and support services will provide interfaces for electronic

commerce applications such as interactive catalogues and will support directory

services-function necessary for information search and access These two concepts

are very different Interactive catalogues are the customized interface to consumer

applications such as home shopping An interactive catalog is an extension of the

paper-based catalogs and incorporates additional features such as sophisticated

graphics and video to make the advertising more attractive

Directories on the other hand operate behind the scenes and attempt to organize the

enormous amount of information and transaction to generate to facilitated electronic

commerce Directory services database make data from any server appear as a local

file A classic example of a directory is the telephone White Pages which allows us to

locate people and telephone numbers In the case of electronic commerce directories

would play an important role in information management functions For instance take

the case of buying an airline ticket with several stock overs with a caveat that the time

between layovers be minimized This search would require several queries to various

on-line directories to find empty seats on various airlines and them the availability of

seats would be coordinated with the amount of time spend in the airport terminals

4 Secure Messaging And Structured Document Interchange Services

The importance of the fourth layer secure messaging is clear Everyone in business

knows that electronic messaging is a critical business issue Consider a familiar

business scenario you hand over an urgent fax on Monday and find out on Tuesday

that itrsquos still sitting on your fax operatorrsquos desk What happened The line was busy

and he thought he would try again later On the number was wrong but he forgot to

laid you know Or you are in London and you need to send a spreadsheet that details

a marketing plan for a product introduction strategy to co-worker in New-York This

must be done today not tomorrow when the courier service good deliver There is a

solution to these common and frustrating problems Itrsquos called integrated messaging

a group of computer services that through the use of a network send receive and

combine messages faxes and large data files Some better known examples are

electronic mail enhance fax and electronic data interchange

Broadly define messaging is a software that sits between the network infrastructure

and the clients or electronic commerce applications masking the peculiarities of the

environment Others define messaging as a framework for the total implementation of

portable applications divorcing you from the architectural primitives of your system In

general messaging products are not applications that solve problems they are more

enablers of the application that solve problems

Messaging services offer solution for communicating non-formatted (unstructured)

data such as purchase orders shipping notices and invoices Unstructured messaging

consist of fax e-mail and form based system likes Lotus Notes Structured documents

messaging consists of the automated interchange of standardized and approved

messages between computer applications via telecommunication lines Examples of

structured document messaging include EDI

Messaging is gaining momentum in electronic commerce and seems to have many

advantages It supports both synchronous (immediate) and asynchronous (delayed)

message delivery and processing With asynchronous messaging when a message is

send work continues (software doesnrsquot wait for a response) This allows the transfer

of messages through store-and-forward methods

The main disadvantages of messaging are the new types of applications it enables-

which appear to be more complex especially to traditional programmers-and the jungle

of standardrsquos in involves Because of the lack of standards there is often no

interoperability between different messaging vendors leading to islands of messaging

Also security privacy and confidentiality through data encryption and authentication

technique are important issue that need to resolve for ensuring the legality of the

message-based transaction themselves

5 Middleware Services

Middleware is a relatively new concept that emerged only recently Likes so many other

innovations it came into being out of necessity Users in the 1970rsquos when vendors

delivered homogenous systems that worked didnrsquot have a need for middleware When

conditions changed-along with the hardware and the software the organizations

couldnrsquot cope The tools were inadequate the backlog was enormous and the

pressure was overwhelming And the user were dissatisfied Something was needed

to solve all the interface translation transformation and interpretation problems that

work driving applications developerrsquos crazy

With the growth of networks client-server technology and all other forms of

communicating betweenamong unlike platforms the problems of getting all the pieces

to work together grew from formidable to horrendous As the cry for distributed

computing spread users demanded interaction between disk similar systems

networks that permitted shared resources and applications that could be accessed by

multiple software programs In simple terms middleware is the ultimate mediator

between diverse software programs that enables them talk to one another

6 Transparency

Transparency utilize that user should be unaware that they are accessing multiple

systems Transparency is essential for dealing with higher-level issues than needed

physical media and interconnection that under line network infrastructure is in charge

of The ideal picture is one of a ldquovirtualrdquo network a collection of work ndashgroup

departmental enterprise and inter enterprise LANrsquos that appears to the end users or

client application to be a seamless and easily accessed whole

Transparency is accomplished using middleware that facilitated a distributed

computing environment This gives users and applications transparent accessed to

data computation and other resources across collections of multivendor

heterogeneous system The strategic architectures of every major system vendor are

now based on some form of middleware The key to realizing the theoretical benefit

of such an architecture is transparency Users need not spend their time trying to

understand where something is Nor should application developers have to code into

their applications the exact location of resources over the network The goal is for the

applications to send a request to the middleware layer which then satisfied the request

any way it can using remote information

7 Transaction Security and Management

Support for transaction processing (TP) is fundamental to success in the electronic

commerce market Security and management are essential to all layers in the

electronic commerce model Transaction integrity must be given for businesses that

cannot afford any loss or inconsistency in data For electronic commerce middleware

provides the qualities accepted in the standard TP system the so-called ACID

properties (Atomicity consistency isolation and durability)

World-Wide-Web as the Architecture Electronic commerce depends on the unspoken assumption that computers co-

operate efficiency for seamless information sharing Unfortunately this assumption of

interoperability has been supported by the realities of practical computing Computing

is skill a world made up of many technical directions product implementation and

competing vendors This diversity while good for information causes problem as the

E-commerce application try to impose a certain discipline on the proliferating

computers and networks It is ironic that real effect of computing is all too often the

prevention of data sharing due to incompatibility-architectures data formats and

communications protocols

What does the WEB Encompass

The web has become an umbrella for a wide range of concepts and technologies that

differ markedly in purpose and scope These include the global hypertext publishing

concepts the universal reader concept and the client-server concept

The global hypertext publishing concepts promotes the idea of the seamless

information world in which all on-line information can be accessed and retrieved in a

consistent and simple way To access information in the seamless world we will need

the ability to address many types of data- text files images sound files animation

sequences

The universal readership concept promotes the idea that unlike the segmented

application of the past we can use one application- a universal (or common) user

interface-to read a variety of documents This concepts implies that one informationrsquos

is published it is accessible of any type of computer in any country and that any

(authorized) person nearly needs to use one simple program to access it This

accomplished in the web by using a core browser or application that is augmented by

supporting applications The core browser implements only minable functionality and

attempts to off load more specialized work onto the supporting applications

The client-server concept allows the web to grow easily without any centralized control

Anyone can published information and anyone (as long as he or she authorized) can

read and download it The publishing information requires a server program and

reading data requires the client browser All the clients and all the servers are

connected to one another by Internet The various standard protocols allows all clients

to communicate will all servers In practice the web hands or a number of essential

concepts including the following

The addressing scheme known as uniform resource locator (URL) makes the hyper

media world possible despite many different protocols

A network protocol known as hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) used by client

browsers and servers of first performance and features not otherwise available

A mark-up language (HTML) which every web client is required to understand is

used for the representation of hypertext documents containing text list boxes and

graphics information across the net

Chapter-4

Technology Behind the web

Information providers (or publishers) run programs (called servers) from which the

browsers (clients) can obtain information These programs can either be Web servers

that understand the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) ldquoGatewayrdquo programs that

convert an existing information format to hypertext for a non-http server that Web

browser can access-anonymous FTP or Gopher servers

Web servers are composed of two major parts the hypertext transfer protocol for

transmitting documents between servers and clients and the hypertext markup

language (HTML) format for documents The link between HTML files and the HTTP

servers is provided by the uniform resource locator (URLrsquos)

Uniform Resource Locator

The documents that the browsers display are hypertext that contains pointers to other

documents The browsers let you deal with the pointers in a transparent way-select the

pointer and you are presented with the text to which it points This pointer is

implemented using a concept that is central to Web browsers Uniform Resource

Locator (URLrsquos) One way to think about URLrsquos is to use the library and location on a

shelf as a metaphor A URL for a digital library would be a unique call number that

provides an exact location of every book in the world including the country city street

and library shelf locations

In practice URLrsquos are the strings used as addresses of objects (documents images)

on the Web Think of them as analogous to your e-mail address Just as your address

is unique and may be used by any other Internet user to send your mail without knowing

exactly where you are a URL marks the unique locations on the Internet where a file

or services can be found

URLrsquos follow a fairly consistent pattern The first part describes the type of resource

the second part gives the name of the server housing the resource and the third part

gives full file name of the resource URLrsquos are universal in that they provide access to

a wide range of network services which required separate application in the past For

a new network protocol one can easily form an address as the set of parameters

necessary to retrieve the objects If these parameters are encoded into concise string

with a prefix to identify the protocol and encoding one has new URL scheme Take a

look at the URLrsquos formats below

FTP ftpserveraddresscompletefilename

Gopher gopherserveraddressportdirectoryfilename

TELNET telnetserveraddressport

HTTP httpserveraddressporthomepagehtml

News newsmiscstocksinvest

These are URL for Internet news articles and newsgroups (the NNTP protocol) and for

HTTP archives for telnet destinations e-mail addresses and so on The same can be

done for names of objects in a given name space For example the URL of the main

page for the web project happens to be

httpwebw3orghypertextwebtheprojecthtmlThe prefix ldquohttprsquorsquo in the preceding

example indicates the address space and defines the interpretation of the rest of the

string The HTTP protocol is to be used so the string contains the address of the server

to be contacted and a sub string to be passed to the server

As noted earlier different protocols use different syntaxes but they do have a small

amount in common For example the common URL syntax reserves the solidus () as

a way of representing hierarchical space the pound label () as a way of pointing inside

the document and question mark () as a separator between the address of an object

and a query operation applied to it Hierarchical spaces are useful for hypertext where

onerdquo work ldquomay be spilt up into many interlinked documents The allows relative

names to exploit the hierarchical structure and allows links to be made within the wok

independent of the higher parts of the URL such as the server name

URLs are central to the Web architecture The fact that it is easy to address an object

on the Internet is essential for the system to scale and for the information space to be

independent of the network and server topology

Contents

1 Chapter 1

Introduction

2 Chapter 2

Electronic Commerce And World Wide Web

3 Chapter 3

Architectural Framework for Electronic Commerce

4 Chapter 4

Technology Behind The Web

5 Chapter 5

Network Security and Firewalls

6 Chapter 6

Electronic Commerce Companies

7 Chapter 7

A Pictorial Representation of E-Commerce

8 Chapter 8

Conclusion

Chapter-1

Introduction

Every individual or company that wants to make money and become the next Microsoft needs to understand the market potential business implication and technological foundation of electronic commerce but what is electronic commerce everybody is talking about How does it affect the organizations way of doing business what sort of technical and business are needed to be successful

Companies and consumers are discovering that global networking and other technological innovations are powerful assists if used as competitive weapons in day-to-day activity E-commerce is associated with the buying and selling of informationrsquos products and services via computer network today

Consumer desire are very hard to predict pin point or decipher of electronic markets whose shapes structure and population are still in early stages Needs envisioned include entertainment on demand including five hundred channel TV video on demand games on demand electronic retailing via catalogs and kiosk and home shopping networks

In future viewers will decide what they want to see and when they want to participate a successful market places are expected to those that cater to consumerrsquos loneliness boredom education and career In a highly competitive society where neighbors seldom talk to one another these outlets give consumer someone to tough after going home

Letrsquos take a look at the changing conditions in the ldquonew economyrdquo with respect to the retail industry Consumers are pushing retailers to the wall demanding lower prices better quality a large section of in-season goods Retailers are scrambling to fill the order They are slashing back-office costs reducing profit margin reducing-cycle time buying more wisely and making huge investments in technology They are revamping distribution channels to make sure that warehouses costs are down by reducing their average inventory levels and coordinating the consumer demand and supply pattern

In the push to reduce prices more and more retailers are turning to overseas supplier in part because of cheaper labor costs Retail are the immediate line of fire and had to do the cost cutting They put the pressure on the manufacturer and then to the supplier end of the pipeline

Electronic commerce is forming companies to rethink the existing ways of doing target marketing relationship marketing and even event marketing Adaptation would include moving towards computerized ldquopaperlessrdquo operations to reduce trading costs and facilitate the adoption of new business process Japanese approach JIT (just in time) total quality control and quality circles are focused now for delivery of goods through electronic commerce

Chapter-2

Electronic commerce and the world-wide-web

We have broadly defined electronic commerce as a modern business methodology

that address the desire of firms consumers and management to cut costs while

improving the quality of goods and increasing the speed of services The need for

electronic commerce stems from the demand within business and government to make

better use of computing that is better apply computer technology to improve business

process and information exchange both within an enterprise and across organizations

In short electronic commerce appears to be and integrating force that represent the

digital conversions of twenty-first century business application and computing

technologies

Electronic commerce applications emphasis the generations and exploitation of new

business opportunity and to use the popular buzzword ldquogenerate business valuerdquo For

instance when buyer- seller transaction occur in the electronic market place

information is accesses observed arrange and sold in different ways in fact the

information about a product of service is separated from the physical product or

services and has become important on its own In some cases the information can

become as crucial as his actual product or services in term of its effect on a companyrsquos

in short information ways business transactions are creating new ways of doing

business and even new type of business

Electronic commerce application are quite varied In its most common form E-

commerce is also used to donate the paperless exchange of business information

using EDI electronic mail (E-mail) electronic bulletin boards electronic funds transfer

(EFT) and similar technology These technologies are normally applied in high-pay of

areas recognizing that paper-handling activity usually increase expense without

adding value On the other hand the term Electronic Commerce is used to describe

a new online approach to perform traditional functions such as payment and funds

transfer order entry a processing invoicing inventory management cargo tracking

electronic catalogues and point-of-sale data gathering More recently company have

realized that the advertising marketing and customer support functions are also part

of electronic commerce application domain These business functions act as initiator

to the entire order management cycle that incorporates the more established motions

of electronic commerce

In short what we are witnessing is the use of term electronic commerce as an umbrella

concepts to integrate a wide range of new and old applications

Despite the changes taking places business have three goals stay competitive

improve productivity and deliver quality service These goals are the guiding buoys for

firms plotting their course in the turbulent water of electronic commerce There are

other factors that companies need to keep in mind First most company have already

made enormous information technology investments to automate their key internal

processes such as purchasing invoicing and other similar functions So some aspects

of the technological infrastructure for electronic commerce are already in place The

challenge now become how to effectively leverage this investment Second prices for

computer hardware and network equipment continue to fall marking information

technology an appealing investments for many businesses especially when itrsquos used

for high-impact applications such as linking their distributed operations However

investments without a clear idea of the electronic commerce architecture being built

would be akin to driving with blinders on As a result companies that have decided that

electronic commerce applications represent one of the best strategic investments they

can make must first exert some effort to understand the technology underlying

electronic commerce applications

At first glance it appears that messaging based technologies such as EDI and mail-

enable applications combine with database and information management service

form the technical foundation for effective electronic commerce solutionsno single one

of these technologies can deliver the full potential of electronic commerce however

What we require is and integrated architecture the likes of which has never been seen

before This integrated architecture is emerging in the form of the World Wide Web

(WWW) As electronic commerce becomes more mature we are beginning to see

sophisticated application being developed on WWW Technically and commercially

the www client-server model seems poised to become a dominant technology

Electronic Transfer Interchange

ctronic Document Interchange Electronic Document Interchange (EDI)

Electronic Funds Transfer (EFD)

Corporate

Digital

Library

Information Sharing

Collaborative Work

Electronic

Publishing

Marketing Advertising

Sales Customers Support

Electronic Messaging

Fax E-mail

Chapter-3

Architectural Frame work For Electronic Commerce

The software frame work necessary for building electronic commerce application is

little understood in existing literature In general frame work is intended to define and

create tools that integrate the information found in todayrsquos closed system and allow the

development of E-Commerce applicationsit is important to understand that the aim of

architectural frame work itself is not to build new database management systems data

repository computer languages software agent- based transaction monitors or

communication protocols Rather the architecture should focused on synthesizing the

diverse resource already in place in corporation to facilitate the integration of data

and software for better applications

We propound that the electronic commerce applications architecture consist of six

layers of functionality or services (1) Applications (2) Brokerage Services Data and

Transaction Management (3) Interface and Support layers(4) Secure Messaging and

Electronic Document Interchange(5)Middleware and Structure Document

Interchange and(6) Network Infrastructure and Basic communication services

Application Services Customer-to business Business-to- business Intra-Organization

Brokerage and Data Management Order Processes ndashMail-Order Purchasing Payment Scheme-electronic cash Clearinghouse and Virtual mall

Interface Layer Interactive Catalog Directory Support Function Software Agents

Secure Messaging Secure Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Encrypted E-mail EDI Remote Programming(RPC)

Middleware Services Structure Documents(SGMLHTML) Compound Document(OLE OpenDoc)

Network Infrastructure Wireless-Cellular Radio PCS Wire line - POTS Coaxial Fiber Optic

These layers cooperate to provide a seamless transition between todayrsquos computing

resources and those of tomorrow by transparently integrating information access and

exchange within the context of the chosen application As seen in above figure

electronic commerce application are based on several elegant technology But only

when they are integrated do they provide uniquely powerful solution

In the ensuing discussion of each of these layer we will not elaborate on the various

aspects of the network infrastructure that transports information

1 Electronic Commerce Application Services The application service layers of E-commerce will be comprised or existing and future

applications built on the innate architecture Three distinct classes of electronic

commerce application can be distinguished Customer-to-Business Business-to-

Business and intra organization

Customer-to-Business Transactions

We call this category market place transaction In a marketplace transaction

customers learn about products differently through electronic publishing by them

differently using electronic cash and secure payment systems and have them

delivered differently Also how customers allocate their loyalty may also be different

In light of this organization itself has to adapt to a world where the traditional concepts

of brand differentiation no longer hold-where ldquoqualityrdquo has a new meaning where

content may not be equated to ldquoproductrdquo where ldquodistributionrdquo may not automatically

Manufacturing

and

Production

Engineering

and Research

Accounting

Finance and

Management

Advertising Sales Customer Services

Procurement Distribution and Logistic

Customer Oriented

Electronic Commerce

Customer

Global Supplier

Classic EDI

Internal Publishing Private Commerce

mean ldquophysical transportrdquo In this new environment brand equity can rapidly evaporate

forcing firms to developed new ways of doing business

Business-to-Business Transaction

We call this category market-link transactions Here business government and other

organizations depend on Computer-to-Computer communication as a fast an

economical and a dependable way to conduct business transaction Small companies

are also beginning to see the benefits of adopting the same methods Business-to

Business transactions include the use of EDI an electronic mail for purchasing goods

and services buying information and consulting services submitting request for

proposal and receives proposals

For Example the current accounts payable process occurs through the exchange of

paper documents Each year the trading partners exchange millions of invoices

checks purchase order financial reports and other transactions Most of the

documents are in electronic form at their point of origin but are printed and key-entered

at the point of receipt Current manual process of printing mailing and rekeying is

costly time consuming and error-prone Given this situation and faced with the need

to reduce costs small businesses are looking towards electronic- commerce as a

possible savior

Intra-Organizational transactions

We call this category market driven transactions A company becomes market driven

by dispersing throughout the firm information about its customers and competitors by

spreading strategic and tactical decision making so that all units can participate and

by continuously monitoring their customer commitment by making improve customer

satisfaction an ongoing objective To maintain the relationships that are critical to

delivering superior customer value management must pay close attention to service

both before and after sales

2 Information Brokerage and Data Management

The information brokerage and management layer provide service integration through

the notion of information brokerages the development of which is necessitated by the

increasing information resource fragmentation We use the notion of information

brokerage to represent an intermediary who provides service integration between

customer and information providers given some constraint such as a low price fast

service or profit maximization for a client

Information brokers for example are rapidly becoming necessary in dealing with the

voluminous amounts of information on the networks As on-line database migrate to

consumer information utilities consumers and information professionals will have to

keep up the knowledge and ownership of all these systems Whorsquos got what How do

you use it What do they charge Most professionals have enough trouble keeping

track of files of interest on one or two database services Will all the complexity

associated with large number of online database or service bureaus itrsquos impossible to

accept humans to do the searching It will have to be software programs-information

brokers or software agents to use the most popular term-act on searcher behalf

Information brokerage does more than just searching

3 Interface and Support service

The third layer interface and support services will provide interfaces for electronic

commerce applications such as interactive catalogues and will support directory

services-function necessary for information search and access These two concepts

are very different Interactive catalogues are the customized interface to consumer

applications such as home shopping An interactive catalog is an extension of the

paper-based catalogs and incorporates additional features such as sophisticated

graphics and video to make the advertising more attractive

Directories on the other hand operate behind the scenes and attempt to organize the

enormous amount of information and transaction to generate to facilitated electronic

commerce Directory services database make data from any server appear as a local

file A classic example of a directory is the telephone White Pages which allows us to

locate people and telephone numbers In the case of electronic commerce directories

would play an important role in information management functions For instance take

the case of buying an airline ticket with several stock overs with a caveat that the time

between layovers be minimized This search would require several queries to various

on-line directories to find empty seats on various airlines and them the availability of

seats would be coordinated with the amount of time spend in the airport terminals

4 Secure Messaging And Structured Document Interchange Services

The importance of the fourth layer secure messaging is clear Everyone in business

knows that electronic messaging is a critical business issue Consider a familiar

business scenario you hand over an urgent fax on Monday and find out on Tuesday

that itrsquos still sitting on your fax operatorrsquos desk What happened The line was busy

and he thought he would try again later On the number was wrong but he forgot to

laid you know Or you are in London and you need to send a spreadsheet that details

a marketing plan for a product introduction strategy to co-worker in New-York This

must be done today not tomorrow when the courier service good deliver There is a

solution to these common and frustrating problems Itrsquos called integrated messaging

a group of computer services that through the use of a network send receive and

combine messages faxes and large data files Some better known examples are

electronic mail enhance fax and electronic data interchange

Broadly define messaging is a software that sits between the network infrastructure

and the clients or electronic commerce applications masking the peculiarities of the

environment Others define messaging as a framework for the total implementation of

portable applications divorcing you from the architectural primitives of your system In

general messaging products are not applications that solve problems they are more

enablers of the application that solve problems

Messaging services offer solution for communicating non-formatted (unstructured)

data such as purchase orders shipping notices and invoices Unstructured messaging

consist of fax e-mail and form based system likes Lotus Notes Structured documents

messaging consists of the automated interchange of standardized and approved

messages between computer applications via telecommunication lines Examples of

structured document messaging include EDI

Messaging is gaining momentum in electronic commerce and seems to have many

advantages It supports both synchronous (immediate) and asynchronous (delayed)

message delivery and processing With asynchronous messaging when a message is

send work continues (software doesnrsquot wait for a response) This allows the transfer

of messages through store-and-forward methods

The main disadvantages of messaging are the new types of applications it enables-

which appear to be more complex especially to traditional programmers-and the jungle

of standardrsquos in involves Because of the lack of standards there is often no

interoperability between different messaging vendors leading to islands of messaging

Also security privacy and confidentiality through data encryption and authentication

technique are important issue that need to resolve for ensuring the legality of the

message-based transaction themselves

5 Middleware Services

Middleware is a relatively new concept that emerged only recently Likes so many other

innovations it came into being out of necessity Users in the 1970rsquos when vendors

delivered homogenous systems that worked didnrsquot have a need for middleware When

conditions changed-along with the hardware and the software the organizations

couldnrsquot cope The tools were inadequate the backlog was enormous and the

pressure was overwhelming And the user were dissatisfied Something was needed

to solve all the interface translation transformation and interpretation problems that

work driving applications developerrsquos crazy

With the growth of networks client-server technology and all other forms of

communicating betweenamong unlike platforms the problems of getting all the pieces

to work together grew from formidable to horrendous As the cry for distributed

computing spread users demanded interaction between disk similar systems

networks that permitted shared resources and applications that could be accessed by

multiple software programs In simple terms middleware is the ultimate mediator

between diverse software programs that enables them talk to one another

6 Transparency

Transparency utilize that user should be unaware that they are accessing multiple

systems Transparency is essential for dealing with higher-level issues than needed

physical media and interconnection that under line network infrastructure is in charge

of The ideal picture is one of a ldquovirtualrdquo network a collection of work ndashgroup

departmental enterprise and inter enterprise LANrsquos that appears to the end users or

client application to be a seamless and easily accessed whole

Transparency is accomplished using middleware that facilitated a distributed

computing environment This gives users and applications transparent accessed to

data computation and other resources across collections of multivendor

heterogeneous system The strategic architectures of every major system vendor are

now based on some form of middleware The key to realizing the theoretical benefit

of such an architecture is transparency Users need not spend their time trying to

understand where something is Nor should application developers have to code into

their applications the exact location of resources over the network The goal is for the

applications to send a request to the middleware layer which then satisfied the request

any way it can using remote information

7 Transaction Security and Management

Support for transaction processing (TP) is fundamental to success in the electronic

commerce market Security and management are essential to all layers in the

electronic commerce model Transaction integrity must be given for businesses that

cannot afford any loss or inconsistency in data For electronic commerce middleware

provides the qualities accepted in the standard TP system the so-called ACID

properties (Atomicity consistency isolation and durability)

World-Wide-Web as the Architecture Electronic commerce depends on the unspoken assumption that computers co-

operate efficiency for seamless information sharing Unfortunately this assumption of

interoperability has been supported by the realities of practical computing Computing

is skill a world made up of many technical directions product implementation and

competing vendors This diversity while good for information causes problem as the

E-commerce application try to impose a certain discipline on the proliferating

computers and networks It is ironic that real effect of computing is all too often the

prevention of data sharing due to incompatibility-architectures data formats and

communications protocols

What does the WEB Encompass

The web has become an umbrella for a wide range of concepts and technologies that

differ markedly in purpose and scope These include the global hypertext publishing

concepts the universal reader concept and the client-server concept

The global hypertext publishing concepts promotes the idea of the seamless

information world in which all on-line information can be accessed and retrieved in a

consistent and simple way To access information in the seamless world we will need

the ability to address many types of data- text files images sound files animation

sequences

The universal readership concept promotes the idea that unlike the segmented

application of the past we can use one application- a universal (or common) user

interface-to read a variety of documents This concepts implies that one informationrsquos

is published it is accessible of any type of computer in any country and that any

(authorized) person nearly needs to use one simple program to access it This

accomplished in the web by using a core browser or application that is augmented by

supporting applications The core browser implements only minable functionality and

attempts to off load more specialized work onto the supporting applications

The client-server concept allows the web to grow easily without any centralized control

Anyone can published information and anyone (as long as he or she authorized) can

read and download it The publishing information requires a server program and

reading data requires the client browser All the clients and all the servers are

connected to one another by Internet The various standard protocols allows all clients

to communicate will all servers In practice the web hands or a number of essential

concepts including the following

The addressing scheme known as uniform resource locator (URL) makes the hyper

media world possible despite many different protocols

A network protocol known as hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) used by client

browsers and servers of first performance and features not otherwise available

A mark-up language (HTML) which every web client is required to understand is

used for the representation of hypertext documents containing text list boxes and

graphics information across the net

Chapter-4

Technology Behind the web

Information providers (or publishers) run programs (called servers) from which the

browsers (clients) can obtain information These programs can either be Web servers

that understand the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) ldquoGatewayrdquo programs that

convert an existing information format to hypertext for a non-http server that Web

browser can access-anonymous FTP or Gopher servers

Web servers are composed of two major parts the hypertext transfer protocol for

transmitting documents between servers and clients and the hypertext markup

language (HTML) format for documents The link between HTML files and the HTTP

servers is provided by the uniform resource locator (URLrsquos)

Uniform Resource Locator

The documents that the browsers display are hypertext that contains pointers to other

documents The browsers let you deal with the pointers in a transparent way-select the

pointer and you are presented with the text to which it points This pointer is

implemented using a concept that is central to Web browsers Uniform Resource

Locator (URLrsquos) One way to think about URLrsquos is to use the library and location on a

shelf as a metaphor A URL for a digital library would be a unique call number that

provides an exact location of every book in the world including the country city street

and library shelf locations

In practice URLrsquos are the strings used as addresses of objects (documents images)

on the Web Think of them as analogous to your e-mail address Just as your address

is unique and may be used by any other Internet user to send your mail without knowing

exactly where you are a URL marks the unique locations on the Internet where a file

or services can be found

URLrsquos follow a fairly consistent pattern The first part describes the type of resource

the second part gives the name of the server housing the resource and the third part

gives full file name of the resource URLrsquos are universal in that they provide access to

a wide range of network services which required separate application in the past For

a new network protocol one can easily form an address as the set of parameters

necessary to retrieve the objects If these parameters are encoded into concise string

with a prefix to identify the protocol and encoding one has new URL scheme Take a

look at the URLrsquos formats below

FTP ftpserveraddresscompletefilename

Gopher gopherserveraddressportdirectoryfilename

TELNET telnetserveraddressport

HTTP httpserveraddressporthomepagehtml

News newsmiscstocksinvest

These are URL for Internet news articles and newsgroups (the NNTP protocol) and for

HTTP archives for telnet destinations e-mail addresses and so on The same can be

done for names of objects in a given name space For example the URL of the main

page for the web project happens to be

httpwebw3orghypertextwebtheprojecthtmlThe prefix ldquohttprsquorsquo in the preceding

example indicates the address space and defines the interpretation of the rest of the

string The HTTP protocol is to be used so the string contains the address of the server

to be contacted and a sub string to be passed to the server

As noted earlier different protocols use different syntaxes but they do have a small

amount in common For example the common URL syntax reserves the solidus () as

a way of representing hierarchical space the pound label () as a way of pointing inside

the document and question mark () as a separator between the address of an object

and a query operation applied to it Hierarchical spaces are useful for hypertext where

onerdquo work ldquomay be spilt up into many interlinked documents The allows relative

names to exploit the hierarchical structure and allows links to be made within the wok

independent of the higher parts of the URL such as the server name

URLs are central to the Web architecture The fact that it is easy to address an object

on the Internet is essential for the system to scale and for the information space to be

independent of the network and server topology

Chapter-1

Introduction

Every individual or company that wants to make money and become the next Microsoft needs to understand the market potential business implication and technological foundation of electronic commerce but what is electronic commerce everybody is talking about How does it affect the organizations way of doing business what sort of technical and business are needed to be successful

Companies and consumers are discovering that global networking and other technological innovations are powerful assists if used as competitive weapons in day-to-day activity E-commerce is associated with the buying and selling of informationrsquos products and services via computer network today

Consumer desire are very hard to predict pin point or decipher of electronic markets whose shapes structure and population are still in early stages Needs envisioned include entertainment on demand including five hundred channel TV video on demand games on demand electronic retailing via catalogs and kiosk and home shopping networks

In future viewers will decide what they want to see and when they want to participate a successful market places are expected to those that cater to consumerrsquos loneliness boredom education and career In a highly competitive society where neighbors seldom talk to one another these outlets give consumer someone to tough after going home

Letrsquos take a look at the changing conditions in the ldquonew economyrdquo with respect to the retail industry Consumers are pushing retailers to the wall demanding lower prices better quality a large section of in-season goods Retailers are scrambling to fill the order They are slashing back-office costs reducing profit margin reducing-cycle time buying more wisely and making huge investments in technology They are revamping distribution channels to make sure that warehouses costs are down by reducing their average inventory levels and coordinating the consumer demand and supply pattern

In the push to reduce prices more and more retailers are turning to overseas supplier in part because of cheaper labor costs Retail are the immediate line of fire and had to do the cost cutting They put the pressure on the manufacturer and then to the supplier end of the pipeline

Electronic commerce is forming companies to rethink the existing ways of doing target marketing relationship marketing and even event marketing Adaptation would include moving towards computerized ldquopaperlessrdquo operations to reduce trading costs and facilitate the adoption of new business process Japanese approach JIT (just in time) total quality control and quality circles are focused now for delivery of goods through electronic commerce

Chapter-2

Electronic commerce and the world-wide-web

We have broadly defined electronic commerce as a modern business methodology

that address the desire of firms consumers and management to cut costs while

improving the quality of goods and increasing the speed of services The need for

electronic commerce stems from the demand within business and government to make

better use of computing that is better apply computer technology to improve business

process and information exchange both within an enterprise and across organizations

In short electronic commerce appears to be and integrating force that represent the

digital conversions of twenty-first century business application and computing

technologies

Electronic commerce applications emphasis the generations and exploitation of new

business opportunity and to use the popular buzzword ldquogenerate business valuerdquo For

instance when buyer- seller transaction occur in the electronic market place

information is accesses observed arrange and sold in different ways in fact the

information about a product of service is separated from the physical product or

services and has become important on its own In some cases the information can

become as crucial as his actual product or services in term of its effect on a companyrsquos

in short information ways business transactions are creating new ways of doing

business and even new type of business

Electronic commerce application are quite varied In its most common form E-

commerce is also used to donate the paperless exchange of business information

using EDI electronic mail (E-mail) electronic bulletin boards electronic funds transfer

(EFT) and similar technology These technologies are normally applied in high-pay of

areas recognizing that paper-handling activity usually increase expense without

adding value On the other hand the term Electronic Commerce is used to describe

a new online approach to perform traditional functions such as payment and funds

transfer order entry a processing invoicing inventory management cargo tracking

electronic catalogues and point-of-sale data gathering More recently company have

realized that the advertising marketing and customer support functions are also part

of electronic commerce application domain These business functions act as initiator

to the entire order management cycle that incorporates the more established motions

of electronic commerce

In short what we are witnessing is the use of term electronic commerce as an umbrella

concepts to integrate a wide range of new and old applications

Despite the changes taking places business have three goals stay competitive

improve productivity and deliver quality service These goals are the guiding buoys for

firms plotting their course in the turbulent water of electronic commerce There are

other factors that companies need to keep in mind First most company have already

made enormous information technology investments to automate their key internal

processes such as purchasing invoicing and other similar functions So some aspects

of the technological infrastructure for electronic commerce are already in place The

challenge now become how to effectively leverage this investment Second prices for

computer hardware and network equipment continue to fall marking information

technology an appealing investments for many businesses especially when itrsquos used

for high-impact applications such as linking their distributed operations However

investments without a clear idea of the electronic commerce architecture being built

would be akin to driving with blinders on As a result companies that have decided that

electronic commerce applications represent one of the best strategic investments they

can make must first exert some effort to understand the technology underlying

electronic commerce applications

At first glance it appears that messaging based technologies such as EDI and mail-

enable applications combine with database and information management service

form the technical foundation for effective electronic commerce solutionsno single one

of these technologies can deliver the full potential of electronic commerce however

What we require is and integrated architecture the likes of which has never been seen

before This integrated architecture is emerging in the form of the World Wide Web

(WWW) As electronic commerce becomes more mature we are beginning to see

sophisticated application being developed on WWW Technically and commercially

the www client-server model seems poised to become a dominant technology

Electronic Transfer Interchange

ctronic Document Interchange Electronic Document Interchange (EDI)

Electronic Funds Transfer (EFD)

Corporate

Digital

Library

Information Sharing

Collaborative Work

Electronic

Publishing

Marketing Advertising

Sales Customers Support

Electronic Messaging

Fax E-mail

Chapter-3

Architectural Frame work For Electronic Commerce

The software frame work necessary for building electronic commerce application is

little understood in existing literature In general frame work is intended to define and

create tools that integrate the information found in todayrsquos closed system and allow the

development of E-Commerce applicationsit is important to understand that the aim of

architectural frame work itself is not to build new database management systems data

repository computer languages software agent- based transaction monitors or

communication protocols Rather the architecture should focused on synthesizing the

diverse resource already in place in corporation to facilitate the integration of data

and software for better applications

We propound that the electronic commerce applications architecture consist of six

layers of functionality or services (1) Applications (2) Brokerage Services Data and

Transaction Management (3) Interface and Support layers(4) Secure Messaging and

Electronic Document Interchange(5)Middleware and Structure Document

Interchange and(6) Network Infrastructure and Basic communication services

Application Services Customer-to business Business-to- business Intra-Organization

Brokerage and Data Management Order Processes ndashMail-Order Purchasing Payment Scheme-electronic cash Clearinghouse and Virtual mall

Interface Layer Interactive Catalog Directory Support Function Software Agents

Secure Messaging Secure Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Encrypted E-mail EDI Remote Programming(RPC)

Middleware Services Structure Documents(SGMLHTML) Compound Document(OLE OpenDoc)

Network Infrastructure Wireless-Cellular Radio PCS Wire line - POTS Coaxial Fiber Optic

These layers cooperate to provide a seamless transition between todayrsquos computing

resources and those of tomorrow by transparently integrating information access and

exchange within the context of the chosen application As seen in above figure

electronic commerce application are based on several elegant technology But only

when they are integrated do they provide uniquely powerful solution

In the ensuing discussion of each of these layer we will not elaborate on the various

aspects of the network infrastructure that transports information

1 Electronic Commerce Application Services The application service layers of E-commerce will be comprised or existing and future

applications built on the innate architecture Three distinct classes of electronic

commerce application can be distinguished Customer-to-Business Business-to-

Business and intra organization

Customer-to-Business Transactions

We call this category market place transaction In a marketplace transaction

customers learn about products differently through electronic publishing by them

differently using electronic cash and secure payment systems and have them

delivered differently Also how customers allocate their loyalty may also be different

In light of this organization itself has to adapt to a world where the traditional concepts

of brand differentiation no longer hold-where ldquoqualityrdquo has a new meaning where

content may not be equated to ldquoproductrdquo where ldquodistributionrdquo may not automatically

Manufacturing

and

Production

Engineering

and Research

Accounting

Finance and

Management

Advertising Sales Customer Services

Procurement Distribution and Logistic

Customer Oriented

Electronic Commerce

Customer

Global Supplier

Classic EDI

Internal Publishing Private Commerce

mean ldquophysical transportrdquo In this new environment brand equity can rapidly evaporate

forcing firms to developed new ways of doing business

Business-to-Business Transaction

We call this category market-link transactions Here business government and other

organizations depend on Computer-to-Computer communication as a fast an

economical and a dependable way to conduct business transaction Small companies

are also beginning to see the benefits of adopting the same methods Business-to

Business transactions include the use of EDI an electronic mail for purchasing goods

and services buying information and consulting services submitting request for

proposal and receives proposals

For Example the current accounts payable process occurs through the exchange of

paper documents Each year the trading partners exchange millions of invoices

checks purchase order financial reports and other transactions Most of the

documents are in electronic form at their point of origin but are printed and key-entered

at the point of receipt Current manual process of printing mailing and rekeying is

costly time consuming and error-prone Given this situation and faced with the need

to reduce costs small businesses are looking towards electronic- commerce as a

possible savior

Intra-Organizational transactions

We call this category market driven transactions A company becomes market driven

by dispersing throughout the firm information about its customers and competitors by

spreading strategic and tactical decision making so that all units can participate and

by continuously monitoring their customer commitment by making improve customer

satisfaction an ongoing objective To maintain the relationships that are critical to

delivering superior customer value management must pay close attention to service

both before and after sales

2 Information Brokerage and Data Management

The information brokerage and management layer provide service integration through

the notion of information brokerages the development of which is necessitated by the

increasing information resource fragmentation We use the notion of information

brokerage to represent an intermediary who provides service integration between

customer and information providers given some constraint such as a low price fast

service or profit maximization for a client

Information brokers for example are rapidly becoming necessary in dealing with the

voluminous amounts of information on the networks As on-line database migrate to

consumer information utilities consumers and information professionals will have to

keep up the knowledge and ownership of all these systems Whorsquos got what How do

you use it What do they charge Most professionals have enough trouble keeping

track of files of interest on one or two database services Will all the complexity

associated with large number of online database or service bureaus itrsquos impossible to

accept humans to do the searching It will have to be software programs-information

brokers or software agents to use the most popular term-act on searcher behalf

Information brokerage does more than just searching

3 Interface and Support service

The third layer interface and support services will provide interfaces for electronic

commerce applications such as interactive catalogues and will support directory

services-function necessary for information search and access These two concepts

are very different Interactive catalogues are the customized interface to consumer

applications such as home shopping An interactive catalog is an extension of the

paper-based catalogs and incorporates additional features such as sophisticated

graphics and video to make the advertising more attractive

Directories on the other hand operate behind the scenes and attempt to organize the

enormous amount of information and transaction to generate to facilitated electronic

commerce Directory services database make data from any server appear as a local

file A classic example of a directory is the telephone White Pages which allows us to

locate people and telephone numbers In the case of electronic commerce directories

would play an important role in information management functions For instance take

the case of buying an airline ticket with several stock overs with a caveat that the time

between layovers be minimized This search would require several queries to various

on-line directories to find empty seats on various airlines and them the availability of

seats would be coordinated with the amount of time spend in the airport terminals

4 Secure Messaging And Structured Document Interchange Services

The importance of the fourth layer secure messaging is clear Everyone in business

knows that electronic messaging is a critical business issue Consider a familiar

business scenario you hand over an urgent fax on Monday and find out on Tuesday

that itrsquos still sitting on your fax operatorrsquos desk What happened The line was busy

and he thought he would try again later On the number was wrong but he forgot to

laid you know Or you are in London and you need to send a spreadsheet that details

a marketing plan for a product introduction strategy to co-worker in New-York This

must be done today not tomorrow when the courier service good deliver There is a

solution to these common and frustrating problems Itrsquos called integrated messaging

a group of computer services that through the use of a network send receive and

combine messages faxes and large data files Some better known examples are

electronic mail enhance fax and electronic data interchange

Broadly define messaging is a software that sits between the network infrastructure

and the clients or electronic commerce applications masking the peculiarities of the

environment Others define messaging as a framework for the total implementation of

portable applications divorcing you from the architectural primitives of your system In

general messaging products are not applications that solve problems they are more

enablers of the application that solve problems

Messaging services offer solution for communicating non-formatted (unstructured)

data such as purchase orders shipping notices and invoices Unstructured messaging

consist of fax e-mail and form based system likes Lotus Notes Structured documents

messaging consists of the automated interchange of standardized and approved

messages between computer applications via telecommunication lines Examples of

structured document messaging include EDI

Messaging is gaining momentum in electronic commerce and seems to have many

advantages It supports both synchronous (immediate) and asynchronous (delayed)

message delivery and processing With asynchronous messaging when a message is

send work continues (software doesnrsquot wait for a response) This allows the transfer

of messages through store-and-forward methods

The main disadvantages of messaging are the new types of applications it enables-

which appear to be more complex especially to traditional programmers-and the jungle

of standardrsquos in involves Because of the lack of standards there is often no

interoperability between different messaging vendors leading to islands of messaging

Also security privacy and confidentiality through data encryption and authentication

technique are important issue that need to resolve for ensuring the legality of the

message-based transaction themselves

5 Middleware Services

Middleware is a relatively new concept that emerged only recently Likes so many other

innovations it came into being out of necessity Users in the 1970rsquos when vendors

delivered homogenous systems that worked didnrsquot have a need for middleware When

conditions changed-along with the hardware and the software the organizations

couldnrsquot cope The tools were inadequate the backlog was enormous and the

pressure was overwhelming And the user were dissatisfied Something was needed

to solve all the interface translation transformation and interpretation problems that

work driving applications developerrsquos crazy

With the growth of networks client-server technology and all other forms of

communicating betweenamong unlike platforms the problems of getting all the pieces

to work together grew from formidable to horrendous As the cry for distributed

computing spread users demanded interaction between disk similar systems

networks that permitted shared resources and applications that could be accessed by

multiple software programs In simple terms middleware is the ultimate mediator

between diverse software programs that enables them talk to one another

6 Transparency

Transparency utilize that user should be unaware that they are accessing multiple

systems Transparency is essential for dealing with higher-level issues than needed

physical media and interconnection that under line network infrastructure is in charge

of The ideal picture is one of a ldquovirtualrdquo network a collection of work ndashgroup

departmental enterprise and inter enterprise LANrsquos that appears to the end users or

client application to be a seamless and easily accessed whole

Transparency is accomplished using middleware that facilitated a distributed

computing environment This gives users and applications transparent accessed to

data computation and other resources across collections of multivendor

heterogeneous system The strategic architectures of every major system vendor are

now based on some form of middleware The key to realizing the theoretical benefit

of such an architecture is transparency Users need not spend their time trying to

understand where something is Nor should application developers have to code into

their applications the exact location of resources over the network The goal is for the

applications to send a request to the middleware layer which then satisfied the request

any way it can using remote information

7 Transaction Security and Management

Support for transaction processing (TP) is fundamental to success in the electronic

commerce market Security and management are essential to all layers in the

electronic commerce model Transaction integrity must be given for businesses that

cannot afford any loss or inconsistency in data For electronic commerce middleware

provides the qualities accepted in the standard TP system the so-called ACID

properties (Atomicity consistency isolation and durability)

World-Wide-Web as the Architecture Electronic commerce depends on the unspoken assumption that computers co-

operate efficiency for seamless information sharing Unfortunately this assumption of

interoperability has been supported by the realities of practical computing Computing

is skill a world made up of many technical directions product implementation and

competing vendors This diversity while good for information causes problem as the

E-commerce application try to impose a certain discipline on the proliferating

computers and networks It is ironic that real effect of computing is all too often the

prevention of data sharing due to incompatibility-architectures data formats and

communications protocols

What does the WEB Encompass

The web has become an umbrella for a wide range of concepts and technologies that

differ markedly in purpose and scope These include the global hypertext publishing

concepts the universal reader concept and the client-server concept

The global hypertext publishing concepts promotes the idea of the seamless

information world in which all on-line information can be accessed and retrieved in a

consistent and simple way To access information in the seamless world we will need

the ability to address many types of data- text files images sound files animation

sequences

The universal readership concept promotes the idea that unlike the segmented

application of the past we can use one application- a universal (or common) user

interface-to read a variety of documents This concepts implies that one informationrsquos

is published it is accessible of any type of computer in any country and that any

(authorized) person nearly needs to use one simple program to access it This

accomplished in the web by using a core browser or application that is augmented by

supporting applications The core browser implements only minable functionality and

attempts to off load more specialized work onto the supporting applications

The client-server concept allows the web to grow easily without any centralized control

Anyone can published information and anyone (as long as he or she authorized) can

read and download it The publishing information requires a server program and

reading data requires the client browser All the clients and all the servers are

connected to one another by Internet The various standard protocols allows all clients

to communicate will all servers In practice the web hands or a number of essential

concepts including the following

The addressing scheme known as uniform resource locator (URL) makes the hyper

media world possible despite many different protocols

A network protocol known as hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) used by client

browsers and servers of first performance and features not otherwise available

A mark-up language (HTML) which every web client is required to understand is

used for the representation of hypertext documents containing text list boxes and

graphics information across the net

Chapter-4

Technology Behind the web

Information providers (or publishers) run programs (called servers) from which the

browsers (clients) can obtain information These programs can either be Web servers

that understand the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) ldquoGatewayrdquo programs that

convert an existing information format to hypertext for a non-http server that Web

browser can access-anonymous FTP or Gopher servers

Web servers are composed of two major parts the hypertext transfer protocol for

transmitting documents between servers and clients and the hypertext markup

language (HTML) format for documents The link between HTML files and the HTTP

servers is provided by the uniform resource locator (URLrsquos)

Uniform Resource Locator

The documents that the browsers display are hypertext that contains pointers to other

documents The browsers let you deal with the pointers in a transparent way-select the

pointer and you are presented with the text to which it points This pointer is

implemented using a concept that is central to Web browsers Uniform Resource

Locator (URLrsquos) One way to think about URLrsquos is to use the library and location on a

shelf as a metaphor A URL for a digital library would be a unique call number that

provides an exact location of every book in the world including the country city street

and library shelf locations

In practice URLrsquos are the strings used as addresses of objects (documents images)

on the Web Think of them as analogous to your e-mail address Just as your address

is unique and may be used by any other Internet user to send your mail without knowing

exactly where you are a URL marks the unique locations on the Internet where a file

or services can be found

URLrsquos follow a fairly consistent pattern The first part describes the type of resource

the second part gives the name of the server housing the resource and the third part

gives full file name of the resource URLrsquos are universal in that they provide access to

a wide range of network services which required separate application in the past For

a new network protocol one can easily form an address as the set of parameters

necessary to retrieve the objects If these parameters are encoded into concise string

with a prefix to identify the protocol and encoding one has new URL scheme Take a

look at the URLrsquos formats below

FTP ftpserveraddresscompletefilename

Gopher gopherserveraddressportdirectoryfilename

TELNET telnetserveraddressport

HTTP httpserveraddressporthomepagehtml

News newsmiscstocksinvest

These are URL for Internet news articles and newsgroups (the NNTP protocol) and for

HTTP archives for telnet destinations e-mail addresses and so on The same can be

done for names of objects in a given name space For example the URL of the main

page for the web project happens to be

httpwebw3orghypertextwebtheprojecthtmlThe prefix ldquohttprsquorsquo in the preceding

example indicates the address space and defines the interpretation of the rest of the

string The HTTP protocol is to be used so the string contains the address of the server

to be contacted and a sub string to be passed to the server

As noted earlier different protocols use different syntaxes but they do have a small

amount in common For example the common URL syntax reserves the solidus () as

a way of representing hierarchical space the pound label () as a way of pointing inside

the document and question mark () as a separator between the address of an object

and a query operation applied to it Hierarchical spaces are useful for hypertext where

onerdquo work ldquomay be spilt up into many interlinked documents The allows relative

names to exploit the hierarchical structure and allows links to be made within the wok

independent of the higher parts of the URL such as the server name

URLs are central to the Web architecture The fact that it is easy to address an object

on the Internet is essential for the system to scale and for the information space to be

independent of the network and server topology

Chapter-2

Electronic commerce and the world-wide-web

We have broadly defined electronic commerce as a modern business methodology

that address the desire of firms consumers and management to cut costs while

improving the quality of goods and increasing the speed of services The need for

electronic commerce stems from the demand within business and government to make

better use of computing that is better apply computer technology to improve business

process and information exchange both within an enterprise and across organizations

In short electronic commerce appears to be and integrating force that represent the

digital conversions of twenty-first century business application and computing

technologies

Electronic commerce applications emphasis the generations and exploitation of new

business opportunity and to use the popular buzzword ldquogenerate business valuerdquo For

instance when buyer- seller transaction occur in the electronic market place

information is accesses observed arrange and sold in different ways in fact the

information about a product of service is separated from the physical product or

services and has become important on its own In some cases the information can

become as crucial as his actual product or services in term of its effect on a companyrsquos

in short information ways business transactions are creating new ways of doing

business and even new type of business

Electronic commerce application are quite varied In its most common form E-

commerce is also used to donate the paperless exchange of business information

using EDI electronic mail (E-mail) electronic bulletin boards electronic funds transfer

(EFT) and similar technology These technologies are normally applied in high-pay of

areas recognizing that paper-handling activity usually increase expense without

adding value On the other hand the term Electronic Commerce is used to describe

a new online approach to perform traditional functions such as payment and funds

transfer order entry a processing invoicing inventory management cargo tracking

electronic catalogues and point-of-sale data gathering More recently company have

realized that the advertising marketing and customer support functions are also part

of electronic commerce application domain These business functions act as initiator

to the entire order management cycle that incorporates the more established motions

of electronic commerce

In short what we are witnessing is the use of term electronic commerce as an umbrella

concepts to integrate a wide range of new and old applications

Despite the changes taking places business have three goals stay competitive

improve productivity and deliver quality service These goals are the guiding buoys for

firms plotting their course in the turbulent water of electronic commerce There are

other factors that companies need to keep in mind First most company have already

made enormous information technology investments to automate their key internal

processes such as purchasing invoicing and other similar functions So some aspects

of the technological infrastructure for electronic commerce are already in place The

challenge now become how to effectively leverage this investment Second prices for

computer hardware and network equipment continue to fall marking information

technology an appealing investments for many businesses especially when itrsquos used

for high-impact applications such as linking their distributed operations However

investments without a clear idea of the electronic commerce architecture being built

would be akin to driving with blinders on As a result companies that have decided that

electronic commerce applications represent one of the best strategic investments they

can make must first exert some effort to understand the technology underlying

electronic commerce applications

At first glance it appears that messaging based technologies such as EDI and mail-

enable applications combine with database and information management service

form the technical foundation for effective electronic commerce solutionsno single one

of these technologies can deliver the full potential of electronic commerce however

What we require is and integrated architecture the likes of which has never been seen

before This integrated architecture is emerging in the form of the World Wide Web

(WWW) As electronic commerce becomes more mature we are beginning to see

sophisticated application being developed on WWW Technically and commercially

the www client-server model seems poised to become a dominant technology

Electronic Transfer Interchange

ctronic Document Interchange Electronic Document Interchange (EDI)

Electronic Funds Transfer (EFD)

Corporate

Digital

Library

Information Sharing

Collaborative Work

Electronic

Publishing

Marketing Advertising

Sales Customers Support

Electronic Messaging

Fax E-mail

Chapter-3

Architectural Frame work For Electronic Commerce

The software frame work necessary for building electronic commerce application is

little understood in existing literature In general frame work is intended to define and

create tools that integrate the information found in todayrsquos closed system and allow the

development of E-Commerce applicationsit is important to understand that the aim of

architectural frame work itself is not to build new database management systems data

repository computer languages software agent- based transaction monitors or

communication protocols Rather the architecture should focused on synthesizing the

diverse resource already in place in corporation to facilitate the integration of data

and software for better applications

We propound that the electronic commerce applications architecture consist of six

layers of functionality or services (1) Applications (2) Brokerage Services Data and

Transaction Management (3) Interface and Support layers(4) Secure Messaging and

Electronic Document Interchange(5)Middleware and Structure Document

Interchange and(6) Network Infrastructure and Basic communication services

Application Services Customer-to business Business-to- business Intra-Organization

Brokerage and Data Management Order Processes ndashMail-Order Purchasing Payment Scheme-electronic cash Clearinghouse and Virtual mall

Interface Layer Interactive Catalog Directory Support Function Software Agents

Secure Messaging Secure Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Encrypted E-mail EDI Remote Programming(RPC)

Middleware Services Structure Documents(SGMLHTML) Compound Document(OLE OpenDoc)

Network Infrastructure Wireless-Cellular Radio PCS Wire line - POTS Coaxial Fiber Optic

These layers cooperate to provide a seamless transition between todayrsquos computing

resources and those of tomorrow by transparently integrating information access and

exchange within the context of the chosen application As seen in above figure

electronic commerce application are based on several elegant technology But only

when they are integrated do they provide uniquely powerful solution

In the ensuing discussion of each of these layer we will not elaborate on the various

aspects of the network infrastructure that transports information

1 Electronic Commerce Application Services The application service layers of E-commerce will be comprised or existing and future

applications built on the innate architecture Three distinct classes of electronic

commerce application can be distinguished Customer-to-Business Business-to-

Business and intra organization

Customer-to-Business Transactions

We call this category market place transaction In a marketplace transaction

customers learn about products differently through electronic publishing by them

differently using electronic cash and secure payment systems and have them

delivered differently Also how customers allocate their loyalty may also be different

In light of this organization itself has to adapt to a world where the traditional concepts

of brand differentiation no longer hold-where ldquoqualityrdquo has a new meaning where

content may not be equated to ldquoproductrdquo where ldquodistributionrdquo may not automatically

Manufacturing

and

Production

Engineering

and Research

Accounting

Finance and

Management

Advertising Sales Customer Services

Procurement Distribution and Logistic

Customer Oriented

Electronic Commerce

Customer

Global Supplier

Classic EDI

Internal Publishing Private Commerce

mean ldquophysical transportrdquo In this new environment brand equity can rapidly evaporate

forcing firms to developed new ways of doing business

Business-to-Business Transaction

We call this category market-link transactions Here business government and other

organizations depend on Computer-to-Computer communication as a fast an

economical and a dependable way to conduct business transaction Small companies

are also beginning to see the benefits of adopting the same methods Business-to

Business transactions include the use of EDI an electronic mail for purchasing goods

and services buying information and consulting services submitting request for

proposal and receives proposals

For Example the current accounts payable process occurs through the exchange of

paper documents Each year the trading partners exchange millions of invoices

checks purchase order financial reports and other transactions Most of the

documents are in electronic form at their point of origin but are printed and key-entered

at the point of receipt Current manual process of printing mailing and rekeying is

costly time consuming and error-prone Given this situation and faced with the need

to reduce costs small businesses are looking towards electronic- commerce as a

possible savior

Intra-Organizational transactions

We call this category market driven transactions A company becomes market driven

by dispersing throughout the firm information about its customers and competitors by

spreading strategic and tactical decision making so that all units can participate and

by continuously monitoring their customer commitment by making improve customer

satisfaction an ongoing objective To maintain the relationships that are critical to

delivering superior customer value management must pay close attention to service

both before and after sales

2 Information Brokerage and Data Management

The information brokerage and management layer provide service integration through

the notion of information brokerages the development of which is necessitated by the

increasing information resource fragmentation We use the notion of information

brokerage to represent an intermediary who provides service integration between

customer and information providers given some constraint such as a low price fast

service or profit maximization for a client

Information brokers for example are rapidly becoming necessary in dealing with the

voluminous amounts of information on the networks As on-line database migrate to

consumer information utilities consumers and information professionals will have to

keep up the knowledge and ownership of all these systems Whorsquos got what How do

you use it What do they charge Most professionals have enough trouble keeping

track of files of interest on one or two database services Will all the complexity

associated with large number of online database or service bureaus itrsquos impossible to

accept humans to do the searching It will have to be software programs-information

brokers or software agents to use the most popular term-act on searcher behalf

Information brokerage does more than just searching

3 Interface and Support service

The third layer interface and support services will provide interfaces for electronic

commerce applications such as interactive catalogues and will support directory

services-function necessary for information search and access These two concepts

are very different Interactive catalogues are the customized interface to consumer

applications such as home shopping An interactive catalog is an extension of the

paper-based catalogs and incorporates additional features such as sophisticated

graphics and video to make the advertising more attractive

Directories on the other hand operate behind the scenes and attempt to organize the

enormous amount of information and transaction to generate to facilitated electronic

commerce Directory services database make data from any server appear as a local

file A classic example of a directory is the telephone White Pages which allows us to

locate people and telephone numbers In the case of electronic commerce directories

would play an important role in information management functions For instance take

the case of buying an airline ticket with several stock overs with a caveat that the time

between layovers be minimized This search would require several queries to various

on-line directories to find empty seats on various airlines and them the availability of

seats would be coordinated with the amount of time spend in the airport terminals

4 Secure Messaging And Structured Document Interchange Services

The importance of the fourth layer secure messaging is clear Everyone in business

knows that electronic messaging is a critical business issue Consider a familiar

business scenario you hand over an urgent fax on Monday and find out on Tuesday

that itrsquos still sitting on your fax operatorrsquos desk What happened The line was busy

and he thought he would try again later On the number was wrong but he forgot to

laid you know Or you are in London and you need to send a spreadsheet that details

a marketing plan for a product introduction strategy to co-worker in New-York This

must be done today not tomorrow when the courier service good deliver There is a

solution to these common and frustrating problems Itrsquos called integrated messaging

a group of computer services that through the use of a network send receive and

combine messages faxes and large data files Some better known examples are

electronic mail enhance fax and electronic data interchange

Broadly define messaging is a software that sits between the network infrastructure

and the clients or electronic commerce applications masking the peculiarities of the

environment Others define messaging as a framework for the total implementation of

portable applications divorcing you from the architectural primitives of your system In

general messaging products are not applications that solve problems they are more

enablers of the application that solve problems

Messaging services offer solution for communicating non-formatted (unstructured)

data such as purchase orders shipping notices and invoices Unstructured messaging

consist of fax e-mail and form based system likes Lotus Notes Structured documents

messaging consists of the automated interchange of standardized and approved

messages between computer applications via telecommunication lines Examples of

structured document messaging include EDI

Messaging is gaining momentum in electronic commerce and seems to have many

advantages It supports both synchronous (immediate) and asynchronous (delayed)

message delivery and processing With asynchronous messaging when a message is

send work continues (software doesnrsquot wait for a response) This allows the transfer

of messages through store-and-forward methods

The main disadvantages of messaging are the new types of applications it enables-

which appear to be more complex especially to traditional programmers-and the jungle

of standardrsquos in involves Because of the lack of standards there is often no

interoperability between different messaging vendors leading to islands of messaging

Also security privacy and confidentiality through data encryption and authentication

technique are important issue that need to resolve for ensuring the legality of the

message-based transaction themselves

5 Middleware Services

Middleware is a relatively new concept that emerged only recently Likes so many other

innovations it came into being out of necessity Users in the 1970rsquos when vendors

delivered homogenous systems that worked didnrsquot have a need for middleware When

conditions changed-along with the hardware and the software the organizations

couldnrsquot cope The tools were inadequate the backlog was enormous and the

pressure was overwhelming And the user were dissatisfied Something was needed

to solve all the interface translation transformation and interpretation problems that

work driving applications developerrsquos crazy

With the growth of networks client-server technology and all other forms of

communicating betweenamong unlike platforms the problems of getting all the pieces

to work together grew from formidable to horrendous As the cry for distributed

computing spread users demanded interaction between disk similar systems

networks that permitted shared resources and applications that could be accessed by

multiple software programs In simple terms middleware is the ultimate mediator

between diverse software programs that enables them talk to one another

6 Transparency

Transparency utilize that user should be unaware that they are accessing multiple

systems Transparency is essential for dealing with higher-level issues than needed

physical media and interconnection that under line network infrastructure is in charge

of The ideal picture is one of a ldquovirtualrdquo network a collection of work ndashgroup

departmental enterprise and inter enterprise LANrsquos that appears to the end users or

client application to be a seamless and easily accessed whole

Transparency is accomplished using middleware that facilitated a distributed

computing environment This gives users and applications transparent accessed to

data computation and other resources across collections of multivendor

heterogeneous system The strategic architectures of every major system vendor are

now based on some form of middleware The key to realizing the theoretical benefit

of such an architecture is transparency Users need not spend their time trying to

understand where something is Nor should application developers have to code into

their applications the exact location of resources over the network The goal is for the

applications to send a request to the middleware layer which then satisfied the request

any way it can using remote information

7 Transaction Security and Management

Support for transaction processing (TP) is fundamental to success in the electronic

commerce market Security and management are essential to all layers in the

electronic commerce model Transaction integrity must be given for businesses that

cannot afford any loss or inconsistency in data For electronic commerce middleware

provides the qualities accepted in the standard TP system the so-called ACID

properties (Atomicity consistency isolation and durability)

World-Wide-Web as the Architecture Electronic commerce depends on the unspoken assumption that computers co-

operate efficiency for seamless information sharing Unfortunately this assumption of

interoperability has been supported by the realities of practical computing Computing

is skill a world made up of many technical directions product implementation and

competing vendors This diversity while good for information causes problem as the

E-commerce application try to impose a certain discipline on the proliferating

computers and networks It is ironic that real effect of computing is all too often the

prevention of data sharing due to incompatibility-architectures data formats and

communications protocols

What does the WEB Encompass

The web has become an umbrella for a wide range of concepts and technologies that

differ markedly in purpose and scope These include the global hypertext publishing

concepts the universal reader concept and the client-server concept

The global hypertext publishing concepts promotes the idea of the seamless

information world in which all on-line information can be accessed and retrieved in a

consistent and simple way To access information in the seamless world we will need

the ability to address many types of data- text files images sound files animation

sequences

The universal readership concept promotes the idea that unlike the segmented

application of the past we can use one application- a universal (or common) user

interface-to read a variety of documents This concepts implies that one informationrsquos

is published it is accessible of any type of computer in any country and that any

(authorized) person nearly needs to use one simple program to access it This

accomplished in the web by using a core browser or application that is augmented by

supporting applications The core browser implements only minable functionality and

attempts to off load more specialized work onto the supporting applications

The client-server concept allows the web to grow easily without any centralized control

Anyone can published information and anyone (as long as he or she authorized) can

read and download it The publishing information requires a server program and

reading data requires the client browser All the clients and all the servers are

connected to one another by Internet The various standard protocols allows all clients

to communicate will all servers In practice the web hands or a number of essential

concepts including the following

The addressing scheme known as uniform resource locator (URL) makes the hyper

media world possible despite many different protocols

A network protocol known as hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) used by client

browsers and servers of first performance and features not otherwise available

A mark-up language (HTML) which every web client is required to understand is

used for the representation of hypertext documents containing text list boxes and

graphics information across the net

Chapter-4

Technology Behind the web

Information providers (or publishers) run programs (called servers) from which the

browsers (clients) can obtain information These programs can either be Web servers

that understand the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) ldquoGatewayrdquo programs that

convert an existing information format to hypertext for a non-http server that Web

browser can access-anonymous FTP or Gopher servers

Web servers are composed of two major parts the hypertext transfer protocol for

transmitting documents between servers and clients and the hypertext markup

language (HTML) format for documents The link between HTML files and the HTTP

servers is provided by the uniform resource locator (URLrsquos)

Uniform Resource Locator

The documents that the browsers display are hypertext that contains pointers to other

documents The browsers let you deal with the pointers in a transparent way-select the

pointer and you are presented with the text to which it points This pointer is

implemented using a concept that is central to Web browsers Uniform Resource

Locator (URLrsquos) One way to think about URLrsquos is to use the library and location on a

shelf as a metaphor A URL for a digital library would be a unique call number that

provides an exact location of every book in the world including the country city street

and library shelf locations

In practice URLrsquos are the strings used as addresses of objects (documents images)

on the Web Think of them as analogous to your e-mail address Just as your address

is unique and may be used by any other Internet user to send your mail without knowing

exactly where you are a URL marks the unique locations on the Internet where a file

or services can be found

URLrsquos follow a fairly consistent pattern The first part describes the type of resource

the second part gives the name of the server housing the resource and the third part

gives full file name of the resource URLrsquos are universal in that they provide access to

a wide range of network services which required separate application in the past For

a new network protocol one can easily form an address as the set of parameters

necessary to retrieve the objects If these parameters are encoded into concise string

with a prefix to identify the protocol and encoding one has new URL scheme Take a

look at the URLrsquos formats below

FTP ftpserveraddresscompletefilename

Gopher gopherserveraddressportdirectoryfilename

TELNET telnetserveraddressport

HTTP httpserveraddressporthomepagehtml

News newsmiscstocksinvest

These are URL for Internet news articles and newsgroups (the NNTP protocol) and for

HTTP archives for telnet destinations e-mail addresses and so on The same can be

done for names of objects in a given name space For example the URL of the main

page for the web project happens to be

httpwebw3orghypertextwebtheprojecthtmlThe prefix ldquohttprsquorsquo in the preceding

example indicates the address space and defines the interpretation of the rest of the

string The HTTP protocol is to be used so the string contains the address of the server

to be contacted and a sub string to be passed to the server

As noted earlier different protocols use different syntaxes but they do have a small

amount in common For example the common URL syntax reserves the solidus () as

a way of representing hierarchical space the pound label () as a way of pointing inside

the document and question mark () as a separator between the address of an object

and a query operation applied to it Hierarchical spaces are useful for hypertext where

onerdquo work ldquomay be spilt up into many interlinked documents The allows relative

names to exploit the hierarchical structure and allows links to be made within the wok

independent of the higher parts of the URL such as the server name

URLs are central to the Web architecture The fact that it is easy to address an object

on the Internet is essential for the system to scale and for the information space to be

independent of the network and server topology

Despite the changes taking places business have three goals stay competitive

improve productivity and deliver quality service These goals are the guiding buoys for

firms plotting their course in the turbulent water of electronic commerce There are

other factors that companies need to keep in mind First most company have already

made enormous information technology investments to automate their key internal

processes such as purchasing invoicing and other similar functions So some aspects

of the technological infrastructure for electronic commerce are already in place The

challenge now become how to effectively leverage this investment Second prices for

computer hardware and network equipment continue to fall marking information

technology an appealing investments for many businesses especially when itrsquos used

for high-impact applications such as linking their distributed operations However

investments without a clear idea of the electronic commerce architecture being built

would be akin to driving with blinders on As a result companies that have decided that

electronic commerce applications represent one of the best strategic investments they

can make must first exert some effort to understand the technology underlying

electronic commerce applications

At first glance it appears that messaging based technologies such as EDI and mail-

enable applications combine with database and information management service

form the technical foundation for effective electronic commerce solutionsno single one

of these technologies can deliver the full potential of electronic commerce however

What we require is and integrated architecture the likes of which has never been seen

before This integrated architecture is emerging in the form of the World Wide Web

(WWW) As electronic commerce becomes more mature we are beginning to see

sophisticated application being developed on WWW Technically and commercially

the www client-server model seems poised to become a dominant technology

Electronic Transfer Interchange

ctronic Document Interchange Electronic Document Interchange (EDI)

Electronic Funds Transfer (EFD)

Corporate

Digital

Library

Information Sharing

Collaborative Work

Electronic

Publishing

Marketing Advertising

Sales Customers Support

Electronic Messaging

Fax E-mail

Chapter-3

Architectural Frame work For Electronic Commerce

The software frame work necessary for building electronic commerce application is

little understood in existing literature In general frame work is intended to define and

create tools that integrate the information found in todayrsquos closed system and allow the

development of E-Commerce applicationsit is important to understand that the aim of

architectural frame work itself is not to build new database management systems data

repository computer languages software agent- based transaction monitors or

communication protocols Rather the architecture should focused on synthesizing the

diverse resource already in place in corporation to facilitate the integration of data

and software for better applications

We propound that the electronic commerce applications architecture consist of six

layers of functionality or services (1) Applications (2) Brokerage Services Data and

Transaction Management (3) Interface and Support layers(4) Secure Messaging and

Electronic Document Interchange(5)Middleware and Structure Document

Interchange and(6) Network Infrastructure and Basic communication services

Application Services Customer-to business Business-to- business Intra-Organization

Brokerage and Data Management Order Processes ndashMail-Order Purchasing Payment Scheme-electronic cash Clearinghouse and Virtual mall

Interface Layer Interactive Catalog Directory Support Function Software Agents

Secure Messaging Secure Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Encrypted E-mail EDI Remote Programming(RPC)

Middleware Services Structure Documents(SGMLHTML) Compound Document(OLE OpenDoc)

Network Infrastructure Wireless-Cellular Radio PCS Wire line - POTS Coaxial Fiber Optic

These layers cooperate to provide a seamless transition between todayrsquos computing

resources and those of tomorrow by transparently integrating information access and

exchange within the context of the chosen application As seen in above figure

electronic commerce application are based on several elegant technology But only

when they are integrated do they provide uniquely powerful solution

In the ensuing discussion of each of these layer we will not elaborate on the various

aspects of the network infrastructure that transports information

1 Electronic Commerce Application Services The application service layers of E-commerce will be comprised or existing and future

applications built on the innate architecture Three distinct classes of electronic

commerce application can be distinguished Customer-to-Business Business-to-

Business and intra organization

Customer-to-Business Transactions

We call this category market place transaction In a marketplace transaction

customers learn about products differently through electronic publishing by them

differently using electronic cash and secure payment systems and have them

delivered differently Also how customers allocate their loyalty may also be different

In light of this organization itself has to adapt to a world where the traditional concepts

of brand differentiation no longer hold-where ldquoqualityrdquo has a new meaning where

content may not be equated to ldquoproductrdquo where ldquodistributionrdquo may not automatically

Manufacturing

and

Production

Engineering

and Research

Accounting

Finance and

Management

Advertising Sales Customer Services

Procurement Distribution and Logistic

Customer Oriented

Electronic Commerce

Customer

Global Supplier

Classic EDI

Internal Publishing Private Commerce

mean ldquophysical transportrdquo In this new environment brand equity can rapidly evaporate

forcing firms to developed new ways of doing business

Business-to-Business Transaction

We call this category market-link transactions Here business government and other

organizations depend on Computer-to-Computer communication as a fast an

economical and a dependable way to conduct business transaction Small companies

are also beginning to see the benefits of adopting the same methods Business-to

Business transactions include the use of EDI an electronic mail for purchasing goods

and services buying information and consulting services submitting request for

proposal and receives proposals

For Example the current accounts payable process occurs through the exchange of

paper documents Each year the trading partners exchange millions of invoices

checks purchase order financial reports and other transactions Most of the

documents are in electronic form at their point of origin but are printed and key-entered

at the point of receipt Current manual process of printing mailing and rekeying is

costly time consuming and error-prone Given this situation and faced with the need

to reduce costs small businesses are looking towards electronic- commerce as a

possible savior

Intra-Organizational transactions

We call this category market driven transactions A company becomes market driven

by dispersing throughout the firm information about its customers and competitors by

spreading strategic and tactical decision making so that all units can participate and

by continuously monitoring their customer commitment by making improve customer

satisfaction an ongoing objective To maintain the relationships that are critical to

delivering superior customer value management must pay close attention to service

both before and after sales

2 Information Brokerage and Data Management

The information brokerage and management layer provide service integration through

the notion of information brokerages the development of which is necessitated by the

increasing information resource fragmentation We use the notion of information

brokerage to represent an intermediary who provides service integration between

customer and information providers given some constraint such as a low price fast

service or profit maximization for a client

Information brokers for example are rapidly becoming necessary in dealing with the

voluminous amounts of information on the networks As on-line database migrate to

consumer information utilities consumers and information professionals will have to

keep up the knowledge and ownership of all these systems Whorsquos got what How do

you use it What do they charge Most professionals have enough trouble keeping

track of files of interest on one or two database services Will all the complexity

associated with large number of online database or service bureaus itrsquos impossible to

accept humans to do the searching It will have to be software programs-information

brokers or software agents to use the most popular term-act on searcher behalf

Information brokerage does more than just searching

3 Interface and Support service

The third layer interface and support services will provide interfaces for electronic

commerce applications such as interactive catalogues and will support directory

services-function necessary for information search and access These two concepts

are very different Interactive catalogues are the customized interface to consumer

applications such as home shopping An interactive catalog is an extension of the

paper-based catalogs and incorporates additional features such as sophisticated

graphics and video to make the advertising more attractive

Directories on the other hand operate behind the scenes and attempt to organize the

enormous amount of information and transaction to generate to facilitated electronic

commerce Directory services database make data from any server appear as a local

file A classic example of a directory is the telephone White Pages which allows us to

locate people and telephone numbers In the case of electronic commerce directories

would play an important role in information management functions For instance take

the case of buying an airline ticket with several stock overs with a caveat that the time

between layovers be minimized This search would require several queries to various

on-line directories to find empty seats on various airlines and them the availability of

seats would be coordinated with the amount of time spend in the airport terminals

4 Secure Messaging And Structured Document Interchange Services

The importance of the fourth layer secure messaging is clear Everyone in business

knows that electronic messaging is a critical business issue Consider a familiar

business scenario you hand over an urgent fax on Monday and find out on Tuesday

that itrsquos still sitting on your fax operatorrsquos desk What happened The line was busy

and he thought he would try again later On the number was wrong but he forgot to

laid you know Or you are in London and you need to send a spreadsheet that details

a marketing plan for a product introduction strategy to co-worker in New-York This

must be done today not tomorrow when the courier service good deliver There is a

solution to these common and frustrating problems Itrsquos called integrated messaging

a group of computer services that through the use of a network send receive and

combine messages faxes and large data files Some better known examples are

electronic mail enhance fax and electronic data interchange

Broadly define messaging is a software that sits between the network infrastructure

and the clients or electronic commerce applications masking the peculiarities of the

environment Others define messaging as a framework for the total implementation of

portable applications divorcing you from the architectural primitives of your system In

general messaging products are not applications that solve problems they are more

enablers of the application that solve problems

Messaging services offer solution for communicating non-formatted (unstructured)

data such as purchase orders shipping notices and invoices Unstructured messaging

consist of fax e-mail and form based system likes Lotus Notes Structured documents

messaging consists of the automated interchange of standardized and approved

messages between computer applications via telecommunication lines Examples of

structured document messaging include EDI

Messaging is gaining momentum in electronic commerce and seems to have many

advantages It supports both synchronous (immediate) and asynchronous (delayed)

message delivery and processing With asynchronous messaging when a message is

send work continues (software doesnrsquot wait for a response) This allows the transfer

of messages through store-and-forward methods

The main disadvantages of messaging are the new types of applications it enables-

which appear to be more complex especially to traditional programmers-and the jungle

of standardrsquos in involves Because of the lack of standards there is often no

interoperability between different messaging vendors leading to islands of messaging

Also security privacy and confidentiality through data encryption and authentication

technique are important issue that need to resolve for ensuring the legality of the

message-based transaction themselves

5 Middleware Services

Middleware is a relatively new concept that emerged only recently Likes so many other

innovations it came into being out of necessity Users in the 1970rsquos when vendors

delivered homogenous systems that worked didnrsquot have a need for middleware When

conditions changed-along with the hardware and the software the organizations

couldnrsquot cope The tools were inadequate the backlog was enormous and the

pressure was overwhelming And the user were dissatisfied Something was needed

to solve all the interface translation transformation and interpretation problems that

work driving applications developerrsquos crazy

With the growth of networks client-server technology and all other forms of

communicating betweenamong unlike platforms the problems of getting all the pieces

to work together grew from formidable to horrendous As the cry for distributed

computing spread users demanded interaction between disk similar systems

networks that permitted shared resources and applications that could be accessed by

multiple software programs In simple terms middleware is the ultimate mediator

between diverse software programs that enables them talk to one another

6 Transparency

Transparency utilize that user should be unaware that they are accessing multiple

systems Transparency is essential for dealing with higher-level issues than needed

physical media and interconnection that under line network infrastructure is in charge

of The ideal picture is one of a ldquovirtualrdquo network a collection of work ndashgroup

departmental enterprise and inter enterprise LANrsquos that appears to the end users or

client application to be a seamless and easily accessed whole

Transparency is accomplished using middleware that facilitated a distributed

computing environment This gives users and applications transparent accessed to

data computation and other resources across collections of multivendor

heterogeneous system The strategic architectures of every major system vendor are

now based on some form of middleware The key to realizing the theoretical benefit

of such an architecture is transparency Users need not spend their time trying to

understand where something is Nor should application developers have to code into

their applications the exact location of resources over the network The goal is for the

applications to send a request to the middleware layer which then satisfied the request

any way it can using remote information

7 Transaction Security and Management

Support for transaction processing (TP) is fundamental to success in the electronic

commerce market Security and management are essential to all layers in the

electronic commerce model Transaction integrity must be given for businesses that

cannot afford any loss or inconsistency in data For electronic commerce middleware

provides the qualities accepted in the standard TP system the so-called ACID

properties (Atomicity consistency isolation and durability)

World-Wide-Web as the Architecture Electronic commerce depends on the unspoken assumption that computers co-

operate efficiency for seamless information sharing Unfortunately this assumption of

interoperability has been supported by the realities of practical computing Computing

is skill a world made up of many technical directions product implementation and

competing vendors This diversity while good for information causes problem as the

E-commerce application try to impose a certain discipline on the proliferating

computers and networks It is ironic that real effect of computing is all too often the

prevention of data sharing due to incompatibility-architectures data formats and

communications protocols

What does the WEB Encompass

The web has become an umbrella for a wide range of concepts and technologies that

differ markedly in purpose and scope These include the global hypertext publishing

concepts the universal reader concept and the client-server concept

The global hypertext publishing concepts promotes the idea of the seamless

information world in which all on-line information can be accessed and retrieved in a

consistent and simple way To access information in the seamless world we will need

the ability to address many types of data- text files images sound files animation

sequences

The universal readership concept promotes the idea that unlike the segmented

application of the past we can use one application- a universal (or common) user

interface-to read a variety of documents This concepts implies that one informationrsquos

is published it is accessible of any type of computer in any country and that any

(authorized) person nearly needs to use one simple program to access it This

accomplished in the web by using a core browser or application that is augmented by

supporting applications The core browser implements only minable functionality and

attempts to off load more specialized work onto the supporting applications

The client-server concept allows the web to grow easily without any centralized control

Anyone can published information and anyone (as long as he or she authorized) can

read and download it The publishing information requires a server program and

reading data requires the client browser All the clients and all the servers are

connected to one another by Internet The various standard protocols allows all clients

to communicate will all servers In practice the web hands or a number of essential

concepts including the following

The addressing scheme known as uniform resource locator (URL) makes the hyper

media world possible despite many different protocols

A network protocol known as hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) used by client

browsers and servers of first performance and features not otherwise available

A mark-up language (HTML) which every web client is required to understand is

used for the representation of hypertext documents containing text list boxes and

graphics information across the net

Chapter-4

Technology Behind the web

Information providers (or publishers) run programs (called servers) from which the

browsers (clients) can obtain information These programs can either be Web servers

that understand the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) ldquoGatewayrdquo programs that

convert an existing information format to hypertext for a non-http server that Web

browser can access-anonymous FTP or Gopher servers

Web servers are composed of two major parts the hypertext transfer protocol for

transmitting documents between servers and clients and the hypertext markup

language (HTML) format for documents The link between HTML files and the HTTP

servers is provided by the uniform resource locator (URLrsquos)

Uniform Resource Locator

The documents that the browsers display are hypertext that contains pointers to other

documents The browsers let you deal with the pointers in a transparent way-select the

pointer and you are presented with the text to which it points This pointer is

implemented using a concept that is central to Web browsers Uniform Resource

Locator (URLrsquos) One way to think about URLrsquos is to use the library and location on a

shelf as a metaphor A URL for a digital library would be a unique call number that

provides an exact location of every book in the world including the country city street

and library shelf locations

In practice URLrsquos are the strings used as addresses of objects (documents images)

on the Web Think of them as analogous to your e-mail address Just as your address

is unique and may be used by any other Internet user to send your mail without knowing

exactly where you are a URL marks the unique locations on the Internet where a file

or services can be found

URLrsquos follow a fairly consistent pattern The first part describes the type of resource

the second part gives the name of the server housing the resource and the third part

gives full file name of the resource URLrsquos are universal in that they provide access to

a wide range of network services which required separate application in the past For

a new network protocol one can easily form an address as the set of parameters

necessary to retrieve the objects If these parameters are encoded into concise string

with a prefix to identify the protocol and encoding one has new URL scheme Take a

look at the URLrsquos formats below

FTP ftpserveraddresscompletefilename

Gopher gopherserveraddressportdirectoryfilename

TELNET telnetserveraddressport

HTTP httpserveraddressporthomepagehtml

News newsmiscstocksinvest

These are URL for Internet news articles and newsgroups (the NNTP protocol) and for

HTTP archives for telnet destinations e-mail addresses and so on The same can be

done for names of objects in a given name space For example the URL of the main

page for the web project happens to be

httpwebw3orghypertextwebtheprojecthtmlThe prefix ldquohttprsquorsquo in the preceding

example indicates the address space and defines the interpretation of the rest of the

string The HTTP protocol is to be used so the string contains the address of the server

to be contacted and a sub string to be passed to the server

As noted earlier different protocols use different syntaxes but they do have a small

amount in common For example the common URL syntax reserves the solidus () as

a way of representing hierarchical space the pound label () as a way of pointing inside

the document and question mark () as a separator between the address of an object

and a query operation applied to it Hierarchical spaces are useful for hypertext where

onerdquo work ldquomay be spilt up into many interlinked documents The allows relative

names to exploit the hierarchical structure and allows links to be made within the wok

independent of the higher parts of the URL such as the server name

URLs are central to the Web architecture The fact that it is easy to address an object

on the Internet is essential for the system to scale and for the information space to be

independent of the network and server topology

Chapter-3

Architectural Frame work For Electronic Commerce

The software frame work necessary for building electronic commerce application is

little understood in existing literature In general frame work is intended to define and

create tools that integrate the information found in todayrsquos closed system and allow the

development of E-Commerce applicationsit is important to understand that the aim of

architectural frame work itself is not to build new database management systems data

repository computer languages software agent- based transaction monitors or

communication protocols Rather the architecture should focused on synthesizing the

diverse resource already in place in corporation to facilitate the integration of data

and software for better applications

We propound that the electronic commerce applications architecture consist of six

layers of functionality or services (1) Applications (2) Brokerage Services Data and

Transaction Management (3) Interface and Support layers(4) Secure Messaging and

Electronic Document Interchange(5)Middleware and Structure Document

Interchange and(6) Network Infrastructure and Basic communication services

Application Services Customer-to business Business-to- business Intra-Organization

Brokerage and Data Management Order Processes ndashMail-Order Purchasing Payment Scheme-electronic cash Clearinghouse and Virtual mall

Interface Layer Interactive Catalog Directory Support Function Software Agents

Secure Messaging Secure Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Encrypted E-mail EDI Remote Programming(RPC)

Middleware Services Structure Documents(SGMLHTML) Compound Document(OLE OpenDoc)

Network Infrastructure Wireless-Cellular Radio PCS Wire line - POTS Coaxial Fiber Optic

These layers cooperate to provide a seamless transition between todayrsquos computing

resources and those of tomorrow by transparently integrating information access and

exchange within the context of the chosen application As seen in above figure

electronic commerce application are based on several elegant technology But only

when they are integrated do they provide uniquely powerful solution

In the ensuing discussion of each of these layer we will not elaborate on the various

aspects of the network infrastructure that transports information

1 Electronic Commerce Application Services The application service layers of E-commerce will be comprised or existing and future

applications built on the innate architecture Three distinct classes of electronic

commerce application can be distinguished Customer-to-Business Business-to-

Business and intra organization

Customer-to-Business Transactions

We call this category market place transaction In a marketplace transaction

customers learn about products differently through electronic publishing by them

differently using electronic cash and secure payment systems and have them

delivered differently Also how customers allocate their loyalty may also be different

In light of this organization itself has to adapt to a world where the traditional concepts

of brand differentiation no longer hold-where ldquoqualityrdquo has a new meaning where

content may not be equated to ldquoproductrdquo where ldquodistributionrdquo may not automatically

Manufacturing

and

Production

Engineering

and Research

Accounting

Finance and

Management

Advertising Sales Customer Services

Procurement Distribution and Logistic

Customer Oriented

Electronic Commerce

Customer

Global Supplier

Classic EDI

Internal Publishing Private Commerce

mean ldquophysical transportrdquo In this new environment brand equity can rapidly evaporate

forcing firms to developed new ways of doing business

Business-to-Business Transaction

We call this category market-link transactions Here business government and other

organizations depend on Computer-to-Computer communication as a fast an

economical and a dependable way to conduct business transaction Small companies

are also beginning to see the benefits of adopting the same methods Business-to

Business transactions include the use of EDI an electronic mail for purchasing goods

and services buying information and consulting services submitting request for

proposal and receives proposals

For Example the current accounts payable process occurs through the exchange of

paper documents Each year the trading partners exchange millions of invoices

checks purchase order financial reports and other transactions Most of the

documents are in electronic form at their point of origin but are printed and key-entered

at the point of receipt Current manual process of printing mailing and rekeying is

costly time consuming and error-prone Given this situation and faced with the need

to reduce costs small businesses are looking towards electronic- commerce as a

possible savior

Intra-Organizational transactions

We call this category market driven transactions A company becomes market driven

by dispersing throughout the firm information about its customers and competitors by

spreading strategic and tactical decision making so that all units can participate and

by continuously monitoring their customer commitment by making improve customer

satisfaction an ongoing objective To maintain the relationships that are critical to

delivering superior customer value management must pay close attention to service

both before and after sales

2 Information Brokerage and Data Management

The information brokerage and management layer provide service integration through

the notion of information brokerages the development of which is necessitated by the

increasing information resource fragmentation We use the notion of information

brokerage to represent an intermediary who provides service integration between

customer and information providers given some constraint such as a low price fast

service or profit maximization for a client

Information brokers for example are rapidly becoming necessary in dealing with the

voluminous amounts of information on the networks As on-line database migrate to

consumer information utilities consumers and information professionals will have to

keep up the knowledge and ownership of all these systems Whorsquos got what How do

you use it What do they charge Most professionals have enough trouble keeping

track of files of interest on one or two database services Will all the complexity

associated with large number of online database or service bureaus itrsquos impossible to

accept humans to do the searching It will have to be software programs-information

brokers or software agents to use the most popular term-act on searcher behalf

Information brokerage does more than just searching

3 Interface and Support service

The third layer interface and support services will provide interfaces for electronic

commerce applications such as interactive catalogues and will support directory

services-function necessary for information search and access These two concepts

are very different Interactive catalogues are the customized interface to consumer

applications such as home shopping An interactive catalog is an extension of the

paper-based catalogs and incorporates additional features such as sophisticated

graphics and video to make the advertising more attractive

Directories on the other hand operate behind the scenes and attempt to organize the

enormous amount of information and transaction to generate to facilitated electronic

commerce Directory services database make data from any server appear as a local

file A classic example of a directory is the telephone White Pages which allows us to

locate people and telephone numbers In the case of electronic commerce directories

would play an important role in information management functions For instance take

the case of buying an airline ticket with several stock overs with a caveat that the time

between layovers be minimized This search would require several queries to various

on-line directories to find empty seats on various airlines and them the availability of

seats would be coordinated with the amount of time spend in the airport terminals

4 Secure Messaging And Structured Document Interchange Services

The importance of the fourth layer secure messaging is clear Everyone in business

knows that electronic messaging is a critical business issue Consider a familiar

business scenario you hand over an urgent fax on Monday and find out on Tuesday

that itrsquos still sitting on your fax operatorrsquos desk What happened The line was busy

and he thought he would try again later On the number was wrong but he forgot to

laid you know Or you are in London and you need to send a spreadsheet that details

a marketing plan for a product introduction strategy to co-worker in New-York This

must be done today not tomorrow when the courier service good deliver There is a

solution to these common and frustrating problems Itrsquos called integrated messaging

a group of computer services that through the use of a network send receive and

combine messages faxes and large data files Some better known examples are

electronic mail enhance fax and electronic data interchange

Broadly define messaging is a software that sits between the network infrastructure

and the clients or electronic commerce applications masking the peculiarities of the

environment Others define messaging as a framework for the total implementation of

portable applications divorcing you from the architectural primitives of your system In

general messaging products are not applications that solve problems they are more

enablers of the application that solve problems

Messaging services offer solution for communicating non-formatted (unstructured)

data such as purchase orders shipping notices and invoices Unstructured messaging

consist of fax e-mail and form based system likes Lotus Notes Structured documents

messaging consists of the automated interchange of standardized and approved

messages between computer applications via telecommunication lines Examples of

structured document messaging include EDI

Messaging is gaining momentum in electronic commerce and seems to have many

advantages It supports both synchronous (immediate) and asynchronous (delayed)

message delivery and processing With asynchronous messaging when a message is

send work continues (software doesnrsquot wait for a response) This allows the transfer

of messages through store-and-forward methods

The main disadvantages of messaging are the new types of applications it enables-

which appear to be more complex especially to traditional programmers-and the jungle

of standardrsquos in involves Because of the lack of standards there is often no

interoperability between different messaging vendors leading to islands of messaging

Also security privacy and confidentiality through data encryption and authentication

technique are important issue that need to resolve for ensuring the legality of the

message-based transaction themselves

5 Middleware Services

Middleware is a relatively new concept that emerged only recently Likes so many other

innovations it came into being out of necessity Users in the 1970rsquos when vendors

delivered homogenous systems that worked didnrsquot have a need for middleware When

conditions changed-along with the hardware and the software the organizations

couldnrsquot cope The tools were inadequate the backlog was enormous and the

pressure was overwhelming And the user were dissatisfied Something was needed

to solve all the interface translation transformation and interpretation problems that

work driving applications developerrsquos crazy

With the growth of networks client-server technology and all other forms of

communicating betweenamong unlike platforms the problems of getting all the pieces

to work together grew from formidable to horrendous As the cry for distributed

computing spread users demanded interaction between disk similar systems

networks that permitted shared resources and applications that could be accessed by

multiple software programs In simple terms middleware is the ultimate mediator

between diverse software programs that enables them talk to one another

6 Transparency

Transparency utilize that user should be unaware that they are accessing multiple

systems Transparency is essential for dealing with higher-level issues than needed

physical media and interconnection that under line network infrastructure is in charge

of The ideal picture is one of a ldquovirtualrdquo network a collection of work ndashgroup

departmental enterprise and inter enterprise LANrsquos that appears to the end users or

client application to be a seamless and easily accessed whole

Transparency is accomplished using middleware that facilitated a distributed

computing environment This gives users and applications transparent accessed to

data computation and other resources across collections of multivendor

heterogeneous system The strategic architectures of every major system vendor are

now based on some form of middleware The key to realizing the theoretical benefit

of such an architecture is transparency Users need not spend their time trying to

understand where something is Nor should application developers have to code into

their applications the exact location of resources over the network The goal is for the

applications to send a request to the middleware layer which then satisfied the request

any way it can using remote information

7 Transaction Security and Management

Support for transaction processing (TP) is fundamental to success in the electronic

commerce market Security and management are essential to all layers in the

electronic commerce model Transaction integrity must be given for businesses that

cannot afford any loss or inconsistency in data For electronic commerce middleware

provides the qualities accepted in the standard TP system the so-called ACID

properties (Atomicity consistency isolation and durability)

World-Wide-Web as the Architecture Electronic commerce depends on the unspoken assumption that computers co-

operate efficiency for seamless information sharing Unfortunately this assumption of

interoperability has been supported by the realities of practical computing Computing

is skill a world made up of many technical directions product implementation and

competing vendors This diversity while good for information causes problem as the

E-commerce application try to impose a certain discipline on the proliferating

computers and networks It is ironic that real effect of computing is all too often the

prevention of data sharing due to incompatibility-architectures data formats and

communications protocols

What does the WEB Encompass

The web has become an umbrella for a wide range of concepts and technologies that

differ markedly in purpose and scope These include the global hypertext publishing

concepts the universal reader concept and the client-server concept

The global hypertext publishing concepts promotes the idea of the seamless

information world in which all on-line information can be accessed and retrieved in a

consistent and simple way To access information in the seamless world we will need

the ability to address many types of data- text files images sound files animation

sequences

The universal readership concept promotes the idea that unlike the segmented

application of the past we can use one application- a universal (or common) user

interface-to read a variety of documents This concepts implies that one informationrsquos

is published it is accessible of any type of computer in any country and that any

(authorized) person nearly needs to use one simple program to access it This

accomplished in the web by using a core browser or application that is augmented by

supporting applications The core browser implements only minable functionality and

attempts to off load more specialized work onto the supporting applications

The client-server concept allows the web to grow easily without any centralized control

Anyone can published information and anyone (as long as he or she authorized) can

read and download it The publishing information requires a server program and

reading data requires the client browser All the clients and all the servers are

connected to one another by Internet The various standard protocols allows all clients

to communicate will all servers In practice the web hands or a number of essential

concepts including the following

The addressing scheme known as uniform resource locator (URL) makes the hyper

media world possible despite many different protocols

A network protocol known as hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) used by client

browsers and servers of first performance and features not otherwise available

A mark-up language (HTML) which every web client is required to understand is

used for the representation of hypertext documents containing text list boxes and

graphics information across the net

Chapter-4

Technology Behind the web

Information providers (or publishers) run programs (called servers) from which the

browsers (clients) can obtain information These programs can either be Web servers

that understand the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) ldquoGatewayrdquo programs that

convert an existing information format to hypertext for a non-http server that Web

browser can access-anonymous FTP or Gopher servers

Web servers are composed of two major parts the hypertext transfer protocol for

transmitting documents between servers and clients and the hypertext markup

language (HTML) format for documents The link between HTML files and the HTTP

servers is provided by the uniform resource locator (URLrsquos)

Uniform Resource Locator

The documents that the browsers display are hypertext that contains pointers to other

documents The browsers let you deal with the pointers in a transparent way-select the

pointer and you are presented with the text to which it points This pointer is

implemented using a concept that is central to Web browsers Uniform Resource

Locator (URLrsquos) One way to think about URLrsquos is to use the library and location on a

shelf as a metaphor A URL for a digital library would be a unique call number that

provides an exact location of every book in the world including the country city street

and library shelf locations

In practice URLrsquos are the strings used as addresses of objects (documents images)

on the Web Think of them as analogous to your e-mail address Just as your address

is unique and may be used by any other Internet user to send your mail without knowing

exactly where you are a URL marks the unique locations on the Internet where a file

or services can be found

URLrsquos follow a fairly consistent pattern The first part describes the type of resource

the second part gives the name of the server housing the resource and the third part

gives full file name of the resource URLrsquos are universal in that they provide access to

a wide range of network services which required separate application in the past For

a new network protocol one can easily form an address as the set of parameters

necessary to retrieve the objects If these parameters are encoded into concise string

with a prefix to identify the protocol and encoding one has new URL scheme Take a

look at the URLrsquos formats below

FTP ftpserveraddresscompletefilename

Gopher gopherserveraddressportdirectoryfilename

TELNET telnetserveraddressport

HTTP httpserveraddressporthomepagehtml

News newsmiscstocksinvest

These are URL for Internet news articles and newsgroups (the NNTP protocol) and for

HTTP archives for telnet destinations e-mail addresses and so on The same can be

done for names of objects in a given name space For example the URL of the main

page for the web project happens to be

httpwebw3orghypertextwebtheprojecthtmlThe prefix ldquohttprsquorsquo in the preceding

example indicates the address space and defines the interpretation of the rest of the

string The HTTP protocol is to be used so the string contains the address of the server

to be contacted and a sub string to be passed to the server

As noted earlier different protocols use different syntaxes but they do have a small

amount in common For example the common URL syntax reserves the solidus () as

a way of representing hierarchical space the pound label () as a way of pointing inside

the document and question mark () as a separator between the address of an object

and a query operation applied to it Hierarchical spaces are useful for hypertext where

onerdquo work ldquomay be spilt up into many interlinked documents The allows relative

names to exploit the hierarchical structure and allows links to be made within the wok

independent of the higher parts of the URL such as the server name

URLs are central to the Web architecture The fact that it is easy to address an object

on the Internet is essential for the system to scale and for the information space to be

independent of the network and server topology

In the ensuing discussion of each of these layer we will not elaborate on the various

aspects of the network infrastructure that transports information

1 Electronic Commerce Application Services The application service layers of E-commerce will be comprised or existing and future

applications built on the innate architecture Three distinct classes of electronic

commerce application can be distinguished Customer-to-Business Business-to-

Business and intra organization

Customer-to-Business Transactions

We call this category market place transaction In a marketplace transaction

customers learn about products differently through electronic publishing by them

differently using electronic cash and secure payment systems and have them

delivered differently Also how customers allocate their loyalty may also be different

In light of this organization itself has to adapt to a world where the traditional concepts

of brand differentiation no longer hold-where ldquoqualityrdquo has a new meaning where

content may not be equated to ldquoproductrdquo where ldquodistributionrdquo may not automatically

Manufacturing

and

Production

Engineering

and Research

Accounting

Finance and

Management

Advertising Sales Customer Services

Procurement Distribution and Logistic

Customer Oriented

Electronic Commerce

Customer

Global Supplier

Classic EDI

Internal Publishing Private Commerce

mean ldquophysical transportrdquo In this new environment brand equity can rapidly evaporate

forcing firms to developed new ways of doing business

Business-to-Business Transaction

We call this category market-link transactions Here business government and other

organizations depend on Computer-to-Computer communication as a fast an

economical and a dependable way to conduct business transaction Small companies

are also beginning to see the benefits of adopting the same methods Business-to

Business transactions include the use of EDI an electronic mail for purchasing goods

and services buying information and consulting services submitting request for

proposal and receives proposals

For Example the current accounts payable process occurs through the exchange of

paper documents Each year the trading partners exchange millions of invoices

checks purchase order financial reports and other transactions Most of the

documents are in electronic form at their point of origin but are printed and key-entered

at the point of receipt Current manual process of printing mailing and rekeying is

costly time consuming and error-prone Given this situation and faced with the need

to reduce costs small businesses are looking towards electronic- commerce as a

possible savior

Intra-Organizational transactions

We call this category market driven transactions A company becomes market driven

by dispersing throughout the firm information about its customers and competitors by

spreading strategic and tactical decision making so that all units can participate and

by continuously monitoring their customer commitment by making improve customer

satisfaction an ongoing objective To maintain the relationships that are critical to

delivering superior customer value management must pay close attention to service

both before and after sales

2 Information Brokerage and Data Management

The information brokerage and management layer provide service integration through

the notion of information brokerages the development of which is necessitated by the

increasing information resource fragmentation We use the notion of information

brokerage to represent an intermediary who provides service integration between

customer and information providers given some constraint such as a low price fast

service or profit maximization for a client

Information brokers for example are rapidly becoming necessary in dealing with the

voluminous amounts of information on the networks As on-line database migrate to

consumer information utilities consumers and information professionals will have to

keep up the knowledge and ownership of all these systems Whorsquos got what How do

you use it What do they charge Most professionals have enough trouble keeping

track of files of interest on one or two database services Will all the complexity

associated with large number of online database or service bureaus itrsquos impossible to

accept humans to do the searching It will have to be software programs-information

brokers or software agents to use the most popular term-act on searcher behalf

Information brokerage does more than just searching

3 Interface and Support service

The third layer interface and support services will provide interfaces for electronic

commerce applications such as interactive catalogues and will support directory

services-function necessary for information search and access These two concepts

are very different Interactive catalogues are the customized interface to consumer

applications such as home shopping An interactive catalog is an extension of the

paper-based catalogs and incorporates additional features such as sophisticated

graphics and video to make the advertising more attractive

Directories on the other hand operate behind the scenes and attempt to organize the

enormous amount of information and transaction to generate to facilitated electronic

commerce Directory services database make data from any server appear as a local

file A classic example of a directory is the telephone White Pages which allows us to

locate people and telephone numbers In the case of electronic commerce directories

would play an important role in information management functions For instance take

the case of buying an airline ticket with several stock overs with a caveat that the time

between layovers be minimized This search would require several queries to various

on-line directories to find empty seats on various airlines and them the availability of

seats would be coordinated with the amount of time spend in the airport terminals

4 Secure Messaging And Structured Document Interchange Services

The importance of the fourth layer secure messaging is clear Everyone in business

knows that electronic messaging is a critical business issue Consider a familiar

business scenario you hand over an urgent fax on Monday and find out on Tuesday

that itrsquos still sitting on your fax operatorrsquos desk What happened The line was busy

and he thought he would try again later On the number was wrong but he forgot to

laid you know Or you are in London and you need to send a spreadsheet that details

a marketing plan for a product introduction strategy to co-worker in New-York This

must be done today not tomorrow when the courier service good deliver There is a

solution to these common and frustrating problems Itrsquos called integrated messaging

a group of computer services that through the use of a network send receive and

combine messages faxes and large data files Some better known examples are

electronic mail enhance fax and electronic data interchange

Broadly define messaging is a software that sits between the network infrastructure

and the clients or electronic commerce applications masking the peculiarities of the

environment Others define messaging as a framework for the total implementation of

portable applications divorcing you from the architectural primitives of your system In

general messaging products are not applications that solve problems they are more

enablers of the application that solve problems

Messaging services offer solution for communicating non-formatted (unstructured)

data such as purchase orders shipping notices and invoices Unstructured messaging

consist of fax e-mail and form based system likes Lotus Notes Structured documents

messaging consists of the automated interchange of standardized and approved

messages between computer applications via telecommunication lines Examples of

structured document messaging include EDI

Messaging is gaining momentum in electronic commerce and seems to have many

advantages It supports both synchronous (immediate) and asynchronous (delayed)

message delivery and processing With asynchronous messaging when a message is

send work continues (software doesnrsquot wait for a response) This allows the transfer

of messages through store-and-forward methods

The main disadvantages of messaging are the new types of applications it enables-

which appear to be more complex especially to traditional programmers-and the jungle

of standardrsquos in involves Because of the lack of standards there is often no

interoperability between different messaging vendors leading to islands of messaging

Also security privacy and confidentiality through data encryption and authentication

technique are important issue that need to resolve for ensuring the legality of the

message-based transaction themselves

5 Middleware Services

Middleware is a relatively new concept that emerged only recently Likes so many other

innovations it came into being out of necessity Users in the 1970rsquos when vendors

delivered homogenous systems that worked didnrsquot have a need for middleware When

conditions changed-along with the hardware and the software the organizations

couldnrsquot cope The tools were inadequate the backlog was enormous and the

pressure was overwhelming And the user were dissatisfied Something was needed

to solve all the interface translation transformation and interpretation problems that

work driving applications developerrsquos crazy

With the growth of networks client-server technology and all other forms of

communicating betweenamong unlike platforms the problems of getting all the pieces

to work together grew from formidable to horrendous As the cry for distributed

computing spread users demanded interaction between disk similar systems

networks that permitted shared resources and applications that could be accessed by

multiple software programs In simple terms middleware is the ultimate mediator

between diverse software programs that enables them talk to one another

6 Transparency

Transparency utilize that user should be unaware that they are accessing multiple

systems Transparency is essential for dealing with higher-level issues than needed

physical media and interconnection that under line network infrastructure is in charge

of The ideal picture is one of a ldquovirtualrdquo network a collection of work ndashgroup

departmental enterprise and inter enterprise LANrsquos that appears to the end users or

client application to be a seamless and easily accessed whole

Transparency is accomplished using middleware that facilitated a distributed

computing environment This gives users and applications transparent accessed to

data computation and other resources across collections of multivendor

heterogeneous system The strategic architectures of every major system vendor are

now based on some form of middleware The key to realizing the theoretical benefit

of such an architecture is transparency Users need not spend their time trying to

understand where something is Nor should application developers have to code into

their applications the exact location of resources over the network The goal is for the

applications to send a request to the middleware layer which then satisfied the request

any way it can using remote information

7 Transaction Security and Management

Support for transaction processing (TP) is fundamental to success in the electronic

commerce market Security and management are essential to all layers in the

electronic commerce model Transaction integrity must be given for businesses that

cannot afford any loss or inconsistency in data For electronic commerce middleware

provides the qualities accepted in the standard TP system the so-called ACID

properties (Atomicity consistency isolation and durability)

World-Wide-Web as the Architecture Electronic commerce depends on the unspoken assumption that computers co-

operate efficiency for seamless information sharing Unfortunately this assumption of

interoperability has been supported by the realities of practical computing Computing

is skill a world made up of many technical directions product implementation and

competing vendors This diversity while good for information causes problem as the

E-commerce application try to impose a certain discipline on the proliferating

computers and networks It is ironic that real effect of computing is all too often the

prevention of data sharing due to incompatibility-architectures data formats and

communications protocols

What does the WEB Encompass

The web has become an umbrella for a wide range of concepts and technologies that

differ markedly in purpose and scope These include the global hypertext publishing

concepts the universal reader concept and the client-server concept

The global hypertext publishing concepts promotes the idea of the seamless

information world in which all on-line information can be accessed and retrieved in a

consistent and simple way To access information in the seamless world we will need

the ability to address many types of data- text files images sound files animation

sequences

The universal readership concept promotes the idea that unlike the segmented

application of the past we can use one application- a universal (or common) user

interface-to read a variety of documents This concepts implies that one informationrsquos

is published it is accessible of any type of computer in any country and that any

(authorized) person nearly needs to use one simple program to access it This

accomplished in the web by using a core browser or application that is augmented by

supporting applications The core browser implements only minable functionality and

attempts to off load more specialized work onto the supporting applications

The client-server concept allows the web to grow easily without any centralized control

Anyone can published information and anyone (as long as he or she authorized) can

read and download it The publishing information requires a server program and

reading data requires the client browser All the clients and all the servers are

connected to one another by Internet The various standard protocols allows all clients

to communicate will all servers In practice the web hands or a number of essential

concepts including the following

The addressing scheme known as uniform resource locator (URL) makes the hyper

media world possible despite many different protocols

A network protocol known as hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) used by client

browsers and servers of first performance and features not otherwise available

A mark-up language (HTML) which every web client is required to understand is

used for the representation of hypertext documents containing text list boxes and

graphics information across the net

Chapter-4

Technology Behind the web

Information providers (or publishers) run programs (called servers) from which the

browsers (clients) can obtain information These programs can either be Web servers

that understand the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) ldquoGatewayrdquo programs that

convert an existing information format to hypertext for a non-http server that Web

browser can access-anonymous FTP or Gopher servers

Web servers are composed of two major parts the hypertext transfer protocol for

transmitting documents between servers and clients and the hypertext markup

language (HTML) format for documents The link between HTML files and the HTTP

servers is provided by the uniform resource locator (URLrsquos)

Uniform Resource Locator

The documents that the browsers display are hypertext that contains pointers to other

documents The browsers let you deal with the pointers in a transparent way-select the

pointer and you are presented with the text to which it points This pointer is

implemented using a concept that is central to Web browsers Uniform Resource

Locator (URLrsquos) One way to think about URLrsquos is to use the library and location on a

shelf as a metaphor A URL for a digital library would be a unique call number that

provides an exact location of every book in the world including the country city street

and library shelf locations

In practice URLrsquos are the strings used as addresses of objects (documents images)

on the Web Think of them as analogous to your e-mail address Just as your address

is unique and may be used by any other Internet user to send your mail without knowing

exactly where you are a URL marks the unique locations on the Internet where a file

or services can be found

URLrsquos follow a fairly consistent pattern The first part describes the type of resource

the second part gives the name of the server housing the resource and the third part

gives full file name of the resource URLrsquos are universal in that they provide access to

a wide range of network services which required separate application in the past For

a new network protocol one can easily form an address as the set of parameters

necessary to retrieve the objects If these parameters are encoded into concise string

with a prefix to identify the protocol and encoding one has new URL scheme Take a

look at the URLrsquos formats below

FTP ftpserveraddresscompletefilename

Gopher gopherserveraddressportdirectoryfilename

TELNET telnetserveraddressport

HTTP httpserveraddressporthomepagehtml

News newsmiscstocksinvest

These are URL for Internet news articles and newsgroups (the NNTP protocol) and for

HTTP archives for telnet destinations e-mail addresses and so on The same can be

done for names of objects in a given name space For example the URL of the main

page for the web project happens to be

httpwebw3orghypertextwebtheprojecthtmlThe prefix ldquohttprsquorsquo in the preceding

example indicates the address space and defines the interpretation of the rest of the

string The HTTP protocol is to be used so the string contains the address of the server

to be contacted and a sub string to be passed to the server

As noted earlier different protocols use different syntaxes but they do have a small

amount in common For example the common URL syntax reserves the solidus () as

a way of representing hierarchical space the pound label () as a way of pointing inside

the document and question mark () as a separator between the address of an object

and a query operation applied to it Hierarchical spaces are useful for hypertext where

onerdquo work ldquomay be spilt up into many interlinked documents The allows relative

names to exploit the hierarchical structure and allows links to be made within the wok

independent of the higher parts of the URL such as the server name

URLs are central to the Web architecture The fact that it is easy to address an object

on the Internet is essential for the system to scale and for the information space to be

independent of the network and server topology

mean ldquophysical transportrdquo In this new environment brand equity can rapidly evaporate

forcing firms to developed new ways of doing business

Business-to-Business Transaction

We call this category market-link transactions Here business government and other

organizations depend on Computer-to-Computer communication as a fast an

economical and a dependable way to conduct business transaction Small companies

are also beginning to see the benefits of adopting the same methods Business-to

Business transactions include the use of EDI an electronic mail for purchasing goods

and services buying information and consulting services submitting request for

proposal and receives proposals

For Example the current accounts payable process occurs through the exchange of

paper documents Each year the trading partners exchange millions of invoices

checks purchase order financial reports and other transactions Most of the

documents are in electronic form at their point of origin but are printed and key-entered

at the point of receipt Current manual process of printing mailing and rekeying is

costly time consuming and error-prone Given this situation and faced with the need

to reduce costs small businesses are looking towards electronic- commerce as a

possible savior

Intra-Organizational transactions

We call this category market driven transactions A company becomes market driven

by dispersing throughout the firm information about its customers and competitors by

spreading strategic and tactical decision making so that all units can participate and

by continuously monitoring their customer commitment by making improve customer

satisfaction an ongoing objective To maintain the relationships that are critical to

delivering superior customer value management must pay close attention to service

both before and after sales

2 Information Brokerage and Data Management

The information brokerage and management layer provide service integration through

the notion of information brokerages the development of which is necessitated by the

increasing information resource fragmentation We use the notion of information

brokerage to represent an intermediary who provides service integration between

customer and information providers given some constraint such as a low price fast

service or profit maximization for a client

Information brokers for example are rapidly becoming necessary in dealing with the

voluminous amounts of information on the networks As on-line database migrate to

consumer information utilities consumers and information professionals will have to

keep up the knowledge and ownership of all these systems Whorsquos got what How do

you use it What do they charge Most professionals have enough trouble keeping

track of files of interest on one or two database services Will all the complexity

associated with large number of online database or service bureaus itrsquos impossible to

accept humans to do the searching It will have to be software programs-information

brokers or software agents to use the most popular term-act on searcher behalf

Information brokerage does more than just searching

3 Interface and Support service

The third layer interface and support services will provide interfaces for electronic

commerce applications such as interactive catalogues and will support directory

services-function necessary for information search and access These two concepts

are very different Interactive catalogues are the customized interface to consumer

applications such as home shopping An interactive catalog is an extension of the

paper-based catalogs and incorporates additional features such as sophisticated

graphics and video to make the advertising more attractive

Directories on the other hand operate behind the scenes and attempt to organize the

enormous amount of information and transaction to generate to facilitated electronic

commerce Directory services database make data from any server appear as a local

file A classic example of a directory is the telephone White Pages which allows us to

locate people and telephone numbers In the case of electronic commerce directories

would play an important role in information management functions For instance take

the case of buying an airline ticket with several stock overs with a caveat that the time

between layovers be minimized This search would require several queries to various

on-line directories to find empty seats on various airlines and them the availability of

seats would be coordinated with the amount of time spend in the airport terminals

4 Secure Messaging And Structured Document Interchange Services

The importance of the fourth layer secure messaging is clear Everyone in business

knows that electronic messaging is a critical business issue Consider a familiar

business scenario you hand over an urgent fax on Monday and find out on Tuesday

that itrsquos still sitting on your fax operatorrsquos desk What happened The line was busy

and he thought he would try again later On the number was wrong but he forgot to

laid you know Or you are in London and you need to send a spreadsheet that details

a marketing plan for a product introduction strategy to co-worker in New-York This

must be done today not tomorrow when the courier service good deliver There is a

solution to these common and frustrating problems Itrsquos called integrated messaging

a group of computer services that through the use of a network send receive and

combine messages faxes and large data files Some better known examples are

electronic mail enhance fax and electronic data interchange

Broadly define messaging is a software that sits between the network infrastructure

and the clients or electronic commerce applications masking the peculiarities of the

environment Others define messaging as a framework for the total implementation of

portable applications divorcing you from the architectural primitives of your system In

general messaging products are not applications that solve problems they are more

enablers of the application that solve problems

Messaging services offer solution for communicating non-formatted (unstructured)

data such as purchase orders shipping notices and invoices Unstructured messaging

consist of fax e-mail and form based system likes Lotus Notes Structured documents

messaging consists of the automated interchange of standardized and approved

messages between computer applications via telecommunication lines Examples of

structured document messaging include EDI

Messaging is gaining momentum in electronic commerce and seems to have many

advantages It supports both synchronous (immediate) and asynchronous (delayed)

message delivery and processing With asynchronous messaging when a message is

send work continues (software doesnrsquot wait for a response) This allows the transfer

of messages through store-and-forward methods

The main disadvantages of messaging are the new types of applications it enables-

which appear to be more complex especially to traditional programmers-and the jungle

of standardrsquos in involves Because of the lack of standards there is often no

interoperability between different messaging vendors leading to islands of messaging

Also security privacy and confidentiality through data encryption and authentication

technique are important issue that need to resolve for ensuring the legality of the

message-based transaction themselves

5 Middleware Services

Middleware is a relatively new concept that emerged only recently Likes so many other

innovations it came into being out of necessity Users in the 1970rsquos when vendors

delivered homogenous systems that worked didnrsquot have a need for middleware When

conditions changed-along with the hardware and the software the organizations

couldnrsquot cope The tools were inadequate the backlog was enormous and the

pressure was overwhelming And the user were dissatisfied Something was needed

to solve all the interface translation transformation and interpretation problems that

work driving applications developerrsquos crazy

With the growth of networks client-server technology and all other forms of

communicating betweenamong unlike platforms the problems of getting all the pieces

to work together grew from formidable to horrendous As the cry for distributed

computing spread users demanded interaction between disk similar systems

networks that permitted shared resources and applications that could be accessed by

multiple software programs In simple terms middleware is the ultimate mediator

between diverse software programs that enables them talk to one another

6 Transparency

Transparency utilize that user should be unaware that they are accessing multiple

systems Transparency is essential for dealing with higher-level issues than needed

physical media and interconnection that under line network infrastructure is in charge

of The ideal picture is one of a ldquovirtualrdquo network a collection of work ndashgroup

departmental enterprise and inter enterprise LANrsquos that appears to the end users or

client application to be a seamless and easily accessed whole

Transparency is accomplished using middleware that facilitated a distributed

computing environment This gives users and applications transparent accessed to

data computation and other resources across collections of multivendor

heterogeneous system The strategic architectures of every major system vendor are

now based on some form of middleware The key to realizing the theoretical benefit

of such an architecture is transparency Users need not spend their time trying to

understand where something is Nor should application developers have to code into

their applications the exact location of resources over the network The goal is for the

applications to send a request to the middleware layer which then satisfied the request

any way it can using remote information

7 Transaction Security and Management

Support for transaction processing (TP) is fundamental to success in the electronic

commerce market Security and management are essential to all layers in the

electronic commerce model Transaction integrity must be given for businesses that

cannot afford any loss or inconsistency in data For electronic commerce middleware

provides the qualities accepted in the standard TP system the so-called ACID

properties (Atomicity consistency isolation and durability)

World-Wide-Web as the Architecture Electronic commerce depends on the unspoken assumption that computers co-

operate efficiency for seamless information sharing Unfortunately this assumption of

interoperability has been supported by the realities of practical computing Computing

is skill a world made up of many technical directions product implementation and

competing vendors This diversity while good for information causes problem as the

E-commerce application try to impose a certain discipline on the proliferating

computers and networks It is ironic that real effect of computing is all too often the

prevention of data sharing due to incompatibility-architectures data formats and

communications protocols

What does the WEB Encompass

The web has become an umbrella for a wide range of concepts and technologies that

differ markedly in purpose and scope These include the global hypertext publishing

concepts the universal reader concept and the client-server concept

The global hypertext publishing concepts promotes the idea of the seamless

information world in which all on-line information can be accessed and retrieved in a

consistent and simple way To access information in the seamless world we will need

the ability to address many types of data- text files images sound files animation

sequences

The universal readership concept promotes the idea that unlike the segmented

application of the past we can use one application- a universal (or common) user

interface-to read a variety of documents This concepts implies that one informationrsquos

is published it is accessible of any type of computer in any country and that any

(authorized) person nearly needs to use one simple program to access it This

accomplished in the web by using a core browser or application that is augmented by

supporting applications The core browser implements only minable functionality and

attempts to off load more specialized work onto the supporting applications

The client-server concept allows the web to grow easily without any centralized control

Anyone can published information and anyone (as long as he or she authorized) can

read and download it The publishing information requires a server program and

reading data requires the client browser All the clients and all the servers are

connected to one another by Internet The various standard protocols allows all clients

to communicate will all servers In practice the web hands or a number of essential

concepts including the following

The addressing scheme known as uniform resource locator (URL) makes the hyper

media world possible despite many different protocols

A network protocol known as hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) used by client

browsers and servers of first performance and features not otherwise available

A mark-up language (HTML) which every web client is required to understand is

used for the representation of hypertext documents containing text list boxes and

graphics information across the net

Chapter-4

Technology Behind the web

Information providers (or publishers) run programs (called servers) from which the

browsers (clients) can obtain information These programs can either be Web servers

that understand the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) ldquoGatewayrdquo programs that

convert an existing information format to hypertext for a non-http server that Web

browser can access-anonymous FTP or Gopher servers

Web servers are composed of two major parts the hypertext transfer protocol for

transmitting documents between servers and clients and the hypertext markup

language (HTML) format for documents The link between HTML files and the HTTP

servers is provided by the uniform resource locator (URLrsquos)

Uniform Resource Locator

The documents that the browsers display are hypertext that contains pointers to other

documents The browsers let you deal with the pointers in a transparent way-select the

pointer and you are presented with the text to which it points This pointer is

implemented using a concept that is central to Web browsers Uniform Resource

Locator (URLrsquos) One way to think about URLrsquos is to use the library and location on a

shelf as a metaphor A URL for a digital library would be a unique call number that

provides an exact location of every book in the world including the country city street

and library shelf locations

In practice URLrsquos are the strings used as addresses of objects (documents images)

on the Web Think of them as analogous to your e-mail address Just as your address

is unique and may be used by any other Internet user to send your mail without knowing

exactly where you are a URL marks the unique locations on the Internet where a file

or services can be found

URLrsquos follow a fairly consistent pattern The first part describes the type of resource

the second part gives the name of the server housing the resource and the third part

gives full file name of the resource URLrsquos are universal in that they provide access to

a wide range of network services which required separate application in the past For

a new network protocol one can easily form an address as the set of parameters

necessary to retrieve the objects If these parameters are encoded into concise string

with a prefix to identify the protocol and encoding one has new URL scheme Take a

look at the URLrsquos formats below

FTP ftpserveraddresscompletefilename

Gopher gopherserveraddressportdirectoryfilename

TELNET telnetserveraddressport

HTTP httpserveraddressporthomepagehtml

News newsmiscstocksinvest

These are URL for Internet news articles and newsgroups (the NNTP protocol) and for

HTTP archives for telnet destinations e-mail addresses and so on The same can be

done for names of objects in a given name space For example the URL of the main

page for the web project happens to be

httpwebw3orghypertextwebtheprojecthtmlThe prefix ldquohttprsquorsquo in the preceding

example indicates the address space and defines the interpretation of the rest of the

string The HTTP protocol is to be used so the string contains the address of the server

to be contacted and a sub string to be passed to the server

As noted earlier different protocols use different syntaxes but they do have a small

amount in common For example the common URL syntax reserves the solidus () as

a way of representing hierarchical space the pound label () as a way of pointing inside

the document and question mark () as a separator between the address of an object

and a query operation applied to it Hierarchical spaces are useful for hypertext where

onerdquo work ldquomay be spilt up into many interlinked documents The allows relative

names to exploit the hierarchical structure and allows links to be made within the wok

independent of the higher parts of the URL such as the server name

URLs are central to the Web architecture The fact that it is easy to address an object

on the Internet is essential for the system to scale and for the information space to be

independent of the network and server topology

brokers or software agents to use the most popular term-act on searcher behalf

Information brokerage does more than just searching

3 Interface and Support service

The third layer interface and support services will provide interfaces for electronic

commerce applications such as interactive catalogues and will support directory

services-function necessary for information search and access These two concepts

are very different Interactive catalogues are the customized interface to consumer

applications such as home shopping An interactive catalog is an extension of the

paper-based catalogs and incorporates additional features such as sophisticated

graphics and video to make the advertising more attractive

Directories on the other hand operate behind the scenes and attempt to organize the

enormous amount of information and transaction to generate to facilitated electronic

commerce Directory services database make data from any server appear as a local

file A classic example of a directory is the telephone White Pages which allows us to

locate people and telephone numbers In the case of electronic commerce directories

would play an important role in information management functions For instance take

the case of buying an airline ticket with several stock overs with a caveat that the time

between layovers be minimized This search would require several queries to various

on-line directories to find empty seats on various airlines and them the availability of

seats would be coordinated with the amount of time spend in the airport terminals

4 Secure Messaging And Structured Document Interchange Services

The importance of the fourth layer secure messaging is clear Everyone in business

knows that electronic messaging is a critical business issue Consider a familiar

business scenario you hand over an urgent fax on Monday and find out on Tuesday

that itrsquos still sitting on your fax operatorrsquos desk What happened The line was busy

and he thought he would try again later On the number was wrong but he forgot to

laid you know Or you are in London and you need to send a spreadsheet that details

a marketing plan for a product introduction strategy to co-worker in New-York This

must be done today not tomorrow when the courier service good deliver There is a

solution to these common and frustrating problems Itrsquos called integrated messaging

a group of computer services that through the use of a network send receive and

combine messages faxes and large data files Some better known examples are

electronic mail enhance fax and electronic data interchange

Broadly define messaging is a software that sits between the network infrastructure

and the clients or electronic commerce applications masking the peculiarities of the

environment Others define messaging as a framework for the total implementation of

portable applications divorcing you from the architectural primitives of your system In

general messaging products are not applications that solve problems they are more

enablers of the application that solve problems

Messaging services offer solution for communicating non-formatted (unstructured)

data such as purchase orders shipping notices and invoices Unstructured messaging

consist of fax e-mail and form based system likes Lotus Notes Structured documents

messaging consists of the automated interchange of standardized and approved

messages between computer applications via telecommunication lines Examples of

structured document messaging include EDI

Messaging is gaining momentum in electronic commerce and seems to have many

advantages It supports both synchronous (immediate) and asynchronous (delayed)

message delivery and processing With asynchronous messaging when a message is

send work continues (software doesnrsquot wait for a response) This allows the transfer

of messages through store-and-forward methods

The main disadvantages of messaging are the new types of applications it enables-

which appear to be more complex especially to traditional programmers-and the jungle

of standardrsquos in involves Because of the lack of standards there is often no

interoperability between different messaging vendors leading to islands of messaging

Also security privacy and confidentiality through data encryption and authentication

technique are important issue that need to resolve for ensuring the legality of the

message-based transaction themselves

5 Middleware Services

Middleware is a relatively new concept that emerged only recently Likes so many other

innovations it came into being out of necessity Users in the 1970rsquos when vendors

delivered homogenous systems that worked didnrsquot have a need for middleware When

conditions changed-along with the hardware and the software the organizations

couldnrsquot cope The tools were inadequate the backlog was enormous and the

pressure was overwhelming And the user were dissatisfied Something was needed

to solve all the interface translation transformation and interpretation problems that

work driving applications developerrsquos crazy

With the growth of networks client-server technology and all other forms of

communicating betweenamong unlike platforms the problems of getting all the pieces

to work together grew from formidable to horrendous As the cry for distributed

computing spread users demanded interaction between disk similar systems

networks that permitted shared resources and applications that could be accessed by

multiple software programs In simple terms middleware is the ultimate mediator

between diverse software programs that enables them talk to one another

6 Transparency

Transparency utilize that user should be unaware that they are accessing multiple

systems Transparency is essential for dealing with higher-level issues than needed

physical media and interconnection that under line network infrastructure is in charge

of The ideal picture is one of a ldquovirtualrdquo network a collection of work ndashgroup

departmental enterprise and inter enterprise LANrsquos that appears to the end users or

client application to be a seamless and easily accessed whole

Transparency is accomplished using middleware that facilitated a distributed

computing environment This gives users and applications transparent accessed to

data computation and other resources across collections of multivendor

heterogeneous system The strategic architectures of every major system vendor are

now based on some form of middleware The key to realizing the theoretical benefit

of such an architecture is transparency Users need not spend their time trying to

understand where something is Nor should application developers have to code into

their applications the exact location of resources over the network The goal is for the

applications to send a request to the middleware layer which then satisfied the request

any way it can using remote information

7 Transaction Security and Management

Support for transaction processing (TP) is fundamental to success in the electronic

commerce market Security and management are essential to all layers in the

electronic commerce model Transaction integrity must be given for businesses that

cannot afford any loss or inconsistency in data For electronic commerce middleware

provides the qualities accepted in the standard TP system the so-called ACID

properties (Atomicity consistency isolation and durability)

World-Wide-Web as the Architecture Electronic commerce depends on the unspoken assumption that computers co-

operate efficiency for seamless information sharing Unfortunately this assumption of

interoperability has been supported by the realities of practical computing Computing

is skill a world made up of many technical directions product implementation and

competing vendors This diversity while good for information causes problem as the

E-commerce application try to impose a certain discipline on the proliferating

computers and networks It is ironic that real effect of computing is all too often the

prevention of data sharing due to incompatibility-architectures data formats and

communications protocols

What does the WEB Encompass

The web has become an umbrella for a wide range of concepts and technologies that

differ markedly in purpose and scope These include the global hypertext publishing

concepts the universal reader concept and the client-server concept

The global hypertext publishing concepts promotes the idea of the seamless

information world in which all on-line information can be accessed and retrieved in a

consistent and simple way To access information in the seamless world we will need

the ability to address many types of data- text files images sound files animation

sequences

The universal readership concept promotes the idea that unlike the segmented

application of the past we can use one application- a universal (or common) user

interface-to read a variety of documents This concepts implies that one informationrsquos

is published it is accessible of any type of computer in any country and that any

(authorized) person nearly needs to use one simple program to access it This

accomplished in the web by using a core browser or application that is augmented by

supporting applications The core browser implements only minable functionality and

attempts to off load more specialized work onto the supporting applications

The client-server concept allows the web to grow easily without any centralized control

Anyone can published information and anyone (as long as he or she authorized) can

read and download it The publishing information requires a server program and

reading data requires the client browser All the clients and all the servers are

connected to one another by Internet The various standard protocols allows all clients

to communicate will all servers In practice the web hands or a number of essential

concepts including the following

The addressing scheme known as uniform resource locator (URL) makes the hyper

media world possible despite many different protocols

A network protocol known as hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) used by client

browsers and servers of first performance and features not otherwise available

A mark-up language (HTML) which every web client is required to understand is

used for the representation of hypertext documents containing text list boxes and

graphics information across the net

Chapter-4

Technology Behind the web

Information providers (or publishers) run programs (called servers) from which the

browsers (clients) can obtain information These programs can either be Web servers

that understand the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) ldquoGatewayrdquo programs that

convert an existing information format to hypertext for a non-http server that Web

browser can access-anonymous FTP or Gopher servers

Web servers are composed of two major parts the hypertext transfer protocol for

transmitting documents between servers and clients and the hypertext markup

language (HTML) format for documents The link between HTML files and the HTTP

servers is provided by the uniform resource locator (URLrsquos)

Uniform Resource Locator

The documents that the browsers display are hypertext that contains pointers to other

documents The browsers let you deal with the pointers in a transparent way-select the

pointer and you are presented with the text to which it points This pointer is

implemented using a concept that is central to Web browsers Uniform Resource

Locator (URLrsquos) One way to think about URLrsquos is to use the library and location on a

shelf as a metaphor A URL for a digital library would be a unique call number that

provides an exact location of every book in the world including the country city street

and library shelf locations

In practice URLrsquos are the strings used as addresses of objects (documents images)

on the Web Think of them as analogous to your e-mail address Just as your address

is unique and may be used by any other Internet user to send your mail without knowing

exactly where you are a URL marks the unique locations on the Internet where a file

or services can be found

URLrsquos follow a fairly consistent pattern The first part describes the type of resource

the second part gives the name of the server housing the resource and the third part

gives full file name of the resource URLrsquos are universal in that they provide access to

a wide range of network services which required separate application in the past For

a new network protocol one can easily form an address as the set of parameters

necessary to retrieve the objects If these parameters are encoded into concise string

with a prefix to identify the protocol and encoding one has new URL scheme Take a

look at the URLrsquos formats below

FTP ftpserveraddresscompletefilename

Gopher gopherserveraddressportdirectoryfilename

TELNET telnetserveraddressport

HTTP httpserveraddressporthomepagehtml

News newsmiscstocksinvest

These are URL for Internet news articles and newsgroups (the NNTP protocol) and for

HTTP archives for telnet destinations e-mail addresses and so on The same can be

done for names of objects in a given name space For example the URL of the main

page for the web project happens to be

httpwebw3orghypertextwebtheprojecthtmlThe prefix ldquohttprsquorsquo in the preceding

example indicates the address space and defines the interpretation of the rest of the

string The HTTP protocol is to be used so the string contains the address of the server

to be contacted and a sub string to be passed to the server

As noted earlier different protocols use different syntaxes but they do have a small

amount in common For example the common URL syntax reserves the solidus () as

a way of representing hierarchical space the pound label () as a way of pointing inside

the document and question mark () as a separator between the address of an object

and a query operation applied to it Hierarchical spaces are useful for hypertext where

onerdquo work ldquomay be spilt up into many interlinked documents The allows relative

names to exploit the hierarchical structure and allows links to be made within the wok

independent of the higher parts of the URL such as the server name

URLs are central to the Web architecture The fact that it is easy to address an object

on the Internet is essential for the system to scale and for the information space to be

independent of the network and server topology

consist of fax e-mail and form based system likes Lotus Notes Structured documents

messaging consists of the automated interchange of standardized and approved

messages between computer applications via telecommunication lines Examples of

structured document messaging include EDI

Messaging is gaining momentum in electronic commerce and seems to have many

advantages It supports both synchronous (immediate) and asynchronous (delayed)

message delivery and processing With asynchronous messaging when a message is

send work continues (software doesnrsquot wait for a response) This allows the transfer

of messages through store-and-forward methods

The main disadvantages of messaging are the new types of applications it enables-

which appear to be more complex especially to traditional programmers-and the jungle

of standardrsquos in involves Because of the lack of standards there is often no

interoperability between different messaging vendors leading to islands of messaging

Also security privacy and confidentiality through data encryption and authentication

technique are important issue that need to resolve for ensuring the legality of the

message-based transaction themselves

5 Middleware Services

Middleware is a relatively new concept that emerged only recently Likes so many other

innovations it came into being out of necessity Users in the 1970rsquos when vendors

delivered homogenous systems that worked didnrsquot have a need for middleware When

conditions changed-along with the hardware and the software the organizations

couldnrsquot cope The tools were inadequate the backlog was enormous and the

pressure was overwhelming And the user were dissatisfied Something was needed

to solve all the interface translation transformation and interpretation problems that

work driving applications developerrsquos crazy

With the growth of networks client-server technology and all other forms of

communicating betweenamong unlike platforms the problems of getting all the pieces

to work together grew from formidable to horrendous As the cry for distributed

computing spread users demanded interaction between disk similar systems

networks that permitted shared resources and applications that could be accessed by

multiple software programs In simple terms middleware is the ultimate mediator

between diverse software programs that enables them talk to one another

6 Transparency

Transparency utilize that user should be unaware that they are accessing multiple

systems Transparency is essential for dealing with higher-level issues than needed

physical media and interconnection that under line network infrastructure is in charge

of The ideal picture is one of a ldquovirtualrdquo network a collection of work ndashgroup

departmental enterprise and inter enterprise LANrsquos that appears to the end users or

client application to be a seamless and easily accessed whole

Transparency is accomplished using middleware that facilitated a distributed

computing environment This gives users and applications transparent accessed to

data computation and other resources across collections of multivendor

heterogeneous system The strategic architectures of every major system vendor are

now based on some form of middleware The key to realizing the theoretical benefit

of such an architecture is transparency Users need not spend their time trying to

understand where something is Nor should application developers have to code into

their applications the exact location of resources over the network The goal is for the

applications to send a request to the middleware layer which then satisfied the request

any way it can using remote information

7 Transaction Security and Management

Support for transaction processing (TP) is fundamental to success in the electronic

commerce market Security and management are essential to all layers in the

electronic commerce model Transaction integrity must be given for businesses that

cannot afford any loss or inconsistency in data For electronic commerce middleware

provides the qualities accepted in the standard TP system the so-called ACID

properties (Atomicity consistency isolation and durability)

World-Wide-Web as the Architecture Electronic commerce depends on the unspoken assumption that computers co-

operate efficiency for seamless information sharing Unfortunately this assumption of

interoperability has been supported by the realities of practical computing Computing

is skill a world made up of many technical directions product implementation and

competing vendors This diversity while good for information causes problem as the

E-commerce application try to impose a certain discipline on the proliferating

computers and networks It is ironic that real effect of computing is all too often the

prevention of data sharing due to incompatibility-architectures data formats and

communications protocols

What does the WEB Encompass

The web has become an umbrella for a wide range of concepts and technologies that

differ markedly in purpose and scope These include the global hypertext publishing

concepts the universal reader concept and the client-server concept

The global hypertext publishing concepts promotes the idea of the seamless

information world in which all on-line information can be accessed and retrieved in a

consistent and simple way To access information in the seamless world we will need

the ability to address many types of data- text files images sound files animation

sequences

The universal readership concept promotes the idea that unlike the segmented

application of the past we can use one application- a universal (or common) user

interface-to read a variety of documents This concepts implies that one informationrsquos

is published it is accessible of any type of computer in any country and that any

(authorized) person nearly needs to use one simple program to access it This

accomplished in the web by using a core browser or application that is augmented by

supporting applications The core browser implements only minable functionality and

attempts to off load more specialized work onto the supporting applications

The client-server concept allows the web to grow easily without any centralized control

Anyone can published information and anyone (as long as he or she authorized) can

read and download it The publishing information requires a server program and

reading data requires the client browser All the clients and all the servers are

connected to one another by Internet The various standard protocols allows all clients

to communicate will all servers In practice the web hands or a number of essential

concepts including the following

The addressing scheme known as uniform resource locator (URL) makes the hyper

media world possible despite many different protocols

A network protocol known as hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) used by client

browsers and servers of first performance and features not otherwise available

A mark-up language (HTML) which every web client is required to understand is

used for the representation of hypertext documents containing text list boxes and

graphics information across the net

Chapter-4

Technology Behind the web

Information providers (or publishers) run programs (called servers) from which the

browsers (clients) can obtain information These programs can either be Web servers

that understand the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) ldquoGatewayrdquo programs that

convert an existing information format to hypertext for a non-http server that Web

browser can access-anonymous FTP or Gopher servers

Web servers are composed of two major parts the hypertext transfer protocol for

transmitting documents between servers and clients and the hypertext markup

language (HTML) format for documents The link between HTML files and the HTTP

servers is provided by the uniform resource locator (URLrsquos)

Uniform Resource Locator

The documents that the browsers display are hypertext that contains pointers to other

documents The browsers let you deal with the pointers in a transparent way-select the

pointer and you are presented with the text to which it points This pointer is

implemented using a concept that is central to Web browsers Uniform Resource

Locator (URLrsquos) One way to think about URLrsquos is to use the library and location on a

shelf as a metaphor A URL for a digital library would be a unique call number that

provides an exact location of every book in the world including the country city street

and library shelf locations

In practice URLrsquos are the strings used as addresses of objects (documents images)

on the Web Think of them as analogous to your e-mail address Just as your address

is unique and may be used by any other Internet user to send your mail without knowing

exactly where you are a URL marks the unique locations on the Internet where a file

or services can be found

URLrsquos follow a fairly consistent pattern The first part describes the type of resource

the second part gives the name of the server housing the resource and the third part

gives full file name of the resource URLrsquos are universal in that they provide access to

a wide range of network services which required separate application in the past For

a new network protocol one can easily form an address as the set of parameters

necessary to retrieve the objects If these parameters are encoded into concise string

with a prefix to identify the protocol and encoding one has new URL scheme Take a

look at the URLrsquos formats below

FTP ftpserveraddresscompletefilename

Gopher gopherserveraddressportdirectoryfilename

TELNET telnetserveraddressport

HTTP httpserveraddressporthomepagehtml

News newsmiscstocksinvest

These are URL for Internet news articles and newsgroups (the NNTP protocol) and for

HTTP archives for telnet destinations e-mail addresses and so on The same can be

done for names of objects in a given name space For example the URL of the main

page for the web project happens to be

httpwebw3orghypertextwebtheprojecthtmlThe prefix ldquohttprsquorsquo in the preceding

example indicates the address space and defines the interpretation of the rest of the

string The HTTP protocol is to be used so the string contains the address of the server

to be contacted and a sub string to be passed to the server

As noted earlier different protocols use different syntaxes but they do have a small

amount in common For example the common URL syntax reserves the solidus () as

a way of representing hierarchical space the pound label () as a way of pointing inside

the document and question mark () as a separator between the address of an object

and a query operation applied to it Hierarchical spaces are useful for hypertext where

onerdquo work ldquomay be spilt up into many interlinked documents The allows relative

names to exploit the hierarchical structure and allows links to be made within the wok

independent of the higher parts of the URL such as the server name

URLs are central to the Web architecture The fact that it is easy to address an object

on the Internet is essential for the system to scale and for the information space to be

independent of the network and server topology

data computation and other resources across collections of multivendor

heterogeneous system The strategic architectures of every major system vendor are

now based on some form of middleware The key to realizing the theoretical benefit

of such an architecture is transparency Users need not spend their time trying to

understand where something is Nor should application developers have to code into

their applications the exact location of resources over the network The goal is for the

applications to send a request to the middleware layer which then satisfied the request

any way it can using remote information

7 Transaction Security and Management

Support for transaction processing (TP) is fundamental to success in the electronic

commerce market Security and management are essential to all layers in the

electronic commerce model Transaction integrity must be given for businesses that

cannot afford any loss or inconsistency in data For electronic commerce middleware

provides the qualities accepted in the standard TP system the so-called ACID

properties (Atomicity consistency isolation and durability)

World-Wide-Web as the Architecture Electronic commerce depends on the unspoken assumption that computers co-

operate efficiency for seamless information sharing Unfortunately this assumption of

interoperability has been supported by the realities of practical computing Computing

is skill a world made up of many technical directions product implementation and

competing vendors This diversity while good for information causes problem as the

E-commerce application try to impose a certain discipline on the proliferating

computers and networks It is ironic that real effect of computing is all too often the

prevention of data sharing due to incompatibility-architectures data formats and

communications protocols

What does the WEB Encompass

The web has become an umbrella for a wide range of concepts and technologies that

differ markedly in purpose and scope These include the global hypertext publishing

concepts the universal reader concept and the client-server concept

The global hypertext publishing concepts promotes the idea of the seamless

information world in which all on-line information can be accessed and retrieved in a

consistent and simple way To access information in the seamless world we will need

the ability to address many types of data- text files images sound files animation

sequences

The universal readership concept promotes the idea that unlike the segmented

application of the past we can use one application- a universal (or common) user

interface-to read a variety of documents This concepts implies that one informationrsquos

is published it is accessible of any type of computer in any country and that any

(authorized) person nearly needs to use one simple program to access it This

accomplished in the web by using a core browser or application that is augmented by

supporting applications The core browser implements only minable functionality and

attempts to off load more specialized work onto the supporting applications

The client-server concept allows the web to grow easily without any centralized control

Anyone can published information and anyone (as long as he or she authorized) can

read and download it The publishing information requires a server program and

reading data requires the client browser All the clients and all the servers are

connected to one another by Internet The various standard protocols allows all clients

to communicate will all servers In practice the web hands or a number of essential

concepts including the following

The addressing scheme known as uniform resource locator (URL) makes the hyper

media world possible despite many different protocols

A network protocol known as hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) used by client

browsers and servers of first performance and features not otherwise available

A mark-up language (HTML) which every web client is required to understand is

used for the representation of hypertext documents containing text list boxes and

graphics information across the net

Chapter-4

Technology Behind the web

Information providers (or publishers) run programs (called servers) from which the

browsers (clients) can obtain information These programs can either be Web servers

that understand the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) ldquoGatewayrdquo programs that

convert an existing information format to hypertext for a non-http server that Web

browser can access-anonymous FTP or Gopher servers

Web servers are composed of two major parts the hypertext transfer protocol for

transmitting documents between servers and clients and the hypertext markup

language (HTML) format for documents The link between HTML files and the HTTP

servers is provided by the uniform resource locator (URLrsquos)

Uniform Resource Locator

The documents that the browsers display are hypertext that contains pointers to other

documents The browsers let you deal with the pointers in a transparent way-select the

pointer and you are presented with the text to which it points This pointer is

implemented using a concept that is central to Web browsers Uniform Resource

Locator (URLrsquos) One way to think about URLrsquos is to use the library and location on a

shelf as a metaphor A URL for a digital library would be a unique call number that

provides an exact location of every book in the world including the country city street

and library shelf locations

In practice URLrsquos are the strings used as addresses of objects (documents images)

on the Web Think of them as analogous to your e-mail address Just as your address

is unique and may be used by any other Internet user to send your mail without knowing

exactly where you are a URL marks the unique locations on the Internet where a file

or services can be found

URLrsquos follow a fairly consistent pattern The first part describes the type of resource

the second part gives the name of the server housing the resource and the third part

gives full file name of the resource URLrsquos are universal in that they provide access to

a wide range of network services which required separate application in the past For

a new network protocol one can easily form an address as the set of parameters

necessary to retrieve the objects If these parameters are encoded into concise string

with a prefix to identify the protocol and encoding one has new URL scheme Take a

look at the URLrsquos formats below

FTP ftpserveraddresscompletefilename

Gopher gopherserveraddressportdirectoryfilename

TELNET telnetserveraddressport

HTTP httpserveraddressporthomepagehtml

News newsmiscstocksinvest

These are URL for Internet news articles and newsgroups (the NNTP protocol) and for

HTTP archives for telnet destinations e-mail addresses and so on The same can be

done for names of objects in a given name space For example the URL of the main

page for the web project happens to be

httpwebw3orghypertextwebtheprojecthtmlThe prefix ldquohttprsquorsquo in the preceding

example indicates the address space and defines the interpretation of the rest of the

string The HTTP protocol is to be used so the string contains the address of the server

to be contacted and a sub string to be passed to the server

As noted earlier different protocols use different syntaxes but they do have a small

amount in common For example the common URL syntax reserves the solidus () as

a way of representing hierarchical space the pound label () as a way of pointing inside

the document and question mark () as a separator between the address of an object

and a query operation applied to it Hierarchical spaces are useful for hypertext where

onerdquo work ldquomay be spilt up into many interlinked documents The allows relative

names to exploit the hierarchical structure and allows links to be made within the wok

independent of the higher parts of the URL such as the server name

URLs are central to the Web architecture The fact that it is easy to address an object

on the Internet is essential for the system to scale and for the information space to be

independent of the network and server topology

accomplished in the web by using a core browser or application that is augmented by

supporting applications The core browser implements only minable functionality and

attempts to off load more specialized work onto the supporting applications

The client-server concept allows the web to grow easily without any centralized control

Anyone can published information and anyone (as long as he or she authorized) can

read and download it The publishing information requires a server program and

reading data requires the client browser All the clients and all the servers are

connected to one another by Internet The various standard protocols allows all clients

to communicate will all servers In practice the web hands or a number of essential

concepts including the following

The addressing scheme known as uniform resource locator (URL) makes the hyper

media world possible despite many different protocols

A network protocol known as hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) used by client

browsers and servers of first performance and features not otherwise available

A mark-up language (HTML) which every web client is required to understand is

used for the representation of hypertext documents containing text list boxes and

graphics information across the net

Chapter-4

Technology Behind the web

Information providers (or publishers) run programs (called servers) from which the

browsers (clients) can obtain information These programs can either be Web servers

that understand the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) ldquoGatewayrdquo programs that

convert an existing information format to hypertext for a non-http server that Web

browser can access-anonymous FTP or Gopher servers

Web servers are composed of two major parts the hypertext transfer protocol for

transmitting documents between servers and clients and the hypertext markup

language (HTML) format for documents The link between HTML files and the HTTP

servers is provided by the uniform resource locator (URLrsquos)

Uniform Resource Locator

The documents that the browsers display are hypertext that contains pointers to other

documents The browsers let you deal with the pointers in a transparent way-select the

pointer and you are presented with the text to which it points This pointer is

implemented using a concept that is central to Web browsers Uniform Resource

Locator (URLrsquos) One way to think about URLrsquos is to use the library and location on a

shelf as a metaphor A URL for a digital library would be a unique call number that

provides an exact location of every book in the world including the country city street

and library shelf locations

In practice URLrsquos are the strings used as addresses of objects (documents images)

on the Web Think of them as analogous to your e-mail address Just as your address

is unique and may be used by any other Internet user to send your mail without knowing

exactly where you are a URL marks the unique locations on the Internet where a file

or services can be found

URLrsquos follow a fairly consistent pattern The first part describes the type of resource

the second part gives the name of the server housing the resource and the third part

gives full file name of the resource URLrsquos are universal in that they provide access to

a wide range of network services which required separate application in the past For

a new network protocol one can easily form an address as the set of parameters

necessary to retrieve the objects If these parameters are encoded into concise string

with a prefix to identify the protocol and encoding one has new URL scheme Take a

look at the URLrsquos formats below

FTP ftpserveraddresscompletefilename

Gopher gopherserveraddressportdirectoryfilename

TELNET telnetserveraddressport

HTTP httpserveraddressporthomepagehtml

News newsmiscstocksinvest

These are URL for Internet news articles and newsgroups (the NNTP protocol) and for

HTTP archives for telnet destinations e-mail addresses and so on The same can be

done for names of objects in a given name space For example the URL of the main

page for the web project happens to be

httpwebw3orghypertextwebtheprojecthtmlThe prefix ldquohttprsquorsquo in the preceding

example indicates the address space and defines the interpretation of the rest of the

string The HTTP protocol is to be used so the string contains the address of the server

to be contacted and a sub string to be passed to the server

As noted earlier different protocols use different syntaxes but they do have a small

amount in common For example the common URL syntax reserves the solidus () as

a way of representing hierarchical space the pound label () as a way of pointing inside

the document and question mark () as a separator between the address of an object

and a query operation applied to it Hierarchical spaces are useful for hypertext where

onerdquo work ldquomay be spilt up into many interlinked documents The allows relative

names to exploit the hierarchical structure and allows links to be made within the wok

independent of the higher parts of the URL such as the server name

URLs are central to the Web architecture The fact that it is easy to address an object

on the Internet is essential for the system to scale and for the information space to be

independent of the network and server topology

Chapter-4

Technology Behind the web

Information providers (or publishers) run programs (called servers) from which the

browsers (clients) can obtain information These programs can either be Web servers

that understand the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) ldquoGatewayrdquo programs that

convert an existing information format to hypertext for a non-http server that Web

browser can access-anonymous FTP or Gopher servers

Web servers are composed of two major parts the hypertext transfer protocol for

transmitting documents between servers and clients and the hypertext markup

language (HTML) format for documents The link between HTML files and the HTTP

servers is provided by the uniform resource locator (URLrsquos)

Uniform Resource Locator

The documents that the browsers display are hypertext that contains pointers to other

documents The browsers let you deal with the pointers in a transparent way-select the

pointer and you are presented with the text to which it points This pointer is

implemented using a concept that is central to Web browsers Uniform Resource

Locator (URLrsquos) One way to think about URLrsquos is to use the library and location on a

shelf as a metaphor A URL for a digital library would be a unique call number that

provides an exact location of every book in the world including the country city street

and library shelf locations

In practice URLrsquos are the strings used as addresses of objects (documents images)

on the Web Think of them as analogous to your e-mail address Just as your address

is unique and may be used by any other Internet user to send your mail without knowing

exactly where you are a URL marks the unique locations on the Internet where a file

or services can be found

URLrsquos follow a fairly consistent pattern The first part describes the type of resource

the second part gives the name of the server housing the resource and the third part

gives full file name of the resource URLrsquos are universal in that they provide access to

a wide range of network services which required separate application in the past For

a new network protocol one can easily form an address as the set of parameters

necessary to retrieve the objects If these parameters are encoded into concise string

with a prefix to identify the protocol and encoding one has new URL scheme Take a

look at the URLrsquos formats below

FTP ftpserveraddresscompletefilename

Gopher gopherserveraddressportdirectoryfilename

TELNET telnetserveraddressport

HTTP httpserveraddressporthomepagehtml

News newsmiscstocksinvest

These are URL for Internet news articles and newsgroups (the NNTP protocol) and for

HTTP archives for telnet destinations e-mail addresses and so on The same can be

done for names of objects in a given name space For example the URL of the main

page for the web project happens to be

httpwebw3orghypertextwebtheprojecthtmlThe prefix ldquohttprsquorsquo in the preceding

example indicates the address space and defines the interpretation of the rest of the

string The HTTP protocol is to be used so the string contains the address of the server

to be contacted and a sub string to be passed to the server

As noted earlier different protocols use different syntaxes but they do have a small

amount in common For example the common URL syntax reserves the solidus () as

a way of representing hierarchical space the pound label () as a way of pointing inside

the document and question mark () as a separator between the address of an object

and a query operation applied to it Hierarchical spaces are useful for hypertext where

onerdquo work ldquomay be spilt up into many interlinked documents The allows relative

names to exploit the hierarchical structure and allows links to be made within the wok

independent of the higher parts of the URL such as the server name

URLs are central to the Web architecture The fact that it is easy to address an object

on the Internet is essential for the system to scale and for the information space to be

independent of the network and server topology

FTP ftpserveraddresscompletefilename

Gopher gopherserveraddressportdirectoryfilename

TELNET telnetserveraddressport

HTTP httpserveraddressporthomepagehtml

News newsmiscstocksinvest

These are URL for Internet news articles and newsgroups (the NNTP protocol) and for

HTTP archives for telnet destinations e-mail addresses and so on The same can be

done for names of objects in a given name space For example the URL of the main

page for the web project happens to be

httpwebw3orghypertextwebtheprojecthtmlThe prefix ldquohttprsquorsquo in the preceding

example indicates the address space and defines the interpretation of the rest of the

string The HTTP protocol is to be used so the string contains the address of the server

to be contacted and a sub string to be passed to the server

As noted earlier different protocols use different syntaxes but they do have a small

amount in common For example the common URL syntax reserves the solidus () as

a way of representing hierarchical space the pound label () as a way of pointing inside

the document and question mark () as a separator between the address of an object

and a query operation applied to it Hierarchical spaces are useful for hypertext where

onerdquo work ldquomay be spilt up into many interlinked documents The allows relative

names to exploit the hierarchical structure and allows links to be made within the wok

independent of the higher parts of the URL such as the server name

URLs are central to the Web architecture The fact that it is easy to address an object

on the Internet is essential for the system to scale and for the information space to be

independent of the network and server topology

Chapter-5

Network Security and Firewalls

The ability to conduct business on a public network has strong attraction-and the

potential for big savings Security and confidentiality are essential however before

businesses can conduct financial transactions over the Internet and a lack of

widespread security majors remains at this time At present credit card numbers

financial records and other important information are not encrypted and can be

intercepted by any savvy Internet hacker

The discussion of security concerns in electronic commerce can be divided into two

broad types

1 Client-Server security uses various authorization methods to make sure that only

valid users and programs have access to information resources such as databases

Access control mechanism must be setup to ensure that properly authenticated user

are allowed access only to those resources that they are entitled to use Such

mechanism includes password protection encrypted smart cards biometrics and

firewalls

2 Data and transaction security ensures the privacy and confidentiality in electronic

messages and data packets including the authentication of remote user in network

transaction for activities such as on-line payment the goal is to defeat any attempt to

assume another identity while in called with electronic mail or other forms of data

communication Preventive measures include data encryption using various

cryptographic methods

Data and Message Security

The lack of data and message security on the Internet has become a high profile

problem due to increasing number of merchants trying to spur commerce on the global

network For instance credit card numbers in their plain text form create a risk when

transmitted across the Internet where the possibility of the number falling into the wrong

hands is relatively high Would you be willing to type in your credit card number

knowing the risk Even worse would you expose your customers to that risk Just the

thought of ldquosnifferrdquo programs that collect credit card numbers en masse is enough to

keep merchants away from on-line shopping given the possible lawsuits and other

liabilities issues In short the lack of business transaction security is widely

acknowledge as a major impediment to widespread E-commerce

Encrypted Documents and Electronic Mail

E-mail users who desire confidentiality and sender authentications are using

encryption Encryption simply intended to keep personal thoughts personal Some

users are already using Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) others are starting to use Privacy

Enhanced Mail (PEM)

E-mail is typically encrypted for the reason that all network correspondence is open for

eavesdropping Internet e-mail is obviously is far less secure than the postal systems

where envelopes protect correspondence from casual snooping At the glance at the

header area of any E-mail message by contrast will show that it has passed to a

number of nodes on its way to you Every one of these nodes present the opportunity

for snooping

Chapter-6

Electronic-Commerce Companies

Chapter-7

A Pictorial Representation- E Buying Methodology

Step by step of buying flipkart product

Step-1

Step-2

Step-3

Step-4

Step-5

Step-6

Step-7

Step-8

Step-9

Step-10

Step-11

Step by Step buying products of yepme

Step-1

Step-2

Step-3

Step-4

Step-5

Step-6

Step-7

Step-8

Step-9

Chapter-8

Conclusion

E-commerce is growing tremendously A lot of companies have joined between the period July

and August Online retail is still a tiny spot in Indiarsquos retail market of about $500 billion per

year but it is growing at a quick pace A study by retail consultancy Techno Park predicts

Indiarsquos e-tailing market will reach $32 billion by 2020 from 423 billion in 2014

Ethnic Indian cloth and casual wear are favorite products but unusual products like pets-too

are being offered online With the huge growth that e-commerce has witnessed in recent

times analysts like Devangshu Dutta says there is scope for more players to come in but some

also warn about the risks the space is fraught with as only a few may have chances of making

it big They also see consolidation in the sector going forward

Bibliography

Frontier of Electronic-commerce by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew BWhinston

Big E-commerce deals stir up sector-economic times

wwwflipkartcom

wwwyepmecom

users are already using Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) others are starting to use Privacy

Enhanced Mail (PEM)

E-mail is typically encrypted for the reason that all network correspondence is open for

eavesdropping Internet e-mail is obviously is far less secure than the postal systems

where envelopes protect correspondence from casual snooping At the glance at the

header area of any E-mail message by contrast will show that it has passed to a

number of nodes on its way to you Every one of these nodes present the opportunity

for snooping

Chapter-6

Electronic-Commerce Companies

Chapter-7

A Pictorial Representation- E Buying Methodology

Step by step of buying flipkart product

Step-1

Step-2

Step-3

Step-4

Step-5

Step-6

Step-7

Step-8

Step-9

Step-10

Step-11

Step by Step buying products of yepme

Step-1

Step-2

Step-3

Step-4

Step-5

Step-6

Step-7

Step-8

Step-9

Chapter-8

Conclusion

E-commerce is growing tremendously A lot of companies have joined between the period July

and August Online retail is still a tiny spot in Indiarsquos retail market of about $500 billion per

year but it is growing at a quick pace A study by retail consultancy Techno Park predicts

Indiarsquos e-tailing market will reach $32 billion by 2020 from 423 billion in 2014

Ethnic Indian cloth and casual wear are favorite products but unusual products like pets-too

are being offered online With the huge growth that e-commerce has witnessed in recent

times analysts like Devangshu Dutta says there is scope for more players to come in but some

also warn about the risks the space is fraught with as only a few may have chances of making

it big They also see consolidation in the sector going forward

Bibliography

Frontier of Electronic-commerce by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew BWhinston

Big E-commerce deals stir up sector-economic times

wwwflipkartcom

wwwyepmecom

Chapter-6

Electronic-Commerce Companies

Chapter-7

A Pictorial Representation- E Buying Methodology

Step by step of buying flipkart product

Step-1

Step-2

Step-3

Step-4

Step-5

Step-6

Step-7

Step-8

Step-9

Step-10

Step-11

Step by Step buying products of yepme

Step-1

Step-2

Step-3

Step-4

Step-5

Step-6

Step-7

Step-8

Step-9

Chapter-8

Conclusion

E-commerce is growing tremendously A lot of companies have joined between the period July

and August Online retail is still a tiny spot in Indiarsquos retail market of about $500 billion per

year but it is growing at a quick pace A study by retail consultancy Techno Park predicts

Indiarsquos e-tailing market will reach $32 billion by 2020 from 423 billion in 2014

Ethnic Indian cloth and casual wear are favorite products but unusual products like pets-too

are being offered online With the huge growth that e-commerce has witnessed in recent

times analysts like Devangshu Dutta says there is scope for more players to come in but some

also warn about the risks the space is fraught with as only a few may have chances of making

it big They also see consolidation in the sector going forward

Bibliography

Frontier of Electronic-commerce by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew BWhinston

Big E-commerce deals stir up sector-economic times

wwwflipkartcom

wwwyepmecom

Chapter-7

A Pictorial Representation- E Buying Methodology

Step by step of buying flipkart product

Step-1

Step-2

Step-3

Step-4

Step-5

Step-6

Step-7

Step-8

Step-9

Step-10

Step-11

Step by Step buying products of yepme

Step-1

Step-2

Step-3

Step-4

Step-5

Step-6

Step-7

Step-8

Step-9

Chapter-8

Conclusion

E-commerce is growing tremendously A lot of companies have joined between the period July

and August Online retail is still a tiny spot in Indiarsquos retail market of about $500 billion per

year but it is growing at a quick pace A study by retail consultancy Techno Park predicts

Indiarsquos e-tailing market will reach $32 billion by 2020 from 423 billion in 2014

Ethnic Indian cloth and casual wear are favorite products but unusual products like pets-too

are being offered online With the huge growth that e-commerce has witnessed in recent

times analysts like Devangshu Dutta says there is scope for more players to come in but some

also warn about the risks the space is fraught with as only a few may have chances of making

it big They also see consolidation in the sector going forward

Bibliography

Frontier of Electronic-commerce by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew BWhinston

Big E-commerce deals stir up sector-economic times

wwwflipkartcom

wwwyepmecom

Step-2

Step-3

Step-4

Step-5

Step-6

Step-7

Step-8

Step-9

Step-10

Step-11

Step by Step buying products of yepme

Step-1

Step-2

Step-3

Step-4

Step-5

Step-6

Step-7

Step-8

Step-9

Chapter-8

Conclusion

E-commerce is growing tremendously A lot of companies have joined between the period July

and August Online retail is still a tiny spot in Indiarsquos retail market of about $500 billion per

year but it is growing at a quick pace A study by retail consultancy Techno Park predicts

Indiarsquos e-tailing market will reach $32 billion by 2020 from 423 billion in 2014

Ethnic Indian cloth and casual wear are favorite products but unusual products like pets-too

are being offered online With the huge growth that e-commerce has witnessed in recent

times analysts like Devangshu Dutta says there is scope for more players to come in but some

also warn about the risks the space is fraught with as only a few may have chances of making

it big They also see consolidation in the sector going forward

Bibliography

Frontier of Electronic-commerce by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew BWhinston

Big E-commerce deals stir up sector-economic times

wwwflipkartcom

wwwyepmecom

Step-4

Step-5

Step-6

Step-7

Step-8

Step-9

Step-10

Step-11

Step by Step buying products of yepme

Step-1

Step-2

Step-3

Step-4

Step-5

Step-6

Step-7

Step-8

Step-9

Chapter-8

Conclusion

E-commerce is growing tremendously A lot of companies have joined between the period July

and August Online retail is still a tiny spot in Indiarsquos retail market of about $500 billion per

year but it is growing at a quick pace A study by retail consultancy Techno Park predicts

Indiarsquos e-tailing market will reach $32 billion by 2020 from 423 billion in 2014

Ethnic Indian cloth and casual wear are favorite products but unusual products like pets-too

are being offered online With the huge growth that e-commerce has witnessed in recent

times analysts like Devangshu Dutta says there is scope for more players to come in but some

also warn about the risks the space is fraught with as only a few may have chances of making

it big They also see consolidation in the sector going forward

Bibliography

Frontier of Electronic-commerce by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew BWhinston

Big E-commerce deals stir up sector-economic times

wwwflipkartcom

wwwyepmecom

Step-6

Step-7

Step-8

Step-9

Step-10

Step-11

Step by Step buying products of yepme

Step-1

Step-2

Step-3

Step-4

Step-5

Step-6

Step-7

Step-8

Step-9

Chapter-8

Conclusion

E-commerce is growing tremendously A lot of companies have joined between the period July

and August Online retail is still a tiny spot in Indiarsquos retail market of about $500 billion per

year but it is growing at a quick pace A study by retail consultancy Techno Park predicts

Indiarsquos e-tailing market will reach $32 billion by 2020 from 423 billion in 2014

Ethnic Indian cloth and casual wear are favorite products but unusual products like pets-too

are being offered online With the huge growth that e-commerce has witnessed in recent

times analysts like Devangshu Dutta says there is scope for more players to come in but some

also warn about the risks the space is fraught with as only a few may have chances of making

it big They also see consolidation in the sector going forward

Bibliography

Frontier of Electronic-commerce by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew BWhinston

Big E-commerce deals stir up sector-economic times

wwwflipkartcom

wwwyepmecom

Step-8

Step-9

Step-10

Step-11

Step by Step buying products of yepme

Step-1

Step-2

Step-3

Step-4

Step-5

Step-6

Step-7

Step-8

Step-9

Chapter-8

Conclusion

E-commerce is growing tremendously A lot of companies have joined between the period July

and August Online retail is still a tiny spot in Indiarsquos retail market of about $500 billion per

year but it is growing at a quick pace A study by retail consultancy Techno Park predicts

Indiarsquos e-tailing market will reach $32 billion by 2020 from 423 billion in 2014

Ethnic Indian cloth and casual wear are favorite products but unusual products like pets-too

are being offered online With the huge growth that e-commerce has witnessed in recent

times analysts like Devangshu Dutta says there is scope for more players to come in but some

also warn about the risks the space is fraught with as only a few may have chances of making

it big They also see consolidation in the sector going forward

Bibliography

Frontier of Electronic-commerce by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew BWhinston

Big E-commerce deals stir up sector-economic times

wwwflipkartcom

wwwyepmecom

Step-10

Step-11

Step by Step buying products of yepme

Step-1

Step-2

Step-3

Step-4

Step-5

Step-6

Step-7

Step-8

Step-9

Chapter-8

Conclusion

E-commerce is growing tremendously A lot of companies have joined between the period July

and August Online retail is still a tiny spot in Indiarsquos retail market of about $500 billion per

year but it is growing at a quick pace A study by retail consultancy Techno Park predicts

Indiarsquos e-tailing market will reach $32 billion by 2020 from 423 billion in 2014

Ethnic Indian cloth and casual wear are favorite products but unusual products like pets-too

are being offered online With the huge growth that e-commerce has witnessed in recent

times analysts like Devangshu Dutta says there is scope for more players to come in but some

also warn about the risks the space is fraught with as only a few may have chances of making

it big They also see consolidation in the sector going forward

Bibliography

Frontier of Electronic-commerce by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew BWhinston

Big E-commerce deals stir up sector-economic times

wwwflipkartcom

wwwyepmecom

Step by Step buying products of yepme

Step-1

Step-2

Step-3

Step-4

Step-5

Step-6

Step-7

Step-8

Step-9

Chapter-8

Conclusion

E-commerce is growing tremendously A lot of companies have joined between the period July

and August Online retail is still a tiny spot in Indiarsquos retail market of about $500 billion per

year but it is growing at a quick pace A study by retail consultancy Techno Park predicts

Indiarsquos e-tailing market will reach $32 billion by 2020 from 423 billion in 2014

Ethnic Indian cloth and casual wear are favorite products but unusual products like pets-too

are being offered online With the huge growth that e-commerce has witnessed in recent

times analysts like Devangshu Dutta says there is scope for more players to come in but some

also warn about the risks the space is fraught with as only a few may have chances of making

it big They also see consolidation in the sector going forward

Bibliography

Frontier of Electronic-commerce by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew BWhinston

Big E-commerce deals stir up sector-economic times

wwwflipkartcom

wwwyepmecom

Step-3

Step-4

Step-5

Step-6

Step-7

Step-8

Step-9

Chapter-8

Conclusion

E-commerce is growing tremendously A lot of companies have joined between the period July

and August Online retail is still a tiny spot in Indiarsquos retail market of about $500 billion per

year but it is growing at a quick pace A study by retail consultancy Techno Park predicts

Indiarsquos e-tailing market will reach $32 billion by 2020 from 423 billion in 2014

Ethnic Indian cloth and casual wear are favorite products but unusual products like pets-too

are being offered online With the huge growth that e-commerce has witnessed in recent

times analysts like Devangshu Dutta says there is scope for more players to come in but some

also warn about the risks the space is fraught with as only a few may have chances of making

it big They also see consolidation in the sector going forward

Bibliography

Frontier of Electronic-commerce by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew BWhinston

Big E-commerce deals stir up sector-economic times

wwwflipkartcom

wwwyepmecom

Step-5

Step-6

Step-7

Step-8

Step-9

Chapter-8

Conclusion

E-commerce is growing tremendously A lot of companies have joined between the period July

and August Online retail is still a tiny spot in Indiarsquos retail market of about $500 billion per

year but it is growing at a quick pace A study by retail consultancy Techno Park predicts

Indiarsquos e-tailing market will reach $32 billion by 2020 from 423 billion in 2014

Ethnic Indian cloth and casual wear are favorite products but unusual products like pets-too

are being offered online With the huge growth that e-commerce has witnessed in recent

times analysts like Devangshu Dutta says there is scope for more players to come in but some

also warn about the risks the space is fraught with as only a few may have chances of making

it big They also see consolidation in the sector going forward

Bibliography

Frontier of Electronic-commerce by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew BWhinston

Big E-commerce deals stir up sector-economic times

wwwflipkartcom

wwwyepmecom

Step-7

Step-8

Step-9

Chapter-8

Conclusion

E-commerce is growing tremendously A lot of companies have joined between the period July

and August Online retail is still a tiny spot in Indiarsquos retail market of about $500 billion per

year but it is growing at a quick pace A study by retail consultancy Techno Park predicts

Indiarsquos e-tailing market will reach $32 billion by 2020 from 423 billion in 2014

Ethnic Indian cloth and casual wear are favorite products but unusual products like pets-too

are being offered online With the huge growth that e-commerce has witnessed in recent

times analysts like Devangshu Dutta says there is scope for more players to come in but some

also warn about the risks the space is fraught with as only a few may have chances of making

it big They also see consolidation in the sector going forward

Bibliography

Frontier of Electronic-commerce by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew BWhinston

Big E-commerce deals stir up sector-economic times

wwwflipkartcom

wwwyepmecom

Step-9

Chapter-8

Conclusion

E-commerce is growing tremendously A lot of companies have joined between the period July

and August Online retail is still a tiny spot in Indiarsquos retail market of about $500 billion per

year but it is growing at a quick pace A study by retail consultancy Techno Park predicts

Indiarsquos e-tailing market will reach $32 billion by 2020 from 423 billion in 2014

Ethnic Indian cloth and casual wear are favorite products but unusual products like pets-too

are being offered online With the huge growth that e-commerce has witnessed in recent

times analysts like Devangshu Dutta says there is scope for more players to come in but some

also warn about the risks the space is fraught with as only a few may have chances of making

it big They also see consolidation in the sector going forward

Bibliography

Frontier of Electronic-commerce by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew BWhinston

Big E-commerce deals stir up sector-economic times

wwwflipkartcom

wwwyepmecom

Chapter-8

Conclusion

E-commerce is growing tremendously A lot of companies have joined between the period July

and August Online retail is still a tiny spot in Indiarsquos retail market of about $500 billion per

year but it is growing at a quick pace A study by retail consultancy Techno Park predicts

Indiarsquos e-tailing market will reach $32 billion by 2020 from 423 billion in 2014

Ethnic Indian cloth and casual wear are favorite products but unusual products like pets-too

are being offered online With the huge growth that e-commerce has witnessed in recent

times analysts like Devangshu Dutta says there is scope for more players to come in but some

also warn about the risks the space is fraught with as only a few may have chances of making

it big They also see consolidation in the sector going forward

Bibliography

Frontier of Electronic-commerce by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew BWhinston

Big E-commerce deals stir up sector-economic times

wwwflipkartcom

wwwyepmecom

Bibliography

Frontier of Electronic-commerce by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew BWhinston

Big E-commerce deals stir up sector-economic times

wwwflipkartcom

wwwyepmecom