E-COMMERCE

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E-COMMERCE IT430

Lesson 01

E-COMMERCE

Course outline

E-Commerce and its types, Internet and WWW Basics, Internet standards and protocols, IP addressing,

Data communication on internet, Domain name system

Networking devices Bridges, Switches, Routers etc., Role of ISP's on Internet, Getting Domain name

and IP addresses, Understanding electronic mail

Markup languages and the Web, Web designing using HTML, CSS and Java Scripting

Client side & server side processing, Cookies, Maintaining state in a stateless environment, two tier/n-

tier architecture

Security issues on the internet, Firewalls, Proxy Server, Virtual Private Network

Cryptography and Public key infrastructure (PKI), Certification Authorities and Digital Certificates,

Digital signatures Technology

Electronic Payment Systems Virtual Pin payment system, Centralized account system, Electronic

Check, E-Cash, SSL and SET based payment systems

E-business advantages/disadvantages, Paper and electronic catalogues

Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)

E-business models

Internet marketing

Data mining and knowledge discovery Process, OLAP, Types and business application of data mining

E-business strategy, supply chain/value chain analysis and Porter's model, role of e-commerce in

competitive strategy

E-banking, ERP

Legal/policy issues in e-commerce salient features of Electronic Transactions Ordinance, 2002 in

Pakistan

Territorial jurisdiction and conflict of laws, online contracts, online defamation, in

Cyberspace

Issue of ISP's liability, domain-name and trade mark conflicts, privacy issue on the internet, Cyber

crimes

Suggested books

Electronic Commerce (4th edition) by Gary P. Schneider

Electronic Commerce : Security, Risk Management and Control by Greenstein & Feinman

Electronic commerce A Managerial Perspective by Turban et al.

Absolute Beginner's Guide to Networking (3rd edition) by Joe Habraken

Creating a Web Page (5th edition) by Paul Mcfedries

Web Security, Privacy & Commerce by Garfinkel & Spafford

Data Mining Concepts & Techniques by Han Kamber

E-commerce Strategy, Technologies and Applications by David Whiteley

Internet Law in Canada (6th edition) by Michael Geist

E-COMMERCE IT430

E-Commerce definition

Electronic commerce is an emerging concept that describes the process of buying and selling or exchanging

of products, services and information via computer networks including the internet

E-commerce classification

A common classification of EC is by the nature of transaction:

Business-to-Business (B2B): electronic market transactions that take place between organizations

Business-to-Consumer (B2C): retailing transactions with individual shoppers typical shopper at

Amazon.com is a consumer

Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C): consumer sells directly to consumers, examples -individuals selling

in classified ads, auction sites allowing individuals to put up items for auction e.g, e-bay

Consumer-to-Business (C2B): individuals who sell products or services to organizations and those

who seek sellers and conclude a transaction

Intra Business (organizational) EC: all internal organizational activities involving exchange of

goods, services or information, selling corporate products to employees, online training and cost

reduction activities

Non-Business EC: academic institutions, not-for-profit organizations, religious/social organizations

and government agencies using EC to improve their operations, customer service and reduce expense

Basic Definitions

Web client- machine that initiates internet request

Web server machine that services internet request

Browser - software at the client side to interact with web data

Intranet an internal network of computers confined to a single place

Extranet when two or more intranets are connected with each other, they form an Extranet e.g, Virtual

Private Network

Internet a global network of networks is defined as internet

Internet presents a two-way client server communication model as shown in Fig. 1 below:

Client-Server Model

Fig. 1

What is the WEB?

The Web is a protocol that uses the internet as the communication structure. It links documents stored in

computers that communicate on the internet. It is based on Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) - native

protocol of WWW designed for making web page requests.

HTTP is a four step process per transaction

1. Client

Makes an HTTP request for a web page

E-COMMERCE IT430

Makes a TCP/IP connection

2. Sever accepts request

Sends page as HTTP

1 Client downloads the page

2 Server breaks the connection

HTTP is stateless because in the fourth step the server breaks the connection. We can say, therefore:

Each operation or transaction makes a new connection

Each operation is unaware of any other connection

Each click is a new connection

Side Effect of HTTP Transfers

A record is left of all web transaction in a file that resides at the server called common log file. Good news

is that some user data (record of his visits to the web sites) is recorded in a particular format in the log files.

Bad news is that user privacy is not maintained.

What can you do with this data?

Rearrange your site by knowing which portions of your web site are popularly accessed and which are

ignored by the users

Change your marketing strategy e.g., you can introduce some promotional scheme for boosting the

sale of ignored items

Make a mailing list you can trace the location from where customers are visiting and prepare a mailing

list for marketing purposes

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