Engineering an E-Commerce Online System

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Engineering an E-Commerce Online System

•   
• George Kichukov 
•  
•  
• Research Topics in Computer Science
• Dowling College, Oakdale, NY
• Spring 2002
• Dr. Herbert J. Bernstein

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Contents
Introduction Terms Why
E-Commerce? Project Description
Technology Requirements The E-Commerce
System Features Functionality Basic Design
Structure Additional Issues
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Terms

• E-commerce and E-business
• In the past used to describe any business
  activity on the Internet.
• E-commerce - online retailing, for example
  the use of the Web to sell books.
• E-business - describes all business
  activities using the Internet, not just online
  retailing.

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B2C B2B

• Business to (2) Business - describes the use of
  the Internet for business transactions between
  companies, for example the holding of online
  auctions of bulk commodities such as crude oil.
• Business to (2) Consumer - used to describe those
  business ventures, which use Internet technology
  to sell goods and services to Internet users. The
  online selling of books is an example of B2C.

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Why E-Commerce?

• First an online store system is familiar to
  anybody but the concepts apply equally well to
  many other applications
• Second, there is little published on how to
  combine the various technologies that are
  available to design and implement an e-commerce
  systems.
• Third, even though a lot of work has been done on
• e-commerce there is a lot to be improved and
  expanded.

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Project Description

• Many people claim that building an online store
  is easy! But in reality, successful e-commerce is
  far more complex. Before that first cyberbuck
  finds its way into your bank account, you need to
  do considerable research and planning.
• The e-commerce project provides a robust,
  modular, extensible, packaged B2C e-commerce
  platform for a small to medium sized Internet
  store with a rich set of features.
• In addition the system has to be as portable and
  as flexible as possible and should require the
  least amount of resources.

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Technology

• Even though what technology is being used is not
  important for the customers and users it is
  definitely one of the first things that
  developers ask themselves.
• There are a number of web technologies available
  and I would like to say a few words about the
  most popular of them (in alphabetical order)

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ASP or Active Server Pages

• ASP is a versatile and rapid development
  environment available for web use
• Supports VB Script, a language specifically
  designed for creating interactive web
  applications.
• Programming is simpler and development times
  reduced,
• With the corporate muscle of Microsoft behind it,
  the technology is being widely pushed forward.
• The big disadvantage is that it is a Microsoft
  technology designed for Windows Servers.
• There is software available to allow ASP to run
  on Unix servers but it is not very popular.

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CGI or The Common Gateway Interface

• Simplicity. It is easy to understand.
• Language independence. CGI applications can be
  written in nearly any language.
• Process isolation. Since applications run in
  separate processes, buggy applications cannot
  crash the Web server or access the server's
  private internal state.
• Open standard. Some form of CGI has been
  implemented on every Web server.
• CGI also has some drawbacks. The leading problem
  is performance Since a new process is created
  for each request and thrown away when the request
  is done, efficiency is poor.

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Java Servlets and JSP or Java Server Pages

• Servlets provide a component-based,
  platform-independent method for building
  web-based applications.
• JSP is in fact a set of tags that are embedded
  into traditional HTML code and are automatically
  converted into servlets.
• You get all the usual benefits of the Java
  language portability, multithreading, and
  extensive API, object oriented design
• Servlets are much less resource-intensive than
  CGI programs
• Java still has a lot to improve and
  performance-wise is still comparatively slower.

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Perl

• Perl was never intended as an Internet
  programming language and is time-consuming to
  program.
• When you look at Perl programs you often see
  huge, monolithic, difficult-to-understand
  programs.
• On the other side Perl is powerful and it
  possible to write monolithic code that can work
  on both Unix and Windows servers.
• Conclusion
• It turns out that the best technology to be used
  depends on the
• requirements and the best advice seems to be
  choose the one that
• your developers are most comfortable with.

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N-Tier Applications

• The tiers basically refer to the different
  resources that a programmer may utilize. For
  example this application is in fact 4 tiers
• Client side the browser, serving already built
  HTML pages
• Web Server sending data to the browser
• Database Server storing the data
• Application Server executing the code
  manipulating the data

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Requirements

• Platform
• Red Hat Linux 7.2 but since it is in Java,
  Sun claims that it should be easily portable to
  other platforms and I will take their word for
  it.
•  
• Web Server
• For any kind of web development you need a
  web server. The most popular is Apache, which
  happens to be open source and that is what I am
  using.  

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Requirements

• Database Server
• Web applications need additional specialized
  servers such as a database server and application
  server.
• Since the database interaction is handled through
  JDBC, it should be easy to store the data on any
  database
• I am using MySQL, which is another open source
  database server and even though it is missing
  some features such as properly enforced
  referential integrity, it is showing very good
  performance and is in fact forcing the developer
  to be more careful and to write better code.

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Features Functionality

• The system consists of 11 different interrelated
  parts.
• 1. Web-based Set up Wizard
• - Guides you trough the installation of your
  web store
• -  Define domain name
• -  Choose store template
• - Enter administrative username and password
• - The Set Up Wizard is only run the first time
  when the store is set up.

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Features Functionality

• 2.     Template Builder
• -   Provide 1-3 Store Template Designs
• -  Specify colors and fonts
• -         - Upload images and input image
  names
• -         - Enter titles and texts
• -         - Enter link titles
• -         - Choose different options as
  you go along

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Features Functionality

• 3.  Inventory Management
• -  Stores information about the products or
  services that you are selling
• - Uses a database to store data such as
• - Product names
• - Product Descriptions
• - Prices retail and sale
• - Quantity in stock
• - Add/delete/modify products
• - Track quantities in stock and get notified at
  danger levels
• - Define search terms for each product
• - Bundle products together in categories
• - Provides unlimited number of categories and
  subcategories
• - Administrative data with different levels
  of permissions can be set up
•  

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Features Functionality

• 4. Promotions / Coupons / Sales
•       -   Allow for creation and redemption of
  coupon codes. and discounts
• -  Free shipping, bonus product
• -  Promotion of items throughout the store
  by effectively designating featured products
• -  Cross-selling related products
• - Allows for discount text and expiration
  date

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Features Functionality

• 5.      Shopping Cart
• -  Flexible shopping cart with items stored
  in the database
• -  Recommends additional related
  products
• - Option to save a regular order for 90
  days

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Features Functionality

• 6. Customer Registration
• -  Registration form for buyers (customers)
• -  Simple sign in for returning customers
• -  Track order history and customer profile
• -  If the password is forgotten it would be
  emailed to the account email
• -  Customer data can change, so they can
  update their information
• - Copy from shipping address checkbox

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Features Functionality

• 7.      Order Management
• Front end that customers use to place orders
• Back end that is used to fulfill the orders
• Pulls data from the inventory and presents it to
  the customers
• Provides not only a list of products but also
  images and descriptions
• Maintaining order history and tracking orders is
  also related here
• Keeps track of all orders made and payments
  received

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Features Functionality

• 8. Customer Service / Help Desk Section
• - Creating a wide variety of customer-service
  features
• - Custom feedback form
• - About us section
• - Template for generating privacy policy,
  returns, shipping and security
• - Frequently asked questions section

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Features Functionality

• 9. Search
• Allows customers to search for specific products
  by typing
• Goes through the Search Keywords in the database
  of products and displays a list of links of
  matches

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Features Functionality

• 10. Shipping
• -  Look at pending orders
• -  Provide order and shipping information
• -  Update order status
• - Customers can also view the status of
  their order

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Features Functionality

• 11. Reports
• -  Study customer patterns
• -  Provide information about total sales in a
  given period
• -  Split sales information on a monthly or
  weekly basis
• -   Comparisons of revenues generated by
  different products
• -   Does not analyze the log files of the web
  server

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Customer Front End Structure

• 1. /home
• Home page, list of top level categories
  and the list of featured products are dynamically
  generated.
• 2. /category
• a list of products or a new list of
  subcategories
• 3. /products
• page specific for this product with
  description, image, option to view larger image,
  price etc.
• 4. /checkout
• customer registration
• 5. /help
• help and customer service
• 6. /cart
• Add To Cart or View Cart

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Management Back End Structure

• 1. Log in is required and the username and
  password are saved in session variable and are
  checked before any attempted task. Present a list
  of possible administrative tasks.
• 2.  Inventory Tasks and Files
• 3.  New orders, order status, order fulfillment
• 4.  Set Up and Modify the Store Templates
• 5.  Set Up Wizard
• 6.  Reports
• 7.  Customer Service and FAQ section
  administration
• 8. Customer Management and subscription
  services

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Structure and Data

• Large amount of data that inherently lacks
  structure.
• For example, HTML has proved to be an
  enduring markup language for developing Web
  pages however, there are no facilities within
  the language, for example, to indicate whether an
  item of data, say a three-digit number,
  represents the price of a commodity or some
  hourly rate charged by a company employee.

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Problems with Browsers

• Each of these browsers can display the browser
  pages they process in different ways, especially
  if they contain advanced facilities of HTML.
• Different markup languages, focused on particular
  devices, for example there is a markup language
  known as WML (Wireless Markup Language)
• The diversity of such languages means that the
  overhead in maintaining a number of versions of a
  document for different media can be very large.

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XML Possible Solution

• Can be used to indicate structure in a document
• Maintain a single version of a document expressed
  in a language defined by XML and easily convert
  it into a form that can be displayed on a variety
  of media
• Television sets, Internet phones and a variety of
  World Wide Web browsers
• In fact an attempt to separate the structure of
  the data from the way it is presented.

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Security

• Important part of any application
• This system relies on simple username and
  password authentication
• Uses SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) for transferring
  the credit card and other secure information
• Additional security is required by credit card
  companies if you intend to store credit card
  numbers.

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Visa has developed a series of data security
requirements called the "Digital Dozen."

• Install and maintain a working network firewall
• Keep security patches up to date.
• Encrypt stored data.
• Encrypt data sent across networks .
• Use and regularly update anti-virus software.
• Restrict access to data by business "need to
  know."
• Assign a unique ID to each person with computer
  access to data.
• Do not use vendor-supplied defaults for system
  passwords
• Track access to data by unique ID.
• Test security systems and processes daily.
• Maintain a policy that addresses information
  security
• Restrict physical access to cardholder
  information.

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Taxes

• At present, Internet sellers are only required to
  collect sales tax if they have a physical
  presence in the purchaser's state.
• Most of the online stores do not charge any tax.

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Shipping

• UPS and FedEx have opened up their interfaces to
  developers via the Internet
• Shipping costs vary by weight
• Many online merchants charge fixed amounts for
  shipping and handling
• You can offer free shipping on orders above a
  certain dollar amount
• Let your customers know when P.O. boxes are going
  to be an issue

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Payments

• 1. Authentication - make sure the cards you
  are accepting have valid numbers, have actually
  been issued, and are not reported stolen.
• 2. Authorization - checks whether funds are
  available for purchases. If they are, you can put
  reservations on those funds. But you don't get
  the money yet.
• 3. Settlement - the banks will release the
  funds that were previously reserved, and the
  money will make its way through numerous banks
  and intermediaries into your account.

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Payments

• Don't charge the cards until the products are
  ready to go
• There are three options
• third party that verifies and processes the
  payment
• small component is added that will communicate
  directly with a payment gateway
• simply store it for further possibly even manual
  processing

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Conclusion

• An online storefront, like any business itself,
  must continue to grow and change to accommodate
  the evolution of customers and products.
• This flexibility is key to keeping e-business
  viable.
• The quick and ever-changing nature of the Web can
  be daunting, but it can also bring customers,
  connections, and opportunities that never would
  have been possible otherwise.

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• References
• Asbury, Steven Weiner, Scot R. "Developing Java
  Enterprise Applications", Second Edition, Willey
  Computer Publishing 2001 
• Hakman, Kevin. E-Commerce Tutorial,
  http//hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey
• Hall, Marty. Core Servlets and Java Server
  Pages Sun Microsystems Press/Prentice Hall PTR
  Book, 2000
• How to store your secure data,
  http//business.lycos.com
• Ince, Darrel Distributed Applications and E
  Commerce, Addison Wesley, 2001
• Sharma, Vivek Sharma, Rajiv Developing
  e-Commerce Sites An Integrated Approach,
  Addison Wesley, 2000
• Visa USA Visa Security http//usa.visa.com/per
  sonal/about_visa/newsroom/visa_security.htmle

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Acknowledgements

• Dr. Herbert J. Bernstein
• Thank you for teaching and guiding us!
• We are so happy to have you!
• Our Fellow Students
• Keep up to the good work!