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E-COMMERCE
Course outline
E-Commerce and its types, Internet and WWW Basics, Internet
standards and protocols, IP addressing,
Data communication on internet, Domain name system
Networking devices – Bridges, Switches, Routers etc., Role of
ISP’s on Internet, Getting Domain name
and IP addresses, Understanding electronic mail
Markup languages and the Web, Web designing using HTML, CSS and
Java Scripting
Client side & server side processing, Cookies, Maintaining state
in a stateless environment, two tier/ntier
architecture
Security issues on the internet, Firewalls, Proxy Server,
Virtual Private Network
Cryptography and Public key infrastructure (PKI), Certification
Authorities and Digital Certificates,
Digital signatures Technology
Electronic Payment Systems – Virtual Pin payment system,
Centralized account system, Electronic
Check, E-Cash, SSL and SET based payment systems
E-business– advantages/disadvantages, Paper and electronic
catalogues
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)
E-business models
Internet marketing
Data mining and knowledge discovery Process, OLAP, Types and
business application of data mining
E-business strategy, supply chain/value chain analysis and
Porter’s model, role of e-commerce in
competitive strategy
E-banking, ERP
Legal/policy issues in e-commerce –salient features of
Electronic Transactions Ordinance, 2002 in
Pakistan
Territorial jurisdiction and conflict of laws, online contracts,
online defamation, Copyright in
Cyberspace
Issue of ISP’s liability, domain-name and trade mark conflicts,
privacy issue on the internet, Cyber
crimes
Suggested books
Electronic Commerce (4th edition) by Gary P. Schneider
Electronic Commerce : Security, Risk Management and Control by
Greenstein & Feinman
Electronic commerce – A Managerial Perspective by Turban et al.
Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Networking (3rd edition) by Joe
Habraken
Creating a Web Page (5th edition) by Paul Mcfedries
Web Security, Privacy & Commerce by Garfinkel & Spafford
Data Mining – Concepts & Techniques by Han Kamber
E-commerce – Strategy, Technologies and Applications by David
Whiteley
Internet Law in Canada (6th edition) by Michael Geist
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E-Commerce definition
Electronic commerce is an emerging concept that describes the
process of buying and selling or exchanging
of products, services and information via computer networks
including the internet
E-commerce classification
A common classification of EC is by the nature of transaction:
Business-to-Business
(B2B):
electronic market transactions that take place between organizations
Business-to-Consumer (B2C):
retailing transactions with individual shoppers – typical shopper at
Amazon.com is a consumer
Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C):
consumer sells directly to consumers, examples -individuals selling
in classified ads, auction sites allowing individuals to put up
items for auction – e.g, e-bay
Consumer-to-Business (C2B):
individuals who sell products or services to organizations and those
who seek sellers and conclude a transaction
Intra Business (organizational) EC:
all internal organizational activities involving exchange of
goods, services or information, selling corporate products to
employees, online training and cost
reduction activities
Non-Business EC:
institutions, not-for-profit organizations, religious/social
organizations
and government agencies using EC to improve their operations,
customer service and reduce expense
Basic Definitions
Web client- machine that initiates internet request
Web server – machine that services internet request
Browser - software at the client side to interact with web data
Intranet – an internal network of computers confined to a single
place
Extranet – when two or more intranets are connected with each
other, they form an Extranet – e.g, Virtual
Private Network
Internet – a global network of networks is defined as internet
Internet presents a two-way client server communication model
as shown in Fig. 1 below:
Client-Server Model
Fig. 1
What is the WEB?
The Web is a protocol that uses the internet as the
communication structure. It links documents stored in
computers that communicate on the internet. It is based on
Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) - native
protocol of WWW designed for making web page requests.
HTTP is a four step process per transaction
1. Client
Makes an HTTP request for a web page
Makes a TCP/IP connection
2. Sever accepts request
Sends page as HTTP
1 Client downloads the page
2 Server breaks the connection
HTTP is stateless because in the fourth step the server breaks
the connection. We can say, therefore:
Each operation or transaction makes a new connection
Each operation is unaware of any other connection
Each click is a new connection
Side Effect of HTTP Transfers
A record is left of all web transaction in a file that resides
at the server called common log file. Good news
is that some user data (record of his visits to the web sites)
is recorded in a particular format in the log files.
Bad news is that user privacy is not maintained.
What can you do with this data?
Rearrange your site by knowing which portions of your web site
are popularly accessed and which are
ignored by the users
Change your marketing strategy – e.g., you can introduce some
promotional scheme for boosting the
sale of ignored items
Make a mailing list – you can trace the location from where
customers are visiting and prepare a mailing
list for marketing purposes
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