himanshu sharma e-commerce project
DESCRIPTION
Dezyne E'cole College BCA Student WorkTRANSCRIPT
Submitted by
Himanshu Sharma, B.C.A
Bachelor of Computer Application 3rd year
Dezyne E’cole College, Ajmer
www.dezyneecole.com
Acknowledgement
I am thankful to dezyne E’cole College to help in making this project on E-
Commerce A especial thanks to Ms. Jyoti Phulwani to guide us step by step in the
making of project report.
Thanking you
Himanshu Sharma
Bachelor of Computer Application
3rd year
Acknowledgement
CONTENTS
1. Chapter 1
Introduction
2. Chapter 2
Electronic Commerce and the World Wide Web
3. Chapter 3
Architectural Framework for Electronic Commerce
4. Chapter 4
Technology Behind the Web
5. Chapter 5
Network Security and Firewalls
6. Chapter 6
Electronic Commerce Companies
7. Chapter 7
Pictorial Representation: E-Buying Methodology
8. Chapter 8
Conclusion
Chapter 1
Introduction
Every individual of company that wants to make money and become the next Microsoft needs to understand the marker 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 power 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.
Consumers desires are very hard to predict, pinpoint or decipher in electronic markets
whose shapes, structure and populations are still in early stages. Needs envisioned
include entertainment on demand including 500 channels T.V., video on demand,
games on demand, electronic retailing via catalogues and kiosks and home shopping
networks.
In future viewers will secede what they want to see and when they want to participate
and successful market places are expected to those that cater to consumer’s
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.
Let’s take a look at the changing conditions in the “NEW Economy” 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. Retailer 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 fir 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. Adaption would include
moving towards computerized “Paperless” operations to, reduce trading cost and
facilitate the adoption of new business process. Japanese approach JIT (Just in Time)
system, in total quality control and quality control 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 modem business methodology that address the desire of firms, consumer and management to cut costs while improving the quality of goods and inversing the speed of services. The need for electronic commerce streams from the demand within business government to make bustles 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 integration force that represent the digital coverage of twenty-first century business application and computer technologies.
Electronic commerce application emphasis the generation and exploitation of new
business opportunity and to use the popular “buzzword” generated business value”.
For instance, when buyers-seller transaction occurs in the electronic market place,
information is access, observe, arrange and sold different ways in fact, the information
about a product of service is separated from the physical product or services and has
become important on its own. In some case, the information can become as crucial
as his actual product of service. In term of its effects on a company’s in short,
information ways business transaction are creating new ways of doing business and
even new type of business.
Electronic commerce applications are quite varied. In its most common from 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 activities usually increases expenses
without adding value. On the other hand, the term Electronic Commerce is used to
describe a new on-line approach to perform traditional functions such as payments
and funds transfers, 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
function are also part of Electronic-Commerce application domain. The business
function act as initiators 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
Information sharing
Electronic funds transfer (EFT) Electronic data interchange (EDI)
Collaborative work
Marketing, advertising
Sales, customer
support
Fax
Despite the changes taking place, businesses have three goals: stay competitive,
improve productivity and deliver quality service. These goals are the guiding buoys for
firm 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 Technology investments to automate their key internal
processes such as purchasing, invoicing and other similar functions. So, some
aspects of technological infrastructure for electronic commerce are already in place.
The challenge now become: how to effectively leverage this investment. Prices for
computer hardware and network equipment continue to fall, marking information
technology an appealing investment for many businesses, especially when its use 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 on electronic commerce,
however. What we require is integrated architecture the likes of which has never been
see before. This integrated architecture is emerging in the form of the World Wide
Web (WWW). As electronic commerce becomes more mature, we are beginning to
see sophisticated application being developed on the www. Technically and
commercially and, the www client-server model seems poised to become a dominant
technology.
Electronic
commerce
Electronic messaging
Corporate
digital
library
Electronic
publishing
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 today’s close system and allow the
development of e-commerce applications. It is important to understand that the aim of
the architectural framework itself is not to build new database management system,
data repository, computer languages, software agent-based transection monitors or
communication protocols. Rather the architecture should focused on synthesizing the
diverse resource already in place in corporation to facilitate the integration of data and
software for batter applications.
We propound that the electronic commerce application architecture consist of six
layers of functionality or services: (1) applications; (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; (6) network infrastructure and basic communication services.
Application services Customer-to-Business Business-to-Business Intra-Organizational
Brokerage and data management Order processing-mail-order houses Payment schemes-electronic cash Clearinghouse or virtual mall
Interface layer Interactive catalogue Directory support functions Software agents
Secure messaging Secure hypertext transfer protocol Encrypted e-mail, EDI Remote programming (RPC)
Middleware services Structured documents (SGML ,HTML) Compound documents (OLE, Open DOC)
Network infrastructure Wireless- cellular, radio, PCS Wire line- POTS co-axial, fiber optics
These layers cooperate to provide a seamless transition between today’s computing
resources and those of tomorrow by transparently integrating information access and
exchange within the context of the chosen application. As seen in above figure,
electronic commerce applications are based on several elegant technology. But only
when they are integrated do they provide uniquely powerful solutions.
In the ensuing discussion of each of these layers, we will not elaborate on the various
aspect of the network infrastructure that transport 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 organization.
1. Customer-to-business transaction
We call this category marketplace transection. In a marketplace transection, customer learn
about products differently through electronic publishing, buy them differently using electronic
cash and secure payment system, and have them deliver differently. Also, how customer
allocate their loyalty may also be different.
Manufacturing
And production
Engineering
And research
Accounting,
Finance and
management
Advertising Sales Customer service
Procurement, distribution and logistics
Private commerce
Customer-oriented electronic
Customer
Global suppliers
Classic EDI
Internal publishing
In light of this, the organization itself has to adapt to a world where traditional concept of bran
depreciation no longer hold-where “quality” has a new meaning equated to “product”, where
“distribution” may not automatically mean “physical transport”. In this new environment, bran
equity can rapidly evaporate forcing firms to develop new ways of doing business.
2. Business-To-Business Transection:
We call this category market-link transection. Here, businesses, government and
other organizations depend on computer-to-computer communication as a fast, an
economical and a dependable way to conduct business transaction. Small companies
are also beginning to see the benefits of adopting the same methods. Business-to-
business transection include of EDI and electronic mail for purchasing goods and
services, buying information and consulting services, submitting request for proposals
and receive proposals.
For example, the current accounts payable occurs though the exchange of paper
documents. Each year the trading partners exchange millions of invoices, checks,
purchase orders, financial reports and other transection. Most of the documents are
in electronic form as 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 reduced
costs, small businesses are looking towards electronic commerce as a possible
savior.
3. Intra Organizational Transections:
We call this category market-driven transaction a company becomes market driven by
dispersing throughout the form information about its customer and competitors; by
strategic and tactical decision making so that all units participate; and by continuously
monitoring their customer commitment by making improve customer satisfaction and
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 and 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 and 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 professional will have to
keep up the knowledge and ownership of all these system. Who’s got what? How do
you use it? What do they charged? Most professionals have enough trouble keeping
track of files of interest on one or two database services. With all the complexity
associated with large number of on-line database and service bureaus, it’s 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 searches 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 applications such as interactive catalogues and will support directory
service-function necessary for information search and access. These two concepts
are very different. Interactive catalogues are the customize interface to consumer
applications such as home shopping. An interactive catalogue is an extension of the
paper-based catalogue and incorporate 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 transaction 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 us to
locate people and telephone numbers. In the case of electronic commerce, directory
would play an important role in information management functions. For instance, take
the case of buying an airline ticket with several stopovers with a caveat that the time
between layovers be minimized. This search would require several queries to various
on-line directories to find empty seats on various airlines and then the availability of
seats would be coordinated with the amount of time spend in the airport terminals.
Secure Messaging and Structured 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 and urgent fax Monday and find out on Tuesday
that is still sitting on your fax operator’s desk. What happened? The line was busy and
he thought he would try again later. On, 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 a 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. Its call 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, enhance fax and electronic data interchange.
Broadly define, messaging is the software that sits between the network infrastructure
and the clients or electronic commerce application, masking the peculiarities of the
environment. Others define messaging as a framework for the total implementation of
portable application, divorcing you form architectural primitives of your system. In
general, messaging products are not applications that solve problems; they are more
enablers for the application that solve problems.
Messaging services offers solutions for communicating non-formatted (unstructured)
data as purchase orders, shipping notices and invoices. Unstructured messaging
consist of fax, e-mail and form based system like Lotus Notes structured documents
messaging consist of the automated interchange of standardized and approved
messages between computer applications, via telecommunication lines. Example 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, when a message is sent, work
continues (software doesn’t wait for a response). This allows the transfer of 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 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 transaction 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 1970’s, when vendors
delivered homogenous systems that worked, didn’t have a need for middleware. When
conditions changed-along with the hardware and the software the organizations
couldn’t: 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 between/among 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 “Virtual” 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), “Gateway” 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 – 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 : ftp://server.address/complete.file.name
Gopher : gopher://server.address:port/directory/filename
TELNET : telnet://server.address:port
HTTP : http://server.address:port/homepage.html
News : news:misc.stocks.invest
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:
http://web.w3.org/hypertext/web/TheProject.html.
The prefix “HTTP” 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 protocol 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 a query operation applied to it.
Hierarchical spaces are useful for hypertext, where one ”work” may be split up into
many interlinked documents. The # allows relative names to exploit the hierarchical
structure and allows links to be made within the work independent of the higher of
the URL, such as the server name.
URL’s are central to the web architecture. The fact that it is easy to address an
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 topologies.
Chapter 5
Network Security and Firewalls
The ability to conduct business on a public network has strong attraction-and the
potential for big savings. Security and confidentiality are essential, however before
businesses can conduct financial transactions over the internet a lack of widespread
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 concerns in electronic commerce can be
divided into two broad type:-
1. Client-server security uses various authorization methods to make sure that
only valid users and programs have access to information resources such as
databases. Access control mechanism must be set up to ensure that properly
authenticated users are allowed access only to those resources that they are
untitled to use. Such mechanism include password protection, encrypted smart
cards, bio matrix and firewalls.
2. Data and transaction security ensures the privacy and confidentiality in
electronic messages and data packets, including the authentication of the
remote users in network transactions for activities such as on-line payment. The
goal is to defeat any attempt to assume another identity while involved with
electronic mail or other forms of data communication. Preventive measures
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 their plain text from create a risk when
transmitted across the Internet where the possibility of the number following into the
wrong hands is relatively high would you be willing to type in yours credit card number
knowing the risk? Even worse would you expose your customers to that risk? Just the
thought of “sniffer” program that collect credit card numbers en masse is enough to
keep merchants away from on-line shopping given the possible lawsuits and other
liabilities issues in short the lack of business transaction security is widely
acknowledge has a major impediment 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 any 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
Step 2: -
Step 1: -
Chapter 7
Pictorial Representation: E-Buying Methodology
Step 3: -
Step 4: -
Step 5: -
Step 6: -
Step 7: -
Step 8: -
Step 9:
Step 10: -
Step 11: -
Chapter 8
Conclusion
E-commerce is growing tremendously. A lot of companies have joined between the period
July and August. On-line retail is still a tiny spot in India’s retail market of about $500 billion
a year, but it is growing at a quick pace. A study by retail consultancy Technopart predicts
India’s e-tailing market will reach $32 billion by 2020 from $2.3 billion in 2014.
Ethnic Indian clothe and casual wear are favorite products but unusual products like pets- too
are being offered on-line. With the huge growth that E-commerce has witness in recent times
analysts like devangshu datta, sales there is scope for more players to come in. But some
also worn about the risks the space is fraught with, as only a few may have chances of making
a bit. They also see consolidation in the sector going forward.
Bibliography
Frontier of electronic commerce by Ravi Kalakota and Andrew B.Whinston
Big E-commerce deals stir up sector-Economic Times
WWW.flipkart.com