eCommerce Technologies

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eCommerce Technologies
MIS 4453 -- Spring 2004

• Getting Started Overview of eCommerce,
  Websites, and Their Organization

Instructors Kelly Fish, Ph.D. John Seydel,
Ph.D.
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Student Objectives

• Locate course materials and homework
• Discuss the major components of the course
• Define eCommerce and discuss its four primary
  categories
• Explain why eCommerce has had such a great impact
• Define web page, website, homepage, browser,
  server, user agent, protocol
• Understand the components of a URL
• Organize server space for website
• Summarize what happens when a web page is
  requested
• Discuss static versus interactive web pages
• Access server space through FrontPage

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Agenda

• Introductions Professors Students
• Name
• Major Interests
• Hometown
• Overview of Course
• Website www.clt.astate.edu/jseydel/mis4453
• Syllabus
• Text (read Chapters 1 2)
• Schematic
• eCommerce Concepts/Definitions
• Web Concepts

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Course Overview/Schematic
Successful E-Commerce Web site
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Programming assignments 40
Concepts Principles 40

• Business Models
• Internet Marketing
• Online Transactions
• Security
• Legal, Ethical Issues
• Hardware, Software,
• Communications

-XHTML -FrontPage -Access -Active Server
Pages -Flash -XML
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Definition of eCommerce
The Internet is global. It favors intangible
things ideas, information, relationships. And
it is intensively interlinked. - Kevin
Kelly, New Rules for the New Economy

• E-commerce is characterized by several specific
  attributes
• It is about the exchange of digitalized
  information between parties
• It is technology-enabled
• It is technology-mediated
• It includes intra- and inter-organizational
  activities that support the exchange

eCommerce can be defined as technology-mediated
exchange between parties (individuals,
organizations or both) as well as the
electronically based intra- and
inter-organizational activities that facilitate
such exchange
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Four Categories of eCommerce
Four distinct categories of e-commerce can be
defined, based on the business origination and
the customer type
Business originating from...
Consumers
Business
B2B
C2B
Business
e.g., Freemarket, Covisint
e.g., Mercata.com
And selling to...
B2C
C2C
Consumers
e.g., Groupsgoogle.com, Monster.com
e.g., Amazon, Staples.com, Yahoo
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Estimated Savings From eCommerce
In addition to the growth in online population,
B2B revenues and Internet adoption, E-commerce is
important for the cost savings it can generate as
well as for its impact on industry boundaries and
on many aspects of the social life
Cost savings from e-commerce are expected to
exceed 1 trillion by the end of year 2002
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Growth in Number of Internet Users
eCommerce is significant in several respects,
first of which is the expected growth of the
online population
US Online Population Forecasts
Population (Millions)
At the end of 2003 approximately 55 of the US
population will be online
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Adoption Rate of the Internet vs. Other Media
The fast growth of the Internet compared with
other media is an indication of the velocity of
how E-commerce is affecting the nature of
economic activity
Internet as Mass Medium North American Adoption
Curves
TV
Radio
50 Million Users / Households
Cable
CommercialInternet
North American Users / Households (MM)
Years to Reach50 MM Users
Radio 38 years
Commercial Internet 5 years
TV 13 years
Cable 10 years
Launch of HBO in 1976 used to estimate the
beginning of cable as an entertainment /
advertising medium
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Now, Some Web Concepts

• Well start by looking at
• Website basics
• New look at the input/process/output concept
• All about URLs
• File organization (folders)
• Then well address some related issues

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Overview of Web Basics

• Web file concepts/terminology
• Web page, website, web
• Home page (default.htm, index.html, . . . )
• Object files (e.g., graphic images, sounds,
  applets, . . . )
• Browser/server interaction
• User agent (typically running browser) requests
  file/page
• Then
• Page (and related files) pulled from local cache
• Or server retrieves and sends
• Pages
• Static
• Interactive client side and server side
• Simply a modern means of processing data input,
  processing, output

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Input / Processing / Output
(Program code VB, Java, . . . )
Input (data)
Output
Process/Program
Browser/orServer
HTML file (text)
Web page(s)
Rich includes programming, markup, pointers to
files, . . .
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Anatomy of a URL

• Example
• http//www.clt.astate.edu80/jseydel/mis3353/syll3
  353.htmtext
• Protocol
• Assumed is http
• Others https, mailto, ftp, file (i.e., local
  resource), . . .
• Location of the computer (corresponds to IP)
• Domain
• Domain name
• Machine
• Port (not part of IP) 80 is standard for http
• Location on the computer
• Folder
• Subfolders
• File extension (.htm, .asp, .html, .php, . . .
  )
• Bookmark (anchor)

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Folders Example Suzy Student

• Root (folder/file names emphasized)
• default.htm (home page for website)
• personal.htm (personal info page)
• images
• LogoASU.gif (ASU logo)
• torch.gif (background logo)
• working_.gif (man working image)
• exercises
• default.htm (start page for exercises folder)
• Folder structure organizes files within site
• Start page for any folder default.htm
• Not just for web stuff all files should be
  organized into folders (e.g., MyDocuments\MIS2403\
  proj1.mdb)

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Whats in a Web Document (i.e., File)?

• Content
• XML (eXtensible Markup Language) elements
• Two general categories
• XHTML (aka HTML)
• Head
• Body
• Scripts (recall the richness of web documents)
• Attributes (describe elements)
• Describe content
• Purpose
• Display

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Markup, Whats That?

• Computer language for describing text
• Standard generalized markup language (SGML)
• Extensible markup language (XML)
• Hypertext markup language
• HTML
• XHTML
• Read as data file by browser
• HTML (or XHTML) file contains
• Content
• Markup
• Can incorporate functionality (JavaScript)
• Example Suzy Student

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Our Platform

• OS WinXP Pro (also Win2000 Pro)
• User agent (i.e., browser)
• IE 6.0 or higher
• But always compare to results in others
• Editor FrontPage 2002 (FP 2000 also should
  work)
• IIS 5.0 (running on AITP server)
• MS PhotoEditor 3.01 or other free graphic editor
• Flash MX

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Technologies for eCommerce

• Keep in mind, the purpose is to use the right
  technologies to support the firms business plan
• In general, the technologies with which well be
  working can be classified as
• Web tools (e.g., FrontPage, Flash)
• Web languages (e.g., XHTML)
• Server technologies (e.g., ASP)
• Client technologies (web browsers, in particular)

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FrontPage A Web Development and Management Tool

• Overview and general discussion
• Login demonstration
• . . .

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Summary of Objectives

• Locate course materials and homework
• Discuss the major components of the course
• Define eCommerce and discuss its four primary
  categories
• Explain why eCommerce has had such a great impact
• Define web page, website, homepage, browser,
  server, user agent, protocol
• Understand the components of a URL
• Organize server space for website
• Summarize what happens when a web page is
  requested
• Discuss static versus interactive web pages
• Access server space through FrontPage

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Thats all Folks!

• Next time
• Meet in BU 221
• FrontPage introductory exercise (based on Chapter
  2 Hands-On Exercise)
• In the meantime
• Read Chapters 1 2 and familiarize yourself with
  any concepts, etc. you dont already know
• Work Chapter 1 Hands-On Exercise (turn in disk)
• eMail jseydel_at_astate.edu with your name and
  preferred email address

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Appendix
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What Happens When You View a Web Page?

• Two ways to request resources
• Click on a link
• Type a URL into address bar
• HTTP request is then sent to server at designated
  URL
• Includes header info
• Requests file
• Server then returns HTTP response
• Includes header info
• Contains file
• Repeated as client (i.e., user agent) interprets
  file

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Browser/Server Interaction
Alternatively resources pulled from cache
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Protocols

• What are they?
• Rules procedures to govern transmission
  between components in a network
• Common TCP/IP protocols (user agent web
  browser)
• http// (assumed)
• https// (secure socket layer)
• mailto
• ftp//
• gopher// (from the old days)
• file/// (means youve got problems!)
• Usage depends upon type of navigation tool (i.e.,
  user agent)
• Web browsers TCP/IP running http
• Cell phones WAP with variation off http

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Computer Languages

• Programming languages
• Standalone
• Procedural
• Traditional (e.g., COBOL)
• Object-oriented (e.g., Java)
• Nonprocedural (e.g., SQL)
• Scripting languages (rely on other components)
• JavaScript
• VBScript
• Others (e.g., Perl)
• Markup languages (e.g., XHTML, DHTML?)
• Stylesheet languages (e.g., CSS, XSL)
• Database languages (e.g., SQL)
• Note somewhat different than presented in text

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Markup Languages
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User Agents

• Most widely known browsers
• The big two (IE Netscape)
• Challengers, e.g., Opera
• How about some others?
• Consider
• Cell phones
• PDAs
• WebTV
• Pagers
• And the list continues to grow . . .

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Server Technologies

• Provide access to files
• Just delivering web pages (no processing)
• Static HTML
• Dynamic HTML
• Interactive processing (pages created on demand)
• Data from databases
• Data from client
• Technologies for interactive processing
• ASP (scripting via JScript, VBScript)
• PHP (scripting similar to C programming)
• CGI (scripting typically using Perl)
• Others CFML, JSP, . . .
• So, what about Java, C, VB, . . . ?