The Wonderful World of ECommerce

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The Wonderful World of E-Commerce

• Harmless business practice or signs of impending
  doom?

2
Questions to think about

• What are some advantages of
• e-commerce?
• What is the driving force of e-commerce?
• What does XML stand for?

3
Definition

• The use of electronic computer-based technology
  to bring new products, services, or ideas to
  market and/or to support or enhance existing
  business operations.

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What does that do?

• Enables organizations to market products and
  services to a global market using the internet.

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Examples

• Hotel Reservations
• Buy/Sell Stocks
• Internet Banking
• Tickets, Tickets and More Tickets

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Benefits Include (these are good)

• Convenient comparison shopping
• Reduces Costs
• Ability to conduct business 24/7
• Improved Customer Knowledge
• (It slices, It dices, It does your taxes)

7
Disadvantages (these are bad)

• Security Issues
• Privacy Issues
• Complex Legal Issues
• (These arent your mothers issues!)

8
Driving Forces of E-Commerce

• Databases
• Databases
• and more Databases

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Differences in the Databases

• Some fields need to be defined so they can be
  displayed on Web pages
• Product names and descriptions
• Fields containing credit card numbers and
  passwords need to be encrypted.
• Oracle 9i and DB2 support encryption

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Differences continued

• Support tables may be needed to help process
  sales transactions
• Examples include tables for
• Shopping Carts
• Payment Type
• Shipment Table
• Taxrate
• State

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Example of how things are different

• Shopping cart table
• When a customer clicks on an item to buy it a
  shopping cart is automatically created.
• The customers browser and the stores Web server
  create a secure connection with a unique cart ID
  that only lasts until the session is over (the
  customer finishes the order, cancels, or closes
  the browser)

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Example continued

• The shopping cart stores the product
  identification information and the quantity of
  each item the customer wants to buy.
• When the customer is ready the contents of the
  shopping cart are displayed so the customer can
  review.
• If the customer accepts then credit card
  information is exchanged, the items are placed on
  order, and the shopping cart data is deleted.

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XML Extensible Markup Language

• Designed to make possible the exchange of
  structured documents such as orders or invoices
  over the Internet.
• Used to represent and manipulate data elements.
• Created in 1998
• Becoming rapidly popular form of data exchange
  for e-commerce applications.

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XML vs. HTML

• XML and HTML documents are both text files
• XML allows the definition of new tags to describe
  data elements, like
• XML is case sensitive
• Example is not the same as
  

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XML vs. HTML continued

• XML tags must be well formed each tag has
  corresponding closing tag.
• Example 8675309
• XML tags must be properly nested.
• Example 8675309
• XML deals with the description and representation
  of the data, HTML is concerned with how it is
  displayed.

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XML Applications

• Business to Business exchanges
• Legacy systems integration
• Web page development
• Database support
• Database meta-dictionaries

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Questions

• 1. What are some advantages of
• e-commerce?
• Reduces Costs
• Is both a shampoo and conditioner in one
• Improved Customer knowledge
• Both a and c

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Questions

• 2. What is the driving force of e-commerce?
• Gasoline
• Diesel
• Ethanol
• Databases

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Questions

• 3. What does XML stand for?
• x-ray machine locator
• Extensible markup language
• Its a t-shirt size
• Extensible machine language