• Consumer Access Devices:

•
• How the majority of users will access e-
commerce applicationsis heavily linked to the
access device they opt to use.
•
• Number of devices can provide access to
information: Videophones, PCs capable of
handling multimedia, personal digitalassistants,
televisions capable of two-way transmission,
cellularphones, mobile and portable computers
• Architectural Framework for ElectronicCommerce
•
• Electronic commerce application architecture consists of six layers of functionality or services.
•
• Applications
•
• Brokerage services, data or transaction management
•
• Interface and support layers
•
• Secure messaging, security and electronic documentinterchange
•
• Middleware and structured document interchange
•
• Network infrastructure and basic communication services
• ±
• These layers cooperate to provide a seamless transition betweentoday¶s computing resources
and those of tomorrow bytransparently integrating information access and exchange withinthe
context of the chosen application
• Application Services : Customer ±to-business
• Business-to-business
• Intra-organizational

• Brokerage and data management : Order Processing-mail-order houses

• Payment schemes-electronic cash
• Clearing house or virtual mail
• Interface layer : Interactive Catalogs
• Directory Support functions
• Software agents
• Secure Messaging : Secure hypertext transfer protocol
• Encrypted e-mail, EDI
• Remote Programming (RPC)
• Middleware Services : Structured documents
• (SGML,HTML)
• Compound
• documents(OLE,OpenDoc)
• Network Infrastructure : Wireless ±cellular, radio
• Wireline ±coaxial, fiber optic
• Electronic Commerce Application Services
• ±
• Three distinct classes of electronic commerceapplications
•
• Customer to business
•
• Business to Business
•
• Intra organization
•
• Consumer-to-Business Transaction
• ±
• This is called market place transaction. In a marketplace transaction, customers
learn about productsdifferently through electronic publishing, buy
themdifferently using electronic cash and secure paymentsystems and have them
delivered differently
• Business-to-Business Transactions
• ±
• This is called market link transaction.
Businesses,government and other organizations
depend oncomputer-to-computer communication as
a fast, aneconomical, and a dependable way to
conduct businesstransactions. Business-to-Business
transactions includethe use of EDI and electronic mail
for purchasing goodsand services, buying information
and consultingservices, submitting requests for
proposals andreceiving proposals
• Intraorganizational Transactions:
• ±
• This is called market driven transactions.
• ±
• A company becomes market driven by dispersing throughout thefirm information
about its customers and competitors; byspreading strategic and tactical decision
making so that all unitscan participate; and by continuously monitoring their
customercommitment by making improved customer satisfaction an
ongoingobjective.
• ±
• Three major components of market driven transactions are
•
• customer orientation through product and servicecustomization;
•
• cross-functional coordination through enterprise integration
•
• advertising, marketing and customer service
Architectural Framework for
Electronic Commerce
• Information Brokerage and Management:
• ±
• Information brokerage and management layer providesservice
integration through the notion of informationbrokerages, the
development of which is necessitated bythe increasing
information resource fragmentation.
• ±
• Information brokers are becoming necessary in dealingwith the
voluminous amounts of information on thenetworks. With the
complexity associated with largenumber of on-line databases and
service bureaus, it isimpossible to expect humans to do
searching.Information broken or software agents that act on
thesearchers behalf.
•
• Information Brokerage and Management:
• ±
• Ex: In foreign exchange trading, information isretrieved
about the latest currency exchangerates in order to
hedge currency holdings tominimize risk and maximizing
profit.
• ±
• Brokerage function supports data managementand
traditional transaction services. This isaccomplished by
tools such as software agents,distributed query generator,
the distributedtransaction generator, and the
declarativeresource constraint base ±which describes
abusiness¶s rule and environment information.
• Interface and Support Services
• ±
• This layer provides interfaces for electronic commerceapplications such
as interactive catalogs and willsupport directory services ±functions
necessary forinformation search and access.
• ±
• Interactive catalogs are the customized interface toconsumer
applications such as home shopping.
• ±
• Directories operate behind the scenes and attempt toorganize the
enormous amount of information andtransactions generated facilitate
electronic commerce.
• ±
• The primary difference between the two is that unlikeinteractive
catalogs, which deal with people, directorysupport services interact
directly with software
• Secure Messaging and structured
DocumentInterchange Services
• ±
• Messaging is the software that sits between
thenetwork infrastructure and the clients orelectronic
commerce applications, masking thepeculiarities of
the environment.
• ±
• Messaging services offer solutions forcommunicating
non-formatted data ±letters,memos, reports ±as well
as formatted data suchas purchase orders, shipping
notices, andinvoices.
• Secure Messaging and structured Document InterchangeServices
• ±
• Unstructured messaging consists of Fax, e-mail, andform based
systems like Lotus Notes. Structureddocuments messaging
consists of the automatedinterchanging standardized and
approved messagesbetween computer applications. Ex: EDI
• ±
• Messaging supports both synchronous andasynchronous message
delivery and processing. It is notassociated with any particular
communication protocol.With messaging tools, people can
communicate andwork together more effectively
• Secure Messaging and structured
DocumentInterchange Services
• ±
• Due to lack of standards, there is often
nointeroperability between different
messagingvendors leading to islands of messaging.
• ±
• Security, privacy and confidentiality throughdata
encryption and authentication
techniquesare important issues that need to be
resolvedfor ensuring the legality of the message
basedtransactions
• Middleware Services
• ±
• With the growth of networks, Client±Server
technology,and all other forms of communicating
between / amongunlike platforms, the problems of
getting all the piecesto work together became a necessity.
• ±
• Middleware helps to mediate between diverse
softwareprograms that enables them talk to one another.
Toachieve data-centric computing, middleware
servicesfocus on three elements; transparency,
transactionsecurity and management and distributed
objectmanagement and services.
• Middleware Services
• ±
• With the growth of networks, Client±Server
technology,and all other forms of communicating
between / amongunlike platforms, the problems of
getting all the piecesto work together became a necessity.
• ±
• Middleware helps to mediate between diverse
softwareprograms that enables them talk to one another.
Toachieve data-centric computing, middleware
servicesfocus on three elements; transparency,
transactionsecurity and management and distributed
objectmanagement and services
• Middleware Services
•
• Transparency:
• ±
• Transparency implies that users should beunaware that
facilitates a distributed computingenvironment.
• ±
• Transparency is accomplished using middlewarethat
facilitates a distributed computingenvironment. This gives
users and applicationstransparent access to data,
computation, andother resources across collections of
multivendor, heterogeneous systems
• Middleware Services
•
• Transaction Security and Management
• ±
• Security and management are essential to alllayers in the
electronic commerce model.
• ±
• At the transaction security level, two broadgeneral categories of
security services exist;authentication and authorization. For
electroniccommerce, middleware provides the qualitiesexpected
in a standard TP system: ACIDproperties.
•
• Middleware Services
•
• Distributed Object Management and Services
• ±
• Object orientation is proving fundamental
to theproliferation of network based application.
• ±
• Instance of an object in electronic commerce is
adocument. The term object is being usedinterchangeably
with document resulting in anew form of computing
called document orientedcomputing. The trend is moving
from single datatype documents to integrated documents
knownas compound architectures