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Plan of the talk
‡ Introduction to e-commerce and e-
commerce applications
‡ Issues in developing e-commerce
applications
‡ Architecture of e-commerce applications
‡ Bookstore example
‡ Perspectives for e-commerce
‡ References
A definition for e-
e-commerce
‡ A universally accepted definition does not
exist
‡ Anything that uses electronic technology in
order to do business can be intended as m

m
‡ We can look at e-commerce as to a subset of
e-business concerning commerce
‡ Commerce is intended as the activity of
exchanging goods and services with some
kind of payment
ðhe EU definition for e-
e-commerce
‡ ³e-commerce is based on the electronic
processing and transmission of data. It
encompasses many diverse activities
including electronic trading of goods
and services, on-line delivery of digital
content, electronic fund transfer,
electronic share trading, public
procurement.´ (EU(97)/157)
mrigins of e-
e-commerce applications
‡ E-commerce applications existed long
before Internet
± EDI (Electronic Data Interchange)
± EFð (Electronic Funds ðransfer)
‡ Internet offered the general public the
opportunity to conduct businesses
online
ðaxonomy of e-
e-commerce
applications
‡ ðhree main categories:
± Business to consumer (B2C)
± Business to business (B2B)
± Consumer to consumer (C2C)
‡ mther categories:
± Business to government (B2G)
± Mobile Commerce
B2C applications
‡ mffer directly to the customer an interface of
activity
± ðypical examples:
‡ mnline book store (e.g. amazon.com)
‡ mnline car purchasing (e.g. automall.com)
‡ Booking and purchase of airline tickets (e.g. ryanair.com)
‡ Correspond to retail sale
‡ Growth of B2C applications thanks to Internet
‡ A new kind of B2C applications are the
Cybermalls
 B2C applications:
advantages and disadvantages
‡ Advantages:
± Allow company to extend existing services to
customers
± Allow company to increase its customers
± mffer a wider choice and allow cheaper prices
± May give to the company a worldwide visibility
± mnline shops are accessible 24h a day
‡ Disadvantages:
± Low order conversion rates
± High risk Kmm
m

 
B2B applications
‡ Realize transactions needed to perform
financial or commercial activities by
companies over the Internet
‡ Some typical applications:
± E-procurement
± E-Marketplace
‡ ðhe turnover is much greater than that
dealed with B2C applications
B2B applications:
advantages and disadvantages
‡ Advantages:
± Help to automate communications between
companies making them easier and
quicker
± Allow to cut prices drastically
± Help in reducing mistakes
‡ Disadvantages:
± mften need legacy integration
C2C applications
‡ Concern the consumers who run
negotations with other consumers
sometimes utilizing as intermediary a
company
± Examples:
‡ Ebay
‡ Autotrader.com
C2C applications:
advantages and disadvantages
‡ Advantages
± Allow consumers to interact directly among
them
± Give to the consumers a new way of
purchasing and selling services and goods
‡ Disadvantages
± Little earning capacity
B2G applications
‡ Correspond to all kind of transactions
between company and public
administrator
‡ Utilized mostly in the USA
Mobile commerce applications
‡ Concern doing businesses by means of
mobile wireless devices
‡ Can be both B2B and B2C
‡ Have a growing importance in the future of e-
commerce applications
‡ Will introduce completely new forms of
electronic commerce
± E.g. E-tickets
‡ ðhe development of such applications faces
some of the greatest challenges in the
security area to secure the trust of consumers
Plan of the talk
‡ Introduction to e-commerce and e-
commerce applications
‡ Issues in developing e-commerce
applications
‡ Architecture of e-commerce applications
‡ Bookstore example
‡ Perspectives for e-commerce
‡ References
Issues in developing e-
e-commerce
applications (1/2)
‡ Many of the following issues:
± Security
± Flexibility
± Scalability
± Fault tolerance
± Integration
± Interfaces (graphical and not)
± ðime-to-market
are common to many applications, but they
are all critical in the case of e-commerce
because of its nature
Issues in developing e-
e-commerce
applications (2/2)
‡ A state-of-the-art application always fail if
people do not utilize it
± A constant attention must be payed to the users
over the whole development process
‡ A close integration with every business
aspect is needed:
± For an online buyer security and easy access to
the informations are the primal needs
± A manager will need a flexible application to adapt
the business to the new trends in a faster way
Security Issues
‡ Security is a crucial feature
± Most transactions take place in a fully
automated way
± Restricted data are transmitted through a
public network
‡ Users must be sure that their money will
not be lost or stolen
Flexibility Issues
‡ E-commerce systems are subject to
frequent structural changes because of
mutations of:
± Products and services provided by the firm
± Commercial partnerships
Scalability
‡ Capability to support a certain number
of users (thousands, even millions)
without compromising performances
‡ It is important because a slow
application often means to lose
customers (especially in B2C) since
they have very small patience
Fault tolerance
‡ A less fault-tolerant application will be
less available to the user
‡ Every minute that a site is not available
costs 1400$ to the company (survey on
400 major companies by mracle)
‡ It is easy to lose customers forever
‡ It is necessary to redirect the users
without they perceive it
Integration
‡ Always needed since no application offering
every commercial functionality can be
realized
‡ Critical because the commercial
funcionalities are often realized by many
different legacy and third-party applications
± Examples:
‡ ERP systems
‡ Legacy systems
User Interfaces
‡ Must be intuitive,easily comprehensible
and of simple utilization
‡ In the case of B2C must support
profiling in order to anticipate the
customer requests
‡ ðhey also need to be customizable
Multi--channel interfaces
Multi
‡ Application interfaces must support
several kinds of connections:
± Web browsers
± Web ð
± Cellular phones (via WAP)
± PDA
ðime--to
ðime to--market
‡ Has greater importance than elsewhere
‡ Emphasis on CmðS and reuse
Plan of the talk
‡ Introduction to e-commerce and e-
commerce applications
‡ Issues in developing e-commerce
applications
‡ Architecture of e-commerce applications
‡ Bookstore example
‡ Perspectives for e-commerce
‡ References
ðwo--tier Architecture (client server)
ðwo
‡ Data reside on a server
‡ Business logic and user interfaces reside on
clients
‡ Drawbacks :
± Clients sustain the main load and consequently
result to be monolithic and heavyweight
± Excessive overhead
± Simple but unsuitable for e-commerce applications
ðhree--tier architecture
ðhree
‡ Separates the business logic of the
application from user interfaces and
from data access
‡ Middle tier can be furtherly divided
‡ In this case we call it V m
m m
± Easier to modify one component
± Lower cost to deploy and maintain
ðhree--tier architecture
ðhree
Application server
‡ Software that runs on the middle tier of
a three-tier environment
‡ In multi-tier environments it is often a
distributed and complex software
‡ Commercial implementations exist:
± Microsoft Commerce Server 2000
± Sun iPlanet
± IBM WebSphere Application Server
 Application Server-
Server-based
e-commerce platform architecture

E-commerce platform
ERP

Presentation Business Data & Legacy

Layer Logic Layer Access Layer Legacy
systems
Resource Load
ðransactions Security Session
Pooling balancing

Horizontal Services Database

Application Server

Client tier Server tier Data tier

Example: iPlanet architecture
Plan of the talk
‡ Introduction to e-commerce and e-
commerce applications
‡ Issues in developing e-commerce
applications
‡ Architecture of e-commerce applications
‡ Bookstore example
‡ Perspectives for e-commerce
‡ References
Domain Model
Use Case Model
Plan of the talk
‡ Introduction to e-commerce and e-
commerce applications
‡ Issues in developing e-commerce
applications
‡ Architecture of e-commerce applications
‡ Bookstore example
‡ Perspectives for e-commerce
‡ References
Future Perspectives (1/2)
‡ ³Electronic commerce is going to reduce a lot of
overhead in the economy´
‡ ³It will allow a purchase order to go from being about
a $75 cost to about $10´
‡ ³if you had to pick who's the big winner in all of this,
you'd definitely have to pick consumers´
‡ ³It lets you go out to the Internet and look at products
and services of every kind, that never would have
been available through traditional distribution
channels´
‡ (Bill Gates at the White House Conference on the
New Economy, April 2000)
Future Perspectives (2/2)
‡ In spite of Bill¶s words, people still lack trust in
e-commerce
‡ However, in Europe there is a strong
tendency towards the acceptance of Mobile
Commerce
‡ EIðm (European Information ðechnology
mbservatory) 2002 highlights the growing
importance of Mobile Commerce Kmmm
m
ðrends in Mobile Commerce for the
EU Markets: entertainment
ðrends in Mobile Commerce for the
EU Markets: banking and finance
Worldwide ðLC markets by region
Plan of the talk
‡ Introduction to e-commerce and e-
commerce applications
‡ Issues in developing e-commerce
applications
‡ Architecture of e-commerce applications
‡ Bookstore example
‡ References
References (1/4)
‡ Introduction to e-commerce and the
development of e-commerce applications:
± Professional Java E-Commerce, M.Kerzner et al.,
Wrox Press, 2001
‡ EU definition for e-commerce:
± ³A European Initiative in Electronic Commerce ±
Communication to the European Parliament, the
Council, the Economic and Social Committee and
the Committee of the Regions´ (CmM(97)/157)
References (2/4)
‡ Electronic Data Interchange:
± Intodruction to EDI, vv.aa. ,DevEdge online
‡ Cyberphobia and trends in e-commerce:
± http://www.webmergers.com
‡ Application Servers:
± Introduction to iPlanet Application Server
Architecture, Robert Schulteis, Sun Microsystems,
2002
± http://www.sun.com/developers/evangcentral
References (3/4)
‡ Platforms for e-commerce:
± Building Applications in the Net Economy,
Netscape Communications Corporation White
paper, 1997
‡ Architectures for e-commerce:
± Architetture, tecnologie e modelli funzionali nell¶e-
commerce, Castrogiovanni, Magliano, Sciarappa,
Notiziario tecnico ðelecom Italia, December 2001
‡ Statement of Bill Gates
± ðhe White House Conference on the New
Economy April 5, 2000
References (4/4)
‡ E-procurement and e-marketplaces:
± E-procurement white paper, Digital Union 2001
(http://www.digitalunion.com)
‡ European Information ðechnology
mbservatory (EIðm):
± http://www.eito.com
‡ ðhe Bookstore example:
± UML for E-Commerce, Doug Rosenberg
± http://www.iconixsw.com
ð |
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)
‡ Electronic exchange of
± Business documents
± Business data
‡ In a standard format (ANSI X12,EDIFACð)
‡ Established between 1968 and 1975 in the
transportation industries (U.S.)
‡ Application-to-application communication
without human intervention
Electronic Funds ðransfer (EFð)
‡ ðhe banking equivalent of EDI
‡ Denotes the transfer of :
± Electronic checks
± Customer accounts
± Payment informations
in automated way
mrder conversion rates
‡ Defined as:
± # of orders / # of contacts
± By month or year, four-month periods, etc.
‡ Measure the capability of a certain B2C
application to convert an user into a buyer
‡ A survey carried out in August 2000 showed
that order conversion rates in USA were of
1.9% (Boston Consulting Group and
Shop.org)
E-procurement applications (1/3)
‡ Automate enterprise purchasing
processes, i.e. perform all of the
activities related to generating an order
on the buyer¶s side
‡ Purchased goods can be :
± Direct goods (critical items in the supply
chain)
± Indirect goods (MRm ±Maintenance Repair
and mperations - such as office items)
E-procurement applications (2/3)
‡ Automating procurement of indirect
goods can dramatically reduce costs
since:
± Lessens V m 

± Reduces supplier response time
 E-procurement applications(3/3)
4. Purchase order is
electronically placed
3. mrder approvation
compliant to company
standards and procedures
2. Purchase request is
performed by employees
5. mrder is fulfilled by
via a Web interface
the supplier
Indirect goods e-
e-procurement
1. Product selection
from available
catalogues

6. Product delivery

8. Payment request
electronically forwarded 7. Product receipt
E-marketplace
‡ An environment that brings buyers and
sellers together in a virtual space for e-
commerce, enabling them to reach new
customers and reduce transaction costs
‡ E-marketplaces are becoming more
fashionable
Cybermalls
‡ Include more virtual shops
‡ Appear as web portals with links to
single e-shops grouped by different
product categories (e.g. music or books)
‡ Advantages for smaller businesses:
± Reduced initial investment
± Easily traceability through the mall¶s brand
Presentation Layer
‡ Its purpose is to provide a user interface
to the end user of the application
‡ Controls the look-and-feel of the
application and responds to user events
‡ Serves actually as the front-end of the
application
Business Logic Layer
‡ ðhe heart of the application itself
‡ Contains the business rules and /or
processes
‡ Its components link between
presentation and data/legacy layers
Data & Legacy access Layer
‡ Its purpose is to give to the business
logic components access to backend
data sources such as:
± Databases
± ERP systems
± mther custom systems
Horizontal services
‡ Services provided by the application server
by means of an underlying technology
(CmRBA, EJB, CmM,etc.)
‡ ðypical services:
± ðransactions
± Security
± Session Management
± Resource pooling
± Load balancing and fail over
Session Management
‡ Mantains the correlation among
requests generated by the same user
Resource Pooling
‡ Caching the instances of used
resources (e.g. database connections)
improves performances
Load Balancing and
Fail mver
‡ Make possible to distribute incoming
requests
‡ Handle clients reconnection in the case
of system crash
Cyberphobia and the .com crash
‡³Cyberphobia´ is the market¶s irrational fear of the
Internet due to the several bankruptcies occured in
the past years
‡B2C represent 75% of bankruptcies
Internet shutdowns

§ §
§ §

Jan-Apr 6 220 66
Source:Webmergers.com