31
Submitted By Chirag Janani, BCA-III year Bachelors of Computer Applications Dezyne E’cole College, Ajmer WWW.dezyneecole.com Electronic Commerce
| Date post: | 18-Dec-2014 |
| Category: |
Education |
| Upload: | dezyne-ecole-college |
| View: | 73 times |
| Download: | 3 times |
Submitted By
Chirag Janani BCA-III year
Bachelors of Computer Applications
Dezyne Ersquocole College Ajmer
WWWdezyneecolecom
Electronic
Commerce
Acknowledgement
I am thankful to Dezyne ErsquoCole College to help in making this project on E-Commerce
A special thanks to Ms Jyoti Phulwani to guide us step by step in the making of this
project report
Thanking you
Chirag janani
Bachelors of Computer Applications
3rd Year
CONTENTS
Chapter1
Introduction
Chapter2
Electronic Commerce and the World-Wide-Web
Chapter3
Architectural Framework for Electronic Commerce
Chapter4
Technological Behind the Web
Chapter5
Network Security and Firewalls
Chapter6
Electronic Commerce Companies
Chapter7
Pictorial Representation E-buying Methodology
Chapter 8
Conclusion
Chapter 1
Introduction
Every individual of company that wants to make money and become the next Microsoft
needs to understand the market potential business implication and technological
foundation of Electronic Commerce But what is Electronic Commerce everybody is
talking about How does it affect the organizations way of doing business What sort
of technical and business skills are needed to be successful
Companies and consumers are discovering that global networking and other
technological innovations are powerful assets if used as competitive weapons in their
day to day activities E-Commerce is associated with the buying and selling of
information products and services via computer network today
Consumer desires are very hard to predict pinpoint or decipher in electronic markets
whose shape structure and population are still in early stages Needs envisioned
include entertainment on demand including 500 channels TV video on demand
games on demand electronic retailing via catalogues and kiosks and home shopping
networks
In future viewers will decide what they want to see and when they want to participate
and successful market places are expected to those that cater to consumerrsquos
loneliness boredom education and carrier In a highly competitive society where
neighbors seldom talk to one another these outlets give consumer someone to talk
after going home
Letrsquos take a look at the changing conditions in the ldquoNEW Economyrdquo with respect to the
retail industry Consumers are pushing retailers to the wall demanding lower prices
better quality and a large-section of in-season goods Retailers are scrambling to fill
the order They are slushing back-office cost producing profit margins producing
cycle-times buying more wisely and making huge investment in technology They are
revamping distribution channels to make sure that warehouses cost are down by
reducing their average inventory levels and coordinating the consumer demand and
supply pattern
In the push to reduce prices more and more retailers are turning to overseas suppliers
in part because of cheaper labour cost Retail are the immediate line of fire and had
to do the cost cutting They put the pressure on the manufacturer and then the supplier
end of the pipeline
Electronic Commerce is forcing companies to rethink the existing ways of doing target
marketing relationship marketing and even event marketing Adaptation would
include moving towards computerized ldquoPaperlessrdquo operations to reduce trading cost
and facilitate the adoption of new business process
Japanese approach JIT (Just in Time) system total quality control and quality circles
are focused now for delivery of goods through electronic commerce
Chapter 2
Electronic Commerce and the World-Wide-Web
We have broadly defined electronic commerce as a modern business methodology
that address the desire of firms consumers and management to cut costs while
improving the quality of goods and increasing the speed of services The need for
electronic commerce stems from the demand within business and government to
make better use of computing that is better apply computer technology to improve
business process and information exchange both within an enterprise and across
organizations In short electronic commerce appears to be an integrating force that
represents the digital conversions of Twenty-First Century business applications and
computing technologies
Electronic Commerce applications emphasis the generation and exploitation of new
business opportunity and to use the popular buzzword ldquoGenerate Business Valuerdquo
For instance when buyer-seller transactions occur in the electronic marketplace
information is accessed observed arranged and sold in different ways In fact the
information about a product or service is separated from the physical product or
service and has become important on its own In some cases the information can
become as crucial as the actual product or service in terms of its effect in a companyrsquos
profits In short information based business transactions are creating new ways of
doing business and even new types of business
Electronic Commerce applications are quite varied In its most common form E-
commerce is also used to donate the paperless exchange of business information
using EDI Electronic-mail (E-mail) Electronic Bulletin-boards Electronic funds
transfer (EFT) and other similar technologies These technologies are normally
applied in high-payoff areas recognizing that paper-handling activity usually increase
expense without having value On the other hand the term Electronic Commerce is
used to describe a new on-line approach to perform traditional functions such as
payment and funds transfer order entry and processing invoicing inventory
management cargo tracking electronic catalogues and point-of-sale data gathering
More recently companies have realized that the advertising marketing and customer
support functions are also part of Electronic-Commerce application domain These
business functions act as initiator to the entire order management cycle that
incorporates the more established notions of Electronic Commerce In short what we
are witnessing is the use of the term Electronic Commerce as an umbrella concept to
integrate a wide range of new and old applications
Electronic Document
Interchange (EDI)
Electronic Fund
Transfer (EFT)
Electronic
Publishing
Despite the change taking place business have three goals stay competative
improve productivity and deliver quality service These goals are guiding buoys for
firma plotting their course in the turbulent waters of electronic commerce There are
other factors that companies need to keep in mind First most companies have
already made enormous information technology investments to automate their key
internal processes such as purchasing invoicing and other simliar functons So some
aspects of the technological infratructure for electronic commerce are already in place
The challenge now become How to effectively leverage this investment Second
prices for computer hardware and network equipment continue to fall marking
information technology an appealing investment for many businesses specially when
its used for high-impact application such as linking their distributed operations
However investment without a clear idea of the electronic commerce architecture
being built would be akin to driving with blinders on As a result companies that have
decided that electronic commerce applications represent one of the best strategic
investment they can make must first exert some effort to understand the technology
underlying electronic commerce applications
At first glance it appears that messaging based technologies such as EDI and Mail-
Enabled applications combined with database and information management service
form the technical foundation for effective electronic commerce solutions no single
one of these technologies can deliver the full potential of electronic commerce
however What we require is an integrated architecture the likes of which has never
been seen before This integrated architecture is emerging in the form of the World
Wide Wed (WWW) As electronic commerce becomes more mature we are beginning
to see sophisticated application being developed on WWW Technically and
commercially the WWW client-server model seems poised to become a dominent
technology
Electronic Document Interchange
Electronic
Commerce
Information Sharing Marketing Advertising
Collaborative Work Sales Customer Support
E-mail Fax
Electronic Messaging
Corporate
Digital
Library
Chapter 3
Architectural Framework for Electronic Commerce
The software framework necessary for building Electronic Commerce applications is
little understood in existing literature In general a framework is intended to define and
create tools that integrate the information found in todayrsquos closed systems and allow
the development of E-commerce applications It is important to understand that the
aim of the architechtural framework itself is not to build new database management
system data repository computer languages software agent-based transaction
monitors or communication protocols Rather tha architecture should focus on
synthesizing the diverse resoures already in place in corporations to facilitate the
integration of data and software for better application
We propound that the electronic commerce application architecture consist of six
layers of functionality or services
(1) Application
(2) Brokerage services data or transaction management
(3) Interface and support layers
(4) Secure messaging and electronic document interchange
(5) Middleware and structured document interchange and
(6) Network infrastructure and basic communication services
These layer cooperate to provide a seamless transition between todayrsquos computing
resources and those of tommorow by transparently integrating information access and
exchange within the context of the chosen application As seen in above figure
Application Services Customer-to-business business-to-business Intra-organisational
Brokerage and data management
Order Processing-mail-order houses Payment schemes-electronic cash clearinghouse or virtual mall
Interface layer Interactive catalogue directory support function Software agents
Secure messaging Secure hypertext transfer protocol Encrypted E-mail EDI Remote Programming (RPC)
Middle layer services Structure documents (SGMLHTML) Compound documents (OLEOpenDoc)
Network Infrastructure Wireless-Cellular Radio PCS Wireline-POTS Coaxile Fibre optics
Internal
Publishing
electronic commerce applications are based on several elegant technologies But only
when they are integrated do they provide uniquely powerful solutions In the ensuing
discussion of each of these layerswe will not elaborate on the various aspects of the
network infrastructure that transports information
Electronic Commerce Application Services
The application services layer of E-Commerce will be comprised of existing and future
applications built on innate architecture Three distinct classes of Electronic
Commerce application can be distinguished Customer-to-Business Business-to-
business and intra organisation
i Customer-to-Business Transactions
We call this category market place transaction In a market place transaction
customer learn about products differently through electronic publishing buy them
differently using electronic cash and secure payment systems and have then
delivered Also how customers allocate their loyalty may also be different
Manufacturing
and production
Engineering and
Research
Accounting
Finance and
management
Global Suppliers
Classic EDI
Procurement distribution and logistics
Advertising Sales Customer Service
Customer-oriented
Electronic Commerce
Customers
In light of this organization itself has to adopt to a world where the traditional concepts
of brand differentiation no longer hold ndash where ldquoQualityrdquo has a new meaning where
ldquoContentrdquo may not be equated to ldquoproductrdquo where ldquoDistributionrdquo may not automatically
mean ldquoPhysical Transportrdquo In this new environment brand equity can rapidly
evaporate forcing firms to develop new ways of doing business
ii Business-to-business Transaction
We call this category market-link transactions Here business government and other
organizations depend on computer-to-computer communication as a fast an
economical and a dependable way to conduct business transactions Small
companies are also beginning to see the benefits of adopting the same methods
Business-to-business transaction include the use of EDI and Electronic-mail for
purchasing goods and services buying information and consulting services
submitting requests for proposals and receive proposals
For example the current accounts payable process occurs through the exchange of
paper documents Each year the trading partners exchange millions of invoices
checks purchase orders financial reports and other transactions Most of the
documents are in electronic form at their point of origin but are printed and key-entered
at the point of receipt The current manual process of printing mailing and rekeying is
costly time consuming and error-prone Given this situation and faced with the need
to reduce costs small businesses are looking towards electronic commerce as
possible saviour
iii Intra-organizational Transactions
We call this category market-driven transaction A company becomes market driven
by dispersing throughout the firm information about its customers and competitors by
spreading strategic and tactical decision making so that all units can participate and
by continuously monitoring their customer commitment by making improved customer
satisfaction an ongoing objective To maintain the relationships that are critical to
delivering superior customer value management must pay close attention to service
both before and after sales
Information Brokerage amp management
The Information Brokerage and Management layer provide service integration through
the notion of information brokerages the development of which is necessitated by the
increasing information resource fragmentation We use the notion of Information
Brokerage to represent an intermediary who provides service integration between
customers and information providers given some constraint such as a low price fast
service or profit maximization for a client
Information Brokers for example are rapidly becoming necessary in dealing with the
voluminous amounts of information on the networks As on-line database migrate to
consumer information utilities consumers and information professionals will have to
keep up the knowledge and ownership of all these systems Whorsquos got what How do
you use it What do they charge Most professionals have enough trouble keeping
trap of files of interest on one or two database services With all the complexity
associated with large number of on-line databases and service bureau itrsquos impossible
to expect humans to do the searching it will have to be software programs-information
brokers or software agents to use the most popular term-act on searchers behalf
Information Brokerage does more than just searching
Interface and Support Service
The third layer interface and support services will provide interfaces for electronic
commerce application such as interactive catalogues and will support directory
services-functions necessary for information search and access These two concepts
are very different Interactive catalogues are the customized interface to consumer
applications such as home shopping An interactive catalogue is an extension of the
paper-based catalogue and incorporates additional features such as sophisticated
graphics and video to make the advertising more attractive
Directories on the other hand operate behind the scenes and attempt to organize the
enormous amount of information and transactions generated to facilitate electronic
commerce Directory services database make data from any server appear as a local
file A classic example of a directory is the telephone White Pages which allows to
locate people and telephone numbers In the case of electronic commerce directories
would play an important role in information management functions For instance take
the case of buying an airline ticket with several stop overs with a caveat that the time
between layovers be minimize This search would require several queries to various
on-line directories to find empty seats on various airlines and then the availability of
seeds would be coordinated with the amount time spent in the airport terminals
Secure Messaging and Structure Document Interchange Services
The importance of the fourth layer Secure Messaging is clear Everyone in business
knows that electronic messaging is a critical business issue Consider a familiar
business scenario you hand over an urgent fax on Monday and find out on Tuesday
that itrsquos still sitting on your fax operatorrsquos desk What happened The line was busy
and he thought he would try again later Or the number was wrong but he forgot to
let you know Or you are in London and you need to send a spreadsheet that details
a marketing plan for a product introduction strategy to co-worker in New York This
must be done today not tomorrow when the courier service would deliver There is a
solution to these common and frustrating problems Itrsquos called integrated messaging
a group of computer services that through the use of a network send receive and
combine messages faxes and large data files Some better known examples are
electronic mail enhances fax and electronic data interchange
Broadly defined messaging is the software that sits between the network
infrastructure and the clients or electronic commerce applications masking the
peculiarities if the environment Others define messages as a framework for the total
implementation of portable applications divorcing you from the architectural primitives
of your system In general messaging products are not applications that solve
problems they are more enablers of the application that solve problems
Messaging services offer solution for communicating non-formatted (Unstructured)
data such as purchase orders shipping notices and invoices Unstructured messaging
consists of fax e-mail and form based systems like Lotus Notes Structured
documents messaging consists of the automated interchange of standardized and
approved messages between computer applications via telecommunications lines
Examples of structured document messaging include EDI
Messaging is gaining momentum in electronic commerce and seems to have many
advantages It supports both synchronous (immediate) and asynchronous (delayed)
message delivery and processing With asynchronous messaging when a message
is sent work continues (software doesnrsquot wait for a response) This allows the transfer
of messages through store-and-forward methods
The main disadvantages of messaging are the new types of applications it enables-
which appear to be more complex especially to traditional programmers-and the
jungle of standards it involves Because of the lack of standards there is often no
interoperability between different messaging vendors leading to islands of messaging
Also security privacy and confidentiality through data encryption and authentication
techniques are important issues that need to be resolved for ensuring the legality of
the message-based transactions themselves
Middleware Services
Middleware is a relatively new concept that emerged only recently Like so many other
innovations it came in being out of necessity Users in the 1970rsquos when vendors
delivered homogenous systems that worked didnrsquot have a need for middleware When
conditions changed-along with the hardware and the software the organizations
couldnrsquot The tools were inadequate the backlog was enormous and the pressure
was over whelming And the users were dissatisfied Something was needed to solve
all the interface translation transformation and interpretation problems that were
driving application developers crazy
With the growth of networks client-server technology and all other forms of
communicating betweenamong unlike platforms the problems of getting all pieces to
work together grew from formidable to horrendous As the cry for distributed
computing spread users demanded interaction between dissimilar system networks
that permitted shared resources and applications that could be accessed by multiple
software programs In simple terms middleware is the ultimate mediator between
diverse software programs that enables them talk to one another
Transparency
Transparency implies that users should be unaware that they are accessing multiple
systems Transparency is essential for dealing with higher-level issues than physical
media and interconnection that the underlying network infrastructure is in charge of
The ideal picture is one of a ldquoVirtualrdquo network a collection of work-group
departmental enterprise and inter-enterprise LANs that appears to the end user or
client application to be a seamless and easily accessed whole
Transparency is accomplished using middleware that facilities a distributed computing
environment This gives users and applications transparent access to data
computation and other resources across collections of multivendor heterogeneous
systems The strategic architectures of every major system vendor are now based on
some form of middleware The key to realizing the theoretical benefits of such an
architecture is transparency Users need not spend their time to understand where
something is Nor should application developers have to code into their applications
the exact locations of resources over the network The goal is for the applications to
send a request to the middleware layer which then satisfies the request any way it
can using remote information
Transaction Security and management
Support for transaction processing (TP) is fundamental to success in the electronic
commerce market Security and Management are essential to all layers in the
electronic commerce model Transaction integrity must be given for businesses that
cannot afford any loss or inconsistency in data For electronic commerce middleware
provides the qualities expected in the standard TP system the so-called ACID
property (Atomicity Consistency Isolation and Durability)
World Wide Web (WWW) As the Architecture
Electronic commerce depends on the unspoken assumption that computers
cooperate efficiently for seamless information sharing Unfortunately this assumption
of interoperability has been supported by the realities of practical computing
Computing is still a world made up of many technical directions product
implementations and competing vendors This diversity while good for innovation
causes problem as the E-Commerce applications try to impose a certain discipline on
the proliferating computers and networks It is ironic that real effect of computing is all
too often the prevention of data sharing due to incompatibility-architectures data
formats and communication protocols
What does the WEB Encompass
The Web has become an umbrella for a wide range of concepts and technologies that
differ markedly in purpose and scope These include the global hypertext publishing
concept the universal reader concept and the client-server concept
The global hypertext publishing concept promotes the idea of seamless information
world in which all on-line information can be accessed and retrieve in a consistent and
simple way To access information in this seamless world we will need the ability to
address many types of data-text files images sound files and animation sequences
The universal readership concept promotes the idea that unlike the segmented
applications of the past we can use one application-a universal (or common) user
interface-to read a variety of documents This concept implies that once information
is published it is accessible from any type of computer in any country and that any
(authorized) person merely needs to use one simple program to access it This is
accomplished in the web by using a core browser or application that is augmented by
supporting applications The core browser implements only minimal functionality and
attempts to offload more specialized work onto the supporting applications
The client-server concept allows the web to grow easily without any centralized
control Anyone can publish information and anyone (as long as He or She is
authorized) can read and download it Publishing information requires a server
program and reading data requires a client browser All the clients and all the servers
are connected to one another by the Internet The various standard protocols allows
all clients to communicate with all servers
In practice the web hands on a number of essential concepts including the following
i) The addressing schemes known as Uniform Resource Locator (URL) makes
the hypermedia world possible despite many different protocols
ii) A network protocol known as hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) used by client
browsers and servers offers performance and features not otherwise available
iii) A mark-up language (HTML) which every web client is requires to understand
is used for the representation of hypertext documents containing text list boxes
and graphics information across the net
Chapter 4
Technological Behind the Web
Information providers (or publishers) run programs (called servers) from which the
browsers (client can obtain information) These programs can either be Wed servers
that understand the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) ldquoGatewayrdquo program that
convert an existing information format to hypertext or a non-HTTP server that Web
browsers can access-anonymous FTP or Gopher servers
Web servers are composed of two major parts the Hypertext Transfer protocol for
transmitting documents between servers and clients and the hypertext Markup
language (HTML) format for documents The link between HTML files and the HTTP
servers is provided by the Uniform Resource Locators (URLs)
Uniform Resource Locator
The documents that the browsers display are hypertext that contains pointers to other
documents The browsers let you deal with the pointers in a transparent way ndash select
the pointer and you are presented with the text to which it points This pointer is
implemented using a concept that is central to Web browsers Uniform Resource
Locators (URLs) One way to think about URLs is to use the libraries and location on
a shelf as a metaphor A URL for a digital library would be a unique call number that
provides the exact location of every book in the world including the country city street
and library shelf location
In practice URLs are the strings used as addresses of objects (documents images)
on the Web Think of them as analogous to your E-mail address Just as your address
is unique and maybe used by any other Internet users to send you mail without
knowing exactly where you are a URL marks the unique location on the Internet
where a file or service can be found
URLs follow a fairly consistent pattern The first part describes the type of resource
the second part gives the name of the server housing the resource and the third part
gives full file name of the resource URLs are Universal in that they provide access to
a wide range of network services which required separate applications in the past For
a new network protocol one can easily form an address as the set of parameters
necessary to retrieve the object If these parameters are encoded into a concise string
with a prefix to identify the protocols and encoding one has a new URL scheme Take
a look at the URL formats below
FTP ftpserveraddresscompletefilename
Gopher gopherserveraddressportdirectoryfilename
TELNET telnetserveraddressport
HTTP httpserveraddressporthomepagehtml
News newsmiscstocksinvest
These are URLs for Internet news articles and news groups (The NNTP protocol) and
for HTTP archives for TELNET destinations E-mail addresses and so on The same
can done for names of objects in a given name space For example the URL of the
main page for the Web project happens to be
httpwebw3orghypertextwebTheProjecthtml The prefix ldquoHTTPrdquo in the preceding
example indicates the address space and defines the interpretation of the rest of the
string The HTTP protocol is to be used so the string contains the address of the
server to be contacted and a sub string to be passed to the server
As noted earlier different protocols use different syntaxes but they do have a small
amount in common For example the common URL syntax reserve the solidus () as
a way of representing a hierarchical space the pound label () as a way of pointing
inside the document and question mark () as a separator between the address of an
object and the query operation applied to it Hierarchical spaces are useful for
hypertext where one ldquoworkrdquo maybe split up into many interlinked documents the
allows relative name to exploit the hierarchical structure and allows links to be made
within the work independent of the higher parts of the URL such as the server name
URLs are central to the Web architecture The fact that it is easy to address and object
anywhere on the internet is essential for the system to scale and for the information
space to be independent of the network and server topology
Chapter 5
Network Security and Firewalls
The ability to conduct business on a public network has strong attraction ndash and the
potential for big savings Security and confidentiality are essential however before
businesses can conduct financial transactions over the internet and a lack of
widespread security measures remains at this time At present credit card numbers
financial records and other important information are not encrypted and can be
intercepted by any savvy Internet hacker
The discussion of security is concerns in electronic commerce can be divided into two
broad types
1 Client-server security usages various authorization methods to make sure that only
valid users and programs have access to information resource such as database
Access control mechanisms must be set up to ensure that properly authentication
user are allowed access only to those resource that they are entitled to use Such
mechanism includes password protection encrypted smart card biometric and
firewalls
2 Data and transaction security ensures the privacy and confidentiality in electronic
messages and data packets including the authentication of remote users in
network truncation of activity such as on-line payment The goal is to defeat any
attempt to assume another identity while involved while electronic mail or other
forms of data communication Preventive measure include data encryption using
various cryptographic methods
Data and message security
The lack of data and message security on the Internet has become a high profile
problem due to increasing number of merchants trying to spur commerce on the global
network For instance credit card numbers in there plain text form create a risk when
transmitted across the internet where the possibility of the number falling into the
wrong hands is relatively high Would you be willing to type in your credit card number
knowing the risk Even worse would you expose your customer to that risk Just the
thought of ldquosnifferrdquo programs that collect credit card numbers en masse is enough to
keep merchants away from on-line shopping given the possible lawsuits and other
liability issues In sort the lack of business truncation security is widely acknowledge
as a major implement to widespread e-commerce
Encrypted Documents and Electronic Mail
E-mail users who desires confidentiality and sender are using encryption Encryption
is simply to intend to keep personal thoughts personal Some users are already using
Pretty Good Personality (PGP) others are starting to use Privacy Enhanced Mail
(PEM)
E-mail is typically encrypted for the reason that all network correspondence is open
for eavesdropping Internet e-mail is obviously far less secure then the postal system
where envelopes protect correspondence for casual snooping A glance at the header
area of e-mail message by contrast will show that it has passed through a number of
nodes on its way to you Every one of these nodes presents the opportunity for
snooping
Chapter 6
Electronic Commerce Companies
Chapter 7
Pictorial Representation E-buying Methodology
Flipkartcom
STEP 1
STEP 2
STEP 3
STEP 4
STEP 5
STEP 6
STEP 7
STEP 8
STEP 9
STEP 10
STEP 11
STEP 12
Pictorial Representation E-buying Methodology
Yepmecom
STEP 1
STEP 2
STEP 3
STEP 4
STEP 5
STEP 6
STEP 7
STEP 8
STEP 9
Chapter 8
Conclusion
E-commerce is growing tremendously A lot of companies have joined between the
period July and August Online retail is still a tiny spot in Indiarsquos retail market of about
$500 billion a year but it is growing at a quick pace A study by retail consultancy
Techno-park predicts Indiarsquos e-tailing market will reach $32 billion by 2020 from $23
billion in 2014
Ethnic Indian clothes and casual wear are favorite products but unusual products like
Pets-too are to being offered online With a huge growth that e-commerce has
witnessed in recent times analysts like Devangshu Dutta sales there is scope for more
players to come in But some also warn about the risks the space is fraught with as
only a few may have chances of making it big They also see consolidation in the
sector going forward
Bibliography
Frontiers of Electronic commerce by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew B Whinston
Big E-commerce deals stir up Sector-Economic Times
wwwflipkartcom
wwwYepmecom
Acknowledgement
I am thankful to Dezyne ErsquoCole College to help in making this project on E-Commerce
A special thanks to Ms Jyoti Phulwani to guide us step by step in the making of this
project report
Thanking you
Chirag janani
Bachelors of Computer Applications
3rd Year
CONTENTS
Chapter1
Introduction
Chapter2
Electronic Commerce and the World-Wide-Web
Chapter3
Architectural Framework for Electronic Commerce
Chapter4
Technological Behind the Web
Chapter5
Network Security and Firewalls
Chapter6
Electronic Commerce Companies
Chapter7
Pictorial Representation E-buying Methodology
Chapter 8
Conclusion
Chapter 1
Introduction
Every individual of company that wants to make money and become the next Microsoft
needs to understand the market potential business implication and technological
foundation of Electronic Commerce But what is Electronic Commerce everybody is
talking about How does it affect the organizations way of doing business What sort
of technical and business skills are needed to be successful
Companies and consumers are discovering that global networking and other
technological innovations are powerful assets if used as competitive weapons in their
day to day activities E-Commerce is associated with the buying and selling of
information products and services via computer network today
Consumer desires are very hard to predict pinpoint or decipher in electronic markets
whose shape structure and population are still in early stages Needs envisioned
include entertainment on demand including 500 channels TV video on demand
games on demand electronic retailing via catalogues and kiosks and home shopping
networks
In future viewers will decide what they want to see and when they want to participate
and successful market places are expected to those that cater to consumerrsquos
loneliness boredom education and carrier In a highly competitive society where
neighbors seldom talk to one another these outlets give consumer someone to talk
after going home
Letrsquos take a look at the changing conditions in the ldquoNEW Economyrdquo with respect to the
retail industry Consumers are pushing retailers to the wall demanding lower prices
better quality and a large-section of in-season goods Retailers are scrambling to fill
the order They are slushing back-office cost producing profit margins producing
cycle-times buying more wisely and making huge investment in technology They are
revamping distribution channels to make sure that warehouses cost are down by
reducing their average inventory levels and coordinating the consumer demand and
supply pattern
In the push to reduce prices more and more retailers are turning to overseas suppliers
in part because of cheaper labour cost Retail are the immediate line of fire and had
to do the cost cutting They put the pressure on the manufacturer and then the supplier
end of the pipeline
Electronic Commerce is forcing companies to rethink the existing ways of doing target
marketing relationship marketing and even event marketing Adaptation would
include moving towards computerized ldquoPaperlessrdquo operations to reduce trading cost
and facilitate the adoption of new business process
Japanese approach JIT (Just in Time) system total quality control and quality circles
are focused now for delivery of goods through electronic commerce
Chapter 2
Electronic Commerce and the World-Wide-Web
We have broadly defined electronic commerce as a modern business methodology
that address the desire of firms consumers and management to cut costs while
improving the quality of goods and increasing the speed of services The need for
electronic commerce stems from the demand within business and government to
make better use of computing that is better apply computer technology to improve
business process and information exchange both within an enterprise and across
organizations In short electronic commerce appears to be an integrating force that
represents the digital conversions of Twenty-First Century business applications and
computing technologies
Electronic Commerce applications emphasis the generation and exploitation of new
business opportunity and to use the popular buzzword ldquoGenerate Business Valuerdquo
For instance when buyer-seller transactions occur in the electronic marketplace
information is accessed observed arranged and sold in different ways In fact the
information about a product or service is separated from the physical product or
service and has become important on its own In some cases the information can
become as crucial as the actual product or service in terms of its effect in a companyrsquos
profits In short information based business transactions are creating new ways of
doing business and even new types of business
Electronic Commerce applications are quite varied In its most common form E-
commerce is also used to donate the paperless exchange of business information
using EDI Electronic-mail (E-mail) Electronic Bulletin-boards Electronic funds
transfer (EFT) and other similar technologies These technologies are normally
applied in high-payoff areas recognizing that paper-handling activity usually increase
expense without having value On the other hand the term Electronic Commerce is
used to describe a new on-line approach to perform traditional functions such as
payment and funds transfer order entry and processing invoicing inventory
management cargo tracking electronic catalogues and point-of-sale data gathering
More recently companies have realized that the advertising marketing and customer
support functions are also part of Electronic-Commerce application domain These
business functions act as initiator to the entire order management cycle that
incorporates the more established notions of Electronic Commerce In short what we
are witnessing is the use of the term Electronic Commerce as an umbrella concept to
integrate a wide range of new and old applications
Electronic Document
Interchange (EDI)
Electronic Fund
Transfer (EFT)
Electronic
Publishing
Despite the change taking place business have three goals stay competative
improve productivity and deliver quality service These goals are guiding buoys for
firma plotting their course in the turbulent waters of electronic commerce There are
other factors that companies need to keep in mind First most companies have
already made enormous information technology investments to automate their key
internal processes such as purchasing invoicing and other simliar functons So some
aspects of the technological infratructure for electronic commerce are already in place
The challenge now become How to effectively leverage this investment Second
prices for computer hardware and network equipment continue to fall marking
information technology an appealing investment for many businesses specially when
its used for high-impact application such as linking their distributed operations
However investment without a clear idea of the electronic commerce architecture
being built would be akin to driving with blinders on As a result companies that have
decided that electronic commerce applications represent one of the best strategic
investment they can make must first exert some effort to understand the technology
underlying electronic commerce applications
At first glance it appears that messaging based technologies such as EDI and Mail-
Enabled applications combined with database and information management service
form the technical foundation for effective electronic commerce solutions no single
one of these technologies can deliver the full potential of electronic commerce
however What we require is an integrated architecture the likes of which has never
been seen before This integrated architecture is emerging in the form of the World
Wide Wed (WWW) As electronic commerce becomes more mature we are beginning
to see sophisticated application being developed on WWW Technically and
commercially the WWW client-server model seems poised to become a dominent
technology
Electronic Document Interchange
Electronic
Commerce
Information Sharing Marketing Advertising
Collaborative Work Sales Customer Support
E-mail Fax
Electronic Messaging
Corporate
Digital
Library
Chapter 3
Architectural Framework for Electronic Commerce
The software framework necessary for building Electronic Commerce applications is
little understood in existing literature In general a framework is intended to define and
create tools that integrate the information found in todayrsquos closed systems and allow
the development of E-commerce applications It is important to understand that the
aim of the architechtural framework itself is not to build new database management
system data repository computer languages software agent-based transaction
monitors or communication protocols Rather tha architecture should focus on
synthesizing the diverse resoures already in place in corporations to facilitate the
integration of data and software for better application
We propound that the electronic commerce application architecture consist of six
layers of functionality or services
(1) Application
(2) Brokerage services data or transaction management
(3) Interface and support layers
(4) Secure messaging and electronic document interchange
(5) Middleware and structured document interchange and
(6) Network infrastructure and basic communication services
These layer cooperate to provide a seamless transition between todayrsquos computing
resources and those of tommorow by transparently integrating information access and
exchange within the context of the chosen application As seen in above figure
Application Services Customer-to-business business-to-business Intra-organisational
Brokerage and data management
Order Processing-mail-order houses Payment schemes-electronic cash clearinghouse or virtual mall
Interface layer Interactive catalogue directory support function Software agents
Secure messaging Secure hypertext transfer protocol Encrypted E-mail EDI Remote Programming (RPC)
Middle layer services Structure documents (SGMLHTML) Compound documents (OLEOpenDoc)
Network Infrastructure Wireless-Cellular Radio PCS Wireline-POTS Coaxile Fibre optics
Internal
Publishing
electronic commerce applications are based on several elegant technologies But only
when they are integrated do they provide uniquely powerful solutions In the ensuing
discussion of each of these layerswe will not elaborate on the various aspects of the
network infrastructure that transports information
Electronic Commerce Application Services
The application services layer of E-Commerce will be comprised of existing and future
applications built on innate architecture Three distinct classes of Electronic
Commerce application can be distinguished Customer-to-Business Business-to-
business and intra organisation
i Customer-to-Business Transactions
We call this category market place transaction In a market place transaction
customer learn about products differently through electronic publishing buy them
differently using electronic cash and secure payment systems and have then
delivered Also how customers allocate their loyalty may also be different
Manufacturing
and production
Engineering and
Research
Accounting
Finance and
management
Global Suppliers
Classic EDI
Procurement distribution and logistics
Advertising Sales Customer Service
Customer-oriented
Electronic Commerce
Customers
In light of this organization itself has to adopt to a world where the traditional concepts
of brand differentiation no longer hold ndash where ldquoQualityrdquo has a new meaning where
ldquoContentrdquo may not be equated to ldquoproductrdquo where ldquoDistributionrdquo may not automatically
mean ldquoPhysical Transportrdquo In this new environment brand equity can rapidly
evaporate forcing firms to develop new ways of doing business
ii Business-to-business Transaction
We call this category market-link transactions Here business government and other
organizations depend on computer-to-computer communication as a fast an
economical and a dependable way to conduct business transactions Small
companies are also beginning to see the benefits of adopting the same methods
Business-to-business transaction include the use of EDI and Electronic-mail for
purchasing goods and services buying information and consulting services
submitting requests for proposals and receive proposals
For example the current accounts payable process occurs through the exchange of
paper documents Each year the trading partners exchange millions of invoices
checks purchase orders financial reports and other transactions Most of the
documents are in electronic form at their point of origin but are printed and key-entered
at the point of receipt The current manual process of printing mailing and rekeying is
costly time consuming and error-prone Given this situation and faced with the need
to reduce costs small businesses are looking towards electronic commerce as
possible saviour
iii Intra-organizational Transactions
We call this category market-driven transaction A company becomes market driven
by dispersing throughout the firm information about its customers and competitors by
spreading strategic and tactical decision making so that all units can participate and
by continuously monitoring their customer commitment by making improved customer
satisfaction an ongoing objective To maintain the relationships that are critical to
delivering superior customer value management must pay close attention to service
both before and after sales
Information Brokerage amp management
The Information Brokerage and Management layer provide service integration through
the notion of information brokerages the development of which is necessitated by the
increasing information resource fragmentation We use the notion of Information
Brokerage to represent an intermediary who provides service integration between
customers and information providers given some constraint such as a low price fast
service or profit maximization for a client
Information Brokers for example are rapidly becoming necessary in dealing with the
voluminous amounts of information on the networks As on-line database migrate to
consumer information utilities consumers and information professionals will have to
keep up the knowledge and ownership of all these systems Whorsquos got what How do
you use it What do they charge Most professionals have enough trouble keeping
trap of files of interest on one or two database services With all the complexity
associated with large number of on-line databases and service bureau itrsquos impossible
to expect humans to do the searching it will have to be software programs-information
brokers or software agents to use the most popular term-act on searchers behalf
Information Brokerage does more than just searching
Interface and Support Service
The third layer interface and support services will provide interfaces for electronic
commerce application such as interactive catalogues and will support directory
services-functions necessary for information search and access These two concepts
are very different Interactive catalogues are the customized interface to consumer
applications such as home shopping An interactive catalogue is an extension of the
paper-based catalogue and incorporates additional features such as sophisticated
graphics and video to make the advertising more attractive
Directories on the other hand operate behind the scenes and attempt to organize the
enormous amount of information and transactions generated to facilitate electronic
commerce Directory services database make data from any server appear as a local
file A classic example of a directory is the telephone White Pages which allows to
locate people and telephone numbers In the case of electronic commerce directories
would play an important role in information management functions For instance take
the case of buying an airline ticket with several stop overs with a caveat that the time
between layovers be minimize This search would require several queries to various
on-line directories to find empty seats on various airlines and then the availability of
seeds would be coordinated with the amount time spent in the airport terminals
Secure Messaging and Structure Document Interchange Services
The importance of the fourth layer Secure Messaging is clear Everyone in business
knows that electronic messaging is a critical business issue Consider a familiar
business scenario you hand over an urgent fax on Monday and find out on Tuesday
that itrsquos still sitting on your fax operatorrsquos desk What happened The line was busy
and he thought he would try again later Or the number was wrong but he forgot to
let you know Or you are in London and you need to send a spreadsheet that details
a marketing plan for a product introduction strategy to co-worker in New York This
must be done today not tomorrow when the courier service would deliver There is a
solution to these common and frustrating problems Itrsquos called integrated messaging
a group of computer services that through the use of a network send receive and
combine messages faxes and large data files Some better known examples are
electronic mail enhances fax and electronic data interchange
Broadly defined messaging is the software that sits between the network
infrastructure and the clients or electronic commerce applications masking the
peculiarities if the environment Others define messages as a framework for the total
implementation of portable applications divorcing you from the architectural primitives
of your system In general messaging products are not applications that solve
problems they are more enablers of the application that solve problems
Messaging services offer solution for communicating non-formatted (Unstructured)
data such as purchase orders shipping notices and invoices Unstructured messaging
consists of fax e-mail and form based systems like Lotus Notes Structured
documents messaging consists of the automated interchange of standardized and
approved messages between computer applications via telecommunications lines
Examples of structured document messaging include EDI
Messaging is gaining momentum in electronic commerce and seems to have many
advantages It supports both synchronous (immediate) and asynchronous (delayed)
message delivery and processing With asynchronous messaging when a message
is sent work continues (software doesnrsquot wait for a response) This allows the transfer
of messages through store-and-forward methods
The main disadvantages of messaging are the new types of applications it enables-
which appear to be more complex especially to traditional programmers-and the
jungle of standards it involves Because of the lack of standards there is often no
interoperability between different messaging vendors leading to islands of messaging
Also security privacy and confidentiality through data encryption and authentication
techniques are important issues that need to be resolved for ensuring the legality of
the message-based transactions themselves
Middleware Services
Middleware is a relatively new concept that emerged only recently Like so many other
innovations it came in being out of necessity Users in the 1970rsquos when vendors
delivered homogenous systems that worked didnrsquot have a need for middleware When
conditions changed-along with the hardware and the software the organizations
couldnrsquot The tools were inadequate the backlog was enormous and the pressure
was over whelming And the users were dissatisfied Something was needed to solve
all the interface translation transformation and interpretation problems that were
driving application developers crazy
With the growth of networks client-server technology and all other forms of
communicating betweenamong unlike platforms the problems of getting all pieces to
work together grew from formidable to horrendous As the cry for distributed
computing spread users demanded interaction between dissimilar system networks
that permitted shared resources and applications that could be accessed by multiple
software programs In simple terms middleware is the ultimate mediator between
diverse software programs that enables them talk to one another
Transparency
Transparency implies that users should be unaware that they are accessing multiple
systems Transparency is essential for dealing with higher-level issues than physical
media and interconnection that the underlying network infrastructure is in charge of
The ideal picture is one of a ldquoVirtualrdquo network a collection of work-group
departmental enterprise and inter-enterprise LANs that appears to the end user or
client application to be a seamless and easily accessed whole
Transparency is accomplished using middleware that facilities a distributed computing
environment This gives users and applications transparent access to data
computation and other resources across collections of multivendor heterogeneous
systems The strategic architectures of every major system vendor are now based on
some form of middleware The key to realizing the theoretical benefits of such an
architecture is transparency Users need not spend their time to understand where
something is Nor should application developers have to code into their applications
the exact locations of resources over the network The goal is for the applications to
send a request to the middleware layer which then satisfies the request any way it
can using remote information
Transaction Security and management
Support for transaction processing (TP) is fundamental to success in the electronic
commerce market Security and Management are essential to all layers in the
electronic commerce model Transaction integrity must be given for businesses that
cannot afford any loss or inconsistency in data For electronic commerce middleware
provides the qualities expected in the standard TP system the so-called ACID
property (Atomicity Consistency Isolation and Durability)
World Wide Web (WWW) As the Architecture
Electronic commerce depends on the unspoken assumption that computers
cooperate efficiently for seamless information sharing Unfortunately this assumption
of interoperability has been supported by the realities of practical computing
Computing is still a world made up of many technical directions product
implementations and competing vendors This diversity while good for innovation
causes problem as the E-Commerce applications try to impose a certain discipline on
the proliferating computers and networks It is ironic that real effect of computing is all
too often the prevention of data sharing due to incompatibility-architectures data
formats and communication protocols
What does the WEB Encompass
The Web has become an umbrella for a wide range of concepts and technologies that
differ markedly in purpose and scope These include the global hypertext publishing
concept the universal reader concept and the client-server concept
The global hypertext publishing concept promotes the idea of seamless information
world in which all on-line information can be accessed and retrieve in a consistent and
simple way To access information in this seamless world we will need the ability to
address many types of data-text files images sound files and animation sequences
The universal readership concept promotes the idea that unlike the segmented
applications of the past we can use one application-a universal (or common) user
interface-to read a variety of documents This concept implies that once information
is published it is accessible from any type of computer in any country and that any
(authorized) person merely needs to use one simple program to access it This is
accomplished in the web by using a core browser or application that is augmented by
supporting applications The core browser implements only minimal functionality and
attempts to offload more specialized work onto the supporting applications
The client-server concept allows the web to grow easily without any centralized
control Anyone can publish information and anyone (as long as He or She is
authorized) can read and download it Publishing information requires a server
program and reading data requires a client browser All the clients and all the servers
are connected to one another by the Internet The various standard protocols allows
all clients to communicate with all servers
In practice the web hands on a number of essential concepts including the following
i) The addressing schemes known as Uniform Resource Locator (URL) makes
the hypermedia world possible despite many different protocols
ii) A network protocol known as hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) used by client
browsers and servers offers performance and features not otherwise available
iii) A mark-up language (HTML) which every web client is requires to understand
is used for the representation of hypertext documents containing text list boxes
and graphics information across the net
Chapter 4
Technological Behind the Web
Information providers (or publishers) run programs (called servers) from which the
browsers (client can obtain information) These programs can either be Wed servers
that understand the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) ldquoGatewayrdquo program that
convert an existing information format to hypertext or a non-HTTP server that Web
browsers can access-anonymous FTP or Gopher servers
Web servers are composed of two major parts the Hypertext Transfer protocol for
transmitting documents between servers and clients and the hypertext Markup
language (HTML) format for documents The link between HTML files and the HTTP
servers is provided by the Uniform Resource Locators (URLs)
Uniform Resource Locator
The documents that the browsers display are hypertext that contains pointers to other
documents The browsers let you deal with the pointers in a transparent way ndash select
the pointer and you are presented with the text to which it points This pointer is
implemented using a concept that is central to Web browsers Uniform Resource
Locators (URLs) One way to think about URLs is to use the libraries and location on
a shelf as a metaphor A URL for a digital library would be a unique call number that
provides the exact location of every book in the world including the country city street
and library shelf location
In practice URLs are the strings used as addresses of objects (documents images)
on the Web Think of them as analogous to your E-mail address Just as your address
is unique and maybe used by any other Internet users to send you mail without
knowing exactly where you are a URL marks the unique location on the Internet
where a file or service can be found
URLs follow a fairly consistent pattern The first part describes the type of resource
the second part gives the name of the server housing the resource and the third part
gives full file name of the resource URLs are Universal in that they provide access to
a wide range of network services which required separate applications in the past For
a new network protocol one can easily form an address as the set of parameters
necessary to retrieve the object If these parameters are encoded into a concise string
with a prefix to identify the protocols and encoding one has a new URL scheme Take
a look at the URL formats below
FTP ftpserveraddresscompletefilename
Gopher gopherserveraddressportdirectoryfilename
TELNET telnetserveraddressport
HTTP httpserveraddressporthomepagehtml
News newsmiscstocksinvest
These are URLs for Internet news articles and news groups (The NNTP protocol) and
for HTTP archives for TELNET destinations E-mail addresses and so on The same
can done for names of objects in a given name space For example the URL of the
main page for the Web project happens to be
httpwebw3orghypertextwebTheProjecthtml The prefix ldquoHTTPrdquo in the preceding
example indicates the address space and defines the interpretation of the rest of the
string The HTTP protocol is to be used so the string contains the address of the
server to be contacted and a sub string to be passed to the server
As noted earlier different protocols use different syntaxes but they do have a small
amount in common For example the common URL syntax reserve the solidus () as
a way of representing a hierarchical space the pound label () as a way of pointing
inside the document and question mark () as a separator between the address of an
object and the query operation applied to it Hierarchical spaces are useful for
hypertext where one ldquoworkrdquo maybe split up into many interlinked documents the
allows relative name to exploit the hierarchical structure and allows links to be made
within the work independent of the higher parts of the URL such as the server name
URLs are central to the Web architecture The fact that it is easy to address and object
anywhere on the internet is essential for the system to scale and for the information
space to be independent of the network and server topology
Chapter 5
Network Security and Firewalls
The ability to conduct business on a public network has strong attraction ndash and the
potential for big savings Security and confidentiality are essential however before
businesses can conduct financial transactions over the internet and a lack of
widespread security measures remains at this time At present credit card numbers
financial records and other important information are not encrypted and can be
intercepted by any savvy Internet hacker
The discussion of security is concerns in electronic commerce can be divided into two
broad types
1 Client-server security usages various authorization methods to make sure that only
valid users and programs have access to information resource such as database
Access control mechanisms must be set up to ensure that properly authentication
user are allowed access only to those resource that they are entitled to use Such
mechanism includes password protection encrypted smart card biometric and
firewalls
2 Data and transaction security ensures the privacy and confidentiality in electronic
messages and data packets including the authentication of remote users in
network truncation of activity such as on-line payment The goal is to defeat any
attempt to assume another identity while involved while electronic mail or other
forms of data communication Preventive measure include data encryption using
various cryptographic methods
Data and message security
The lack of data and message security on the Internet has become a high profile
problem due to increasing number of merchants trying to spur commerce on the global
network For instance credit card numbers in there plain text form create a risk when
transmitted across the internet where the possibility of the number falling into the
wrong hands is relatively high Would you be willing to type in your credit card number
knowing the risk Even worse would you expose your customer to that risk Just the
thought of ldquosnifferrdquo programs that collect credit card numbers en masse is enough to
keep merchants away from on-line shopping given the possible lawsuits and other
liability issues In sort the lack of business truncation security is widely acknowledge
as a major implement to widespread e-commerce
Encrypted Documents and Electronic Mail
E-mail users who desires confidentiality and sender are using encryption Encryption
is simply to intend to keep personal thoughts personal Some users are already using
Pretty Good Personality (PGP) others are starting to use Privacy Enhanced Mail
(PEM)
E-mail is typically encrypted for the reason that all network correspondence is open
for eavesdropping Internet e-mail is obviously far less secure then the postal system
where envelopes protect correspondence for casual snooping A glance at the header
area of e-mail message by contrast will show that it has passed through a number of
nodes on its way to you Every one of these nodes presents the opportunity for
snooping
Chapter 6
Electronic Commerce Companies
Chapter 7
Pictorial Representation E-buying Methodology
Flipkartcom
STEP 1
STEP 2
STEP 3
STEP 4
STEP 5
STEP 6
STEP 7
STEP 8
STEP 9
STEP 10
STEP 11
STEP 12
Pictorial Representation E-buying Methodology
Yepmecom
STEP 1
STEP 2
STEP 3
STEP 4
STEP 5
STEP 6
STEP 7
STEP 8
STEP 9
Chapter 8
Conclusion
E-commerce is growing tremendously A lot of companies have joined between the
period July and August Online retail is still a tiny spot in Indiarsquos retail market of about
$500 billion a year but it is growing at a quick pace A study by retail consultancy
Techno-park predicts Indiarsquos e-tailing market will reach $32 billion by 2020 from $23
billion in 2014
Ethnic Indian clothes and casual wear are favorite products but unusual products like
Pets-too are to being offered online With a huge growth that e-commerce has
witnessed in recent times analysts like Devangshu Dutta sales there is scope for more
players to come in But some also warn about the risks the space is fraught with as
only a few may have chances of making it big They also see consolidation in the
sector going forward
Bibliography
Frontiers of Electronic commerce by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew B Whinston
Big E-commerce deals stir up Sector-Economic Times
wwwflipkartcom
wwwYepmecom
CONTENTS
Chapter1
Introduction
Chapter2
Electronic Commerce and the World-Wide-Web
Chapter3
Architectural Framework for Electronic Commerce
Chapter4
Technological Behind the Web
Chapter5
Network Security and Firewalls
Chapter6
Electronic Commerce Companies
Chapter7
Pictorial Representation E-buying Methodology
Chapter 8
Conclusion
Chapter 1
Introduction
Every individual of company that wants to make money and become the next Microsoft
needs to understand the market potential business implication and technological
foundation of Electronic Commerce But what is Electronic Commerce everybody is
talking about How does it affect the organizations way of doing business What sort
of technical and business skills are needed to be successful
Companies and consumers are discovering that global networking and other
technological innovations are powerful assets if used as competitive weapons in their
day to day activities E-Commerce is associated with the buying and selling of
information products and services via computer network today
Consumer desires are very hard to predict pinpoint or decipher in electronic markets
whose shape structure and population are still in early stages Needs envisioned
include entertainment on demand including 500 channels TV video on demand
games on demand electronic retailing via catalogues and kiosks and home shopping
networks
In future viewers will decide what they want to see and when they want to participate
and successful market places are expected to those that cater to consumerrsquos
loneliness boredom education and carrier In a highly competitive society where
neighbors seldom talk to one another these outlets give consumer someone to talk
after going home
Letrsquos take a look at the changing conditions in the ldquoNEW Economyrdquo with respect to the
retail industry Consumers are pushing retailers to the wall demanding lower prices
better quality and a large-section of in-season goods Retailers are scrambling to fill
the order They are slushing back-office cost producing profit margins producing
cycle-times buying more wisely and making huge investment in technology They are
revamping distribution channels to make sure that warehouses cost are down by
reducing their average inventory levels and coordinating the consumer demand and
supply pattern
In the push to reduce prices more and more retailers are turning to overseas suppliers
in part because of cheaper labour cost Retail are the immediate line of fire and had
to do the cost cutting They put the pressure on the manufacturer and then the supplier
end of the pipeline
Electronic Commerce is forcing companies to rethink the existing ways of doing target
marketing relationship marketing and even event marketing Adaptation would
include moving towards computerized ldquoPaperlessrdquo operations to reduce trading cost
and facilitate the adoption of new business process
Japanese approach JIT (Just in Time) system total quality control and quality circles
are focused now for delivery of goods through electronic commerce
Chapter 2
Electronic Commerce and the World-Wide-Web
We have broadly defined electronic commerce as a modern business methodology
that address the desire of firms consumers and management to cut costs while
improving the quality of goods and increasing the speed of services The need for
electronic commerce stems from the demand within business and government to
make better use of computing that is better apply computer technology to improve
business process and information exchange both within an enterprise and across
organizations In short electronic commerce appears to be an integrating force that
represents the digital conversions of Twenty-First Century business applications and
computing technologies
Electronic Commerce applications emphasis the generation and exploitation of new
business opportunity and to use the popular buzzword ldquoGenerate Business Valuerdquo
For instance when buyer-seller transactions occur in the electronic marketplace
information is accessed observed arranged and sold in different ways In fact the
information about a product or service is separated from the physical product or
service and has become important on its own In some cases the information can
become as crucial as the actual product or service in terms of its effect in a companyrsquos
profits In short information based business transactions are creating new ways of
doing business and even new types of business
Electronic Commerce applications are quite varied In its most common form E-
commerce is also used to donate the paperless exchange of business information
using EDI Electronic-mail (E-mail) Electronic Bulletin-boards Electronic funds
transfer (EFT) and other similar technologies These technologies are normally
applied in high-payoff areas recognizing that paper-handling activity usually increase
expense without having value On the other hand the term Electronic Commerce is
used to describe a new on-line approach to perform traditional functions such as
payment and funds transfer order entry and processing invoicing inventory
management cargo tracking electronic catalogues and point-of-sale data gathering
More recently companies have realized that the advertising marketing and customer
support functions are also part of Electronic-Commerce application domain These
business functions act as initiator to the entire order management cycle that
incorporates the more established notions of Electronic Commerce In short what we
are witnessing is the use of the term Electronic Commerce as an umbrella concept to
integrate a wide range of new and old applications
Electronic Document
Interchange (EDI)
Electronic Fund
Transfer (EFT)
Electronic
Publishing
Despite the change taking place business have three goals stay competative
improve productivity and deliver quality service These goals are guiding buoys for
firma plotting their course in the turbulent waters of electronic commerce There are
other factors that companies need to keep in mind First most companies have
already made enormous information technology investments to automate their key
internal processes such as purchasing invoicing and other simliar functons So some
aspects of the technological infratructure for electronic commerce are already in place
The challenge now become How to effectively leverage this investment Second
prices for computer hardware and network equipment continue to fall marking
information technology an appealing investment for many businesses specially when
its used for high-impact application such as linking their distributed operations
However investment without a clear idea of the electronic commerce architecture
being built would be akin to driving with blinders on As a result companies that have
decided that electronic commerce applications represent one of the best strategic
investment they can make must first exert some effort to understand the technology
underlying electronic commerce applications
At first glance it appears that messaging based technologies such as EDI and Mail-
Enabled applications combined with database and information management service
form the technical foundation for effective electronic commerce solutions no single
one of these technologies can deliver the full potential of electronic commerce
however What we require is an integrated architecture the likes of which has never
been seen before This integrated architecture is emerging in the form of the World
Wide Wed (WWW) As electronic commerce becomes more mature we are beginning
to see sophisticated application being developed on WWW Technically and
commercially the WWW client-server model seems poised to become a dominent
technology
Electronic Document Interchange
Electronic
Commerce
Information Sharing Marketing Advertising
Collaborative Work Sales Customer Support
E-mail Fax
Electronic Messaging
Corporate
Digital
Library
Chapter 3
Architectural Framework for Electronic Commerce
The software framework necessary for building Electronic Commerce applications is
little understood in existing literature In general a framework is intended to define and
create tools that integrate the information found in todayrsquos closed systems and allow
the development of E-commerce applications It is important to understand that the
aim of the architechtural framework itself is not to build new database management
system data repository computer languages software agent-based transaction
monitors or communication protocols Rather tha architecture should focus on
synthesizing the diverse resoures already in place in corporations to facilitate the
integration of data and software for better application
We propound that the electronic commerce application architecture consist of six
layers of functionality or services
(1) Application
(2) Brokerage services data or transaction management
(3) Interface and support layers
(4) Secure messaging and electronic document interchange
(5) Middleware and structured document interchange and
(6) Network infrastructure and basic communication services
These layer cooperate to provide a seamless transition between todayrsquos computing
resources and those of tommorow by transparently integrating information access and
exchange within the context of the chosen application As seen in above figure
Application Services Customer-to-business business-to-business Intra-organisational
Brokerage and data management
Order Processing-mail-order houses Payment schemes-electronic cash clearinghouse or virtual mall
Interface layer Interactive catalogue directory support function Software agents
Secure messaging Secure hypertext transfer protocol Encrypted E-mail EDI Remote Programming (RPC)
Middle layer services Structure documents (SGMLHTML) Compound documents (OLEOpenDoc)
Network Infrastructure Wireless-Cellular Radio PCS Wireline-POTS Coaxile Fibre optics
Internal
Publishing
electronic commerce applications are based on several elegant technologies But only
when they are integrated do they provide uniquely powerful solutions In the ensuing
discussion of each of these layerswe will not elaborate on the various aspects of the
network infrastructure that transports information
Electronic Commerce Application Services
The application services layer of E-Commerce will be comprised of existing and future
applications built on innate architecture Three distinct classes of Electronic
Commerce application can be distinguished Customer-to-Business Business-to-
business and intra organisation
i Customer-to-Business Transactions
We call this category market place transaction In a market place transaction
customer learn about products differently through electronic publishing buy them
differently using electronic cash and secure payment systems and have then
delivered Also how customers allocate their loyalty may also be different
Manufacturing
and production
Engineering and
Research
Accounting
Finance and
management
Global Suppliers
Classic EDI
Procurement distribution and logistics
Advertising Sales Customer Service
Customer-oriented
Electronic Commerce
Customers
In light of this organization itself has to adopt to a world where the traditional concepts
of brand differentiation no longer hold ndash where ldquoQualityrdquo has a new meaning where
ldquoContentrdquo may not be equated to ldquoproductrdquo where ldquoDistributionrdquo may not automatically
mean ldquoPhysical Transportrdquo In this new environment brand equity can rapidly
evaporate forcing firms to develop new ways of doing business
ii Business-to-business Transaction
We call this category market-link transactions Here business government and other
organizations depend on computer-to-computer communication as a fast an
economical and a dependable way to conduct business transactions Small
companies are also beginning to see the benefits of adopting the same methods
Business-to-business transaction include the use of EDI and Electronic-mail for
purchasing goods and services buying information and consulting services
submitting requests for proposals and receive proposals
For example the current accounts payable process occurs through the exchange of
paper documents Each year the trading partners exchange millions of invoices
checks purchase orders financial reports and other transactions Most of the
documents are in electronic form at their point of origin but are printed and key-entered
at the point of receipt The current manual process of printing mailing and rekeying is
costly time consuming and error-prone Given this situation and faced with the need
to reduce costs small businesses are looking towards electronic commerce as
possible saviour
iii Intra-organizational Transactions
We call this category market-driven transaction A company becomes market driven
by dispersing throughout the firm information about its customers and competitors by
spreading strategic and tactical decision making so that all units can participate and
by continuously monitoring their customer commitment by making improved customer
satisfaction an ongoing objective To maintain the relationships that are critical to
delivering superior customer value management must pay close attention to service
both before and after sales
Information Brokerage amp management
The Information Brokerage and Management layer provide service integration through
the notion of information brokerages the development of which is necessitated by the
increasing information resource fragmentation We use the notion of Information
Brokerage to represent an intermediary who provides service integration between
customers and information providers given some constraint such as a low price fast
service or profit maximization for a client
Information Brokers for example are rapidly becoming necessary in dealing with the
voluminous amounts of information on the networks As on-line database migrate to
consumer information utilities consumers and information professionals will have to
keep up the knowledge and ownership of all these systems Whorsquos got what How do
you use it What do they charge Most professionals have enough trouble keeping
trap of files of interest on one or two database services With all the complexity
associated with large number of on-line databases and service bureau itrsquos impossible
to expect humans to do the searching it will have to be software programs-information
brokers or software agents to use the most popular term-act on searchers behalf
Information Brokerage does more than just searching
Interface and Support Service
The third layer interface and support services will provide interfaces for electronic
commerce application such as interactive catalogues and will support directory
services-functions necessary for information search and access These two concepts
are very different Interactive catalogues are the customized interface to consumer
applications such as home shopping An interactive catalogue is an extension of the
paper-based catalogue and incorporates additional features such as sophisticated
graphics and video to make the advertising more attractive
Directories on the other hand operate behind the scenes and attempt to organize the
enormous amount of information and transactions generated to facilitate electronic
commerce Directory services database make data from any server appear as a local
file A classic example of a directory is the telephone White Pages which allows to
locate people and telephone numbers In the case of electronic commerce directories
would play an important role in information management functions For instance take
the case of buying an airline ticket with several stop overs with a caveat that the time
between layovers be minimize This search would require several queries to various
on-line directories to find empty seats on various airlines and then the availability of
seeds would be coordinated with the amount time spent in the airport terminals
Secure Messaging and Structure Document Interchange Services
The importance of the fourth layer Secure Messaging is clear Everyone in business
knows that electronic messaging is a critical business issue Consider a familiar
business scenario you hand over an urgent fax on Monday and find out on Tuesday
that itrsquos still sitting on your fax operatorrsquos desk What happened The line was busy
and he thought he would try again later Or the number was wrong but he forgot to
let you know Or you are in London and you need to send a spreadsheet that details
a marketing plan for a product introduction strategy to co-worker in New York This
must be done today not tomorrow when the courier service would deliver There is a
solution to these common and frustrating problems Itrsquos called integrated messaging
a group of computer services that through the use of a network send receive and
combine messages faxes and large data files Some better known examples are
electronic mail enhances fax and electronic data interchange
Broadly defined messaging is the software that sits between the network
infrastructure and the clients or electronic commerce applications masking the
peculiarities if the environment Others define messages as a framework for the total
implementation of portable applications divorcing you from the architectural primitives
of your system In general messaging products are not applications that solve
problems they are more enablers of the application that solve problems
Messaging services offer solution for communicating non-formatted (Unstructured)
data such as purchase orders shipping notices and invoices Unstructured messaging
consists of fax e-mail and form based systems like Lotus Notes Structured
documents messaging consists of the automated interchange of standardized and
approved messages between computer applications via telecommunications lines
Examples of structured document messaging include EDI
Messaging is gaining momentum in electronic commerce and seems to have many
advantages It supports both synchronous (immediate) and asynchronous (delayed)
message delivery and processing With asynchronous messaging when a message
is sent work continues (software doesnrsquot wait for a response) This allows the transfer
of messages through store-and-forward methods
The main disadvantages of messaging are the new types of applications it enables-
which appear to be more complex especially to traditional programmers-and the
jungle of standards it involves Because of the lack of standards there is often no
interoperability between different messaging vendors leading to islands of messaging
Also security privacy and confidentiality through data encryption and authentication
techniques are important issues that need to be resolved for ensuring the legality of
the message-based transactions themselves
Middleware Services
Middleware is a relatively new concept that emerged only recently Like so many other
innovations it came in being out of necessity Users in the 1970rsquos when vendors
delivered homogenous systems that worked didnrsquot have a need for middleware When
conditions changed-along with the hardware and the software the organizations
couldnrsquot The tools were inadequate the backlog was enormous and the pressure
was over whelming And the users were dissatisfied Something was needed to solve
all the interface translation transformation and interpretation problems that were
driving application developers crazy
With the growth of networks client-server technology and all other forms of
communicating betweenamong unlike platforms the problems of getting all pieces to
work together grew from formidable to horrendous As the cry for distributed
computing spread users demanded interaction between dissimilar system networks
that permitted shared resources and applications that could be accessed by multiple
software programs In simple terms middleware is the ultimate mediator between
diverse software programs that enables them talk to one another
Transparency
Transparency implies that users should be unaware that they are accessing multiple
systems Transparency is essential for dealing with higher-level issues than physical
media and interconnection that the underlying network infrastructure is in charge of
The ideal picture is one of a ldquoVirtualrdquo network a collection of work-group
departmental enterprise and inter-enterprise LANs that appears to the end user or
client application to be a seamless and easily accessed whole
Transparency is accomplished using middleware that facilities a distributed computing
environment This gives users and applications transparent access to data
computation and other resources across collections of multivendor heterogeneous
systems The strategic architectures of every major system vendor are now based on
some form of middleware The key to realizing the theoretical benefits of such an
architecture is transparency Users need not spend their time to understand where
something is Nor should application developers have to code into their applications
the exact locations of resources over the network The goal is for the applications to
send a request to the middleware layer which then satisfies the request any way it
can using remote information
Transaction Security and management
Support for transaction processing (TP) is fundamental to success in the electronic
commerce market Security and Management are essential to all layers in the
electronic commerce model Transaction integrity must be given for businesses that
cannot afford any loss or inconsistency in data For electronic commerce middleware
provides the qualities expected in the standard TP system the so-called ACID
property (Atomicity Consistency Isolation and Durability)
World Wide Web (WWW) As the Architecture
Electronic commerce depends on the unspoken assumption that computers
cooperate efficiently for seamless information sharing Unfortunately this assumption
of interoperability has been supported by the realities of practical computing
Computing is still a world made up of many technical directions product
implementations and competing vendors This diversity while good for innovation
causes problem as the E-Commerce applications try to impose a certain discipline on
the proliferating computers and networks It is ironic that real effect of computing is all
too often the prevention of data sharing due to incompatibility-architectures data
formats and communication protocols
What does the WEB Encompass
The Web has become an umbrella for a wide range of concepts and technologies that
differ markedly in purpose and scope These include the global hypertext publishing
concept the universal reader concept and the client-server concept
The global hypertext publishing concept promotes the idea of seamless information
world in which all on-line information can be accessed and retrieve in a consistent and
simple way To access information in this seamless world we will need the ability to
address many types of data-text files images sound files and animation sequences
The universal readership concept promotes the idea that unlike the segmented
applications of the past we can use one application-a universal (or common) user
interface-to read a variety of documents This concept implies that once information
is published it is accessible from any type of computer in any country and that any
(authorized) person merely needs to use one simple program to access it This is
accomplished in the web by using a core browser or application that is augmented by
supporting applications The core browser implements only minimal functionality and
attempts to offload more specialized work onto the supporting applications
The client-server concept allows the web to grow easily without any centralized
control Anyone can publish information and anyone (as long as He or She is
authorized) can read and download it Publishing information requires a server
program and reading data requires a client browser All the clients and all the servers
are connected to one another by the Internet The various standard protocols allows
all clients to communicate with all servers
In practice the web hands on a number of essential concepts including the following
i) The addressing schemes known as Uniform Resource Locator (URL) makes
the hypermedia world possible despite many different protocols
ii) A network protocol known as hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) used by client
browsers and servers offers performance and features not otherwise available
iii) A mark-up language (HTML) which every web client is requires to understand
is used for the representation of hypertext documents containing text list boxes
and graphics information across the net
Chapter 4
Technological Behind the Web
Information providers (or publishers) run programs (called servers) from which the
browsers (client can obtain information) These programs can either be Wed servers
that understand the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) ldquoGatewayrdquo program that
convert an existing information format to hypertext or a non-HTTP server that Web
browsers can access-anonymous FTP or Gopher servers
Web servers are composed of two major parts the Hypertext Transfer protocol for
transmitting documents between servers and clients and the hypertext Markup
language (HTML) format for documents The link between HTML files and the HTTP
servers is provided by the Uniform Resource Locators (URLs)
Uniform Resource Locator
The documents that the browsers display are hypertext that contains pointers to other
documents The browsers let you deal with the pointers in a transparent way ndash select
the pointer and you are presented with the text to which it points This pointer is
implemented using a concept that is central to Web browsers Uniform Resource
Locators (URLs) One way to think about URLs is to use the libraries and location on
a shelf as a metaphor A URL for a digital library would be a unique call number that
provides the exact location of every book in the world including the country city street
and library shelf location
In practice URLs are the strings used as addresses of objects (documents images)
on the Web Think of them as analogous to your E-mail address Just as your address
is unique and maybe used by any other Internet users to send you mail without
knowing exactly where you are a URL marks the unique location on the Internet
where a file or service can be found
URLs follow a fairly consistent pattern The first part describes the type of resource
the second part gives the name of the server housing the resource and the third part
gives full file name of the resource URLs are Universal in that they provide access to
a wide range of network services which required separate applications in the past For
a new network protocol one can easily form an address as the set of parameters
necessary to retrieve the object If these parameters are encoded into a concise string
with a prefix to identify the protocols and encoding one has a new URL scheme Take
a look at the URL formats below
FTP ftpserveraddresscompletefilename
Gopher gopherserveraddressportdirectoryfilename
TELNET telnetserveraddressport
HTTP httpserveraddressporthomepagehtml
News newsmiscstocksinvest
These are URLs for Internet news articles and news groups (The NNTP protocol) and
for HTTP archives for TELNET destinations E-mail addresses and so on The same
can done for names of objects in a given name space For example the URL of the
main page for the Web project happens to be
httpwebw3orghypertextwebTheProjecthtml The prefix ldquoHTTPrdquo in the preceding
example indicates the address space and defines the interpretation of the rest of the
string The HTTP protocol is to be used so the string contains the address of the
server to be contacted and a sub string to be passed to the server
As noted earlier different protocols use different syntaxes but they do have a small
amount in common For example the common URL syntax reserve the solidus () as
a way of representing a hierarchical space the pound label () as a way of pointing
inside the document and question mark () as a separator between the address of an
object and the query operation applied to it Hierarchical spaces are useful for
hypertext where one ldquoworkrdquo maybe split up into many interlinked documents the
allows relative name to exploit the hierarchical structure and allows links to be made
within the work independent of the higher parts of the URL such as the server name
URLs are central to the Web architecture The fact that it is easy to address and object
anywhere on the internet is essential for the system to scale and for the information
space to be independent of the network and server topology
Chapter 5
Network Security and Firewalls
The ability to conduct business on a public network has strong attraction ndash and the
potential for big savings Security and confidentiality are essential however before
businesses can conduct financial transactions over the internet and a lack of
widespread security measures remains at this time At present credit card numbers
financial records and other important information are not encrypted and can be
intercepted by any savvy Internet hacker
The discussion of security is concerns in electronic commerce can be divided into two
broad types
1 Client-server security usages various authorization methods to make sure that only
valid users and programs have access to information resource such as database
Access control mechanisms must be set up to ensure that properly authentication
user are allowed access only to those resource that they are entitled to use Such
mechanism includes password protection encrypted smart card biometric and
firewalls
2 Data and transaction security ensures the privacy and confidentiality in electronic
messages and data packets including the authentication of remote users in
network truncation of activity such as on-line payment The goal is to defeat any
attempt to assume another identity while involved while electronic mail or other
forms of data communication Preventive measure include data encryption using
various cryptographic methods
Data and message security
The lack of data and message security on the Internet has become a high profile
problem due to increasing number of merchants trying to spur commerce on the global
network For instance credit card numbers in there plain text form create a risk when
transmitted across the internet where the possibility of the number falling into the
wrong hands is relatively high Would you be willing to type in your credit card number
knowing the risk Even worse would you expose your customer to that risk Just the
thought of ldquosnifferrdquo programs that collect credit card numbers en masse is enough to
keep merchants away from on-line shopping given the possible lawsuits and other
liability issues In sort the lack of business truncation security is widely acknowledge
as a major implement to widespread e-commerce
Encrypted Documents and Electronic Mail
E-mail users who desires confidentiality and sender are using encryption Encryption
is simply to intend to keep personal thoughts personal Some users are already using
Pretty Good Personality (PGP) others are starting to use Privacy Enhanced Mail
(PEM)
E-mail is typically encrypted for the reason that all network correspondence is open
for eavesdropping Internet e-mail is obviously far less secure then the postal system
where envelopes protect correspondence for casual snooping A glance at the header
area of e-mail message by contrast will show that it has passed through a number of
nodes on its way to you Every one of these nodes presents the opportunity for
snooping
Chapter 6
Electronic Commerce Companies
Chapter 7
Pictorial Representation E-buying Methodology
Flipkartcom
STEP 1
STEP 2
STEP 3
STEP 4
STEP 5
STEP 6
STEP 7
STEP 8
STEP 9
STEP 10
STEP 11
STEP 12
Pictorial Representation E-buying Methodology
Yepmecom
STEP 1
STEP 2
STEP 3
STEP 4
STEP 5
STEP 6
STEP 7
STEP 8
STEP 9
Chapter 8
Conclusion
E-commerce is growing tremendously A lot of companies have joined between the
period July and August Online retail is still a tiny spot in Indiarsquos retail market of about
$500 billion a year but it is growing at a quick pace A study by retail consultancy
Techno-park predicts Indiarsquos e-tailing market will reach $32 billion by 2020 from $23
billion in 2014
Ethnic Indian clothes and casual wear are favorite products but unusual products like
Pets-too are to being offered online With a huge growth that e-commerce has
witnessed in recent times analysts like Devangshu Dutta sales there is scope for more
players to come in But some also warn about the risks the space is fraught with as
only a few may have chances of making it big They also see consolidation in the
sector going forward
Bibliography
Frontiers of Electronic commerce by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew B Whinston
Big E-commerce deals stir up Sector-Economic Times
wwwflipkartcom
wwwYepmecom
Chapter 1
Introduction
Every individual of company that wants to make money and become the next Microsoft
needs to understand the market potential business implication and technological
foundation of Electronic Commerce But what is Electronic Commerce everybody is
talking about How does it affect the organizations way of doing business What sort
of technical and business skills are needed to be successful
Companies and consumers are discovering that global networking and other
technological innovations are powerful assets if used as competitive weapons in their
day to day activities E-Commerce is associated with the buying and selling of
information products and services via computer network today
Consumer desires are very hard to predict pinpoint or decipher in electronic markets
whose shape structure and population are still in early stages Needs envisioned
include entertainment on demand including 500 channels TV video on demand
games on demand electronic retailing via catalogues and kiosks and home shopping
networks
In future viewers will decide what they want to see and when they want to participate
and successful market places are expected to those that cater to consumerrsquos
loneliness boredom education and carrier In a highly competitive society where
neighbors seldom talk to one another these outlets give consumer someone to talk
after going home
Letrsquos take a look at the changing conditions in the ldquoNEW Economyrdquo with respect to the
retail industry Consumers are pushing retailers to the wall demanding lower prices
better quality and a large-section of in-season goods Retailers are scrambling to fill
the order They are slushing back-office cost producing profit margins producing
cycle-times buying more wisely and making huge investment in technology They are
revamping distribution channels to make sure that warehouses cost are down by
reducing their average inventory levels and coordinating the consumer demand and
supply pattern
In the push to reduce prices more and more retailers are turning to overseas suppliers
in part because of cheaper labour cost Retail are the immediate line of fire and had
to do the cost cutting They put the pressure on the manufacturer and then the supplier
end of the pipeline
Electronic Commerce is forcing companies to rethink the existing ways of doing target
marketing relationship marketing and even event marketing Adaptation would
include moving towards computerized ldquoPaperlessrdquo operations to reduce trading cost
and facilitate the adoption of new business process
Japanese approach JIT (Just in Time) system total quality control and quality circles
are focused now for delivery of goods through electronic commerce
Chapter 2
Electronic Commerce and the World-Wide-Web
We have broadly defined electronic commerce as a modern business methodology
that address the desire of firms consumers and management to cut costs while
improving the quality of goods and increasing the speed of services The need for
electronic commerce stems from the demand within business and government to
make better use of computing that is better apply computer technology to improve
business process and information exchange both within an enterprise and across
organizations In short electronic commerce appears to be an integrating force that
represents the digital conversions of Twenty-First Century business applications and
computing technologies
Electronic Commerce applications emphasis the generation and exploitation of new
business opportunity and to use the popular buzzword ldquoGenerate Business Valuerdquo
For instance when buyer-seller transactions occur in the electronic marketplace
information is accessed observed arranged and sold in different ways In fact the
information about a product or service is separated from the physical product or
service and has become important on its own In some cases the information can
become as crucial as the actual product or service in terms of its effect in a companyrsquos
profits In short information based business transactions are creating new ways of
doing business and even new types of business
Electronic Commerce applications are quite varied In its most common form E-
commerce is also used to donate the paperless exchange of business information
using EDI Electronic-mail (E-mail) Electronic Bulletin-boards Electronic funds
transfer (EFT) and other similar technologies These technologies are normally
applied in high-payoff areas recognizing that paper-handling activity usually increase
expense without having value On the other hand the term Electronic Commerce is
used to describe a new on-line approach to perform traditional functions such as
payment and funds transfer order entry and processing invoicing inventory
management cargo tracking electronic catalogues and point-of-sale data gathering
More recently companies have realized that the advertising marketing and customer
support functions are also part of Electronic-Commerce application domain These
business functions act as initiator to the entire order management cycle that
incorporates the more established notions of Electronic Commerce In short what we
are witnessing is the use of the term Electronic Commerce as an umbrella concept to
integrate a wide range of new and old applications
Electronic Document
Interchange (EDI)
Electronic Fund
Transfer (EFT)
Electronic
Publishing
Despite the change taking place business have three goals stay competative
improve productivity and deliver quality service These goals are guiding buoys for
firma plotting their course in the turbulent waters of electronic commerce There are
other factors that companies need to keep in mind First most companies have
already made enormous information technology investments to automate their key
internal processes such as purchasing invoicing and other simliar functons So some
aspects of the technological infratructure for electronic commerce are already in place
The challenge now become How to effectively leverage this investment Second
prices for computer hardware and network equipment continue to fall marking
information technology an appealing investment for many businesses specially when
its used for high-impact application such as linking their distributed operations
However investment without a clear idea of the electronic commerce architecture
being built would be akin to driving with blinders on As a result companies that have
decided that electronic commerce applications represent one of the best strategic
investment they can make must first exert some effort to understand the technology
underlying electronic commerce applications
At first glance it appears that messaging based technologies such as EDI and Mail-
Enabled applications combined with database and information management service
form the technical foundation for effective electronic commerce solutions no single
one of these technologies can deliver the full potential of electronic commerce
however What we require is an integrated architecture the likes of which has never
been seen before This integrated architecture is emerging in the form of the World
Wide Wed (WWW) As electronic commerce becomes more mature we are beginning
to see sophisticated application being developed on WWW Technically and
commercially the WWW client-server model seems poised to become a dominent
technology
Electronic Document Interchange
Electronic
Commerce
Information Sharing Marketing Advertising
Collaborative Work Sales Customer Support
E-mail Fax
Electronic Messaging
Corporate
Digital
Library
Chapter 3
Architectural Framework for Electronic Commerce
The software framework necessary for building Electronic Commerce applications is
little understood in existing literature In general a framework is intended to define and
create tools that integrate the information found in todayrsquos closed systems and allow
the development of E-commerce applications It is important to understand that the
aim of the architechtural framework itself is not to build new database management
system data repository computer languages software agent-based transaction
monitors or communication protocols Rather tha architecture should focus on
synthesizing the diverse resoures already in place in corporations to facilitate the
integration of data and software for better application
We propound that the electronic commerce application architecture consist of six
layers of functionality or services
(1) Application
(2) Brokerage services data or transaction management
(3) Interface and support layers
(4) Secure messaging and electronic document interchange
(5) Middleware and structured document interchange and
(6) Network infrastructure and basic communication services
These layer cooperate to provide a seamless transition between todayrsquos computing
resources and those of tommorow by transparently integrating information access and
exchange within the context of the chosen application As seen in above figure
Application Services Customer-to-business business-to-business Intra-organisational
Brokerage and data management
Order Processing-mail-order houses Payment schemes-electronic cash clearinghouse or virtual mall
Interface layer Interactive catalogue directory support function Software agents
Secure messaging Secure hypertext transfer protocol Encrypted E-mail EDI Remote Programming (RPC)
Middle layer services Structure documents (SGMLHTML) Compound documents (OLEOpenDoc)
Network Infrastructure Wireless-Cellular Radio PCS Wireline-POTS Coaxile Fibre optics
Internal
Publishing
electronic commerce applications are based on several elegant technologies But only
when they are integrated do they provide uniquely powerful solutions In the ensuing
discussion of each of these layerswe will not elaborate on the various aspects of the
network infrastructure that transports information
Electronic Commerce Application Services
The application services layer of E-Commerce will be comprised of existing and future
applications built on innate architecture Three distinct classes of Electronic
Commerce application can be distinguished Customer-to-Business Business-to-
business and intra organisation
i Customer-to-Business Transactions
We call this category market place transaction In a market place transaction
customer learn about products differently through electronic publishing buy them
differently using electronic cash and secure payment systems and have then
delivered Also how customers allocate their loyalty may also be different
Manufacturing
and production
Engineering and
Research
Accounting
Finance and
management
Global Suppliers
Classic EDI
Procurement distribution and logistics
Advertising Sales Customer Service
Customer-oriented
Electronic Commerce
Customers
In light of this organization itself has to adopt to a world where the traditional concepts
of brand differentiation no longer hold ndash where ldquoQualityrdquo has a new meaning where
ldquoContentrdquo may not be equated to ldquoproductrdquo where ldquoDistributionrdquo may not automatically
mean ldquoPhysical Transportrdquo In this new environment brand equity can rapidly
evaporate forcing firms to develop new ways of doing business
ii Business-to-business Transaction
We call this category market-link transactions Here business government and other
organizations depend on computer-to-computer communication as a fast an
economical and a dependable way to conduct business transactions Small
companies are also beginning to see the benefits of adopting the same methods
Business-to-business transaction include the use of EDI and Electronic-mail for
purchasing goods and services buying information and consulting services
submitting requests for proposals and receive proposals
For example the current accounts payable process occurs through the exchange of
paper documents Each year the trading partners exchange millions of invoices
checks purchase orders financial reports and other transactions Most of the
documents are in electronic form at their point of origin but are printed and key-entered
at the point of receipt The current manual process of printing mailing and rekeying is
costly time consuming and error-prone Given this situation and faced with the need
to reduce costs small businesses are looking towards electronic commerce as
possible saviour
iii Intra-organizational Transactions
We call this category market-driven transaction A company becomes market driven
by dispersing throughout the firm information about its customers and competitors by
spreading strategic and tactical decision making so that all units can participate and
by continuously monitoring their customer commitment by making improved customer
satisfaction an ongoing objective To maintain the relationships that are critical to
delivering superior customer value management must pay close attention to service
both before and after sales
Information Brokerage amp management
The Information Brokerage and Management layer provide service integration through
the notion of information brokerages the development of which is necessitated by the
increasing information resource fragmentation We use the notion of Information
Brokerage to represent an intermediary who provides service integration between
customers and information providers given some constraint such as a low price fast
service or profit maximization for a client
Information Brokers for example are rapidly becoming necessary in dealing with the
voluminous amounts of information on the networks As on-line database migrate to
consumer information utilities consumers and information professionals will have to
keep up the knowledge and ownership of all these systems Whorsquos got what How do
you use it What do they charge Most professionals have enough trouble keeping
trap of files of interest on one or two database services With all the complexity
associated with large number of on-line databases and service bureau itrsquos impossible
to expect humans to do the searching it will have to be software programs-information
brokers or software agents to use the most popular term-act on searchers behalf
Information Brokerage does more than just searching
Interface and Support Service
The third layer interface and support services will provide interfaces for electronic
commerce application such as interactive catalogues and will support directory
services-functions necessary for information search and access These two concepts
are very different Interactive catalogues are the customized interface to consumer
applications such as home shopping An interactive catalogue is an extension of the
paper-based catalogue and incorporates additional features such as sophisticated
graphics and video to make the advertising more attractive
Directories on the other hand operate behind the scenes and attempt to organize the
enormous amount of information and transactions generated to facilitate electronic
commerce Directory services database make data from any server appear as a local
file A classic example of a directory is the telephone White Pages which allows to
locate people and telephone numbers In the case of electronic commerce directories
would play an important role in information management functions For instance take
the case of buying an airline ticket with several stop overs with a caveat that the time
between layovers be minimize This search would require several queries to various
on-line directories to find empty seats on various airlines and then the availability of
seeds would be coordinated with the amount time spent in the airport terminals
Secure Messaging and Structure Document Interchange Services
The importance of the fourth layer Secure Messaging is clear Everyone in business
knows that electronic messaging is a critical business issue Consider a familiar
business scenario you hand over an urgent fax on Monday and find out on Tuesday
that itrsquos still sitting on your fax operatorrsquos desk What happened The line was busy
and he thought he would try again later Or the number was wrong but he forgot to
let you know Or you are in London and you need to send a spreadsheet that details
a marketing plan for a product introduction strategy to co-worker in New York This
must be done today not tomorrow when the courier service would deliver There is a
solution to these common and frustrating problems Itrsquos called integrated messaging
a group of computer services that through the use of a network send receive and
combine messages faxes and large data files Some better known examples are
electronic mail enhances fax and electronic data interchange
Broadly defined messaging is the software that sits between the network
infrastructure and the clients or electronic commerce applications masking the
peculiarities if the environment Others define messages as a framework for the total
implementation of portable applications divorcing you from the architectural primitives
of your system In general messaging products are not applications that solve
problems they are more enablers of the application that solve problems
Messaging services offer solution for communicating non-formatted (Unstructured)
data such as purchase orders shipping notices and invoices Unstructured messaging
consists of fax e-mail and form based systems like Lotus Notes Structured
documents messaging consists of the automated interchange of standardized and
approved messages between computer applications via telecommunications lines
Examples of structured document messaging include EDI
Messaging is gaining momentum in electronic commerce and seems to have many
advantages It supports both synchronous (immediate) and asynchronous (delayed)
message delivery and processing With asynchronous messaging when a message
is sent work continues (software doesnrsquot wait for a response) This allows the transfer
of messages through store-and-forward methods
The main disadvantages of messaging are the new types of applications it enables-
which appear to be more complex especially to traditional programmers-and the
jungle of standards it involves Because of the lack of standards there is often no
interoperability between different messaging vendors leading to islands of messaging
Also security privacy and confidentiality through data encryption and authentication
techniques are important issues that need to be resolved for ensuring the legality of
the message-based transactions themselves
Middleware Services
Middleware is a relatively new concept that emerged only recently Like so many other
innovations it came in being out of necessity Users in the 1970rsquos when vendors
delivered homogenous systems that worked didnrsquot have a need for middleware When
conditions changed-along with the hardware and the software the organizations
couldnrsquot The tools were inadequate the backlog was enormous and the pressure
was over whelming And the users were dissatisfied Something was needed to solve
all the interface translation transformation and interpretation problems that were
driving application developers crazy
With the growth of networks client-server technology and all other forms of
communicating betweenamong unlike platforms the problems of getting all pieces to
work together grew from formidable to horrendous As the cry for distributed
computing spread users demanded interaction between dissimilar system networks
that permitted shared resources and applications that could be accessed by multiple
software programs In simple terms middleware is the ultimate mediator between
diverse software programs that enables them talk to one another
Transparency
Transparency implies that users should be unaware that they are accessing multiple
systems Transparency is essential for dealing with higher-level issues than physical
media and interconnection that the underlying network infrastructure is in charge of
The ideal picture is one of a ldquoVirtualrdquo network a collection of work-group
departmental enterprise and inter-enterprise LANs that appears to the end user or
client application to be a seamless and easily accessed whole
Transparency is accomplished using middleware that facilities a distributed computing
environment This gives users and applications transparent access to data
computation and other resources across collections of multivendor heterogeneous
systems The strategic architectures of every major system vendor are now based on
some form of middleware The key to realizing the theoretical benefits of such an
architecture is transparency Users need not spend their time to understand where
something is Nor should application developers have to code into their applications
the exact locations of resources over the network The goal is for the applications to
send a request to the middleware layer which then satisfies the request any way it
can using remote information
Transaction Security and management
Support for transaction processing (TP) is fundamental to success in the electronic
commerce market Security and Management are essential to all layers in the
electronic commerce model Transaction integrity must be given for businesses that
cannot afford any loss or inconsistency in data For electronic commerce middleware
provides the qualities expected in the standard TP system the so-called ACID
property (Atomicity Consistency Isolation and Durability)
World Wide Web (WWW) As the Architecture
Electronic commerce depends on the unspoken assumption that computers
cooperate efficiently for seamless information sharing Unfortunately this assumption
of interoperability has been supported by the realities of practical computing
Computing is still a world made up of many technical directions product
implementations and competing vendors This diversity while good for innovation
causes problem as the E-Commerce applications try to impose a certain discipline on
the proliferating computers and networks It is ironic that real effect of computing is all
too often the prevention of data sharing due to incompatibility-architectures data
formats and communication protocols
What does the WEB Encompass
The Web has become an umbrella for a wide range of concepts and technologies that
differ markedly in purpose and scope These include the global hypertext publishing
concept the universal reader concept and the client-server concept
The global hypertext publishing concept promotes the idea of seamless information
world in which all on-line information can be accessed and retrieve in a consistent and
simple way To access information in this seamless world we will need the ability to
address many types of data-text files images sound files and animation sequences
The universal readership concept promotes the idea that unlike the segmented
applications of the past we can use one application-a universal (or common) user
interface-to read a variety of documents This concept implies that once information
is published it is accessible from any type of computer in any country and that any
(authorized) person merely needs to use one simple program to access it This is
accomplished in the web by using a core browser or application that is augmented by
supporting applications The core browser implements only minimal functionality and
attempts to offload more specialized work onto the supporting applications
The client-server concept allows the web to grow easily without any centralized
control Anyone can publish information and anyone (as long as He or She is
authorized) can read and download it Publishing information requires a server
program and reading data requires a client browser All the clients and all the servers
are connected to one another by the Internet The various standard protocols allows
all clients to communicate with all servers
In practice the web hands on a number of essential concepts including the following
i) The addressing schemes known as Uniform Resource Locator (URL) makes
the hypermedia world possible despite many different protocols
ii) A network protocol known as hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) used by client
browsers and servers offers performance and features not otherwise available
iii) A mark-up language (HTML) which every web client is requires to understand
is used for the representation of hypertext documents containing text list boxes
and graphics information across the net
Chapter 4
Technological Behind the Web
Information providers (or publishers) run programs (called servers) from which the
browsers (client can obtain information) These programs can either be Wed servers
that understand the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) ldquoGatewayrdquo program that
convert an existing information format to hypertext or a non-HTTP server that Web
browsers can access-anonymous FTP or Gopher servers
Web servers are composed of two major parts the Hypertext Transfer protocol for
transmitting documents between servers and clients and the hypertext Markup
language (HTML) format for documents The link between HTML files and the HTTP
servers is provided by the Uniform Resource Locators (URLs)
Uniform Resource Locator
The documents that the browsers display are hypertext that contains pointers to other
documents The browsers let you deal with the pointers in a transparent way ndash select
the pointer and you are presented with the text to which it points This pointer is
implemented using a concept that is central to Web browsers Uniform Resource
Locators (URLs) One way to think about URLs is to use the libraries and location on
a shelf as a metaphor A URL for a digital library would be a unique call number that
provides the exact location of every book in the world including the country city street
and library shelf location
In practice URLs are the strings used as addresses of objects (documents images)
on the Web Think of them as analogous to your E-mail address Just as your address
is unique and maybe used by any other Internet users to send you mail without
knowing exactly where you are a URL marks the unique location on the Internet
where a file or service can be found
URLs follow a fairly consistent pattern The first part describes the type of resource
the second part gives the name of the server housing the resource and the third part
gives full file name of the resource URLs are Universal in that they provide access to
a wide range of network services which required separate applications in the past For
a new network protocol one can easily form an address as the set of parameters
necessary to retrieve the object If these parameters are encoded into a concise string
with a prefix to identify the protocols and encoding one has a new URL scheme Take
a look at the URL formats below
FTP ftpserveraddresscompletefilename
Gopher gopherserveraddressportdirectoryfilename
TELNET telnetserveraddressport
HTTP httpserveraddressporthomepagehtml
News newsmiscstocksinvest
These are URLs for Internet news articles and news groups (The NNTP protocol) and
for HTTP archives for TELNET destinations E-mail addresses and so on The same
can done for names of objects in a given name space For example the URL of the
main page for the Web project happens to be
httpwebw3orghypertextwebTheProjecthtml The prefix ldquoHTTPrdquo in the preceding
example indicates the address space and defines the interpretation of the rest of the
string The HTTP protocol is to be used so the string contains the address of the
server to be contacted and a sub string to be passed to the server
As noted earlier different protocols use different syntaxes but they do have a small
amount in common For example the common URL syntax reserve the solidus () as
a way of representing a hierarchical space the pound label () as a way of pointing
inside the document and question mark () as a separator between the address of an
object and the query operation applied to it Hierarchical spaces are useful for
hypertext where one ldquoworkrdquo maybe split up into many interlinked documents the
allows relative name to exploit the hierarchical structure and allows links to be made
within the work independent of the higher parts of the URL such as the server name
URLs are central to the Web architecture The fact that it is easy to address and object
anywhere on the internet is essential for the system to scale and for the information
space to be independent of the network and server topology
Chapter 5
Network Security and Firewalls
The ability to conduct business on a public network has strong attraction ndash and the
potential for big savings Security and confidentiality are essential however before
businesses can conduct financial transactions over the internet and a lack of
widespread security measures remains at this time At present credit card numbers
financial records and other important information are not encrypted and can be
intercepted by any savvy Internet hacker
The discussion of security is concerns in electronic commerce can be divided into two
broad types
1 Client-server security usages various authorization methods to make sure that only
valid users and programs have access to information resource such as database
Access control mechanisms must be set up to ensure that properly authentication
user are allowed access only to those resource that they are entitled to use Such
mechanism includes password protection encrypted smart card biometric and
firewalls
2 Data and transaction security ensures the privacy and confidentiality in electronic
messages and data packets including the authentication of remote users in
network truncation of activity such as on-line payment The goal is to defeat any
attempt to assume another identity while involved while electronic mail or other
forms of data communication Preventive measure include data encryption using
various cryptographic methods
Data and message security
The lack of data and message security on the Internet has become a high profile
problem due to increasing number of merchants trying to spur commerce on the global
network For instance credit card numbers in there plain text form create a risk when
transmitted across the internet where the possibility of the number falling into the
wrong hands is relatively high Would you be willing to type in your credit card number
knowing the risk Even worse would you expose your customer to that risk Just the
thought of ldquosnifferrdquo programs that collect credit card numbers en masse is enough to
keep merchants away from on-line shopping given the possible lawsuits and other
liability issues In sort the lack of business truncation security is widely acknowledge
as a major implement to widespread e-commerce
Encrypted Documents and Electronic Mail
E-mail users who desires confidentiality and sender are using encryption Encryption
is simply to intend to keep personal thoughts personal Some users are already using
Pretty Good Personality (PGP) others are starting to use Privacy Enhanced Mail
(PEM)
E-mail is typically encrypted for the reason that all network correspondence is open
for eavesdropping Internet e-mail is obviously far less secure then the postal system
where envelopes protect correspondence for casual snooping A glance at the header
area of e-mail message by contrast will show that it has passed through a number of
nodes on its way to you Every one of these nodes presents the opportunity for
snooping
Chapter 6
Electronic Commerce Companies
Chapter 7
Pictorial Representation E-buying Methodology
Flipkartcom
STEP 1
STEP 2
STEP 3
STEP 4
STEP 5
STEP 6
STEP 7
STEP 8
STEP 9
STEP 10
STEP 11
STEP 12
Pictorial Representation E-buying Methodology
Yepmecom
STEP 1
STEP 2
STEP 3
STEP 4
STEP 5
STEP 6
STEP 7
STEP 8
STEP 9
Chapter 8
Conclusion
E-commerce is growing tremendously A lot of companies have joined between the
period July and August Online retail is still a tiny spot in Indiarsquos retail market of about
$500 billion a year but it is growing at a quick pace A study by retail consultancy
Techno-park predicts Indiarsquos e-tailing market will reach $32 billion by 2020 from $23
billion in 2014
Ethnic Indian clothes and casual wear are favorite products but unusual products like
Pets-too are to being offered online With a huge growth that e-commerce has
witnessed in recent times analysts like Devangshu Dutta sales there is scope for more
players to come in But some also warn about the risks the space is fraught with as
only a few may have chances of making it big They also see consolidation in the
sector going forward
Bibliography
Frontiers of Electronic commerce by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew B Whinston
Big E-commerce deals stir up Sector-Economic Times
wwwflipkartcom
wwwYepmecom
Chapter 2
Electronic Commerce and the World-Wide-Web
We have broadly defined electronic commerce as a modern business methodology
that address the desire of firms consumers and management to cut costs while
improving the quality of goods and increasing the speed of services The need for
electronic commerce stems from the demand within business and government to
make better use of computing that is better apply computer technology to improve
business process and information exchange both within an enterprise and across
organizations In short electronic commerce appears to be an integrating force that
represents the digital conversions of Twenty-First Century business applications and
computing technologies
Electronic Commerce applications emphasis the generation and exploitation of new
business opportunity and to use the popular buzzword ldquoGenerate Business Valuerdquo
For instance when buyer-seller transactions occur in the electronic marketplace
information is accessed observed arranged and sold in different ways In fact the
information about a product or service is separated from the physical product or
service and has become important on its own In some cases the information can
become as crucial as the actual product or service in terms of its effect in a companyrsquos
profits In short information based business transactions are creating new ways of
doing business and even new types of business
Electronic Commerce applications are quite varied In its most common form E-
commerce is also used to donate the paperless exchange of business information
using EDI Electronic-mail (E-mail) Electronic Bulletin-boards Electronic funds
transfer (EFT) and other similar technologies These technologies are normally
applied in high-payoff areas recognizing that paper-handling activity usually increase
expense without having value On the other hand the term Electronic Commerce is
used to describe a new on-line approach to perform traditional functions such as
payment and funds transfer order entry and processing invoicing inventory
management cargo tracking electronic catalogues and point-of-sale data gathering
More recently companies have realized that the advertising marketing and customer
support functions are also part of Electronic-Commerce application domain These
business functions act as initiator to the entire order management cycle that
incorporates the more established notions of Electronic Commerce In short what we
are witnessing is the use of the term Electronic Commerce as an umbrella concept to
integrate a wide range of new and old applications
Electronic Document
Interchange (EDI)
Electronic Fund
Transfer (EFT)
Electronic
Publishing
Despite the change taking place business have three goals stay competative
improve productivity and deliver quality service These goals are guiding buoys for
firma plotting their course in the turbulent waters of electronic commerce There are
other factors that companies need to keep in mind First most companies have
already made enormous information technology investments to automate their key
internal processes such as purchasing invoicing and other simliar functons So some
aspects of the technological infratructure for electronic commerce are already in place
The challenge now become How to effectively leverage this investment Second
prices for computer hardware and network equipment continue to fall marking
information technology an appealing investment for many businesses specially when
its used for high-impact application such as linking their distributed operations
However investment without a clear idea of the electronic commerce architecture
being built would be akin to driving with blinders on As a result companies that have
decided that electronic commerce applications represent one of the best strategic
investment they can make must first exert some effort to understand the technology
underlying electronic commerce applications
At first glance it appears that messaging based technologies such as EDI and Mail-
Enabled applications combined with database and information management service
form the technical foundation for effective electronic commerce solutions no single
one of these technologies can deliver the full potential of electronic commerce
however What we require is an integrated architecture the likes of which has never
been seen before This integrated architecture is emerging in the form of the World
Wide Wed (WWW) As electronic commerce becomes more mature we are beginning
to see sophisticated application being developed on WWW Technically and
commercially the WWW client-server model seems poised to become a dominent
technology
Electronic Document Interchange
Electronic
Commerce
Information Sharing Marketing Advertising
Collaborative Work Sales Customer Support
E-mail Fax
Electronic Messaging
Corporate
Digital
Library
Chapter 3
Architectural Framework for Electronic Commerce
The software framework necessary for building Electronic Commerce applications is
little understood in existing literature In general a framework is intended to define and
create tools that integrate the information found in todayrsquos closed systems and allow
the development of E-commerce applications It is important to understand that the
aim of the architechtural framework itself is not to build new database management
system data repository computer languages software agent-based transaction
monitors or communication protocols Rather tha architecture should focus on
synthesizing the diverse resoures already in place in corporations to facilitate the
integration of data and software for better application
We propound that the electronic commerce application architecture consist of six
layers of functionality or services
(1) Application
(2) Brokerage services data or transaction management
(3) Interface and support layers
(4) Secure messaging and electronic document interchange
(5) Middleware and structured document interchange and
(6) Network infrastructure and basic communication services
These layer cooperate to provide a seamless transition between todayrsquos computing
resources and those of tommorow by transparently integrating information access and
exchange within the context of the chosen application As seen in above figure
Application Services Customer-to-business business-to-business Intra-organisational
Brokerage and data management
Order Processing-mail-order houses Payment schemes-electronic cash clearinghouse or virtual mall
Interface layer Interactive catalogue directory support function Software agents
Secure messaging Secure hypertext transfer protocol Encrypted E-mail EDI Remote Programming (RPC)
Middle layer services Structure documents (SGMLHTML) Compound documents (OLEOpenDoc)
Network Infrastructure Wireless-Cellular Radio PCS Wireline-POTS Coaxile Fibre optics
Internal
Publishing
electronic commerce applications are based on several elegant technologies But only
when they are integrated do they provide uniquely powerful solutions In the ensuing
discussion of each of these layerswe will not elaborate on the various aspects of the
network infrastructure that transports information
Electronic Commerce Application Services
The application services layer of E-Commerce will be comprised of existing and future
applications built on innate architecture Three distinct classes of Electronic
Commerce application can be distinguished Customer-to-Business Business-to-
business and intra organisation
i Customer-to-Business Transactions
We call this category market place transaction In a market place transaction
customer learn about products differently through electronic publishing buy them
differently using electronic cash and secure payment systems and have then
delivered Also how customers allocate their loyalty may also be different
Manufacturing
and production
Engineering and
Research
Accounting
Finance and
management
Global Suppliers
Classic EDI
Procurement distribution and logistics
Advertising Sales Customer Service
Customer-oriented
Electronic Commerce
Customers
In light of this organization itself has to adopt to a world where the traditional concepts
of brand differentiation no longer hold ndash where ldquoQualityrdquo has a new meaning where
ldquoContentrdquo may not be equated to ldquoproductrdquo where ldquoDistributionrdquo may not automatically
mean ldquoPhysical Transportrdquo In this new environment brand equity can rapidly
evaporate forcing firms to develop new ways of doing business
ii Business-to-business Transaction
We call this category market-link transactions Here business government and other
organizations depend on computer-to-computer communication as a fast an
economical and a dependable way to conduct business transactions Small
companies are also beginning to see the benefits of adopting the same methods
Business-to-business transaction include the use of EDI and Electronic-mail for
purchasing goods and services buying information and consulting services
submitting requests for proposals and receive proposals
For example the current accounts payable process occurs through the exchange of
paper documents Each year the trading partners exchange millions of invoices
checks purchase orders financial reports and other transactions Most of the
documents are in electronic form at their point of origin but are printed and key-entered
at the point of receipt The current manual process of printing mailing and rekeying is
costly time consuming and error-prone Given this situation and faced with the need
to reduce costs small businesses are looking towards electronic commerce as
possible saviour
iii Intra-organizational Transactions
We call this category market-driven transaction A company becomes market driven
by dispersing throughout the firm information about its customers and competitors by
spreading strategic and tactical decision making so that all units can participate and
by continuously monitoring their customer commitment by making improved customer
satisfaction an ongoing objective To maintain the relationships that are critical to
delivering superior customer value management must pay close attention to service
both before and after sales
Information Brokerage amp management
The Information Brokerage and Management layer provide service integration through
the notion of information brokerages the development of which is necessitated by the
increasing information resource fragmentation We use the notion of Information
Brokerage to represent an intermediary who provides service integration between
customers and information providers given some constraint such as a low price fast
service or profit maximization for a client
Information Brokers for example are rapidly becoming necessary in dealing with the
voluminous amounts of information on the networks As on-line database migrate to
consumer information utilities consumers and information professionals will have to
keep up the knowledge and ownership of all these systems Whorsquos got what How do
you use it What do they charge Most professionals have enough trouble keeping
trap of files of interest on one or two database services With all the complexity
associated with large number of on-line databases and service bureau itrsquos impossible
to expect humans to do the searching it will have to be software programs-information
brokers or software agents to use the most popular term-act on searchers behalf
Information Brokerage does more than just searching
Interface and Support Service
The third layer interface and support services will provide interfaces for electronic
commerce application such as interactive catalogues and will support directory
services-functions necessary for information search and access These two concepts
are very different Interactive catalogues are the customized interface to consumer
applications such as home shopping An interactive catalogue is an extension of the
paper-based catalogue and incorporates additional features such as sophisticated
graphics and video to make the advertising more attractive
Directories on the other hand operate behind the scenes and attempt to organize the
enormous amount of information and transactions generated to facilitate electronic
commerce Directory services database make data from any server appear as a local
file A classic example of a directory is the telephone White Pages which allows to
locate people and telephone numbers In the case of electronic commerce directories
would play an important role in information management functions For instance take
the case of buying an airline ticket with several stop overs with a caveat that the time
between layovers be minimize This search would require several queries to various
on-line directories to find empty seats on various airlines and then the availability of
seeds would be coordinated with the amount time spent in the airport terminals
Secure Messaging and Structure Document Interchange Services
The importance of the fourth layer Secure Messaging is clear Everyone in business
knows that electronic messaging is a critical business issue Consider a familiar
business scenario you hand over an urgent fax on Monday and find out on Tuesday
that itrsquos still sitting on your fax operatorrsquos desk What happened The line was busy
and he thought he would try again later Or the number was wrong but he forgot to
let you know Or you are in London and you need to send a spreadsheet that details
a marketing plan for a product introduction strategy to co-worker in New York This
must be done today not tomorrow when the courier service would deliver There is a
solution to these common and frustrating problems Itrsquos called integrated messaging
a group of computer services that through the use of a network send receive and
combine messages faxes and large data files Some better known examples are
electronic mail enhances fax and electronic data interchange
Broadly defined messaging is the software that sits between the network
infrastructure and the clients or electronic commerce applications masking the
peculiarities if the environment Others define messages as a framework for the total
implementation of portable applications divorcing you from the architectural primitives
of your system In general messaging products are not applications that solve
problems they are more enablers of the application that solve problems
Messaging services offer solution for communicating non-formatted (Unstructured)
data such as purchase orders shipping notices and invoices Unstructured messaging
consists of fax e-mail and form based systems like Lotus Notes Structured
documents messaging consists of the automated interchange of standardized and
approved messages between computer applications via telecommunications lines
Examples of structured document messaging include EDI
Messaging is gaining momentum in electronic commerce and seems to have many
advantages It supports both synchronous (immediate) and asynchronous (delayed)
message delivery and processing With asynchronous messaging when a message
is sent work continues (software doesnrsquot wait for a response) This allows the transfer
of messages through store-and-forward methods
The main disadvantages of messaging are the new types of applications it enables-
which appear to be more complex especially to traditional programmers-and the
jungle of standards it involves Because of the lack of standards there is often no
interoperability between different messaging vendors leading to islands of messaging
Also security privacy and confidentiality through data encryption and authentication
techniques are important issues that need to be resolved for ensuring the legality of
the message-based transactions themselves
Middleware Services
Middleware is a relatively new concept that emerged only recently Like so many other
innovations it came in being out of necessity Users in the 1970rsquos when vendors
delivered homogenous systems that worked didnrsquot have a need for middleware When
conditions changed-along with the hardware and the software the organizations
couldnrsquot The tools were inadequate the backlog was enormous and the pressure
was over whelming And the users were dissatisfied Something was needed to solve
all the interface translation transformation and interpretation problems that were
driving application developers crazy
With the growth of networks client-server technology and all other forms of
communicating betweenamong unlike platforms the problems of getting all pieces to
work together grew from formidable to horrendous As the cry for distributed
computing spread users demanded interaction between dissimilar system networks
that permitted shared resources and applications that could be accessed by multiple
software programs In simple terms middleware is the ultimate mediator between
diverse software programs that enables them talk to one another
Transparency
Transparency implies that users should be unaware that they are accessing multiple
systems Transparency is essential for dealing with higher-level issues than physical
media and interconnection that the underlying network infrastructure is in charge of
The ideal picture is one of a ldquoVirtualrdquo network a collection of work-group
departmental enterprise and inter-enterprise LANs that appears to the end user or
client application to be a seamless and easily accessed whole
Transparency is accomplished using middleware that facilities a distributed computing
environment This gives users and applications transparent access to data
computation and other resources across collections of multivendor heterogeneous
systems The strategic architectures of every major system vendor are now based on
some form of middleware The key to realizing the theoretical benefits of such an
architecture is transparency Users need not spend their time to understand where
something is Nor should application developers have to code into their applications
the exact locations of resources over the network The goal is for the applications to
send a request to the middleware layer which then satisfies the request any way it
can using remote information
Transaction Security and management
Support for transaction processing (TP) is fundamental to success in the electronic
commerce market Security and Management are essential to all layers in the
electronic commerce model Transaction integrity must be given for businesses that
cannot afford any loss or inconsistency in data For electronic commerce middleware
provides the qualities expected in the standard TP system the so-called ACID
property (Atomicity Consistency Isolation and Durability)
World Wide Web (WWW) As the Architecture
Electronic commerce depends on the unspoken assumption that computers
cooperate efficiently for seamless information sharing Unfortunately this assumption
of interoperability has been supported by the realities of practical computing
Computing is still a world made up of many technical directions product
implementations and competing vendors This diversity while good for innovation
causes problem as the E-Commerce applications try to impose a certain discipline on
the proliferating computers and networks It is ironic that real effect of computing is all
too often the prevention of data sharing due to incompatibility-architectures data
formats and communication protocols
What does the WEB Encompass
The Web has become an umbrella for a wide range of concepts and technologies that
differ markedly in purpose and scope These include the global hypertext publishing
concept the universal reader concept and the client-server concept
The global hypertext publishing concept promotes the idea of seamless information
world in which all on-line information can be accessed and retrieve in a consistent and
simple way To access information in this seamless world we will need the ability to
address many types of data-text files images sound files and animation sequences
The universal readership concept promotes the idea that unlike the segmented
applications of the past we can use one application-a universal (or common) user
interface-to read a variety of documents This concept implies that once information
is published it is accessible from any type of computer in any country and that any
(authorized) person merely needs to use one simple program to access it This is
accomplished in the web by using a core browser or application that is augmented by
supporting applications The core browser implements only minimal functionality and
attempts to offload more specialized work onto the supporting applications
The client-server concept allows the web to grow easily without any centralized
control Anyone can publish information and anyone (as long as He or She is
authorized) can read and download it Publishing information requires a server
program and reading data requires a client browser All the clients and all the servers
are connected to one another by the Internet The various standard protocols allows
all clients to communicate with all servers
In practice the web hands on a number of essential concepts including the following
i) The addressing schemes known as Uniform Resource Locator (URL) makes
the hypermedia world possible despite many different protocols
ii) A network protocol known as hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) used by client
browsers and servers offers performance and features not otherwise available
iii) A mark-up language (HTML) which every web client is requires to understand
is used for the representation of hypertext documents containing text list boxes
and graphics information across the net
Chapter 4
Technological Behind the Web
Information providers (or publishers) run programs (called servers) from which the
browsers (client can obtain information) These programs can either be Wed servers
that understand the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) ldquoGatewayrdquo program that
convert an existing information format to hypertext or a non-HTTP server that Web
browsers can access-anonymous FTP or Gopher servers
Web servers are composed of two major parts the Hypertext Transfer protocol for
transmitting documents between servers and clients and the hypertext Markup
language (HTML) format for documents The link between HTML files and the HTTP
servers is provided by the Uniform Resource Locators (URLs)
Uniform Resource Locator
The documents that the browsers display are hypertext that contains pointers to other
documents The browsers let you deal with the pointers in a transparent way ndash select
the pointer and you are presented with the text to which it points This pointer is
implemented using a concept that is central to Web browsers Uniform Resource
Locators (URLs) One way to think about URLs is to use the libraries and location on
a shelf as a metaphor A URL for a digital library would be a unique call number that
provides the exact location of every book in the world including the country city street
and library shelf location
In practice URLs are the strings used as addresses of objects (documents images)
on the Web Think of them as analogous to your E-mail address Just as your address
is unique and maybe used by any other Internet users to send you mail without
knowing exactly where you are a URL marks the unique location on the Internet
where a file or service can be found
URLs follow a fairly consistent pattern The first part describes the type of resource
the second part gives the name of the server housing the resource and the third part
gives full file name of the resource URLs are Universal in that they provide access to
a wide range of network services which required separate applications in the past For
a new network protocol one can easily form an address as the set of parameters
necessary to retrieve the object If these parameters are encoded into a concise string
with a prefix to identify the protocols and encoding one has a new URL scheme Take
a look at the URL formats below
FTP ftpserveraddresscompletefilename
Gopher gopherserveraddressportdirectoryfilename
TELNET telnetserveraddressport
HTTP httpserveraddressporthomepagehtml
News newsmiscstocksinvest
These are URLs for Internet news articles and news groups (The NNTP protocol) and
for HTTP archives for TELNET destinations E-mail addresses and so on The same
can done for names of objects in a given name space For example the URL of the
main page for the Web project happens to be
httpwebw3orghypertextwebTheProjecthtml The prefix ldquoHTTPrdquo in the preceding
example indicates the address space and defines the interpretation of the rest of the
string The HTTP protocol is to be used so the string contains the address of the
server to be contacted and a sub string to be passed to the server
As noted earlier different protocols use different syntaxes but they do have a small
amount in common For example the common URL syntax reserve the solidus () as
a way of representing a hierarchical space the pound label () as a way of pointing
inside the document and question mark () as a separator between the address of an
object and the query operation applied to it Hierarchical spaces are useful for
hypertext where one ldquoworkrdquo maybe split up into many interlinked documents the
allows relative name to exploit the hierarchical structure and allows links to be made
within the work independent of the higher parts of the URL such as the server name
URLs are central to the Web architecture The fact that it is easy to address and object
anywhere on the internet is essential for the system to scale and for the information
space to be independent of the network and server topology
Chapter 5
Network Security and Firewalls
The ability to conduct business on a public network has strong attraction ndash and the
potential for big savings Security and confidentiality are essential however before
businesses can conduct financial transactions over the internet and a lack of
widespread security measures remains at this time At present credit card numbers
financial records and other important information are not encrypted and can be
intercepted by any savvy Internet hacker
The discussion of security is concerns in electronic commerce can be divided into two
broad types
1 Client-server security usages various authorization methods to make sure that only
valid users and programs have access to information resource such as database
Access control mechanisms must be set up to ensure that properly authentication
user are allowed access only to those resource that they are entitled to use Such
mechanism includes password protection encrypted smart card biometric and
firewalls
2 Data and transaction security ensures the privacy and confidentiality in electronic
messages and data packets including the authentication of remote users in
network truncation of activity such as on-line payment The goal is to defeat any
attempt to assume another identity while involved while electronic mail or other
forms of data communication Preventive measure include data encryption using
various cryptographic methods
Data and message security
The lack of data and message security on the Internet has become a high profile
problem due to increasing number of merchants trying to spur commerce on the global
network For instance credit card numbers in there plain text form create a risk when
transmitted across the internet where the possibility of the number falling into the
wrong hands is relatively high Would you be willing to type in your credit card number
knowing the risk Even worse would you expose your customer to that risk Just the
thought of ldquosnifferrdquo programs that collect credit card numbers en masse is enough to
keep merchants away from on-line shopping given the possible lawsuits and other
liability issues In sort the lack of business truncation security is widely acknowledge
as a major implement to widespread e-commerce
Encrypted Documents and Electronic Mail
E-mail users who desires confidentiality and sender are using encryption Encryption
is simply to intend to keep personal thoughts personal Some users are already using
Pretty Good Personality (PGP) others are starting to use Privacy Enhanced Mail
(PEM)
E-mail is typically encrypted for the reason that all network correspondence is open
for eavesdropping Internet e-mail is obviously far less secure then the postal system
where envelopes protect correspondence for casual snooping A glance at the header
area of e-mail message by contrast will show that it has passed through a number of
nodes on its way to you Every one of these nodes presents the opportunity for
snooping
Chapter 6
Electronic Commerce Companies
Chapter 7
Pictorial Representation E-buying Methodology
Flipkartcom
STEP 1
STEP 2
STEP 3
STEP 4
STEP 5
STEP 6
STEP 7
STEP 8
STEP 9
STEP 10
STEP 11
STEP 12
Pictorial Representation E-buying Methodology
Yepmecom
STEP 1
STEP 2
STEP 3
STEP 4
STEP 5
STEP 6
STEP 7
STEP 8
STEP 9
Chapter 8
Conclusion
E-commerce is growing tremendously A lot of companies have joined between the
period July and August Online retail is still a tiny spot in Indiarsquos retail market of about
$500 billion a year but it is growing at a quick pace A study by retail consultancy
Techno-park predicts Indiarsquos e-tailing market will reach $32 billion by 2020 from $23
billion in 2014
Ethnic Indian clothes and casual wear are favorite products but unusual products like
Pets-too are to being offered online With a huge growth that e-commerce has
witnessed in recent times analysts like Devangshu Dutta sales there is scope for more
players to come in But some also warn about the risks the space is fraught with as
only a few may have chances of making it big They also see consolidation in the
sector going forward
Bibliography
Frontiers of Electronic commerce by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew B Whinston
Big E-commerce deals stir up Sector-Economic Times
wwwflipkartcom
wwwYepmecom
Electronic Document
Interchange (EDI)
Electronic Fund
Transfer (EFT)
Electronic
Publishing
Despite the change taking place business have three goals stay competative
improve productivity and deliver quality service These goals are guiding buoys for
firma plotting their course in the turbulent waters of electronic commerce There are
other factors that companies need to keep in mind First most companies have
already made enormous information technology investments to automate their key
internal processes such as purchasing invoicing and other simliar functons So some
aspects of the technological infratructure for electronic commerce are already in place
The challenge now become How to effectively leverage this investment Second
prices for computer hardware and network equipment continue to fall marking
information technology an appealing investment for many businesses specially when
its used for high-impact application such as linking their distributed operations
However investment without a clear idea of the electronic commerce architecture
being built would be akin to driving with blinders on As a result companies that have
decided that electronic commerce applications represent one of the best strategic
investment they can make must first exert some effort to understand the technology
underlying electronic commerce applications
At first glance it appears that messaging based technologies such as EDI and Mail-
Enabled applications combined with database and information management service
form the technical foundation for effective electronic commerce solutions no single
one of these technologies can deliver the full potential of electronic commerce
however What we require is an integrated architecture the likes of which has never
been seen before This integrated architecture is emerging in the form of the World
Wide Wed (WWW) As electronic commerce becomes more mature we are beginning
to see sophisticated application being developed on WWW Technically and
commercially the WWW client-server model seems poised to become a dominent
technology
Electronic Document Interchange
Electronic
Commerce
Information Sharing Marketing Advertising
Collaborative Work Sales Customer Support
E-mail Fax
Electronic Messaging
Corporate
Digital
Library
Chapter 3
Architectural Framework for Electronic Commerce
The software framework necessary for building Electronic Commerce applications is
little understood in existing literature In general a framework is intended to define and
create tools that integrate the information found in todayrsquos closed systems and allow
the development of E-commerce applications It is important to understand that the
aim of the architechtural framework itself is not to build new database management
system data repository computer languages software agent-based transaction
monitors or communication protocols Rather tha architecture should focus on
synthesizing the diverse resoures already in place in corporations to facilitate the
integration of data and software for better application
We propound that the electronic commerce application architecture consist of six
layers of functionality or services
(1) Application
(2) Brokerage services data or transaction management
(3) Interface and support layers
(4) Secure messaging and electronic document interchange
(5) Middleware and structured document interchange and
(6) Network infrastructure and basic communication services
These layer cooperate to provide a seamless transition between todayrsquos computing
resources and those of tommorow by transparently integrating information access and
exchange within the context of the chosen application As seen in above figure
Application Services Customer-to-business business-to-business Intra-organisational
Brokerage and data management
Order Processing-mail-order houses Payment schemes-electronic cash clearinghouse or virtual mall
Interface layer Interactive catalogue directory support function Software agents
Secure messaging Secure hypertext transfer protocol Encrypted E-mail EDI Remote Programming (RPC)
Middle layer services Structure documents (SGMLHTML) Compound documents (OLEOpenDoc)
Network Infrastructure Wireless-Cellular Radio PCS Wireline-POTS Coaxile Fibre optics
Internal
Publishing
electronic commerce applications are based on several elegant technologies But only
when they are integrated do they provide uniquely powerful solutions In the ensuing
discussion of each of these layerswe will not elaborate on the various aspects of the
network infrastructure that transports information
Electronic Commerce Application Services
The application services layer of E-Commerce will be comprised of existing and future
applications built on innate architecture Three distinct classes of Electronic
Commerce application can be distinguished Customer-to-Business Business-to-
business and intra organisation
i Customer-to-Business Transactions
We call this category market place transaction In a market place transaction
customer learn about products differently through electronic publishing buy them
differently using electronic cash and secure payment systems and have then
delivered Also how customers allocate their loyalty may also be different
Manufacturing
and production
Engineering and
Research
Accounting
Finance and
management
Global Suppliers
Classic EDI
Procurement distribution and logistics
Advertising Sales Customer Service
Customer-oriented
Electronic Commerce
Customers
In light of this organization itself has to adopt to a world where the traditional concepts
of brand differentiation no longer hold ndash where ldquoQualityrdquo has a new meaning where
ldquoContentrdquo may not be equated to ldquoproductrdquo where ldquoDistributionrdquo may not automatically
mean ldquoPhysical Transportrdquo In this new environment brand equity can rapidly
evaporate forcing firms to develop new ways of doing business
ii Business-to-business Transaction
We call this category market-link transactions Here business government and other
organizations depend on computer-to-computer communication as a fast an
economical and a dependable way to conduct business transactions Small
companies are also beginning to see the benefits of adopting the same methods
Business-to-business transaction include the use of EDI and Electronic-mail for
purchasing goods and services buying information and consulting services
submitting requests for proposals and receive proposals
For example the current accounts payable process occurs through the exchange of
paper documents Each year the trading partners exchange millions of invoices
checks purchase orders financial reports and other transactions Most of the
documents are in electronic form at their point of origin but are printed and key-entered
at the point of receipt The current manual process of printing mailing and rekeying is
costly time consuming and error-prone Given this situation and faced with the need
to reduce costs small businesses are looking towards electronic commerce as
possible saviour
iii Intra-organizational Transactions
We call this category market-driven transaction A company becomes market driven
by dispersing throughout the firm information about its customers and competitors by
spreading strategic and tactical decision making so that all units can participate and
by continuously monitoring their customer commitment by making improved customer
satisfaction an ongoing objective To maintain the relationships that are critical to
delivering superior customer value management must pay close attention to service
both before and after sales
Information Brokerage amp management
The Information Brokerage and Management layer provide service integration through
the notion of information brokerages the development of which is necessitated by the
increasing information resource fragmentation We use the notion of Information
Brokerage to represent an intermediary who provides service integration between
customers and information providers given some constraint such as a low price fast
service or profit maximization for a client
Information Brokers for example are rapidly becoming necessary in dealing with the
voluminous amounts of information on the networks As on-line database migrate to
consumer information utilities consumers and information professionals will have to
keep up the knowledge and ownership of all these systems Whorsquos got what How do
you use it What do they charge Most professionals have enough trouble keeping
trap of files of interest on one or two database services With all the complexity
associated with large number of on-line databases and service bureau itrsquos impossible
to expect humans to do the searching it will have to be software programs-information
brokers or software agents to use the most popular term-act on searchers behalf
Information Brokerage does more than just searching
Interface and Support Service
The third layer interface and support services will provide interfaces for electronic
commerce application such as interactive catalogues and will support directory
services-functions necessary for information search and access These two concepts
are very different Interactive catalogues are the customized interface to consumer
applications such as home shopping An interactive catalogue is an extension of the
paper-based catalogue and incorporates additional features such as sophisticated
graphics and video to make the advertising more attractive
Directories on the other hand operate behind the scenes and attempt to organize the
enormous amount of information and transactions generated to facilitate electronic
commerce Directory services database make data from any server appear as a local
file A classic example of a directory is the telephone White Pages which allows to
locate people and telephone numbers In the case of electronic commerce directories
would play an important role in information management functions For instance take
the case of buying an airline ticket with several stop overs with a caveat that the time
between layovers be minimize This search would require several queries to various
on-line directories to find empty seats on various airlines and then the availability of
seeds would be coordinated with the amount time spent in the airport terminals
Secure Messaging and Structure Document Interchange Services
The importance of the fourth layer Secure Messaging is clear Everyone in business
knows that electronic messaging is a critical business issue Consider a familiar
business scenario you hand over an urgent fax on Monday and find out on Tuesday
that itrsquos still sitting on your fax operatorrsquos desk What happened The line was busy
and he thought he would try again later Or the number was wrong but he forgot to
let you know Or you are in London and you need to send a spreadsheet that details
a marketing plan for a product introduction strategy to co-worker in New York This
must be done today not tomorrow when the courier service would deliver There is a
solution to these common and frustrating problems Itrsquos called integrated messaging
a group of computer services that through the use of a network send receive and
combine messages faxes and large data files Some better known examples are
electronic mail enhances fax and electronic data interchange
Broadly defined messaging is the software that sits between the network
infrastructure and the clients or electronic commerce applications masking the
peculiarities if the environment Others define messages as a framework for the total
implementation of portable applications divorcing you from the architectural primitives
of your system In general messaging products are not applications that solve
problems they are more enablers of the application that solve problems
Messaging services offer solution for communicating non-formatted (Unstructured)
data such as purchase orders shipping notices and invoices Unstructured messaging
consists of fax e-mail and form based systems like Lotus Notes Structured
documents messaging consists of the automated interchange of standardized and
approved messages between computer applications via telecommunications lines
Examples of structured document messaging include EDI
Messaging is gaining momentum in electronic commerce and seems to have many
advantages It supports both synchronous (immediate) and asynchronous (delayed)
message delivery and processing With asynchronous messaging when a message
is sent work continues (software doesnrsquot wait for a response) This allows the transfer
of messages through store-and-forward methods
The main disadvantages of messaging are the new types of applications it enables-
which appear to be more complex especially to traditional programmers-and the
jungle of standards it involves Because of the lack of standards there is often no
interoperability between different messaging vendors leading to islands of messaging
Also security privacy and confidentiality through data encryption and authentication
techniques are important issues that need to be resolved for ensuring the legality of
the message-based transactions themselves
Middleware Services
Middleware is a relatively new concept that emerged only recently Like so many other
innovations it came in being out of necessity Users in the 1970rsquos when vendors
delivered homogenous systems that worked didnrsquot have a need for middleware When
conditions changed-along with the hardware and the software the organizations
couldnrsquot The tools were inadequate the backlog was enormous and the pressure
was over whelming And the users were dissatisfied Something was needed to solve
all the interface translation transformation and interpretation problems that were
driving application developers crazy
With the growth of networks client-server technology and all other forms of
communicating betweenamong unlike platforms the problems of getting all pieces to
work together grew from formidable to horrendous As the cry for distributed
computing spread users demanded interaction between dissimilar system networks
that permitted shared resources and applications that could be accessed by multiple
software programs In simple terms middleware is the ultimate mediator between
diverse software programs that enables them talk to one another
Transparency
Transparency implies that users should be unaware that they are accessing multiple
systems Transparency is essential for dealing with higher-level issues than physical
media and interconnection that the underlying network infrastructure is in charge of
The ideal picture is one of a ldquoVirtualrdquo network a collection of work-group
departmental enterprise and inter-enterprise LANs that appears to the end user or
client application to be a seamless and easily accessed whole
Transparency is accomplished using middleware that facilities a distributed computing
environment This gives users and applications transparent access to data
computation and other resources across collections of multivendor heterogeneous
systems The strategic architectures of every major system vendor are now based on
some form of middleware The key to realizing the theoretical benefits of such an
architecture is transparency Users need not spend their time to understand where
something is Nor should application developers have to code into their applications
the exact locations of resources over the network The goal is for the applications to
send a request to the middleware layer which then satisfies the request any way it
can using remote information
Transaction Security and management
Support for transaction processing (TP) is fundamental to success in the electronic
commerce market Security and Management are essential to all layers in the
electronic commerce model Transaction integrity must be given for businesses that
cannot afford any loss or inconsistency in data For electronic commerce middleware
provides the qualities expected in the standard TP system the so-called ACID
property (Atomicity Consistency Isolation and Durability)
World Wide Web (WWW) As the Architecture
Electronic commerce depends on the unspoken assumption that computers
cooperate efficiently for seamless information sharing Unfortunately this assumption
of interoperability has been supported by the realities of practical computing
Computing is still a world made up of many technical directions product
implementations and competing vendors This diversity while good for innovation
causes problem as the E-Commerce applications try to impose a certain discipline on
the proliferating computers and networks It is ironic that real effect of computing is all
too often the prevention of data sharing due to incompatibility-architectures data
formats and communication protocols
What does the WEB Encompass
The Web has become an umbrella for a wide range of concepts and technologies that
differ markedly in purpose and scope These include the global hypertext publishing
concept the universal reader concept and the client-server concept
The global hypertext publishing concept promotes the idea of seamless information
world in which all on-line information can be accessed and retrieve in a consistent and
simple way To access information in this seamless world we will need the ability to
address many types of data-text files images sound files and animation sequences
The universal readership concept promotes the idea that unlike the segmented
applications of the past we can use one application-a universal (or common) user
interface-to read a variety of documents This concept implies that once information
is published it is accessible from any type of computer in any country and that any
(authorized) person merely needs to use one simple program to access it This is
accomplished in the web by using a core browser or application that is augmented by
supporting applications The core browser implements only minimal functionality and
attempts to offload more specialized work onto the supporting applications
The client-server concept allows the web to grow easily without any centralized
control Anyone can publish information and anyone (as long as He or She is
authorized) can read and download it Publishing information requires a server
program and reading data requires a client browser All the clients and all the servers
are connected to one another by the Internet The various standard protocols allows
all clients to communicate with all servers
In practice the web hands on a number of essential concepts including the following
i) The addressing schemes known as Uniform Resource Locator (URL) makes
the hypermedia world possible despite many different protocols
ii) A network protocol known as hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) used by client
browsers and servers offers performance and features not otherwise available
iii) A mark-up language (HTML) which every web client is requires to understand
is used for the representation of hypertext documents containing text list boxes
and graphics information across the net
Chapter 4
Technological Behind the Web
Information providers (or publishers) run programs (called servers) from which the
browsers (client can obtain information) These programs can either be Wed servers
that understand the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) ldquoGatewayrdquo program that
convert an existing information format to hypertext or a non-HTTP server that Web
browsers can access-anonymous FTP or Gopher servers
Web servers are composed of two major parts the Hypertext Transfer protocol for
transmitting documents between servers and clients and the hypertext Markup
language (HTML) format for documents The link between HTML files and the HTTP
servers is provided by the Uniform Resource Locators (URLs)
Uniform Resource Locator
The documents that the browsers display are hypertext that contains pointers to other
documents The browsers let you deal with the pointers in a transparent way ndash select
the pointer and you are presented with the text to which it points This pointer is
implemented using a concept that is central to Web browsers Uniform Resource
Locators (URLs) One way to think about URLs is to use the libraries and location on
a shelf as a metaphor A URL for a digital library would be a unique call number that
provides the exact location of every book in the world including the country city street
and library shelf location
In practice URLs are the strings used as addresses of objects (documents images)
on the Web Think of them as analogous to your E-mail address Just as your address
is unique and maybe used by any other Internet users to send you mail without
knowing exactly where you are a URL marks the unique location on the Internet
where a file or service can be found
URLs follow a fairly consistent pattern The first part describes the type of resource
the second part gives the name of the server housing the resource and the third part
gives full file name of the resource URLs are Universal in that they provide access to
a wide range of network services which required separate applications in the past For
a new network protocol one can easily form an address as the set of parameters
necessary to retrieve the object If these parameters are encoded into a concise string
with a prefix to identify the protocols and encoding one has a new URL scheme Take
a look at the URL formats below
FTP ftpserveraddresscompletefilename
Gopher gopherserveraddressportdirectoryfilename
TELNET telnetserveraddressport
HTTP httpserveraddressporthomepagehtml
News newsmiscstocksinvest
These are URLs for Internet news articles and news groups (The NNTP protocol) and
for HTTP archives for TELNET destinations E-mail addresses and so on The same
can done for names of objects in a given name space For example the URL of the
main page for the Web project happens to be
httpwebw3orghypertextwebTheProjecthtml The prefix ldquoHTTPrdquo in the preceding
example indicates the address space and defines the interpretation of the rest of the
string The HTTP protocol is to be used so the string contains the address of the
server to be contacted and a sub string to be passed to the server
As noted earlier different protocols use different syntaxes but they do have a small
amount in common For example the common URL syntax reserve the solidus () as
a way of representing a hierarchical space the pound label () as a way of pointing
inside the document and question mark () as a separator between the address of an
object and the query operation applied to it Hierarchical spaces are useful for
hypertext where one ldquoworkrdquo maybe split up into many interlinked documents the
allows relative name to exploit the hierarchical structure and allows links to be made
within the work independent of the higher parts of the URL such as the server name
URLs are central to the Web architecture The fact that it is easy to address and object
anywhere on the internet is essential for the system to scale and for the information
space to be independent of the network and server topology
Chapter 5
Network Security and Firewalls
The ability to conduct business on a public network has strong attraction ndash and the
potential for big savings Security and confidentiality are essential however before
businesses can conduct financial transactions over the internet and a lack of
widespread security measures remains at this time At present credit card numbers
financial records and other important information are not encrypted and can be
intercepted by any savvy Internet hacker
The discussion of security is concerns in electronic commerce can be divided into two
broad types
1 Client-server security usages various authorization methods to make sure that only
valid users and programs have access to information resource such as database
Access control mechanisms must be set up to ensure that properly authentication
user are allowed access only to those resource that they are entitled to use Such
mechanism includes password protection encrypted smart card biometric and
firewalls
2 Data and transaction security ensures the privacy and confidentiality in electronic
messages and data packets including the authentication of remote users in
network truncation of activity such as on-line payment The goal is to defeat any
attempt to assume another identity while involved while electronic mail or other
forms of data communication Preventive measure include data encryption using
various cryptographic methods
Data and message security
The lack of data and message security on the Internet has become a high profile
problem due to increasing number of merchants trying to spur commerce on the global
network For instance credit card numbers in there plain text form create a risk when
transmitted across the internet where the possibility of the number falling into the
wrong hands is relatively high Would you be willing to type in your credit card number
knowing the risk Even worse would you expose your customer to that risk Just the
thought of ldquosnifferrdquo programs that collect credit card numbers en masse is enough to
keep merchants away from on-line shopping given the possible lawsuits and other
liability issues In sort the lack of business truncation security is widely acknowledge
as a major implement to widespread e-commerce
Encrypted Documents and Electronic Mail
E-mail users who desires confidentiality and sender are using encryption Encryption
is simply to intend to keep personal thoughts personal Some users are already using
Pretty Good Personality (PGP) others are starting to use Privacy Enhanced Mail
(PEM)
E-mail is typically encrypted for the reason that all network correspondence is open
for eavesdropping Internet e-mail is obviously far less secure then the postal system
where envelopes protect correspondence for casual snooping A glance at the header
area of e-mail message by contrast will show that it has passed through a number of
nodes on its way to you Every one of these nodes presents the opportunity for
snooping
Chapter 6
Electronic Commerce Companies
Chapter 7
Pictorial Representation E-buying Methodology
Flipkartcom
STEP 1
STEP 2
STEP 3
STEP 4
STEP 5
STEP 6
STEP 7
STEP 8
STEP 9
STEP 10
STEP 11
STEP 12
Pictorial Representation E-buying Methodology
Yepmecom
STEP 1
STEP 2
STEP 3
STEP 4
STEP 5
STEP 6
STEP 7
STEP 8
STEP 9
Chapter 8
Conclusion
E-commerce is growing tremendously A lot of companies have joined between the
period July and August Online retail is still a tiny spot in Indiarsquos retail market of about
$500 billion a year but it is growing at a quick pace A study by retail consultancy
Techno-park predicts Indiarsquos e-tailing market will reach $32 billion by 2020 from $23
billion in 2014
Ethnic Indian clothes and casual wear are favorite products but unusual products like
Pets-too are to being offered online With a huge growth that e-commerce has
witnessed in recent times analysts like Devangshu Dutta sales there is scope for more
players to come in But some also warn about the risks the space is fraught with as
only a few may have chances of making it big They also see consolidation in the
sector going forward
Bibliography
Frontiers of Electronic commerce by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew B Whinston
Big E-commerce deals stir up Sector-Economic Times
wwwflipkartcom
wwwYepmecom
Chapter 3
Architectural Framework for Electronic Commerce
The software framework necessary for building Electronic Commerce applications is
little understood in existing literature In general a framework is intended to define and
create tools that integrate the information found in todayrsquos closed systems and allow
the development of E-commerce applications It is important to understand that the
aim of the architechtural framework itself is not to build new database management
system data repository computer languages software agent-based transaction
monitors or communication protocols Rather tha architecture should focus on
synthesizing the diverse resoures already in place in corporations to facilitate the
integration of data and software for better application
We propound that the electronic commerce application architecture consist of six
layers of functionality or services
(1) Application
(2) Brokerage services data or transaction management
(3) Interface and support layers
(4) Secure messaging and electronic document interchange
(5) Middleware and structured document interchange and
(6) Network infrastructure and basic communication services
These layer cooperate to provide a seamless transition between todayrsquos computing
resources and those of tommorow by transparently integrating information access and
exchange within the context of the chosen application As seen in above figure
Application Services Customer-to-business business-to-business Intra-organisational
Brokerage and data management
Order Processing-mail-order houses Payment schemes-electronic cash clearinghouse or virtual mall
Interface layer Interactive catalogue directory support function Software agents
Secure messaging Secure hypertext transfer protocol Encrypted E-mail EDI Remote Programming (RPC)
Middle layer services Structure documents (SGMLHTML) Compound documents (OLEOpenDoc)
Network Infrastructure Wireless-Cellular Radio PCS Wireline-POTS Coaxile Fibre optics
Internal
Publishing
electronic commerce applications are based on several elegant technologies But only
when they are integrated do they provide uniquely powerful solutions In the ensuing
discussion of each of these layerswe will not elaborate on the various aspects of the
network infrastructure that transports information
Electronic Commerce Application Services
The application services layer of E-Commerce will be comprised of existing and future
applications built on innate architecture Three distinct classes of Electronic
Commerce application can be distinguished Customer-to-Business Business-to-
business and intra organisation
i Customer-to-Business Transactions
We call this category market place transaction In a market place transaction
customer learn about products differently through electronic publishing buy them
differently using electronic cash and secure payment systems and have then
delivered Also how customers allocate their loyalty may also be different
Manufacturing
and production
Engineering and
Research
Accounting
Finance and
management
Global Suppliers
Classic EDI
Procurement distribution and logistics
Advertising Sales Customer Service
Customer-oriented
Electronic Commerce
Customers
In light of this organization itself has to adopt to a world where the traditional concepts
of brand differentiation no longer hold ndash where ldquoQualityrdquo has a new meaning where
ldquoContentrdquo may not be equated to ldquoproductrdquo where ldquoDistributionrdquo may not automatically
mean ldquoPhysical Transportrdquo In this new environment brand equity can rapidly
evaporate forcing firms to develop new ways of doing business
ii Business-to-business Transaction
We call this category market-link transactions Here business government and other
organizations depend on computer-to-computer communication as a fast an
economical and a dependable way to conduct business transactions Small
companies are also beginning to see the benefits of adopting the same methods
Business-to-business transaction include the use of EDI and Electronic-mail for
purchasing goods and services buying information and consulting services
submitting requests for proposals and receive proposals
For example the current accounts payable process occurs through the exchange of
paper documents Each year the trading partners exchange millions of invoices
checks purchase orders financial reports and other transactions Most of the
documents are in electronic form at their point of origin but are printed and key-entered
at the point of receipt The current manual process of printing mailing and rekeying is
costly time consuming and error-prone Given this situation and faced with the need
to reduce costs small businesses are looking towards electronic commerce as
possible saviour
iii Intra-organizational Transactions
We call this category market-driven transaction A company becomes market driven
by dispersing throughout the firm information about its customers and competitors by
spreading strategic and tactical decision making so that all units can participate and
by continuously monitoring their customer commitment by making improved customer
satisfaction an ongoing objective To maintain the relationships that are critical to
delivering superior customer value management must pay close attention to service
both before and after sales
Information Brokerage amp management
The Information Brokerage and Management layer provide service integration through
the notion of information brokerages the development of which is necessitated by the
increasing information resource fragmentation We use the notion of Information
Brokerage to represent an intermediary who provides service integration between
customers and information providers given some constraint such as a low price fast
service or profit maximization for a client
Information Brokers for example are rapidly becoming necessary in dealing with the
voluminous amounts of information on the networks As on-line database migrate to
consumer information utilities consumers and information professionals will have to
keep up the knowledge and ownership of all these systems Whorsquos got what How do
you use it What do they charge Most professionals have enough trouble keeping
trap of files of interest on one or two database services With all the complexity
associated with large number of on-line databases and service bureau itrsquos impossible
to expect humans to do the searching it will have to be software programs-information
brokers or software agents to use the most popular term-act on searchers behalf
Information Brokerage does more than just searching
Interface and Support Service
The third layer interface and support services will provide interfaces for electronic
commerce application such as interactive catalogues and will support directory
services-functions necessary for information search and access These two concepts
are very different Interactive catalogues are the customized interface to consumer
applications such as home shopping An interactive catalogue is an extension of the
paper-based catalogue and incorporates additional features such as sophisticated
graphics and video to make the advertising more attractive
Directories on the other hand operate behind the scenes and attempt to organize the
enormous amount of information and transactions generated to facilitate electronic
commerce Directory services database make data from any server appear as a local
file A classic example of a directory is the telephone White Pages which allows to
locate people and telephone numbers In the case of electronic commerce directories
would play an important role in information management functions For instance take
the case of buying an airline ticket with several stop overs with a caveat that the time
between layovers be minimize This search would require several queries to various
on-line directories to find empty seats on various airlines and then the availability of
seeds would be coordinated with the amount time spent in the airport terminals
Secure Messaging and Structure Document Interchange Services
The importance of the fourth layer Secure Messaging is clear Everyone in business
knows that electronic messaging is a critical business issue Consider a familiar
business scenario you hand over an urgent fax on Monday and find out on Tuesday
that itrsquos still sitting on your fax operatorrsquos desk What happened The line was busy
and he thought he would try again later Or the number was wrong but he forgot to
let you know Or you are in London and you need to send a spreadsheet that details
a marketing plan for a product introduction strategy to co-worker in New York This
must be done today not tomorrow when the courier service would deliver There is a
solution to these common and frustrating problems Itrsquos called integrated messaging
a group of computer services that through the use of a network send receive and
combine messages faxes and large data files Some better known examples are
electronic mail enhances fax and electronic data interchange
Broadly defined messaging is the software that sits between the network
infrastructure and the clients or electronic commerce applications masking the
peculiarities if the environment Others define messages as a framework for the total
implementation of portable applications divorcing you from the architectural primitives
of your system In general messaging products are not applications that solve
problems they are more enablers of the application that solve problems
Messaging services offer solution for communicating non-formatted (Unstructured)
data such as purchase orders shipping notices and invoices Unstructured messaging
consists of fax e-mail and form based systems like Lotus Notes Structured
documents messaging consists of the automated interchange of standardized and
approved messages between computer applications via telecommunications lines
Examples of structured document messaging include EDI
Messaging is gaining momentum in electronic commerce and seems to have many
advantages It supports both synchronous (immediate) and asynchronous (delayed)
message delivery and processing With asynchronous messaging when a message
is sent work continues (software doesnrsquot wait for a response) This allows the transfer
of messages through store-and-forward methods
The main disadvantages of messaging are the new types of applications it enables-
which appear to be more complex especially to traditional programmers-and the
jungle of standards it involves Because of the lack of standards there is often no
interoperability between different messaging vendors leading to islands of messaging
Also security privacy and confidentiality through data encryption and authentication
techniques are important issues that need to be resolved for ensuring the legality of
the message-based transactions themselves
Middleware Services
Middleware is a relatively new concept that emerged only recently Like so many other
innovations it came in being out of necessity Users in the 1970rsquos when vendors
delivered homogenous systems that worked didnrsquot have a need for middleware When
conditions changed-along with the hardware and the software the organizations
couldnrsquot The tools were inadequate the backlog was enormous and the pressure
was over whelming And the users were dissatisfied Something was needed to solve
all the interface translation transformation and interpretation problems that were
driving application developers crazy
With the growth of networks client-server technology and all other forms of
communicating betweenamong unlike platforms the problems of getting all pieces to
work together grew from formidable to horrendous As the cry for distributed
computing spread users demanded interaction between dissimilar system networks
that permitted shared resources and applications that could be accessed by multiple
software programs In simple terms middleware is the ultimate mediator between
diverse software programs that enables them talk to one another
Transparency
Transparency implies that users should be unaware that they are accessing multiple
systems Transparency is essential for dealing with higher-level issues than physical
media and interconnection that the underlying network infrastructure is in charge of
The ideal picture is one of a ldquoVirtualrdquo network a collection of work-group
departmental enterprise and inter-enterprise LANs that appears to the end user or
client application to be a seamless and easily accessed whole
Transparency is accomplished using middleware that facilities a distributed computing
environment This gives users and applications transparent access to data
computation and other resources across collections of multivendor heterogeneous
systems The strategic architectures of every major system vendor are now based on
some form of middleware The key to realizing the theoretical benefits of such an
architecture is transparency Users need not spend their time to understand where
something is Nor should application developers have to code into their applications
the exact locations of resources over the network The goal is for the applications to
send a request to the middleware layer which then satisfies the request any way it
can using remote information
Transaction Security and management
Support for transaction processing (TP) is fundamental to success in the electronic
commerce market Security and Management are essential to all layers in the
electronic commerce model Transaction integrity must be given for businesses that
cannot afford any loss or inconsistency in data For electronic commerce middleware
provides the qualities expected in the standard TP system the so-called ACID
property (Atomicity Consistency Isolation and Durability)
World Wide Web (WWW) As the Architecture
Electronic commerce depends on the unspoken assumption that computers
cooperate efficiently for seamless information sharing Unfortunately this assumption
of interoperability has been supported by the realities of practical computing
Computing is still a world made up of many technical directions product
implementations and competing vendors This diversity while good for innovation
causes problem as the E-Commerce applications try to impose a certain discipline on
the proliferating computers and networks It is ironic that real effect of computing is all
too often the prevention of data sharing due to incompatibility-architectures data
formats and communication protocols
What does the WEB Encompass
The Web has become an umbrella for a wide range of concepts and technologies that
differ markedly in purpose and scope These include the global hypertext publishing
concept the universal reader concept and the client-server concept
The global hypertext publishing concept promotes the idea of seamless information
world in which all on-line information can be accessed and retrieve in a consistent and
simple way To access information in this seamless world we will need the ability to
address many types of data-text files images sound files and animation sequences
The universal readership concept promotes the idea that unlike the segmented
applications of the past we can use one application-a universal (or common) user
interface-to read a variety of documents This concept implies that once information
is published it is accessible from any type of computer in any country and that any
(authorized) person merely needs to use one simple program to access it This is
accomplished in the web by using a core browser or application that is augmented by
supporting applications The core browser implements only minimal functionality and
attempts to offload more specialized work onto the supporting applications
The client-server concept allows the web to grow easily without any centralized
control Anyone can publish information and anyone (as long as He or She is
authorized) can read and download it Publishing information requires a server
program and reading data requires a client browser All the clients and all the servers
are connected to one another by the Internet The various standard protocols allows
all clients to communicate with all servers
In practice the web hands on a number of essential concepts including the following
i) The addressing schemes known as Uniform Resource Locator (URL) makes
the hypermedia world possible despite many different protocols
ii) A network protocol known as hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) used by client
browsers and servers offers performance and features not otherwise available
iii) A mark-up language (HTML) which every web client is requires to understand
is used for the representation of hypertext documents containing text list boxes
and graphics information across the net
Chapter 4
Technological Behind the Web
Information providers (or publishers) run programs (called servers) from which the
browsers (client can obtain information) These programs can either be Wed servers
that understand the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) ldquoGatewayrdquo program that
convert an existing information format to hypertext or a non-HTTP server that Web
browsers can access-anonymous FTP or Gopher servers
Web servers are composed of two major parts the Hypertext Transfer protocol for
transmitting documents between servers and clients and the hypertext Markup
language (HTML) format for documents The link between HTML files and the HTTP
servers is provided by the Uniform Resource Locators (URLs)
Uniform Resource Locator
The documents that the browsers display are hypertext that contains pointers to other
documents The browsers let you deal with the pointers in a transparent way ndash select
the pointer and you are presented with the text to which it points This pointer is
implemented using a concept that is central to Web browsers Uniform Resource
Locators (URLs) One way to think about URLs is to use the libraries and location on
a shelf as a metaphor A URL for a digital library would be a unique call number that
provides the exact location of every book in the world including the country city street
and library shelf location
In practice URLs are the strings used as addresses of objects (documents images)
on the Web Think of them as analogous to your E-mail address Just as your address
is unique and maybe used by any other Internet users to send you mail without
knowing exactly where you are a URL marks the unique location on the Internet
where a file or service can be found
URLs follow a fairly consistent pattern The first part describes the type of resource
the second part gives the name of the server housing the resource and the third part
gives full file name of the resource URLs are Universal in that they provide access to
a wide range of network services which required separate applications in the past For
a new network protocol one can easily form an address as the set of parameters
necessary to retrieve the object If these parameters are encoded into a concise string
with a prefix to identify the protocols and encoding one has a new URL scheme Take
a look at the URL formats below
FTP ftpserveraddresscompletefilename
Gopher gopherserveraddressportdirectoryfilename
TELNET telnetserveraddressport
HTTP httpserveraddressporthomepagehtml
News newsmiscstocksinvest
These are URLs for Internet news articles and news groups (The NNTP protocol) and
for HTTP archives for TELNET destinations E-mail addresses and so on The same
can done for names of objects in a given name space For example the URL of the
main page for the Web project happens to be
httpwebw3orghypertextwebTheProjecthtml The prefix ldquoHTTPrdquo in the preceding
example indicates the address space and defines the interpretation of the rest of the
string The HTTP protocol is to be used so the string contains the address of the
server to be contacted and a sub string to be passed to the server
As noted earlier different protocols use different syntaxes but they do have a small
amount in common For example the common URL syntax reserve the solidus () as
a way of representing a hierarchical space the pound label () as a way of pointing
inside the document and question mark () as a separator between the address of an
object and the query operation applied to it Hierarchical spaces are useful for
hypertext where one ldquoworkrdquo maybe split up into many interlinked documents the
allows relative name to exploit the hierarchical structure and allows links to be made
within the work independent of the higher parts of the URL such as the server name
URLs are central to the Web architecture The fact that it is easy to address and object
anywhere on the internet is essential for the system to scale and for the information
space to be independent of the network and server topology
Chapter 5
Network Security and Firewalls
The ability to conduct business on a public network has strong attraction ndash and the
potential for big savings Security and confidentiality are essential however before
businesses can conduct financial transactions over the internet and a lack of
widespread security measures remains at this time At present credit card numbers
financial records and other important information are not encrypted and can be
intercepted by any savvy Internet hacker
The discussion of security is concerns in electronic commerce can be divided into two
broad types
1 Client-server security usages various authorization methods to make sure that only
valid users and programs have access to information resource such as database
Access control mechanisms must be set up to ensure that properly authentication
user are allowed access only to those resource that they are entitled to use Such
mechanism includes password protection encrypted smart card biometric and
firewalls
2 Data and transaction security ensures the privacy and confidentiality in electronic
messages and data packets including the authentication of remote users in
network truncation of activity such as on-line payment The goal is to defeat any
attempt to assume another identity while involved while electronic mail or other
forms of data communication Preventive measure include data encryption using
various cryptographic methods
Data and message security
The lack of data and message security on the Internet has become a high profile
problem due to increasing number of merchants trying to spur commerce on the global
network For instance credit card numbers in there plain text form create a risk when
transmitted across the internet where the possibility of the number falling into the
wrong hands is relatively high Would you be willing to type in your credit card number
knowing the risk Even worse would you expose your customer to that risk Just the
thought of ldquosnifferrdquo programs that collect credit card numbers en masse is enough to
keep merchants away from on-line shopping given the possible lawsuits and other
liability issues In sort the lack of business truncation security is widely acknowledge
as a major implement to widespread e-commerce
Encrypted Documents and Electronic Mail
E-mail users who desires confidentiality and sender are using encryption Encryption
is simply to intend to keep personal thoughts personal Some users are already using
Pretty Good Personality (PGP) others are starting to use Privacy Enhanced Mail
(PEM)
E-mail is typically encrypted for the reason that all network correspondence is open
for eavesdropping Internet e-mail is obviously far less secure then the postal system
where envelopes protect correspondence for casual snooping A glance at the header
area of e-mail message by contrast will show that it has passed through a number of
nodes on its way to you Every one of these nodes presents the opportunity for
snooping
Chapter 6
Electronic Commerce Companies
Chapter 7
Pictorial Representation E-buying Methodology
Flipkartcom
STEP 1
STEP 2
STEP 3
STEP 4
STEP 5
STEP 6
STEP 7
STEP 8
STEP 9
STEP 10
STEP 11
STEP 12
Pictorial Representation E-buying Methodology
Yepmecom
STEP 1
STEP 2
STEP 3
STEP 4
STEP 5
STEP 6
STEP 7
STEP 8
STEP 9
Chapter 8
Conclusion
E-commerce is growing tremendously A lot of companies have joined between the
period July and August Online retail is still a tiny spot in Indiarsquos retail market of about
$500 billion a year but it is growing at a quick pace A study by retail consultancy
Techno-park predicts Indiarsquos e-tailing market will reach $32 billion by 2020 from $23
billion in 2014
Ethnic Indian clothes and casual wear are favorite products but unusual products like
Pets-too are to being offered online With a huge growth that e-commerce has
witnessed in recent times analysts like Devangshu Dutta sales there is scope for more
players to come in But some also warn about the risks the space is fraught with as
only a few may have chances of making it big They also see consolidation in the
sector going forward
Bibliography
Frontiers of Electronic commerce by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew B Whinston
Big E-commerce deals stir up Sector-Economic Times
wwwflipkartcom
wwwYepmecom
Internal
Publishing
electronic commerce applications are based on several elegant technologies But only
when they are integrated do they provide uniquely powerful solutions In the ensuing
discussion of each of these layerswe will not elaborate on the various aspects of the
network infrastructure that transports information
Electronic Commerce Application Services
The application services layer of E-Commerce will be comprised of existing and future
applications built on innate architecture Three distinct classes of Electronic
Commerce application can be distinguished Customer-to-Business Business-to-
business and intra organisation
i Customer-to-Business Transactions
We call this category market place transaction In a market place transaction
customer learn about products differently through electronic publishing buy them
differently using electronic cash and secure payment systems and have then
delivered Also how customers allocate their loyalty may also be different
Manufacturing
and production
Engineering and
Research
Accounting
Finance and
management
Global Suppliers
Classic EDI
Procurement distribution and logistics
Advertising Sales Customer Service
Customer-oriented
Electronic Commerce
Customers
In light of this organization itself has to adopt to a world where the traditional concepts
of brand differentiation no longer hold ndash where ldquoQualityrdquo has a new meaning where
ldquoContentrdquo may not be equated to ldquoproductrdquo where ldquoDistributionrdquo may not automatically
mean ldquoPhysical Transportrdquo In this new environment brand equity can rapidly
evaporate forcing firms to develop new ways of doing business
ii Business-to-business Transaction
We call this category market-link transactions Here business government and other
organizations depend on computer-to-computer communication as a fast an
economical and a dependable way to conduct business transactions Small
companies are also beginning to see the benefits of adopting the same methods
Business-to-business transaction include the use of EDI and Electronic-mail for
purchasing goods and services buying information and consulting services
submitting requests for proposals and receive proposals
For example the current accounts payable process occurs through the exchange of
paper documents Each year the trading partners exchange millions of invoices
checks purchase orders financial reports and other transactions Most of the
documents are in electronic form at their point of origin but are printed and key-entered
at the point of receipt The current manual process of printing mailing and rekeying is
costly time consuming and error-prone Given this situation and faced with the need
to reduce costs small businesses are looking towards electronic commerce as
possible saviour
iii Intra-organizational Transactions
We call this category market-driven transaction A company becomes market driven
by dispersing throughout the firm information about its customers and competitors by
spreading strategic and tactical decision making so that all units can participate and
by continuously monitoring their customer commitment by making improved customer
satisfaction an ongoing objective To maintain the relationships that are critical to
delivering superior customer value management must pay close attention to service
both before and after sales
Information Brokerage amp management
The Information Brokerage and Management layer provide service integration through
the notion of information brokerages the development of which is necessitated by the
increasing information resource fragmentation We use the notion of Information
Brokerage to represent an intermediary who provides service integration between
customers and information providers given some constraint such as a low price fast
service or profit maximization for a client
Information Brokers for example are rapidly becoming necessary in dealing with the
voluminous amounts of information on the networks As on-line database migrate to
consumer information utilities consumers and information professionals will have to
keep up the knowledge and ownership of all these systems Whorsquos got what How do
you use it What do they charge Most professionals have enough trouble keeping
trap of files of interest on one or two database services With all the complexity
associated with large number of on-line databases and service bureau itrsquos impossible
to expect humans to do the searching it will have to be software programs-information
brokers or software agents to use the most popular term-act on searchers behalf
Information Brokerage does more than just searching
Interface and Support Service
The third layer interface and support services will provide interfaces for electronic
commerce application such as interactive catalogues and will support directory
services-functions necessary for information search and access These two concepts
are very different Interactive catalogues are the customized interface to consumer
applications such as home shopping An interactive catalogue is an extension of the
paper-based catalogue and incorporates additional features such as sophisticated
graphics and video to make the advertising more attractive
Directories on the other hand operate behind the scenes and attempt to organize the
enormous amount of information and transactions generated to facilitate electronic
commerce Directory services database make data from any server appear as a local
file A classic example of a directory is the telephone White Pages which allows to
locate people and telephone numbers In the case of electronic commerce directories
would play an important role in information management functions For instance take
the case of buying an airline ticket with several stop overs with a caveat that the time
between layovers be minimize This search would require several queries to various
on-line directories to find empty seats on various airlines and then the availability of
seeds would be coordinated with the amount time spent in the airport terminals
Secure Messaging and Structure Document Interchange Services
The importance of the fourth layer Secure Messaging is clear Everyone in business
knows that electronic messaging is a critical business issue Consider a familiar
business scenario you hand over an urgent fax on Monday and find out on Tuesday
that itrsquos still sitting on your fax operatorrsquos desk What happened The line was busy
and he thought he would try again later Or the number was wrong but he forgot to
let you know Or you are in London and you need to send a spreadsheet that details
a marketing plan for a product introduction strategy to co-worker in New York This
must be done today not tomorrow when the courier service would deliver There is a
solution to these common and frustrating problems Itrsquos called integrated messaging
a group of computer services that through the use of a network send receive and
combine messages faxes and large data files Some better known examples are
electronic mail enhances fax and electronic data interchange
Broadly defined messaging is the software that sits between the network
infrastructure and the clients or electronic commerce applications masking the
peculiarities if the environment Others define messages as a framework for the total
implementation of portable applications divorcing you from the architectural primitives
of your system In general messaging products are not applications that solve
problems they are more enablers of the application that solve problems
Messaging services offer solution for communicating non-formatted (Unstructured)
data such as purchase orders shipping notices and invoices Unstructured messaging
consists of fax e-mail and form based systems like Lotus Notes Structured
documents messaging consists of the automated interchange of standardized and
approved messages between computer applications via telecommunications lines
Examples of structured document messaging include EDI
Messaging is gaining momentum in electronic commerce and seems to have many
advantages It supports both synchronous (immediate) and asynchronous (delayed)
message delivery and processing With asynchronous messaging when a message
is sent work continues (software doesnrsquot wait for a response) This allows the transfer
of messages through store-and-forward methods
The main disadvantages of messaging are the new types of applications it enables-
which appear to be more complex especially to traditional programmers-and the
jungle of standards it involves Because of the lack of standards there is often no
interoperability between different messaging vendors leading to islands of messaging
Also security privacy and confidentiality through data encryption and authentication
techniques are important issues that need to be resolved for ensuring the legality of
the message-based transactions themselves
Middleware Services
Middleware is a relatively new concept that emerged only recently Like so many other
innovations it came in being out of necessity Users in the 1970rsquos when vendors
delivered homogenous systems that worked didnrsquot have a need for middleware When
conditions changed-along with the hardware and the software the organizations
couldnrsquot The tools were inadequate the backlog was enormous and the pressure
was over whelming And the users were dissatisfied Something was needed to solve
all the interface translation transformation and interpretation problems that were
driving application developers crazy
With the growth of networks client-server technology and all other forms of
communicating betweenamong unlike platforms the problems of getting all pieces to
work together grew from formidable to horrendous As the cry for distributed
computing spread users demanded interaction between dissimilar system networks
that permitted shared resources and applications that could be accessed by multiple
software programs In simple terms middleware is the ultimate mediator between
diverse software programs that enables them talk to one another
Transparency
Transparency implies that users should be unaware that they are accessing multiple
systems Transparency is essential for dealing with higher-level issues than physical
media and interconnection that the underlying network infrastructure is in charge of
The ideal picture is one of a ldquoVirtualrdquo network a collection of work-group
departmental enterprise and inter-enterprise LANs that appears to the end user or
client application to be a seamless and easily accessed whole
Transparency is accomplished using middleware that facilities a distributed computing
environment This gives users and applications transparent access to data
computation and other resources across collections of multivendor heterogeneous
systems The strategic architectures of every major system vendor are now based on
some form of middleware The key to realizing the theoretical benefits of such an
architecture is transparency Users need not spend their time to understand where
something is Nor should application developers have to code into their applications
the exact locations of resources over the network The goal is for the applications to
send a request to the middleware layer which then satisfies the request any way it
can using remote information
Transaction Security and management
Support for transaction processing (TP) is fundamental to success in the electronic
commerce market Security and Management are essential to all layers in the
electronic commerce model Transaction integrity must be given for businesses that
cannot afford any loss or inconsistency in data For electronic commerce middleware
provides the qualities expected in the standard TP system the so-called ACID
property (Atomicity Consistency Isolation and Durability)
World Wide Web (WWW) As the Architecture
Electronic commerce depends on the unspoken assumption that computers
cooperate efficiently for seamless information sharing Unfortunately this assumption
of interoperability has been supported by the realities of practical computing
Computing is still a world made up of many technical directions product
implementations and competing vendors This diversity while good for innovation
causes problem as the E-Commerce applications try to impose a certain discipline on
the proliferating computers and networks It is ironic that real effect of computing is all
too often the prevention of data sharing due to incompatibility-architectures data
formats and communication protocols
What does the WEB Encompass
The Web has become an umbrella for a wide range of concepts and technologies that
differ markedly in purpose and scope These include the global hypertext publishing
concept the universal reader concept and the client-server concept
The global hypertext publishing concept promotes the idea of seamless information
world in which all on-line information can be accessed and retrieve in a consistent and
simple way To access information in this seamless world we will need the ability to
address many types of data-text files images sound files and animation sequences
The universal readership concept promotes the idea that unlike the segmented
applications of the past we can use one application-a universal (or common) user
interface-to read a variety of documents This concept implies that once information
is published it is accessible from any type of computer in any country and that any
(authorized) person merely needs to use one simple program to access it This is
accomplished in the web by using a core browser or application that is augmented by
supporting applications The core browser implements only minimal functionality and
attempts to offload more specialized work onto the supporting applications
The client-server concept allows the web to grow easily without any centralized
control Anyone can publish information and anyone (as long as He or She is
authorized) can read and download it Publishing information requires a server
program and reading data requires a client browser All the clients and all the servers
are connected to one another by the Internet The various standard protocols allows
all clients to communicate with all servers
In practice the web hands on a number of essential concepts including the following
i) The addressing schemes known as Uniform Resource Locator (URL) makes
the hypermedia world possible despite many different protocols
ii) A network protocol known as hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) used by client
browsers and servers offers performance and features not otherwise available
iii) A mark-up language (HTML) which every web client is requires to understand
is used for the representation of hypertext documents containing text list boxes
and graphics information across the net
Chapter 4
Technological Behind the Web
Information providers (or publishers) run programs (called servers) from which the
browsers (client can obtain information) These programs can either be Wed servers
that understand the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) ldquoGatewayrdquo program that
convert an existing information format to hypertext or a non-HTTP server that Web
browsers can access-anonymous FTP or Gopher servers
Web servers are composed of two major parts the Hypertext Transfer protocol for
transmitting documents between servers and clients and the hypertext Markup
language (HTML) format for documents The link between HTML files and the HTTP
servers is provided by the Uniform Resource Locators (URLs)
Uniform Resource Locator
The documents that the browsers display are hypertext that contains pointers to other
documents The browsers let you deal with the pointers in a transparent way ndash select
the pointer and you are presented with the text to which it points This pointer is
implemented using a concept that is central to Web browsers Uniform Resource
Locators (URLs) One way to think about URLs is to use the libraries and location on
a shelf as a metaphor A URL for a digital library would be a unique call number that
provides the exact location of every book in the world including the country city street
and library shelf location
In practice URLs are the strings used as addresses of objects (documents images)
on the Web Think of them as analogous to your E-mail address Just as your address
is unique and maybe used by any other Internet users to send you mail without
knowing exactly where you are a URL marks the unique location on the Internet
where a file or service can be found
URLs follow a fairly consistent pattern The first part describes the type of resource
the second part gives the name of the server housing the resource and the third part
gives full file name of the resource URLs are Universal in that they provide access to
a wide range of network services which required separate applications in the past For
a new network protocol one can easily form an address as the set of parameters
necessary to retrieve the object If these parameters are encoded into a concise string
with a prefix to identify the protocols and encoding one has a new URL scheme Take
a look at the URL formats below
FTP ftpserveraddresscompletefilename
Gopher gopherserveraddressportdirectoryfilename
TELNET telnetserveraddressport
HTTP httpserveraddressporthomepagehtml
News newsmiscstocksinvest
These are URLs for Internet news articles and news groups (The NNTP protocol) and
for HTTP archives for TELNET destinations E-mail addresses and so on The same
can done for names of objects in a given name space For example the URL of the
main page for the Web project happens to be
httpwebw3orghypertextwebTheProjecthtml The prefix ldquoHTTPrdquo in the preceding
example indicates the address space and defines the interpretation of the rest of the
string The HTTP protocol is to be used so the string contains the address of the
server to be contacted and a sub string to be passed to the server
As noted earlier different protocols use different syntaxes but they do have a small
amount in common For example the common URL syntax reserve the solidus () as
a way of representing a hierarchical space the pound label () as a way of pointing
inside the document and question mark () as a separator between the address of an
object and the query operation applied to it Hierarchical spaces are useful for
hypertext where one ldquoworkrdquo maybe split up into many interlinked documents the
allows relative name to exploit the hierarchical structure and allows links to be made
within the work independent of the higher parts of the URL such as the server name
URLs are central to the Web architecture The fact that it is easy to address and object
anywhere on the internet is essential for the system to scale and for the information
space to be independent of the network and server topology
Chapter 5
Network Security and Firewalls
The ability to conduct business on a public network has strong attraction ndash and the
potential for big savings Security and confidentiality are essential however before
businesses can conduct financial transactions over the internet and a lack of
widespread security measures remains at this time At present credit card numbers
financial records and other important information are not encrypted and can be
intercepted by any savvy Internet hacker
The discussion of security is concerns in electronic commerce can be divided into two
broad types
1 Client-server security usages various authorization methods to make sure that only
valid users and programs have access to information resource such as database
Access control mechanisms must be set up to ensure that properly authentication
user are allowed access only to those resource that they are entitled to use Such
mechanism includes password protection encrypted smart card biometric and
firewalls
2 Data and transaction security ensures the privacy and confidentiality in electronic
messages and data packets including the authentication of remote users in
network truncation of activity such as on-line payment The goal is to defeat any
attempt to assume another identity while involved while electronic mail or other
forms of data communication Preventive measure include data encryption using
various cryptographic methods
Data and message security
The lack of data and message security on the Internet has become a high profile
problem due to increasing number of merchants trying to spur commerce on the global
network For instance credit card numbers in there plain text form create a risk when
transmitted across the internet where the possibility of the number falling into the
wrong hands is relatively high Would you be willing to type in your credit card number
knowing the risk Even worse would you expose your customer to that risk Just the
thought of ldquosnifferrdquo programs that collect credit card numbers en masse is enough to
keep merchants away from on-line shopping given the possible lawsuits and other
liability issues In sort the lack of business truncation security is widely acknowledge
as a major implement to widespread e-commerce
Encrypted Documents and Electronic Mail
E-mail users who desires confidentiality and sender are using encryption Encryption
is simply to intend to keep personal thoughts personal Some users are already using
Pretty Good Personality (PGP) others are starting to use Privacy Enhanced Mail
(PEM)
E-mail is typically encrypted for the reason that all network correspondence is open
for eavesdropping Internet e-mail is obviously far less secure then the postal system
where envelopes protect correspondence for casual snooping A glance at the header
area of e-mail message by contrast will show that it has passed through a number of
nodes on its way to you Every one of these nodes presents the opportunity for
snooping
Chapter 6
Electronic Commerce Companies
Chapter 7
Pictorial Representation E-buying Methodology
Flipkartcom
STEP 1
STEP 2
STEP 3
STEP 4
STEP 5
STEP 6
STEP 7
STEP 8
STEP 9
STEP 10
STEP 11
STEP 12
Pictorial Representation E-buying Methodology
Yepmecom
STEP 1
STEP 2
STEP 3
STEP 4
STEP 5
STEP 6
STEP 7
STEP 8
STEP 9
Chapter 8
Conclusion
E-commerce is growing tremendously A lot of companies have joined between the
period July and August Online retail is still a tiny spot in Indiarsquos retail market of about
$500 billion a year but it is growing at a quick pace A study by retail consultancy
Techno-park predicts Indiarsquos e-tailing market will reach $32 billion by 2020 from $23
billion in 2014
Ethnic Indian clothes and casual wear are favorite products but unusual products like
Pets-too are to being offered online With a huge growth that e-commerce has
witnessed in recent times analysts like Devangshu Dutta sales there is scope for more
players to come in But some also warn about the risks the space is fraught with as
only a few may have chances of making it big They also see consolidation in the
sector going forward
Bibliography
Frontiers of Electronic commerce by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew B Whinston
Big E-commerce deals stir up Sector-Economic Times
wwwflipkartcom
wwwYepmecom
In light of this organization itself has to adopt to a world where the traditional concepts
of brand differentiation no longer hold ndash where ldquoQualityrdquo has a new meaning where
ldquoContentrdquo may not be equated to ldquoproductrdquo where ldquoDistributionrdquo may not automatically
mean ldquoPhysical Transportrdquo In this new environment brand equity can rapidly
evaporate forcing firms to develop new ways of doing business
ii Business-to-business Transaction
We call this category market-link transactions Here business government and other
organizations depend on computer-to-computer communication as a fast an
economical and a dependable way to conduct business transactions Small
companies are also beginning to see the benefits of adopting the same methods
Business-to-business transaction include the use of EDI and Electronic-mail for
purchasing goods and services buying information and consulting services
submitting requests for proposals and receive proposals
For example the current accounts payable process occurs through the exchange of
paper documents Each year the trading partners exchange millions of invoices
checks purchase orders financial reports and other transactions Most of the
documents are in electronic form at their point of origin but are printed and key-entered
at the point of receipt The current manual process of printing mailing and rekeying is
costly time consuming and error-prone Given this situation and faced with the need
to reduce costs small businesses are looking towards electronic commerce as
possible saviour
iii Intra-organizational Transactions
We call this category market-driven transaction A company becomes market driven
by dispersing throughout the firm information about its customers and competitors by
spreading strategic and tactical decision making so that all units can participate and
by continuously monitoring their customer commitment by making improved customer
satisfaction an ongoing objective To maintain the relationships that are critical to
delivering superior customer value management must pay close attention to service
both before and after sales
Information Brokerage amp management
The Information Brokerage and Management layer provide service integration through
the notion of information brokerages the development of which is necessitated by the
increasing information resource fragmentation We use the notion of Information
Brokerage to represent an intermediary who provides service integration between
customers and information providers given some constraint such as a low price fast
service or profit maximization for a client
Information Brokers for example are rapidly becoming necessary in dealing with the
voluminous amounts of information on the networks As on-line database migrate to
consumer information utilities consumers and information professionals will have to
keep up the knowledge and ownership of all these systems Whorsquos got what How do
you use it What do they charge Most professionals have enough trouble keeping
trap of files of interest on one or two database services With all the complexity
associated with large number of on-line databases and service bureau itrsquos impossible
to expect humans to do the searching it will have to be software programs-information
brokers or software agents to use the most popular term-act on searchers behalf
Information Brokerage does more than just searching
Interface and Support Service
The third layer interface and support services will provide interfaces for electronic
commerce application such as interactive catalogues and will support directory
services-functions necessary for information search and access These two concepts
are very different Interactive catalogues are the customized interface to consumer
applications such as home shopping An interactive catalogue is an extension of the
paper-based catalogue and incorporates additional features such as sophisticated
graphics and video to make the advertising more attractive
Directories on the other hand operate behind the scenes and attempt to organize the
enormous amount of information and transactions generated to facilitate electronic
commerce Directory services database make data from any server appear as a local
file A classic example of a directory is the telephone White Pages which allows to
locate people and telephone numbers In the case of electronic commerce directories
would play an important role in information management functions For instance take
the case of buying an airline ticket with several stop overs with a caveat that the time
between layovers be minimize This search would require several queries to various
on-line directories to find empty seats on various airlines and then the availability of
seeds would be coordinated with the amount time spent in the airport terminals
Secure Messaging and Structure Document Interchange Services
The importance of the fourth layer Secure Messaging is clear Everyone in business
knows that electronic messaging is a critical business issue Consider a familiar
business scenario you hand over an urgent fax on Monday and find out on Tuesday
that itrsquos still sitting on your fax operatorrsquos desk What happened The line was busy
and he thought he would try again later Or the number was wrong but he forgot to
let you know Or you are in London and you need to send a spreadsheet that details
a marketing plan for a product introduction strategy to co-worker in New York This
must be done today not tomorrow when the courier service would deliver There is a
solution to these common and frustrating problems Itrsquos called integrated messaging
a group of computer services that through the use of a network send receive and
combine messages faxes and large data files Some better known examples are
electronic mail enhances fax and electronic data interchange
Broadly defined messaging is the software that sits between the network
infrastructure and the clients or electronic commerce applications masking the
peculiarities if the environment Others define messages as a framework for the total
implementation of portable applications divorcing you from the architectural primitives
of your system In general messaging products are not applications that solve
problems they are more enablers of the application that solve problems
Messaging services offer solution for communicating non-formatted (Unstructured)
data such as purchase orders shipping notices and invoices Unstructured messaging
consists of fax e-mail and form based systems like Lotus Notes Structured
documents messaging consists of the automated interchange of standardized and
approved messages between computer applications via telecommunications lines
Examples of structured document messaging include EDI
Messaging is gaining momentum in electronic commerce and seems to have many
advantages It supports both synchronous (immediate) and asynchronous (delayed)
message delivery and processing With asynchronous messaging when a message
is sent work continues (software doesnrsquot wait for a response) This allows the transfer
of messages through store-and-forward methods
The main disadvantages of messaging are the new types of applications it enables-
which appear to be more complex especially to traditional programmers-and the
jungle of standards it involves Because of the lack of standards there is often no
interoperability between different messaging vendors leading to islands of messaging
Also security privacy and confidentiality through data encryption and authentication
techniques are important issues that need to be resolved for ensuring the legality of
the message-based transactions themselves
Middleware Services
Middleware is a relatively new concept that emerged only recently Like so many other
innovations it came in being out of necessity Users in the 1970rsquos when vendors
delivered homogenous systems that worked didnrsquot have a need for middleware When
conditions changed-along with the hardware and the software the organizations
couldnrsquot The tools were inadequate the backlog was enormous and the pressure
was over whelming And the users were dissatisfied Something was needed to solve
all the interface translation transformation and interpretation problems that were
driving application developers crazy
With the growth of networks client-server technology and all other forms of
communicating betweenamong unlike platforms the problems of getting all pieces to
work together grew from formidable to horrendous As the cry for distributed
computing spread users demanded interaction between dissimilar system networks
that permitted shared resources and applications that could be accessed by multiple
software programs In simple terms middleware is the ultimate mediator between
diverse software programs that enables them talk to one another
Transparency
Transparency implies that users should be unaware that they are accessing multiple
systems Transparency is essential for dealing with higher-level issues than physical
media and interconnection that the underlying network infrastructure is in charge of
The ideal picture is one of a ldquoVirtualrdquo network a collection of work-group
departmental enterprise and inter-enterprise LANs that appears to the end user or
client application to be a seamless and easily accessed whole
Transparency is accomplished using middleware that facilities a distributed computing
environment This gives users and applications transparent access to data
computation and other resources across collections of multivendor heterogeneous
systems The strategic architectures of every major system vendor are now based on
some form of middleware The key to realizing the theoretical benefits of such an
architecture is transparency Users need not spend their time to understand where
something is Nor should application developers have to code into their applications
the exact locations of resources over the network The goal is for the applications to
send a request to the middleware layer which then satisfies the request any way it
can using remote information
Transaction Security and management
Support for transaction processing (TP) is fundamental to success in the electronic
commerce market Security and Management are essential to all layers in the
electronic commerce model Transaction integrity must be given for businesses that
cannot afford any loss or inconsistency in data For electronic commerce middleware
provides the qualities expected in the standard TP system the so-called ACID
property (Atomicity Consistency Isolation and Durability)
World Wide Web (WWW) As the Architecture
Electronic commerce depends on the unspoken assumption that computers
cooperate efficiently for seamless information sharing Unfortunately this assumption
of interoperability has been supported by the realities of practical computing
Computing is still a world made up of many technical directions product
implementations and competing vendors This diversity while good for innovation
causes problem as the E-Commerce applications try to impose a certain discipline on
the proliferating computers and networks It is ironic that real effect of computing is all
too often the prevention of data sharing due to incompatibility-architectures data
formats and communication protocols
What does the WEB Encompass
The Web has become an umbrella for a wide range of concepts and technologies that
differ markedly in purpose and scope These include the global hypertext publishing
concept the universal reader concept and the client-server concept
The global hypertext publishing concept promotes the idea of seamless information
world in which all on-line information can be accessed and retrieve in a consistent and
simple way To access information in this seamless world we will need the ability to
address many types of data-text files images sound files and animation sequences
The universal readership concept promotes the idea that unlike the segmented
applications of the past we can use one application-a universal (or common) user
interface-to read a variety of documents This concept implies that once information
is published it is accessible from any type of computer in any country and that any
(authorized) person merely needs to use one simple program to access it This is
accomplished in the web by using a core browser or application that is augmented by
supporting applications The core browser implements only minimal functionality and
attempts to offload more specialized work onto the supporting applications
The client-server concept allows the web to grow easily without any centralized
control Anyone can publish information and anyone (as long as He or She is
authorized) can read and download it Publishing information requires a server
program and reading data requires a client browser All the clients and all the servers
are connected to one another by the Internet The various standard protocols allows
all clients to communicate with all servers
In practice the web hands on a number of essential concepts including the following
i) The addressing schemes known as Uniform Resource Locator (URL) makes
the hypermedia world possible despite many different protocols
ii) A network protocol known as hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) used by client
browsers and servers offers performance and features not otherwise available
iii) A mark-up language (HTML) which every web client is requires to understand
is used for the representation of hypertext documents containing text list boxes
and graphics information across the net
Chapter 4
Technological Behind the Web
Information providers (or publishers) run programs (called servers) from which the
browsers (client can obtain information) These programs can either be Wed servers
that understand the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) ldquoGatewayrdquo program that
convert an existing information format to hypertext or a non-HTTP server that Web
browsers can access-anonymous FTP or Gopher servers
Web servers are composed of two major parts the Hypertext Transfer protocol for
transmitting documents between servers and clients and the hypertext Markup
language (HTML) format for documents The link between HTML files and the HTTP
servers is provided by the Uniform Resource Locators (URLs)
Uniform Resource Locator
The documents that the browsers display are hypertext that contains pointers to other
documents The browsers let you deal with the pointers in a transparent way ndash select
the pointer and you are presented with the text to which it points This pointer is
implemented using a concept that is central to Web browsers Uniform Resource
Locators (URLs) One way to think about URLs is to use the libraries and location on
a shelf as a metaphor A URL for a digital library would be a unique call number that
provides the exact location of every book in the world including the country city street
and library shelf location
In practice URLs are the strings used as addresses of objects (documents images)
on the Web Think of them as analogous to your E-mail address Just as your address
is unique and maybe used by any other Internet users to send you mail without
knowing exactly where you are a URL marks the unique location on the Internet
where a file or service can be found
URLs follow a fairly consistent pattern The first part describes the type of resource
the second part gives the name of the server housing the resource and the third part
gives full file name of the resource URLs are Universal in that they provide access to
a wide range of network services which required separate applications in the past For
a new network protocol one can easily form an address as the set of parameters
necessary to retrieve the object If these parameters are encoded into a concise string
with a prefix to identify the protocols and encoding one has a new URL scheme Take
a look at the URL formats below
FTP ftpserveraddresscompletefilename
Gopher gopherserveraddressportdirectoryfilename
TELNET telnetserveraddressport
HTTP httpserveraddressporthomepagehtml
News newsmiscstocksinvest
These are URLs for Internet news articles and news groups (The NNTP protocol) and
for HTTP archives for TELNET destinations E-mail addresses and so on The same
can done for names of objects in a given name space For example the URL of the
main page for the Web project happens to be
httpwebw3orghypertextwebTheProjecthtml The prefix ldquoHTTPrdquo in the preceding
example indicates the address space and defines the interpretation of the rest of the
string The HTTP protocol is to be used so the string contains the address of the
server to be contacted and a sub string to be passed to the server
As noted earlier different protocols use different syntaxes but they do have a small
amount in common For example the common URL syntax reserve the solidus () as
a way of representing a hierarchical space the pound label () as a way of pointing
inside the document and question mark () as a separator between the address of an
object and the query operation applied to it Hierarchical spaces are useful for
hypertext where one ldquoworkrdquo maybe split up into many interlinked documents the
allows relative name to exploit the hierarchical structure and allows links to be made
within the work independent of the higher parts of the URL such as the server name
URLs are central to the Web architecture The fact that it is easy to address and object
anywhere on the internet is essential for the system to scale and for the information
space to be independent of the network and server topology
Chapter 5
Network Security and Firewalls
The ability to conduct business on a public network has strong attraction ndash and the
potential for big savings Security and confidentiality are essential however before
businesses can conduct financial transactions over the internet and a lack of
widespread security measures remains at this time At present credit card numbers
financial records and other important information are not encrypted and can be
intercepted by any savvy Internet hacker
The discussion of security is concerns in electronic commerce can be divided into two
broad types
1 Client-server security usages various authorization methods to make sure that only
valid users and programs have access to information resource such as database
Access control mechanisms must be set up to ensure that properly authentication
user are allowed access only to those resource that they are entitled to use Such
mechanism includes password protection encrypted smart card biometric and
firewalls
2 Data and transaction security ensures the privacy and confidentiality in electronic
messages and data packets including the authentication of remote users in
network truncation of activity such as on-line payment The goal is to defeat any
attempt to assume another identity while involved while electronic mail or other
forms of data communication Preventive measure include data encryption using
various cryptographic methods
Data and message security
The lack of data and message security on the Internet has become a high profile
problem due to increasing number of merchants trying to spur commerce on the global
network For instance credit card numbers in there plain text form create a risk when
transmitted across the internet where the possibility of the number falling into the
wrong hands is relatively high Would you be willing to type in your credit card number
knowing the risk Even worse would you expose your customer to that risk Just the
thought of ldquosnifferrdquo programs that collect credit card numbers en masse is enough to
keep merchants away from on-line shopping given the possible lawsuits and other
liability issues In sort the lack of business truncation security is widely acknowledge
as a major implement to widespread e-commerce
Encrypted Documents and Electronic Mail
E-mail users who desires confidentiality and sender are using encryption Encryption
is simply to intend to keep personal thoughts personal Some users are already using
Pretty Good Personality (PGP) others are starting to use Privacy Enhanced Mail
(PEM)
E-mail is typically encrypted for the reason that all network correspondence is open
for eavesdropping Internet e-mail is obviously far less secure then the postal system
where envelopes protect correspondence for casual snooping A glance at the header
area of e-mail message by contrast will show that it has passed through a number of
nodes on its way to you Every one of these nodes presents the opportunity for
snooping
Chapter 6
Electronic Commerce Companies
Chapter 7
Pictorial Representation E-buying Methodology
Flipkartcom
STEP 1
STEP 2
STEP 3
STEP 4
STEP 5
STEP 6
STEP 7
STEP 8
STEP 9
STEP 10
STEP 11
STEP 12
Pictorial Representation E-buying Methodology
Yepmecom
STEP 1
STEP 2
STEP 3
STEP 4
STEP 5
STEP 6
STEP 7
STEP 8
STEP 9
Chapter 8
Conclusion
E-commerce is growing tremendously A lot of companies have joined between the
period July and August Online retail is still a tiny spot in Indiarsquos retail market of about
$500 billion a year but it is growing at a quick pace A study by retail consultancy
Techno-park predicts Indiarsquos e-tailing market will reach $32 billion by 2020 from $23
billion in 2014
Ethnic Indian clothes and casual wear are favorite products but unusual products like
Pets-too are to being offered online With a huge growth that e-commerce has
witnessed in recent times analysts like Devangshu Dutta sales there is scope for more
players to come in But some also warn about the risks the space is fraught with as
only a few may have chances of making it big They also see consolidation in the
sector going forward
Bibliography
Frontiers of Electronic commerce by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew B Whinston
Big E-commerce deals stir up Sector-Economic Times
wwwflipkartcom
wwwYepmecom
trap of files of interest on one or two database services With all the complexity
associated with large number of on-line databases and service bureau itrsquos impossible
to expect humans to do the searching it will have to be software programs-information
brokers or software agents to use the most popular term-act on searchers behalf
Information Brokerage does more than just searching
Interface and Support Service
The third layer interface and support services will provide interfaces for electronic
commerce application such as interactive catalogues and will support directory
services-functions necessary for information search and access These two concepts
are very different Interactive catalogues are the customized interface to consumer
applications such as home shopping An interactive catalogue is an extension of the
paper-based catalogue and incorporates additional features such as sophisticated
graphics and video to make the advertising more attractive
Directories on the other hand operate behind the scenes and attempt to organize the
enormous amount of information and transactions generated to facilitate electronic
commerce Directory services database make data from any server appear as a local
file A classic example of a directory is the telephone White Pages which allows to
locate people and telephone numbers In the case of electronic commerce directories
would play an important role in information management functions For instance take
the case of buying an airline ticket with several stop overs with a caveat that the time
between layovers be minimize This search would require several queries to various
on-line directories to find empty seats on various airlines and then the availability of
seeds would be coordinated with the amount time spent in the airport terminals
Secure Messaging and Structure Document Interchange Services
The importance of the fourth layer Secure Messaging is clear Everyone in business
knows that electronic messaging is a critical business issue Consider a familiar
business scenario you hand over an urgent fax on Monday and find out on Tuesday
that itrsquos still sitting on your fax operatorrsquos desk What happened The line was busy
and he thought he would try again later Or the number was wrong but he forgot to
let you know Or you are in London and you need to send a spreadsheet that details
a marketing plan for a product introduction strategy to co-worker in New York This
must be done today not tomorrow when the courier service would deliver There is a
solution to these common and frustrating problems Itrsquos called integrated messaging
a group of computer services that through the use of a network send receive and
combine messages faxes and large data files Some better known examples are
electronic mail enhances fax and electronic data interchange
Broadly defined messaging is the software that sits between the network
infrastructure and the clients or electronic commerce applications masking the
peculiarities if the environment Others define messages as a framework for the total
implementation of portable applications divorcing you from the architectural primitives
of your system In general messaging products are not applications that solve
problems they are more enablers of the application that solve problems
Messaging services offer solution for communicating non-formatted (Unstructured)
data such as purchase orders shipping notices and invoices Unstructured messaging
consists of fax e-mail and form based systems like Lotus Notes Structured
documents messaging consists of the automated interchange of standardized and
approved messages between computer applications via telecommunications lines
Examples of structured document messaging include EDI
Messaging is gaining momentum in electronic commerce and seems to have many
advantages It supports both synchronous (immediate) and asynchronous (delayed)
message delivery and processing With asynchronous messaging when a message
is sent work continues (software doesnrsquot wait for a response) This allows the transfer
of messages through store-and-forward methods
The main disadvantages of messaging are the new types of applications it enables-
which appear to be more complex especially to traditional programmers-and the
jungle of standards it involves Because of the lack of standards there is often no
interoperability between different messaging vendors leading to islands of messaging
Also security privacy and confidentiality through data encryption and authentication
techniques are important issues that need to be resolved for ensuring the legality of
the message-based transactions themselves
Middleware Services
Middleware is a relatively new concept that emerged only recently Like so many other
innovations it came in being out of necessity Users in the 1970rsquos when vendors
delivered homogenous systems that worked didnrsquot have a need for middleware When
conditions changed-along with the hardware and the software the organizations
couldnrsquot The tools were inadequate the backlog was enormous and the pressure
was over whelming And the users were dissatisfied Something was needed to solve
all the interface translation transformation and interpretation problems that were
driving application developers crazy
With the growth of networks client-server technology and all other forms of
communicating betweenamong unlike platforms the problems of getting all pieces to
work together grew from formidable to horrendous As the cry for distributed
computing spread users demanded interaction between dissimilar system networks
that permitted shared resources and applications that could be accessed by multiple
software programs In simple terms middleware is the ultimate mediator between
diverse software programs that enables them talk to one another
Transparency
Transparency implies that users should be unaware that they are accessing multiple
systems Transparency is essential for dealing with higher-level issues than physical
media and interconnection that the underlying network infrastructure is in charge of
The ideal picture is one of a ldquoVirtualrdquo network a collection of work-group
departmental enterprise and inter-enterprise LANs that appears to the end user or
client application to be a seamless and easily accessed whole
Transparency is accomplished using middleware that facilities a distributed computing
environment This gives users and applications transparent access to data
computation and other resources across collections of multivendor heterogeneous
systems The strategic architectures of every major system vendor are now based on
some form of middleware The key to realizing the theoretical benefits of such an
architecture is transparency Users need not spend their time to understand where
something is Nor should application developers have to code into their applications
the exact locations of resources over the network The goal is for the applications to
send a request to the middleware layer which then satisfies the request any way it
can using remote information
Transaction Security and management
Support for transaction processing (TP) is fundamental to success in the electronic
commerce market Security and Management are essential to all layers in the
electronic commerce model Transaction integrity must be given for businesses that
cannot afford any loss or inconsistency in data For electronic commerce middleware
provides the qualities expected in the standard TP system the so-called ACID
property (Atomicity Consistency Isolation and Durability)
World Wide Web (WWW) As the Architecture
Electronic commerce depends on the unspoken assumption that computers
cooperate efficiently for seamless information sharing Unfortunately this assumption
of interoperability has been supported by the realities of practical computing
Computing is still a world made up of many technical directions product
implementations and competing vendors This diversity while good for innovation
causes problem as the E-Commerce applications try to impose a certain discipline on
the proliferating computers and networks It is ironic that real effect of computing is all
too often the prevention of data sharing due to incompatibility-architectures data
formats and communication protocols
What does the WEB Encompass
The Web has become an umbrella for a wide range of concepts and technologies that
differ markedly in purpose and scope These include the global hypertext publishing
concept the universal reader concept and the client-server concept
The global hypertext publishing concept promotes the idea of seamless information
world in which all on-line information can be accessed and retrieve in a consistent and
simple way To access information in this seamless world we will need the ability to
address many types of data-text files images sound files and animation sequences
The universal readership concept promotes the idea that unlike the segmented
applications of the past we can use one application-a universal (or common) user
interface-to read a variety of documents This concept implies that once information
is published it is accessible from any type of computer in any country and that any
(authorized) person merely needs to use one simple program to access it This is
accomplished in the web by using a core browser or application that is augmented by
supporting applications The core browser implements only minimal functionality and
attempts to offload more specialized work onto the supporting applications
The client-server concept allows the web to grow easily without any centralized
control Anyone can publish information and anyone (as long as He or She is
authorized) can read and download it Publishing information requires a server
program and reading data requires a client browser All the clients and all the servers
are connected to one another by the Internet The various standard protocols allows
all clients to communicate with all servers
In practice the web hands on a number of essential concepts including the following
i) The addressing schemes known as Uniform Resource Locator (URL) makes
the hypermedia world possible despite many different protocols
ii) A network protocol known as hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) used by client
browsers and servers offers performance and features not otherwise available
iii) A mark-up language (HTML) which every web client is requires to understand
is used for the representation of hypertext documents containing text list boxes
and graphics information across the net
Chapter 4
Technological Behind the Web
Information providers (or publishers) run programs (called servers) from which the
browsers (client can obtain information) These programs can either be Wed servers
that understand the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) ldquoGatewayrdquo program that
convert an existing information format to hypertext or a non-HTTP server that Web
browsers can access-anonymous FTP or Gopher servers
Web servers are composed of two major parts the Hypertext Transfer protocol for
transmitting documents between servers and clients and the hypertext Markup
language (HTML) format for documents The link between HTML files and the HTTP
servers is provided by the Uniform Resource Locators (URLs)
Uniform Resource Locator
The documents that the browsers display are hypertext that contains pointers to other
documents The browsers let you deal with the pointers in a transparent way ndash select
the pointer and you are presented with the text to which it points This pointer is
implemented using a concept that is central to Web browsers Uniform Resource
Locators (URLs) One way to think about URLs is to use the libraries and location on
a shelf as a metaphor A URL for a digital library would be a unique call number that
provides the exact location of every book in the world including the country city street
and library shelf location
In practice URLs are the strings used as addresses of objects (documents images)
on the Web Think of them as analogous to your E-mail address Just as your address
is unique and maybe used by any other Internet users to send you mail without
knowing exactly where you are a URL marks the unique location on the Internet
where a file or service can be found
URLs follow a fairly consistent pattern The first part describes the type of resource
the second part gives the name of the server housing the resource and the third part
gives full file name of the resource URLs are Universal in that they provide access to
a wide range of network services which required separate applications in the past For
a new network protocol one can easily form an address as the set of parameters
necessary to retrieve the object If these parameters are encoded into a concise string
with a prefix to identify the protocols and encoding one has a new URL scheme Take
a look at the URL formats below
FTP ftpserveraddresscompletefilename
Gopher gopherserveraddressportdirectoryfilename
TELNET telnetserveraddressport
HTTP httpserveraddressporthomepagehtml
News newsmiscstocksinvest
These are URLs for Internet news articles and news groups (The NNTP protocol) and
for HTTP archives for TELNET destinations E-mail addresses and so on The same
can done for names of objects in a given name space For example the URL of the
main page for the Web project happens to be
httpwebw3orghypertextwebTheProjecthtml The prefix ldquoHTTPrdquo in the preceding
example indicates the address space and defines the interpretation of the rest of the
string The HTTP protocol is to be used so the string contains the address of the
server to be contacted and a sub string to be passed to the server
As noted earlier different protocols use different syntaxes but they do have a small
amount in common For example the common URL syntax reserve the solidus () as
a way of representing a hierarchical space the pound label () as a way of pointing
inside the document and question mark () as a separator between the address of an
object and the query operation applied to it Hierarchical spaces are useful for
hypertext where one ldquoworkrdquo maybe split up into many interlinked documents the
allows relative name to exploit the hierarchical structure and allows links to be made
within the work independent of the higher parts of the URL such as the server name
URLs are central to the Web architecture The fact that it is easy to address and object
anywhere on the internet is essential for the system to scale and for the information
space to be independent of the network and server topology
Chapter 5
Network Security and Firewalls
The ability to conduct business on a public network has strong attraction ndash and the
potential for big savings Security and confidentiality are essential however before
businesses can conduct financial transactions over the internet and a lack of
widespread security measures remains at this time At present credit card numbers
financial records and other important information are not encrypted and can be
intercepted by any savvy Internet hacker
The discussion of security is concerns in electronic commerce can be divided into two
broad types
1 Client-server security usages various authorization methods to make sure that only
valid users and programs have access to information resource such as database
Access control mechanisms must be set up to ensure that properly authentication
user are allowed access only to those resource that they are entitled to use Such
mechanism includes password protection encrypted smart card biometric and
firewalls
2 Data and transaction security ensures the privacy and confidentiality in electronic
messages and data packets including the authentication of remote users in
network truncation of activity such as on-line payment The goal is to defeat any
attempt to assume another identity while involved while electronic mail or other
forms of data communication Preventive measure include data encryption using
various cryptographic methods
Data and message security
The lack of data and message security on the Internet has become a high profile
problem due to increasing number of merchants trying to spur commerce on the global
network For instance credit card numbers in there plain text form create a risk when
transmitted across the internet where the possibility of the number falling into the
wrong hands is relatively high Would you be willing to type in your credit card number
knowing the risk Even worse would you expose your customer to that risk Just the
thought of ldquosnifferrdquo programs that collect credit card numbers en masse is enough to
keep merchants away from on-line shopping given the possible lawsuits and other
liability issues In sort the lack of business truncation security is widely acknowledge
as a major implement to widespread e-commerce
Encrypted Documents and Electronic Mail
E-mail users who desires confidentiality and sender are using encryption Encryption
is simply to intend to keep personal thoughts personal Some users are already using
Pretty Good Personality (PGP) others are starting to use Privacy Enhanced Mail
(PEM)
E-mail is typically encrypted for the reason that all network correspondence is open
for eavesdropping Internet e-mail is obviously far less secure then the postal system
where envelopes protect correspondence for casual snooping A glance at the header
area of e-mail message by contrast will show that it has passed through a number of
nodes on its way to you Every one of these nodes presents the opportunity for
snooping
Chapter 6
Electronic Commerce Companies
Chapter 7
Pictorial Representation E-buying Methodology
Flipkartcom
STEP 1
STEP 2
STEP 3
STEP 4
STEP 5
STEP 6
STEP 7
STEP 8
STEP 9
STEP 10
STEP 11
STEP 12
Pictorial Representation E-buying Methodology
Yepmecom
STEP 1
STEP 2
STEP 3
STEP 4
STEP 5
STEP 6
STEP 7
STEP 8
STEP 9
Chapter 8
Conclusion
E-commerce is growing tremendously A lot of companies have joined between the
period July and August Online retail is still a tiny spot in Indiarsquos retail market of about
$500 billion a year but it is growing at a quick pace A study by retail consultancy
Techno-park predicts Indiarsquos e-tailing market will reach $32 billion by 2020 from $23
billion in 2014
Ethnic Indian clothes and casual wear are favorite products but unusual products like
Pets-too are to being offered online With a huge growth that e-commerce has
witnessed in recent times analysts like Devangshu Dutta sales there is scope for more
players to come in But some also warn about the risks the space is fraught with as
only a few may have chances of making it big They also see consolidation in the
sector going forward
Bibliography
Frontiers of Electronic commerce by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew B Whinston
Big E-commerce deals stir up Sector-Economic Times
wwwflipkartcom
wwwYepmecom
Messaging services offer solution for communicating non-formatted (Unstructured)
data such as purchase orders shipping notices and invoices Unstructured messaging
consists of fax e-mail and form based systems like Lotus Notes Structured
documents messaging consists of the automated interchange of standardized and
approved messages between computer applications via telecommunications lines
Examples of structured document messaging include EDI
Messaging is gaining momentum in electronic commerce and seems to have many
advantages It supports both synchronous (immediate) and asynchronous (delayed)
message delivery and processing With asynchronous messaging when a message
is sent work continues (software doesnrsquot wait for a response) This allows the transfer
of messages through store-and-forward methods
The main disadvantages of messaging are the new types of applications it enables-
which appear to be more complex especially to traditional programmers-and the
jungle of standards it involves Because of the lack of standards there is often no
interoperability between different messaging vendors leading to islands of messaging
Also security privacy and confidentiality through data encryption and authentication
techniques are important issues that need to be resolved for ensuring the legality of
the message-based transactions themselves
Middleware Services
Middleware is a relatively new concept that emerged only recently Like so many other
innovations it came in being out of necessity Users in the 1970rsquos when vendors
delivered homogenous systems that worked didnrsquot have a need for middleware When
conditions changed-along with the hardware and the software the organizations
couldnrsquot The tools were inadequate the backlog was enormous and the pressure
was over whelming And the users were dissatisfied Something was needed to solve
all the interface translation transformation and interpretation problems that were
driving application developers crazy
With the growth of networks client-server technology and all other forms of
communicating betweenamong unlike platforms the problems of getting all pieces to
work together grew from formidable to horrendous As the cry for distributed
computing spread users demanded interaction between dissimilar system networks
that permitted shared resources and applications that could be accessed by multiple
software programs In simple terms middleware is the ultimate mediator between
diverse software programs that enables them talk to one another
Transparency
Transparency implies that users should be unaware that they are accessing multiple
systems Transparency is essential for dealing with higher-level issues than physical
media and interconnection that the underlying network infrastructure is in charge of
The ideal picture is one of a ldquoVirtualrdquo network a collection of work-group
departmental enterprise and inter-enterprise LANs that appears to the end user or
client application to be a seamless and easily accessed whole
Transparency is accomplished using middleware that facilities a distributed computing
environment This gives users and applications transparent access to data
computation and other resources across collections of multivendor heterogeneous
systems The strategic architectures of every major system vendor are now based on
some form of middleware The key to realizing the theoretical benefits of such an
architecture is transparency Users need not spend their time to understand where
something is Nor should application developers have to code into their applications
the exact locations of resources over the network The goal is for the applications to
send a request to the middleware layer which then satisfies the request any way it
can using remote information
Transaction Security and management
Support for transaction processing (TP) is fundamental to success in the electronic
commerce market Security and Management are essential to all layers in the
electronic commerce model Transaction integrity must be given for businesses that
cannot afford any loss or inconsistency in data For electronic commerce middleware
provides the qualities expected in the standard TP system the so-called ACID
property (Atomicity Consistency Isolation and Durability)
World Wide Web (WWW) As the Architecture
Electronic commerce depends on the unspoken assumption that computers
cooperate efficiently for seamless information sharing Unfortunately this assumption
of interoperability has been supported by the realities of practical computing
Computing is still a world made up of many technical directions product
implementations and competing vendors This diversity while good for innovation
causes problem as the E-Commerce applications try to impose a certain discipline on
the proliferating computers and networks It is ironic that real effect of computing is all
too often the prevention of data sharing due to incompatibility-architectures data
formats and communication protocols
What does the WEB Encompass
The Web has become an umbrella for a wide range of concepts and technologies that
differ markedly in purpose and scope These include the global hypertext publishing
concept the universal reader concept and the client-server concept
The global hypertext publishing concept promotes the idea of seamless information
world in which all on-line information can be accessed and retrieve in a consistent and
simple way To access information in this seamless world we will need the ability to
address many types of data-text files images sound files and animation sequences
The universal readership concept promotes the idea that unlike the segmented
applications of the past we can use one application-a universal (or common) user
interface-to read a variety of documents This concept implies that once information
is published it is accessible from any type of computer in any country and that any
(authorized) person merely needs to use one simple program to access it This is
accomplished in the web by using a core browser or application that is augmented by
supporting applications The core browser implements only minimal functionality and
attempts to offload more specialized work onto the supporting applications
The client-server concept allows the web to grow easily without any centralized
control Anyone can publish information and anyone (as long as He or She is
authorized) can read and download it Publishing information requires a server
program and reading data requires a client browser All the clients and all the servers
are connected to one another by the Internet The various standard protocols allows
all clients to communicate with all servers
In practice the web hands on a number of essential concepts including the following
i) The addressing schemes known as Uniform Resource Locator (URL) makes
the hypermedia world possible despite many different protocols
ii) A network protocol known as hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) used by client
browsers and servers offers performance and features not otherwise available
iii) A mark-up language (HTML) which every web client is requires to understand
is used for the representation of hypertext documents containing text list boxes
and graphics information across the net
Chapter 4
Technological Behind the Web
Information providers (or publishers) run programs (called servers) from which the
browsers (client can obtain information) These programs can either be Wed servers
that understand the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) ldquoGatewayrdquo program that
convert an existing information format to hypertext or a non-HTTP server that Web
browsers can access-anonymous FTP or Gopher servers
Web servers are composed of two major parts the Hypertext Transfer protocol for
transmitting documents between servers and clients and the hypertext Markup
language (HTML) format for documents The link between HTML files and the HTTP
servers is provided by the Uniform Resource Locators (URLs)
Uniform Resource Locator
The documents that the browsers display are hypertext that contains pointers to other
documents The browsers let you deal with the pointers in a transparent way ndash select
the pointer and you are presented with the text to which it points This pointer is
implemented using a concept that is central to Web browsers Uniform Resource
Locators (URLs) One way to think about URLs is to use the libraries and location on
a shelf as a metaphor A URL for a digital library would be a unique call number that
provides the exact location of every book in the world including the country city street
and library shelf location
In practice URLs are the strings used as addresses of objects (documents images)
on the Web Think of them as analogous to your E-mail address Just as your address
is unique and maybe used by any other Internet users to send you mail without
knowing exactly where you are a URL marks the unique location on the Internet
where a file or service can be found
URLs follow a fairly consistent pattern The first part describes the type of resource
the second part gives the name of the server housing the resource and the third part
gives full file name of the resource URLs are Universal in that they provide access to
a wide range of network services which required separate applications in the past For
a new network protocol one can easily form an address as the set of parameters
necessary to retrieve the object If these parameters are encoded into a concise string
with a prefix to identify the protocols and encoding one has a new URL scheme Take
a look at the URL formats below
FTP ftpserveraddresscompletefilename
Gopher gopherserveraddressportdirectoryfilename
TELNET telnetserveraddressport
HTTP httpserveraddressporthomepagehtml
News newsmiscstocksinvest
These are URLs for Internet news articles and news groups (The NNTP protocol) and
for HTTP archives for TELNET destinations E-mail addresses and so on The same
can done for names of objects in a given name space For example the URL of the
main page for the Web project happens to be
httpwebw3orghypertextwebTheProjecthtml The prefix ldquoHTTPrdquo in the preceding
example indicates the address space and defines the interpretation of the rest of the
string The HTTP protocol is to be used so the string contains the address of the
server to be contacted and a sub string to be passed to the server
As noted earlier different protocols use different syntaxes but they do have a small
amount in common For example the common URL syntax reserve the solidus () as
a way of representing a hierarchical space the pound label () as a way of pointing
inside the document and question mark () as a separator between the address of an
object and the query operation applied to it Hierarchical spaces are useful for
hypertext where one ldquoworkrdquo maybe split up into many interlinked documents the
allows relative name to exploit the hierarchical structure and allows links to be made
within the work independent of the higher parts of the URL such as the server name
URLs are central to the Web architecture The fact that it is easy to address and object
anywhere on the internet is essential for the system to scale and for the information
space to be independent of the network and server topology
Chapter 5
Network Security and Firewalls
The ability to conduct business on a public network has strong attraction ndash and the
potential for big savings Security and confidentiality are essential however before
businesses can conduct financial transactions over the internet and a lack of
widespread security measures remains at this time At present credit card numbers
financial records and other important information are not encrypted and can be
intercepted by any savvy Internet hacker
The discussion of security is concerns in electronic commerce can be divided into two
broad types
1 Client-server security usages various authorization methods to make sure that only
valid users and programs have access to information resource such as database
Access control mechanisms must be set up to ensure that properly authentication
user are allowed access only to those resource that they are entitled to use Such
mechanism includes password protection encrypted smart card biometric and
firewalls
2 Data and transaction security ensures the privacy and confidentiality in electronic
messages and data packets including the authentication of remote users in
network truncation of activity such as on-line payment The goal is to defeat any
attempt to assume another identity while involved while electronic mail or other
forms of data communication Preventive measure include data encryption using
various cryptographic methods
Data and message security
The lack of data and message security on the Internet has become a high profile
problem due to increasing number of merchants trying to spur commerce on the global
network For instance credit card numbers in there plain text form create a risk when
transmitted across the internet where the possibility of the number falling into the
wrong hands is relatively high Would you be willing to type in your credit card number
knowing the risk Even worse would you expose your customer to that risk Just the
thought of ldquosnifferrdquo programs that collect credit card numbers en masse is enough to
keep merchants away from on-line shopping given the possible lawsuits and other
liability issues In sort the lack of business truncation security is widely acknowledge
as a major implement to widespread e-commerce
Encrypted Documents and Electronic Mail
E-mail users who desires confidentiality and sender are using encryption Encryption
is simply to intend to keep personal thoughts personal Some users are already using
Pretty Good Personality (PGP) others are starting to use Privacy Enhanced Mail
(PEM)
E-mail is typically encrypted for the reason that all network correspondence is open
for eavesdropping Internet e-mail is obviously far less secure then the postal system
where envelopes protect correspondence for casual snooping A glance at the header
area of e-mail message by contrast will show that it has passed through a number of
nodes on its way to you Every one of these nodes presents the opportunity for
snooping
Chapter 6
Electronic Commerce Companies
Chapter 7
Pictorial Representation E-buying Methodology
Flipkartcom
STEP 1
STEP 2
STEP 3
STEP 4
STEP 5
STEP 6
STEP 7
STEP 8
STEP 9
STEP 10
STEP 11
STEP 12
Pictorial Representation E-buying Methodology
Yepmecom
STEP 1
STEP 2
STEP 3
STEP 4
STEP 5
STEP 6
STEP 7
STEP 8
STEP 9
Chapter 8
Conclusion
E-commerce is growing tremendously A lot of companies have joined between the
period July and August Online retail is still a tiny spot in Indiarsquos retail market of about
$500 billion a year but it is growing at a quick pace A study by retail consultancy
Techno-park predicts Indiarsquos e-tailing market will reach $32 billion by 2020 from $23
billion in 2014
Ethnic Indian clothes and casual wear are favorite products but unusual products like
Pets-too are to being offered online With a huge growth that e-commerce has
witnessed in recent times analysts like Devangshu Dutta sales there is scope for more
players to come in But some also warn about the risks the space is fraught with as
only a few may have chances of making it big They also see consolidation in the
sector going forward
Bibliography
Frontiers of Electronic commerce by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew B Whinston
Big E-commerce deals stir up Sector-Economic Times
wwwflipkartcom
wwwYepmecom
Transparency is accomplished using middleware that facilities a distributed computing
environment This gives users and applications transparent access to data
computation and other resources across collections of multivendor heterogeneous
systems The strategic architectures of every major system vendor are now based on
some form of middleware The key to realizing the theoretical benefits of such an
architecture is transparency Users need not spend their time to understand where
something is Nor should application developers have to code into their applications
the exact locations of resources over the network The goal is for the applications to
send a request to the middleware layer which then satisfies the request any way it
can using remote information
Transaction Security and management
Support for transaction processing (TP) is fundamental to success in the electronic
commerce market Security and Management are essential to all layers in the
electronic commerce model Transaction integrity must be given for businesses that
cannot afford any loss or inconsistency in data For electronic commerce middleware
provides the qualities expected in the standard TP system the so-called ACID
property (Atomicity Consistency Isolation and Durability)
World Wide Web (WWW) As the Architecture
Electronic commerce depends on the unspoken assumption that computers
cooperate efficiently for seamless information sharing Unfortunately this assumption
of interoperability has been supported by the realities of practical computing
Computing is still a world made up of many technical directions product
implementations and competing vendors This diversity while good for innovation
causes problem as the E-Commerce applications try to impose a certain discipline on
the proliferating computers and networks It is ironic that real effect of computing is all
too often the prevention of data sharing due to incompatibility-architectures data
formats and communication protocols
What does the WEB Encompass
The Web has become an umbrella for a wide range of concepts and technologies that
differ markedly in purpose and scope These include the global hypertext publishing
concept the universal reader concept and the client-server concept
The global hypertext publishing concept promotes the idea of seamless information
world in which all on-line information can be accessed and retrieve in a consistent and
simple way To access information in this seamless world we will need the ability to
address many types of data-text files images sound files and animation sequences
The universal readership concept promotes the idea that unlike the segmented
applications of the past we can use one application-a universal (or common) user
interface-to read a variety of documents This concept implies that once information
is published it is accessible from any type of computer in any country and that any
(authorized) person merely needs to use one simple program to access it This is
accomplished in the web by using a core browser or application that is augmented by
supporting applications The core browser implements only minimal functionality and
attempts to offload more specialized work onto the supporting applications
The client-server concept allows the web to grow easily without any centralized
control Anyone can publish information and anyone (as long as He or She is
authorized) can read and download it Publishing information requires a server
program and reading data requires a client browser All the clients and all the servers
are connected to one another by the Internet The various standard protocols allows
all clients to communicate with all servers
In practice the web hands on a number of essential concepts including the following
i) The addressing schemes known as Uniform Resource Locator (URL) makes
the hypermedia world possible despite many different protocols
ii) A network protocol known as hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) used by client
browsers and servers offers performance and features not otherwise available
iii) A mark-up language (HTML) which every web client is requires to understand
is used for the representation of hypertext documents containing text list boxes
and graphics information across the net
Chapter 4
Technological Behind the Web
Information providers (or publishers) run programs (called servers) from which the
browsers (client can obtain information) These programs can either be Wed servers
that understand the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) ldquoGatewayrdquo program that
convert an existing information format to hypertext or a non-HTTP server that Web
browsers can access-anonymous FTP or Gopher servers
Web servers are composed of two major parts the Hypertext Transfer protocol for
transmitting documents between servers and clients and the hypertext Markup
language (HTML) format for documents The link between HTML files and the HTTP
servers is provided by the Uniform Resource Locators (URLs)
Uniform Resource Locator
The documents that the browsers display are hypertext that contains pointers to other
documents The browsers let you deal with the pointers in a transparent way ndash select
the pointer and you are presented with the text to which it points This pointer is
implemented using a concept that is central to Web browsers Uniform Resource
Locators (URLs) One way to think about URLs is to use the libraries and location on
a shelf as a metaphor A URL for a digital library would be a unique call number that
provides the exact location of every book in the world including the country city street
and library shelf location
In practice URLs are the strings used as addresses of objects (documents images)
on the Web Think of them as analogous to your E-mail address Just as your address
is unique and maybe used by any other Internet users to send you mail without
knowing exactly where you are a URL marks the unique location on the Internet
where a file or service can be found
URLs follow a fairly consistent pattern The first part describes the type of resource
the second part gives the name of the server housing the resource and the third part
gives full file name of the resource URLs are Universal in that they provide access to
a wide range of network services which required separate applications in the past For
a new network protocol one can easily form an address as the set of parameters
necessary to retrieve the object If these parameters are encoded into a concise string
with a prefix to identify the protocols and encoding one has a new URL scheme Take
a look at the URL formats below
FTP ftpserveraddresscompletefilename
Gopher gopherserveraddressportdirectoryfilename
TELNET telnetserveraddressport
HTTP httpserveraddressporthomepagehtml
News newsmiscstocksinvest
These are URLs for Internet news articles and news groups (The NNTP protocol) and
for HTTP archives for TELNET destinations E-mail addresses and so on The same
can done for names of objects in a given name space For example the URL of the
main page for the Web project happens to be
httpwebw3orghypertextwebTheProjecthtml The prefix ldquoHTTPrdquo in the preceding
example indicates the address space and defines the interpretation of the rest of the
string The HTTP protocol is to be used so the string contains the address of the
server to be contacted and a sub string to be passed to the server
As noted earlier different protocols use different syntaxes but they do have a small
amount in common For example the common URL syntax reserve the solidus () as
a way of representing a hierarchical space the pound label () as a way of pointing
inside the document and question mark () as a separator between the address of an
object and the query operation applied to it Hierarchical spaces are useful for
hypertext where one ldquoworkrdquo maybe split up into many interlinked documents the
allows relative name to exploit the hierarchical structure and allows links to be made
within the work independent of the higher parts of the URL such as the server name
URLs are central to the Web architecture The fact that it is easy to address and object
anywhere on the internet is essential for the system to scale and for the information
space to be independent of the network and server topology
Chapter 5
Network Security and Firewalls
The ability to conduct business on a public network has strong attraction ndash and the
potential for big savings Security and confidentiality are essential however before
businesses can conduct financial transactions over the internet and a lack of
widespread security measures remains at this time At present credit card numbers
financial records and other important information are not encrypted and can be
intercepted by any savvy Internet hacker
The discussion of security is concerns in electronic commerce can be divided into two
broad types
1 Client-server security usages various authorization methods to make sure that only
valid users and programs have access to information resource such as database
Access control mechanisms must be set up to ensure that properly authentication
user are allowed access only to those resource that they are entitled to use Such
mechanism includes password protection encrypted smart card biometric and
firewalls
2 Data and transaction security ensures the privacy and confidentiality in electronic
messages and data packets including the authentication of remote users in
network truncation of activity such as on-line payment The goal is to defeat any
attempt to assume another identity while involved while electronic mail or other
forms of data communication Preventive measure include data encryption using
various cryptographic methods
Data and message security
The lack of data and message security on the Internet has become a high profile
problem due to increasing number of merchants trying to spur commerce on the global
network For instance credit card numbers in there plain text form create a risk when
transmitted across the internet where the possibility of the number falling into the
wrong hands is relatively high Would you be willing to type in your credit card number
knowing the risk Even worse would you expose your customer to that risk Just the
thought of ldquosnifferrdquo programs that collect credit card numbers en masse is enough to
keep merchants away from on-line shopping given the possible lawsuits and other
liability issues In sort the lack of business truncation security is widely acknowledge
as a major implement to widespread e-commerce
Encrypted Documents and Electronic Mail
E-mail users who desires confidentiality and sender are using encryption Encryption
is simply to intend to keep personal thoughts personal Some users are already using
Pretty Good Personality (PGP) others are starting to use Privacy Enhanced Mail
(PEM)
E-mail is typically encrypted for the reason that all network correspondence is open
for eavesdropping Internet e-mail is obviously far less secure then the postal system
where envelopes protect correspondence for casual snooping A glance at the header
area of e-mail message by contrast will show that it has passed through a number of
nodes on its way to you Every one of these nodes presents the opportunity for
snooping
Chapter 6
Electronic Commerce Companies
Chapter 7
Pictorial Representation E-buying Methodology
Flipkartcom
STEP 1
STEP 2
STEP 3
STEP 4
STEP 5
STEP 6
STEP 7
STEP 8
STEP 9
STEP 10
STEP 11
STEP 12
Pictorial Representation E-buying Methodology
Yepmecom
STEP 1
STEP 2
STEP 3
STEP 4
STEP 5
STEP 6
STEP 7
STEP 8
STEP 9
Chapter 8
Conclusion
E-commerce is growing tremendously A lot of companies have joined between the
period July and August Online retail is still a tiny spot in Indiarsquos retail market of about
$500 billion a year but it is growing at a quick pace A study by retail consultancy
Techno-park predicts Indiarsquos e-tailing market will reach $32 billion by 2020 from $23
billion in 2014
Ethnic Indian clothes and casual wear are favorite products but unusual products like
Pets-too are to being offered online With a huge growth that e-commerce has
witnessed in recent times analysts like Devangshu Dutta sales there is scope for more
players to come in But some also warn about the risks the space is fraught with as
only a few may have chances of making it big They also see consolidation in the
sector going forward
Bibliography
Frontiers of Electronic commerce by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew B Whinston
Big E-commerce deals stir up Sector-Economic Times
wwwflipkartcom
wwwYepmecom
(authorized) person merely needs to use one simple program to access it This is
accomplished in the web by using a core browser or application that is augmented by
supporting applications The core browser implements only minimal functionality and
attempts to offload more specialized work onto the supporting applications
The client-server concept allows the web to grow easily without any centralized
control Anyone can publish information and anyone (as long as He or She is
authorized) can read and download it Publishing information requires a server
program and reading data requires a client browser All the clients and all the servers
are connected to one another by the Internet The various standard protocols allows
all clients to communicate with all servers
In practice the web hands on a number of essential concepts including the following
i) The addressing schemes known as Uniform Resource Locator (URL) makes
the hypermedia world possible despite many different protocols
ii) A network protocol known as hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) used by client
browsers and servers offers performance and features not otherwise available
iii) A mark-up language (HTML) which every web client is requires to understand
is used for the representation of hypertext documents containing text list boxes
and graphics information across the net
Chapter 4
Technological Behind the Web
Information providers (or publishers) run programs (called servers) from which the
browsers (client can obtain information) These programs can either be Wed servers
that understand the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) ldquoGatewayrdquo program that
convert an existing information format to hypertext or a non-HTTP server that Web
browsers can access-anonymous FTP or Gopher servers
Web servers are composed of two major parts the Hypertext Transfer protocol for
transmitting documents between servers and clients and the hypertext Markup
language (HTML) format for documents The link between HTML files and the HTTP
servers is provided by the Uniform Resource Locators (URLs)
Uniform Resource Locator
The documents that the browsers display are hypertext that contains pointers to other
documents The browsers let you deal with the pointers in a transparent way ndash select
the pointer and you are presented with the text to which it points This pointer is
implemented using a concept that is central to Web browsers Uniform Resource
Locators (URLs) One way to think about URLs is to use the libraries and location on
a shelf as a metaphor A URL for a digital library would be a unique call number that
provides the exact location of every book in the world including the country city street
and library shelf location
In practice URLs are the strings used as addresses of objects (documents images)
on the Web Think of them as analogous to your E-mail address Just as your address
is unique and maybe used by any other Internet users to send you mail without
knowing exactly where you are a URL marks the unique location on the Internet
where a file or service can be found
URLs follow a fairly consistent pattern The first part describes the type of resource
the second part gives the name of the server housing the resource and the third part
gives full file name of the resource URLs are Universal in that they provide access to
a wide range of network services which required separate applications in the past For
a new network protocol one can easily form an address as the set of parameters
necessary to retrieve the object If these parameters are encoded into a concise string
with a prefix to identify the protocols and encoding one has a new URL scheme Take
a look at the URL formats below
FTP ftpserveraddresscompletefilename
Gopher gopherserveraddressportdirectoryfilename
TELNET telnetserveraddressport
HTTP httpserveraddressporthomepagehtml
News newsmiscstocksinvest
These are URLs for Internet news articles and news groups (The NNTP protocol) and
for HTTP archives for TELNET destinations E-mail addresses and so on The same
can done for names of objects in a given name space For example the URL of the
main page for the Web project happens to be
httpwebw3orghypertextwebTheProjecthtml The prefix ldquoHTTPrdquo in the preceding
example indicates the address space and defines the interpretation of the rest of the
string The HTTP protocol is to be used so the string contains the address of the
server to be contacted and a sub string to be passed to the server
As noted earlier different protocols use different syntaxes but they do have a small
amount in common For example the common URL syntax reserve the solidus () as
a way of representing a hierarchical space the pound label () as a way of pointing
inside the document and question mark () as a separator between the address of an
object and the query operation applied to it Hierarchical spaces are useful for
hypertext where one ldquoworkrdquo maybe split up into many interlinked documents the
allows relative name to exploit the hierarchical structure and allows links to be made
within the work independent of the higher parts of the URL such as the server name
URLs are central to the Web architecture The fact that it is easy to address and object
anywhere on the internet is essential for the system to scale and for the information
space to be independent of the network and server topology
Chapter 5
Network Security and Firewalls
The ability to conduct business on a public network has strong attraction ndash and the
potential for big savings Security and confidentiality are essential however before
businesses can conduct financial transactions over the internet and a lack of
widespread security measures remains at this time At present credit card numbers
financial records and other important information are not encrypted and can be
intercepted by any savvy Internet hacker
The discussion of security is concerns in electronic commerce can be divided into two
broad types
1 Client-server security usages various authorization methods to make sure that only
valid users and programs have access to information resource such as database
Access control mechanisms must be set up to ensure that properly authentication
user are allowed access only to those resource that they are entitled to use Such
mechanism includes password protection encrypted smart card biometric and
firewalls
2 Data and transaction security ensures the privacy and confidentiality in electronic
messages and data packets including the authentication of remote users in
network truncation of activity such as on-line payment The goal is to defeat any
attempt to assume another identity while involved while electronic mail or other
forms of data communication Preventive measure include data encryption using
various cryptographic methods
Data and message security
The lack of data and message security on the Internet has become a high profile
problem due to increasing number of merchants trying to spur commerce on the global
network For instance credit card numbers in there plain text form create a risk when
transmitted across the internet where the possibility of the number falling into the
wrong hands is relatively high Would you be willing to type in your credit card number
knowing the risk Even worse would you expose your customer to that risk Just the
thought of ldquosnifferrdquo programs that collect credit card numbers en masse is enough to
keep merchants away from on-line shopping given the possible lawsuits and other
liability issues In sort the lack of business truncation security is widely acknowledge
as a major implement to widespread e-commerce
Encrypted Documents and Electronic Mail
E-mail users who desires confidentiality and sender are using encryption Encryption
is simply to intend to keep personal thoughts personal Some users are already using
Pretty Good Personality (PGP) others are starting to use Privacy Enhanced Mail
(PEM)
E-mail is typically encrypted for the reason that all network correspondence is open
for eavesdropping Internet e-mail is obviously far less secure then the postal system
where envelopes protect correspondence for casual snooping A glance at the header
area of e-mail message by contrast will show that it has passed through a number of
nodes on its way to you Every one of these nodes presents the opportunity for
snooping
Chapter 6
Electronic Commerce Companies
Chapter 7
Pictorial Representation E-buying Methodology
Flipkartcom
STEP 1
STEP 2
STEP 3
STEP 4
STEP 5
STEP 6
STEP 7
STEP 8
STEP 9
STEP 10
STEP 11
STEP 12
Pictorial Representation E-buying Methodology
Yepmecom
STEP 1
STEP 2
STEP 3
STEP 4
STEP 5
STEP 6
STEP 7
STEP 8
STEP 9
Chapter 8
Conclusion
E-commerce is growing tremendously A lot of companies have joined between the
period July and August Online retail is still a tiny spot in Indiarsquos retail market of about
$500 billion a year but it is growing at a quick pace A study by retail consultancy
Techno-park predicts Indiarsquos e-tailing market will reach $32 billion by 2020 from $23
billion in 2014
Ethnic Indian clothes and casual wear are favorite products but unusual products like
Pets-too are to being offered online With a huge growth that e-commerce has
witnessed in recent times analysts like Devangshu Dutta sales there is scope for more
players to come in But some also warn about the risks the space is fraught with as
only a few may have chances of making it big They also see consolidation in the
sector going forward
Bibliography
Frontiers of Electronic commerce by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew B Whinston
Big E-commerce deals stir up Sector-Economic Times
wwwflipkartcom
wwwYepmecom
Chapter 4
Technological Behind the Web
Information providers (or publishers) run programs (called servers) from which the
browsers (client can obtain information) These programs can either be Wed servers
that understand the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) ldquoGatewayrdquo program that
convert an existing information format to hypertext or a non-HTTP server that Web
browsers can access-anonymous FTP or Gopher servers
Web servers are composed of two major parts the Hypertext Transfer protocol for
transmitting documents between servers and clients and the hypertext Markup
language (HTML) format for documents The link between HTML files and the HTTP
servers is provided by the Uniform Resource Locators (URLs)
Uniform Resource Locator
The documents that the browsers display are hypertext that contains pointers to other
documents The browsers let you deal with the pointers in a transparent way ndash select
the pointer and you are presented with the text to which it points This pointer is
implemented using a concept that is central to Web browsers Uniform Resource
Locators (URLs) One way to think about URLs is to use the libraries and location on
a shelf as a metaphor A URL for a digital library would be a unique call number that
provides the exact location of every book in the world including the country city street
and library shelf location
In practice URLs are the strings used as addresses of objects (documents images)
on the Web Think of them as analogous to your E-mail address Just as your address
is unique and maybe used by any other Internet users to send you mail without
knowing exactly where you are a URL marks the unique location on the Internet
where a file or service can be found
URLs follow a fairly consistent pattern The first part describes the type of resource
the second part gives the name of the server housing the resource and the third part
gives full file name of the resource URLs are Universal in that they provide access to
a wide range of network services which required separate applications in the past For
a new network protocol one can easily form an address as the set of parameters
necessary to retrieve the object If these parameters are encoded into a concise string
with a prefix to identify the protocols and encoding one has a new URL scheme Take
a look at the URL formats below
FTP ftpserveraddresscompletefilename
Gopher gopherserveraddressportdirectoryfilename
TELNET telnetserveraddressport
HTTP httpserveraddressporthomepagehtml
News newsmiscstocksinvest
These are URLs for Internet news articles and news groups (The NNTP protocol) and
for HTTP archives for TELNET destinations E-mail addresses and so on The same
can done for names of objects in a given name space For example the URL of the
main page for the Web project happens to be
httpwebw3orghypertextwebTheProjecthtml The prefix ldquoHTTPrdquo in the preceding
example indicates the address space and defines the interpretation of the rest of the
string The HTTP protocol is to be used so the string contains the address of the
server to be contacted and a sub string to be passed to the server
As noted earlier different protocols use different syntaxes but they do have a small
amount in common For example the common URL syntax reserve the solidus () as
a way of representing a hierarchical space the pound label () as a way of pointing
inside the document and question mark () as a separator between the address of an
object and the query operation applied to it Hierarchical spaces are useful for
hypertext where one ldquoworkrdquo maybe split up into many interlinked documents the
allows relative name to exploit the hierarchical structure and allows links to be made
within the work independent of the higher parts of the URL such as the server name
URLs are central to the Web architecture The fact that it is easy to address and object
anywhere on the internet is essential for the system to scale and for the information
space to be independent of the network and server topology
Chapter 5
Network Security and Firewalls
The ability to conduct business on a public network has strong attraction ndash and the
potential for big savings Security and confidentiality are essential however before
businesses can conduct financial transactions over the internet and a lack of
widespread security measures remains at this time At present credit card numbers
financial records and other important information are not encrypted and can be
intercepted by any savvy Internet hacker
The discussion of security is concerns in electronic commerce can be divided into two
broad types
1 Client-server security usages various authorization methods to make sure that only
valid users and programs have access to information resource such as database
Access control mechanisms must be set up to ensure that properly authentication
user are allowed access only to those resource that they are entitled to use Such
mechanism includes password protection encrypted smart card biometric and
firewalls
2 Data and transaction security ensures the privacy and confidentiality in electronic
messages and data packets including the authentication of remote users in
network truncation of activity such as on-line payment The goal is to defeat any
attempt to assume another identity while involved while electronic mail or other
forms of data communication Preventive measure include data encryption using
various cryptographic methods
Data and message security
The lack of data and message security on the Internet has become a high profile
problem due to increasing number of merchants trying to spur commerce on the global
network For instance credit card numbers in there plain text form create a risk when
transmitted across the internet where the possibility of the number falling into the
wrong hands is relatively high Would you be willing to type in your credit card number
knowing the risk Even worse would you expose your customer to that risk Just the
thought of ldquosnifferrdquo programs that collect credit card numbers en masse is enough to
keep merchants away from on-line shopping given the possible lawsuits and other
liability issues In sort the lack of business truncation security is widely acknowledge
as a major implement to widespread e-commerce
Encrypted Documents and Electronic Mail
E-mail users who desires confidentiality and sender are using encryption Encryption
is simply to intend to keep personal thoughts personal Some users are already using
Pretty Good Personality (PGP) others are starting to use Privacy Enhanced Mail
(PEM)
E-mail is typically encrypted for the reason that all network correspondence is open
for eavesdropping Internet e-mail is obviously far less secure then the postal system
where envelopes protect correspondence for casual snooping A glance at the header
area of e-mail message by contrast will show that it has passed through a number of
nodes on its way to you Every one of these nodes presents the opportunity for
snooping
Chapter 6
Electronic Commerce Companies
Chapter 7
Pictorial Representation E-buying Methodology
Flipkartcom
STEP 1
STEP 2
STEP 3
STEP 4
STEP 5
STEP 6
STEP 7
STEP 8
STEP 9
STEP 10
STEP 11
STEP 12
Pictorial Representation E-buying Methodology
Yepmecom
STEP 1
STEP 2
STEP 3
STEP 4
STEP 5
STEP 6
STEP 7
STEP 8
STEP 9
Chapter 8
Conclusion
E-commerce is growing tremendously A lot of companies have joined between the
period July and August Online retail is still a tiny spot in Indiarsquos retail market of about
$500 billion a year but it is growing at a quick pace A study by retail consultancy
Techno-park predicts Indiarsquos e-tailing market will reach $32 billion by 2020 from $23
billion in 2014
Ethnic Indian clothes and casual wear are favorite products but unusual products like
Pets-too are to being offered online With a huge growth that e-commerce has
witnessed in recent times analysts like Devangshu Dutta sales there is scope for more
players to come in But some also warn about the risks the space is fraught with as
only a few may have chances of making it big They also see consolidation in the
sector going forward
Bibliography
Frontiers of Electronic commerce by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew B Whinston
Big E-commerce deals stir up Sector-Economic Times
wwwflipkartcom
wwwYepmecom
These are URLs for Internet news articles and news groups (The NNTP protocol) and
for HTTP archives for TELNET destinations E-mail addresses and so on The same
can done for names of objects in a given name space For example the URL of the
main page for the Web project happens to be
httpwebw3orghypertextwebTheProjecthtml The prefix ldquoHTTPrdquo in the preceding
example indicates the address space and defines the interpretation of the rest of the
string The HTTP protocol is to be used so the string contains the address of the
server to be contacted and a sub string to be passed to the server
As noted earlier different protocols use different syntaxes but they do have a small
amount in common For example the common URL syntax reserve the solidus () as
a way of representing a hierarchical space the pound label () as a way of pointing
inside the document and question mark () as a separator between the address of an
object and the query operation applied to it Hierarchical spaces are useful for
hypertext where one ldquoworkrdquo maybe split up into many interlinked documents the
allows relative name to exploit the hierarchical structure and allows links to be made
within the work independent of the higher parts of the URL such as the server name
URLs are central to the Web architecture The fact that it is easy to address and object
anywhere on the internet is essential for the system to scale and for the information
space to be independent of the network and server topology
Chapter 5
Network Security and Firewalls
The ability to conduct business on a public network has strong attraction ndash and the
potential for big savings Security and confidentiality are essential however before
businesses can conduct financial transactions over the internet and a lack of
widespread security measures remains at this time At present credit card numbers
financial records and other important information are not encrypted and can be
intercepted by any savvy Internet hacker
The discussion of security is concerns in electronic commerce can be divided into two
broad types
1 Client-server security usages various authorization methods to make sure that only
valid users and programs have access to information resource such as database
Access control mechanisms must be set up to ensure that properly authentication
user are allowed access only to those resource that they are entitled to use Such
mechanism includes password protection encrypted smart card biometric and
firewalls
2 Data and transaction security ensures the privacy and confidentiality in electronic
messages and data packets including the authentication of remote users in
network truncation of activity such as on-line payment The goal is to defeat any
attempt to assume another identity while involved while electronic mail or other
forms of data communication Preventive measure include data encryption using
various cryptographic methods
Data and message security
The lack of data and message security on the Internet has become a high profile
problem due to increasing number of merchants trying to spur commerce on the global
network For instance credit card numbers in there plain text form create a risk when
transmitted across the internet where the possibility of the number falling into the
wrong hands is relatively high Would you be willing to type in your credit card number
knowing the risk Even worse would you expose your customer to that risk Just the
thought of ldquosnifferrdquo programs that collect credit card numbers en masse is enough to
keep merchants away from on-line shopping given the possible lawsuits and other
liability issues In sort the lack of business truncation security is widely acknowledge
as a major implement to widespread e-commerce
Encrypted Documents and Electronic Mail
E-mail users who desires confidentiality and sender are using encryption Encryption
is simply to intend to keep personal thoughts personal Some users are already using
Pretty Good Personality (PGP) others are starting to use Privacy Enhanced Mail
(PEM)
E-mail is typically encrypted for the reason that all network correspondence is open
for eavesdropping Internet e-mail is obviously far less secure then the postal system
where envelopes protect correspondence for casual snooping A glance at the header
area of e-mail message by contrast will show that it has passed through a number of
nodes on its way to you Every one of these nodes presents the opportunity for
snooping
Chapter 6
Electronic Commerce Companies
Chapter 7
Pictorial Representation E-buying Methodology
Flipkartcom
STEP 1
STEP 2
STEP 3
STEP 4
STEP 5
STEP 6
STEP 7
STEP 8
STEP 9
STEP 10
STEP 11
STEP 12
Pictorial Representation E-buying Methodology
Yepmecom
STEP 1
STEP 2
STEP 3
STEP 4
STEP 5
STEP 6
STEP 7
STEP 8
STEP 9
Chapter 8
Conclusion
E-commerce is growing tremendously A lot of companies have joined between the
period July and August Online retail is still a tiny spot in Indiarsquos retail market of about
$500 billion a year but it is growing at a quick pace A study by retail consultancy
Techno-park predicts Indiarsquos e-tailing market will reach $32 billion by 2020 from $23
billion in 2014
Ethnic Indian clothes and casual wear are favorite products but unusual products like
Pets-too are to being offered online With a huge growth that e-commerce has
witnessed in recent times analysts like Devangshu Dutta sales there is scope for more
players to come in But some also warn about the risks the space is fraught with as
only a few may have chances of making it big They also see consolidation in the
sector going forward
Bibliography
Frontiers of Electronic commerce by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew B Whinston
Big E-commerce deals stir up Sector-Economic Times
wwwflipkartcom
wwwYepmecom
Chapter 5
Network Security and Firewalls
The ability to conduct business on a public network has strong attraction ndash and the
potential for big savings Security and confidentiality are essential however before
businesses can conduct financial transactions over the internet and a lack of
widespread security measures remains at this time At present credit card numbers
financial records and other important information are not encrypted and can be
intercepted by any savvy Internet hacker
The discussion of security is concerns in electronic commerce can be divided into two
broad types
1 Client-server security usages various authorization methods to make sure that only
valid users and programs have access to information resource such as database
Access control mechanisms must be set up to ensure that properly authentication
user are allowed access only to those resource that they are entitled to use Such
mechanism includes password protection encrypted smart card biometric and
firewalls
2 Data and transaction security ensures the privacy and confidentiality in electronic
messages and data packets including the authentication of remote users in
network truncation of activity such as on-line payment The goal is to defeat any
attempt to assume another identity while involved while electronic mail or other
forms of data communication Preventive measure include data encryption using
various cryptographic methods
Data and message security
The lack of data and message security on the Internet has become a high profile
problem due to increasing number of merchants trying to spur commerce on the global
network For instance credit card numbers in there plain text form create a risk when
transmitted across the internet where the possibility of the number falling into the
wrong hands is relatively high Would you be willing to type in your credit card number
knowing the risk Even worse would you expose your customer to that risk Just the
thought of ldquosnifferrdquo programs that collect credit card numbers en masse is enough to
keep merchants away from on-line shopping given the possible lawsuits and other
liability issues In sort the lack of business truncation security is widely acknowledge
as a major implement to widespread e-commerce
Encrypted Documents and Electronic Mail
E-mail users who desires confidentiality and sender are using encryption Encryption
is simply to intend to keep personal thoughts personal Some users are already using
Pretty Good Personality (PGP) others are starting to use Privacy Enhanced Mail
(PEM)
E-mail is typically encrypted for the reason that all network correspondence is open
for eavesdropping Internet e-mail is obviously far less secure then the postal system
where envelopes protect correspondence for casual snooping A glance at the header
area of e-mail message by contrast will show that it has passed through a number of
nodes on its way to you Every one of these nodes presents the opportunity for
snooping
Chapter 6
Electronic Commerce Companies
Chapter 7
Pictorial Representation E-buying Methodology
Flipkartcom
STEP 1
STEP 2
STEP 3
STEP 4
STEP 5
STEP 6
STEP 7
STEP 8
STEP 9
STEP 10
STEP 11
STEP 12
Pictorial Representation E-buying Methodology
Yepmecom
STEP 1
STEP 2
STEP 3
STEP 4
STEP 5
STEP 6
STEP 7
STEP 8
STEP 9
Chapter 8
Conclusion
E-commerce is growing tremendously A lot of companies have joined between the
period July and August Online retail is still a tiny spot in Indiarsquos retail market of about
$500 billion a year but it is growing at a quick pace A study by retail consultancy
Techno-park predicts Indiarsquos e-tailing market will reach $32 billion by 2020 from $23
billion in 2014
Ethnic Indian clothes and casual wear are favorite products but unusual products like
Pets-too are to being offered online With a huge growth that e-commerce has
witnessed in recent times analysts like Devangshu Dutta sales there is scope for more
players to come in But some also warn about the risks the space is fraught with as
only a few may have chances of making it big They also see consolidation in the
sector going forward
Bibliography
Frontiers of Electronic commerce by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew B Whinston
Big E-commerce deals stir up Sector-Economic Times
wwwflipkartcom
wwwYepmecom
E-mail is typically encrypted for the reason that all network correspondence is open
for eavesdropping Internet e-mail is obviously far less secure then the postal system
where envelopes protect correspondence for casual snooping A glance at the header
area of e-mail message by contrast will show that it has passed through a number of
nodes on its way to you Every one of these nodes presents the opportunity for
snooping
Chapter 6
Electronic Commerce Companies
Chapter 7
Pictorial Representation E-buying Methodology
Flipkartcom
STEP 1
STEP 2
STEP 3
STEP 4
STEP 5
STEP 6
STEP 7
STEP 8
STEP 9
STEP 10
STEP 11
STEP 12
Pictorial Representation E-buying Methodology
Yepmecom
STEP 1
STEP 2
STEP 3
STEP 4
STEP 5
STEP 6
STEP 7
STEP 8
STEP 9
Chapter 8
Conclusion
E-commerce is growing tremendously A lot of companies have joined between the
period July and August Online retail is still a tiny spot in Indiarsquos retail market of about
$500 billion a year but it is growing at a quick pace A study by retail consultancy
Techno-park predicts Indiarsquos e-tailing market will reach $32 billion by 2020 from $23
billion in 2014
Ethnic Indian clothes and casual wear are favorite products but unusual products like
Pets-too are to being offered online With a huge growth that e-commerce has
witnessed in recent times analysts like Devangshu Dutta sales there is scope for more
players to come in But some also warn about the risks the space is fraught with as
only a few may have chances of making it big They also see consolidation in the
sector going forward
Bibliography
Frontiers of Electronic commerce by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew B Whinston
Big E-commerce deals stir up Sector-Economic Times
wwwflipkartcom
wwwYepmecom
Chapter 6
Electronic Commerce Companies
Chapter 7
Pictorial Representation E-buying Methodology
Flipkartcom
STEP 1
STEP 2
STEP 3
STEP 4
STEP 5
STEP 6
STEP 7
STEP 8
STEP 9
STEP 10
STEP 11
STEP 12
Pictorial Representation E-buying Methodology
Yepmecom
STEP 1
STEP 2
STEP 3
STEP 4
STEP 5
STEP 6
STEP 7
STEP 8
STEP 9
Chapter 8
Conclusion
E-commerce is growing tremendously A lot of companies have joined between the
period July and August Online retail is still a tiny spot in Indiarsquos retail market of about
$500 billion a year but it is growing at a quick pace A study by retail consultancy
Techno-park predicts Indiarsquos e-tailing market will reach $32 billion by 2020 from $23
billion in 2014
Ethnic Indian clothes and casual wear are favorite products but unusual products like
Pets-too are to being offered online With a huge growth that e-commerce has
witnessed in recent times analysts like Devangshu Dutta sales there is scope for more
players to come in But some also warn about the risks the space is fraught with as
only a few may have chances of making it big They also see consolidation in the
sector going forward
Bibliography
Frontiers of Electronic commerce by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew B Whinston
Big E-commerce deals stir up Sector-Economic Times
wwwflipkartcom
wwwYepmecom
Chapter 7
Pictorial Representation E-buying Methodology
Flipkartcom
STEP 1
STEP 2
STEP 3
STEP 4
STEP 5
STEP 6
STEP 7
STEP 8
STEP 9
STEP 10
STEP 11
STEP 12
Pictorial Representation E-buying Methodology
Yepmecom
STEP 1
STEP 2
STEP 3
STEP 4
STEP 5
STEP 6
STEP 7
STEP 8
STEP 9
Chapter 8
Conclusion
E-commerce is growing tremendously A lot of companies have joined between the
period July and August Online retail is still a tiny spot in Indiarsquos retail market of about
$500 billion a year but it is growing at a quick pace A study by retail consultancy
Techno-park predicts Indiarsquos e-tailing market will reach $32 billion by 2020 from $23
billion in 2014
Ethnic Indian clothes and casual wear are favorite products but unusual products like
Pets-too are to being offered online With a huge growth that e-commerce has
witnessed in recent times analysts like Devangshu Dutta sales there is scope for more
players to come in But some also warn about the risks the space is fraught with as
only a few may have chances of making it big They also see consolidation in the
sector going forward
Bibliography
Frontiers of Electronic commerce by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew B Whinston
Big E-commerce deals stir up Sector-Economic Times
wwwflipkartcom
wwwYepmecom
STEP 3
STEP 4
STEP 5
STEP 6
STEP 7
STEP 8
STEP 9
STEP 10
STEP 11
STEP 12
Pictorial Representation E-buying Methodology
Yepmecom
STEP 1
STEP 2
STEP 3
STEP 4
STEP 5
STEP 6
STEP 7
STEP 8
STEP 9
Chapter 8
Conclusion
E-commerce is growing tremendously A lot of companies have joined between the
period July and August Online retail is still a tiny spot in Indiarsquos retail market of about
$500 billion a year but it is growing at a quick pace A study by retail consultancy
Techno-park predicts Indiarsquos e-tailing market will reach $32 billion by 2020 from $23
billion in 2014
Ethnic Indian clothes and casual wear are favorite products but unusual products like
Pets-too are to being offered online With a huge growth that e-commerce has
witnessed in recent times analysts like Devangshu Dutta sales there is scope for more
players to come in But some also warn about the risks the space is fraught with as
only a few may have chances of making it big They also see consolidation in the
sector going forward
Bibliography
Frontiers of Electronic commerce by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew B Whinston
Big E-commerce deals stir up Sector-Economic Times
wwwflipkartcom
wwwYepmecom
STEP 5
STEP 6
STEP 7
STEP 8
STEP 9
STEP 10
STEP 11
STEP 12
Pictorial Representation E-buying Methodology
Yepmecom
STEP 1
STEP 2
STEP 3
STEP 4
STEP 5
STEP 6
STEP 7
STEP 8
STEP 9
Chapter 8
Conclusion
E-commerce is growing tremendously A lot of companies have joined between the
period July and August Online retail is still a tiny spot in Indiarsquos retail market of about
$500 billion a year but it is growing at a quick pace A study by retail consultancy
Techno-park predicts Indiarsquos e-tailing market will reach $32 billion by 2020 from $23
billion in 2014
Ethnic Indian clothes and casual wear are favorite products but unusual products like
Pets-too are to being offered online With a huge growth that e-commerce has
witnessed in recent times analysts like Devangshu Dutta sales there is scope for more
players to come in But some also warn about the risks the space is fraught with as
only a few may have chances of making it big They also see consolidation in the
sector going forward
Bibliography
Frontiers of Electronic commerce by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew B Whinston
Big E-commerce deals stir up Sector-Economic Times
wwwflipkartcom
wwwYepmecom
STEP 7
STEP 8
STEP 9
STEP 10
STEP 11
STEP 12
Pictorial Representation E-buying Methodology
Yepmecom
STEP 1
STEP 2
STEP 3
STEP 4
STEP 5
STEP 6
STEP 7
STEP 8
STEP 9
Chapter 8
Conclusion
E-commerce is growing tremendously A lot of companies have joined between the
period July and August Online retail is still a tiny spot in Indiarsquos retail market of about
$500 billion a year but it is growing at a quick pace A study by retail consultancy
Techno-park predicts Indiarsquos e-tailing market will reach $32 billion by 2020 from $23
billion in 2014
Ethnic Indian clothes and casual wear are favorite products but unusual products like
Pets-too are to being offered online With a huge growth that e-commerce has
witnessed in recent times analysts like Devangshu Dutta sales there is scope for more
players to come in But some also warn about the risks the space is fraught with as
only a few may have chances of making it big They also see consolidation in the
sector going forward
Bibliography
Frontiers of Electronic commerce by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew B Whinston
Big E-commerce deals stir up Sector-Economic Times
wwwflipkartcom
wwwYepmecom
STEP 9
STEP 10
STEP 11
STEP 12
Pictorial Representation E-buying Methodology
Yepmecom
STEP 1
STEP 2
STEP 3
STEP 4
STEP 5
STEP 6
STEP 7
STEP 8
STEP 9
Chapter 8
Conclusion
E-commerce is growing tremendously A lot of companies have joined between the
period July and August Online retail is still a tiny spot in Indiarsquos retail market of about
$500 billion a year but it is growing at a quick pace A study by retail consultancy
Techno-park predicts Indiarsquos e-tailing market will reach $32 billion by 2020 from $23
billion in 2014
Ethnic Indian clothes and casual wear are favorite products but unusual products like
Pets-too are to being offered online With a huge growth that e-commerce has
witnessed in recent times analysts like Devangshu Dutta sales there is scope for more
players to come in But some also warn about the risks the space is fraught with as
only a few may have chances of making it big They also see consolidation in the
sector going forward
Bibliography
Frontiers of Electronic commerce by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew B Whinston
Big E-commerce deals stir up Sector-Economic Times
wwwflipkartcom
wwwYepmecom
STEP 11
STEP 12
Pictorial Representation E-buying Methodology
Yepmecom
STEP 1
STEP 2
STEP 3
STEP 4
STEP 5
STEP 6
STEP 7
STEP 8
STEP 9
Chapter 8
Conclusion
E-commerce is growing tremendously A lot of companies have joined between the
period July and August Online retail is still a tiny spot in Indiarsquos retail market of about
$500 billion a year but it is growing at a quick pace A study by retail consultancy
Techno-park predicts Indiarsquos e-tailing market will reach $32 billion by 2020 from $23
billion in 2014
Ethnic Indian clothes and casual wear are favorite products but unusual products like
Pets-too are to being offered online With a huge growth that e-commerce has
witnessed in recent times analysts like Devangshu Dutta sales there is scope for more
players to come in But some also warn about the risks the space is fraught with as
only a few may have chances of making it big They also see consolidation in the
sector going forward
Bibliography
Frontiers of Electronic commerce by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew B Whinston
Big E-commerce deals stir up Sector-Economic Times
wwwflipkartcom
wwwYepmecom
Pictorial Representation E-buying Methodology
Yepmecom
STEP 1
STEP 2
STEP 3
STEP 4
STEP 5
STEP 6
STEP 7
STEP 8
STEP 9
Chapter 8
Conclusion
E-commerce is growing tremendously A lot of companies have joined between the
period July and August Online retail is still a tiny spot in Indiarsquos retail market of about
$500 billion a year but it is growing at a quick pace A study by retail consultancy
Techno-park predicts Indiarsquos e-tailing market will reach $32 billion by 2020 from $23
billion in 2014
Ethnic Indian clothes and casual wear are favorite products but unusual products like
Pets-too are to being offered online With a huge growth that e-commerce has
witnessed in recent times analysts like Devangshu Dutta sales there is scope for more
players to come in But some also warn about the risks the space is fraught with as
only a few may have chances of making it big They also see consolidation in the
sector going forward
Bibliography
Frontiers of Electronic commerce by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew B Whinston
Big E-commerce deals stir up Sector-Economic Times
wwwflipkartcom
wwwYepmecom
STEP 3
STEP 4
STEP 5
STEP 6
STEP 7
STEP 8
STEP 9
Chapter 8
Conclusion
E-commerce is growing tremendously A lot of companies have joined between the
period July and August Online retail is still a tiny spot in Indiarsquos retail market of about
$500 billion a year but it is growing at a quick pace A study by retail consultancy
Techno-park predicts Indiarsquos e-tailing market will reach $32 billion by 2020 from $23
billion in 2014
Ethnic Indian clothes and casual wear are favorite products but unusual products like
Pets-too are to being offered online With a huge growth that e-commerce has
witnessed in recent times analysts like Devangshu Dutta sales there is scope for more
players to come in But some also warn about the risks the space is fraught with as
only a few may have chances of making it big They also see consolidation in the
sector going forward
Bibliography
Frontiers of Electronic commerce by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew B Whinston
Big E-commerce deals stir up Sector-Economic Times
wwwflipkartcom
wwwYepmecom
STEP 5
STEP 6
STEP 7
STEP 8
STEP 9
Chapter 8
Conclusion
E-commerce is growing tremendously A lot of companies have joined between the
period July and August Online retail is still a tiny spot in Indiarsquos retail market of about
$500 billion a year but it is growing at a quick pace A study by retail consultancy
Techno-park predicts Indiarsquos e-tailing market will reach $32 billion by 2020 from $23
billion in 2014
Ethnic Indian clothes and casual wear are favorite products but unusual products like
Pets-too are to being offered online With a huge growth that e-commerce has
witnessed in recent times analysts like Devangshu Dutta sales there is scope for more
players to come in But some also warn about the risks the space is fraught with as
only a few may have chances of making it big They also see consolidation in the
sector going forward
Bibliography
Frontiers of Electronic commerce by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew B Whinston
Big E-commerce deals stir up Sector-Economic Times
wwwflipkartcom
wwwYepmecom
STEP 7
STEP 8
STEP 9
Chapter 8
Conclusion
E-commerce is growing tremendously A lot of companies have joined between the
period July and August Online retail is still a tiny spot in Indiarsquos retail market of about
$500 billion a year but it is growing at a quick pace A study by retail consultancy
Techno-park predicts Indiarsquos e-tailing market will reach $32 billion by 2020 from $23
billion in 2014
Ethnic Indian clothes and casual wear are favorite products but unusual products like
Pets-too are to being offered online With a huge growth that e-commerce has
witnessed in recent times analysts like Devangshu Dutta sales there is scope for more
players to come in But some also warn about the risks the space is fraught with as
only a few may have chances of making it big They also see consolidation in the
sector going forward
Bibliography
Frontiers of Electronic commerce by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew B Whinston
Big E-commerce deals stir up Sector-Economic Times
wwwflipkartcom
wwwYepmecom
STEP 9
Chapter 8
Conclusion
E-commerce is growing tremendously A lot of companies have joined between the
period July and August Online retail is still a tiny spot in Indiarsquos retail market of about
$500 billion a year but it is growing at a quick pace A study by retail consultancy
Techno-park predicts Indiarsquos e-tailing market will reach $32 billion by 2020 from $23
billion in 2014
Ethnic Indian clothes and casual wear are favorite products but unusual products like
Pets-too are to being offered online With a huge growth that e-commerce has
witnessed in recent times analysts like Devangshu Dutta sales there is scope for more
players to come in But some also warn about the risks the space is fraught with as
only a few may have chances of making it big They also see consolidation in the
sector going forward
Bibliography
Frontiers of Electronic commerce by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew B Whinston
Big E-commerce deals stir up Sector-Economic Times
wwwflipkartcom
wwwYepmecom
Chapter 8
Conclusion
E-commerce is growing tremendously A lot of companies have joined between the
period July and August Online retail is still a tiny spot in Indiarsquos retail market of about
$500 billion a year but it is growing at a quick pace A study by retail consultancy
Techno-park predicts Indiarsquos e-tailing market will reach $32 billion by 2020 from $23
billion in 2014
Ethnic Indian clothes and casual wear are favorite products but unusual products like
Pets-too are to being offered online With a huge growth that e-commerce has
witnessed in recent times analysts like Devangshu Dutta sales there is scope for more
players to come in But some also warn about the risks the space is fraught with as
only a few may have chances of making it big They also see consolidation in the
sector going forward
Bibliography
Frontiers of Electronic commerce by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew B Whinston
Big E-commerce deals stir up Sector-Economic Times
wwwflipkartcom
wwwYepmecom
Bibliography
Frontiers of Electronic commerce by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew B Whinston
Big E-commerce deals stir up Sector-Economic Times
wwwflipkartcom
wwwYepmecom
![NIRMASHUDH [ pancholi chirag ]](https://static.documents.pub/doc/80x56/577ce7b51a28abf10395a048/nirmashudh-pancholi-chirag-.jpg)
