ELECTRONIC COMMERCE

Introduction to E-commerce ?
With the emergence of internet and the world wide web new methods of carrying out business
transactions using the world wide web began to be explored. Electronic Commerce emerged as a very
important application of the world wide web. Today it is difficult to find an isolated computer.
Computers in an organization are interconnected to form intranets and Intranets of the cooperating
organizations are interconnected to form extranet. It is cheaper and faster to carry out business
transactions within an organization and among organizations electronically using the network

connection. Thus it is important to understand how business transactions are carried out electronically
reliably and securely. When designing information systems it is essential to understand the emerging
web based transactions. A number of organizations are exploring how to carry out all day-to-day
operations electronically using the intranet in a so-called paperless system. It is thus important for a
student to understand how to design such systems.

In its simplest form ecommerce is the buying and selling of products and services by businesses and
consumers over the Internet. People use the term "ecommerce" to describe encrypted payments on the
Internet.
Sharing business information, maintaining business relationships and conducting business transactions
using computers connected to a telecommunication network is called E-Commerce

CLASSIFICATION
1. BUSINESS TO BUSINESS (B2B)
2. BUSINESS TO CUSTOMER (B2C)
3. CUSTOMER TO CUSTOMER (C2C)
E-commerce Applications-example
•RETAIL STORES - Books, Music
•AUCTION SITES
•COOPERATING BUSINESSES –Placing orders, paying invoices etc.
•ELECTRONIC BANKING
•BOOKING TICKETS - TRAINS, CINEMA, AIRLINES
•ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING
•FILLING TAX RETURNS WITH GOVERNMENT DEPT.
Sometimes these transactions include the real-time transfer of funds from buyer to seller and sometimes
this is handled manually through an eft-pos terminal once a secure order is received by the merchant.

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Internet sales are increasing rapidly as consumers take advantage of lower prices offer by wholesalers
retailing their products. This trend is set to strengthen as web sites address consumer security and
privacy concerns.
Multistage model for e-commerce

The sales cycle is the foundation of e-commerce, and any system must deal with the various stages in
the cycle. These stages are as follows:
1. Search and identification of the items that are wanted and who sells them.
2. Selection and negotiation involve getting the price quotations and choosing which items to
order from whom, then setting delivery and price terms.
3. Purchasing includes sending an electronic purchase order and choosing a payment method.
Note the difference between a continuing customer and a first-time or one-time customer, and
also the methods of ensuring a secure payment transaction.
4. Product and service delivery may be done in the normal manner for most products and
services. However, items such as software, texts, documents, music, and other material can be
delivered electronically over the Internet. As a CGA student, you receive course material
online using the Internet.
5. After-sales service is a growing aspect of e-commerce. Since information about the customer
and the order exists in electronic form, it can be stored on a database and retrieved to answer
customer inquiries or provide warranty service.
FORCES FUELING E-COMMERCE
There are at least three major forces fueling e-commerce; economic forces, marketing forces including
customer interaction force and Technology ( multimedia convergence).

a) Economic Forces. One of the most evident benefits of e-commerce is economic efficiency resulting
from the reduction in communications costs, low-cost technological infrastructure, speedier and more
economic electronic transactions with suppliers, lower global information sharing and advertising
costs, and cheaper customer service alternatives.
b) Market Forces. Corporations are encouraged to use e-commerce in marketing and promotion to
capture international markets, both big and small. The Internet is likewise used as a medium for
enhanced customer service and support. It is a lot easier for companies to provide their target
consumers with more detailed product and service information using the Internet.
c) Technology Forces. The development of ICT is a key factor in the growth of e-commerce. For
instance, technological advances in digitizing content, compression and the promotion of open systems
technology have paved the way for the convergence of communication into a single platform. This in
turn has made communication more efficient, faster, easier and more economical as the need to set up
separate networks for telephone services, television broadcast, cable television and Internet access is
eliminated. From the standpoint of firms / businesses and consumers have only one information
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provider means lower communication costs.

BENEFITS OF E-COMMERCE
E-commerce can provide the following benefits over non-electronic commerce:
 Reduced costs by reducing labour, reduced paper work, reduced errors in keying in data, reduce
post costs
 Reduced time. Shorter lead times for payment and return on investment in advertising, faster
delivery of product
 Flexibility with efficiency. The ability to handle complex situations, product ranges and
customer profiles without the situation becoming unmanageable.
 Improve relationships with trading partners. Improved communication between trading partners
leads to enhanced long-term relationships.
 Lock in Customers. The closer you are to your customer and the more you work with them to
change from normal business practices to best practice e-commerce the harder it is for a
competitor to upset your customer relationship.
 New Markets. The Internet has the potential to expand your business into wider geographical
locations.

E-COMMERCE CHALLENGES
There are three major challenges for companies moving to e-commerce. The first is to define an
effective model and strategy . The components of the most successful model are community (building a
group of customers), content (identifying what you are offering in an attractive way), and commerce
(offering desirable methods of acquiring and paying for offerings).
Another challenge is the physical delivery of units to individual customers, which often requires
changing distribution systems and processes, because there is no retail store with goods on display for
customers to select and purchase.
A third major challenge is integrating the electronic ordering over the Internet through a website with
the inventory control and production planning systems.

E-COMMERCE SUPPLY CHAIN

All businesses have various value-added processes. The supply chain is one such process that has the
potential for significant benefits if converted to e-commerce. Supply chain management has three sub-
processes: demand planning, supply planning, and demand fulfilment. The benefits include increased
revenues and decreased costs, improved customer satisfaction, and inventory reduction across the
supply chain. You should understand these benefits and the impact not just on the individual
organization but also on the entire industry.

1. Business-to-business (B2B)
B2B provides opportunities for particular industries as well as for society. For example, a manufacturer
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such as an automobile maker can reduce its inventory-carrying costs by linking with its parts and
materials suppliers to deliver the materials when they are required for production. This is known as the
just-in-time (JIT) approach. Not only are the carrying costs of inventory reduced, so are storage facility
requirements and handling costs. Furthermore, the invoicing and payment processes between the
manufacturer and its suppliers can also be handled as B2B transactions. The B2B links extend further
when the suppliers of parts link to the industries that supply the raw materials on a B2B basis.
On a smaller scale are retailers who deal with merchandise suppliers on a B2B basis, whether the
suppliers are manufacturers of goods or growers of produce, regardless of where they are located.
Businesses are also consumers of goods such as office supplies, and they can obtain these online on a
B2B basis.

2. Business-to-consumer (B2C)
So far, some consumers are still reluctant to shop on the Internet, so there is a large untapped market.
As more people work for organizations that use B2B, and most companies that have catalogues
encourage customers to order online, the volume of business in B2C will increase dramatically.
The term business-to-consumer, often called B2C, refers to transactions between a business and its end
consumer. Examples of B2C transactions include individuals shopping for clothes to be given as
birthday gifts, diners ordering food and eating in a restaurant, and TV watchers subscribing to satellite
TV providers.
Though B2C refers to all business-to-consumer transactions the term is most commonly used for online
selling of products. The effect of B2C transactions in the online scene is of such magnitude that
retailers have become very vigilant in keeping their websites up-to-date and optimized to get the
consumer traffic they want.

3. Consumer-to-consumer (C2C)
Customer to Customer (C2C) markets are innovative ways to allow customers to interact with each
other. While traditional markets require business to customer relationships, in which a customer goes to
the business in order to purchase a product or service. In customer to customer markets the business
facilitates an environment where customers can sell these goods and or services to each other .
Customer to Customer (C2C), sometimes known as Consumer to Consumer, E-Commerce involves
electronically-facilitated transactions between individuals, often through a third party. One common
example is online auctions, such as Ebay, where an individual can list an item for sale and other
individuals can bid to purchase it. Auction sites normally charge commission to the sellers using them.
They act purely as intermediaries who match buyers with sellers and they have little control over the
quality of the products being offered, although they do try to prevent the sale of illegal goods, such as
pirate CDs or DVDs. The Web allows individuals to sell directly to other consumers through web
auction sites such as eBay and Kijiji. Another popular area for customer to customer transactions is
online classified advertising sites, such as Craigslist and Gumtree. Major online retailers like Amazon
also allow individuals to sell products via their sites.
C2C is expected to increase in the future because it minimises the costs of using third parties. However,
it does suffer from some problems, such as lack of quality control or payment guarantees and there can
sometimes be difficulties in making credit-card payments.
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Global e-commerce
The Internet facilitates international e-commerce, but there are challenges to this aspect such as local
culture, cross-border taxation issues, and restrictions on information transfer, which you should
understand.

Advantages Of E-commerce
1. Buying/selling a variety of goods and services from one's home or business
2. Anywhere, anytime transaction
3. Can look for lowest cost for specific goods or service
4. Businesses can reach out to worldwide clients - can establish business partnerships
5. Order processing cost reduced
6. Electronic funds transfer faster
7. Supply chain management is simpler, faster, and cheaper using e- commerce
- Can order from several vendors and monitor supplies.
 Production schedule and inventory of an organization can be inspected by cooperating supplier
who can in-turn schedule their work.

Disadvantages Of E-commerce
1. Electronic data interchange using EDI is expensive for small businesses
2. Security of internet is not very good - viruses, hacker attacks can paralise
e-commerce
3. Privacy of e-transactions is not guaranteed
4. E-commerce de-personalises shopping. People go shopping to meet others
- window shop and bargain

E-COMMERCE APPLICATIONS
The following are areas where e-commerce is widely used.

1.Retail and wholesale

Electronic retailing sites use the well-known catalogue and shopping cart model, or perhaps a
cybermall, which is a website that offers a number of retailers and products. Wholesale opportunities
are available for companies that spend large amounts on manufacturing, repair, and operations (MRO).
E-commerce software for plant operations can result in significant savings.

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2.Manufacturing
The text covers several aspects of manufacturing. The concept and implementation of an electronic
exchange is where companies can join with competitors and suppliers to sell goods. However, there are
obstacles to this form of e-commerce, including the natural distrust of competitors, the unwillingness to
share expertise, and the possibility of government scrutiny in respect to collusion or antitrust
legislation. E-commerce can also be used to reduce the costs of distribution and sales.

3.Marketing
E-commerce is widely used for marketing. Information obtained from customers to target a particular
group with e-mails and other advertising messages is known as market segmentation. Technology-
enabled relationship management is the gathering of a customer profile that includes buying patterns,
behaviours, preferences, and other characteristics, which is then used by a company to tailor its
offering and promotions to a specific customer. A leading Internet company, DoubleClick, uses the
Internet to build customer relationships.
If you have Bell Canada as your ISP, you will have noticed that BellZinc uses DoubleClick.
Some small businesses and proprietorships do not actually sell goods or services over the Internet.
They simply want a web presence so that their name will be recognized. Their websites may contain
information about their business, provide catalogues or descriptions of goods and services,
testimonials, and marketing material, with information on how to contact them. This is indeed a form
of marketing and a growing application.

4. Investment and finance

One reason the Internet has revolutionized the investment and finance industry may be because the
industry has so many built-in inefficiencies. However, it is more likely that the huge volume of
transactions in the
industry makes it easier to recover the costs of developing and implementing e-commerce for the
organizations concerned. Although some institutions offer their services at no cost, others charge a
small fee per transaction. Many achieve savings through reducing personnel and branch locations.
a. Stock trading online allows the investor to review many sites with information about stocks,
including profiles and recommendations from a variety of sources. It also allows contact with the
broker to buy and sell at a substantially lower commission than the old way, and to track portfolios.
Most financial institution sites and the larger ISPs have links to financial and investment sites.

b.Online banking is a growing segment of e-commerce, which is a natural evolution from tellers, to off-
hour banking via instant teller machines, to telephone banking. Bill presentment, available from some
banks, involves no paper because you are notified by e-mail that you have a bill, you can see the
image, and you can direct your bank to pay the bill.

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 E-COMMERCE TECHNOLOGY INFRASTRUCTURE
For e-commerce to be successful, an organization must have a site that attracts customers and is easy to
use, but it is imperative that the service must be reliable, accurate, and provide rapid response. In e-
commerce, it is easier for the potential customer to go elsewhere if the process is slow and they
encounter problems with the order itself. Therefore, it is essential to build a good working system with
a complete and sound technological infrastructure. The key infrastructure components are the
organization's internal technology in the form of networks, linked to the Internet by high-speed
equipment, with the e-commerce software working in conjunction with the server software and the
server operating system on the server hardware platform. These infrastructure components must be
carefully chosen and integrated to support a large number of customers, suppliers, and business
partners around the world.

Hardware

A key component is a web server hardware platform complete with appropriate software. A key
decision at the outset is whether a company should host its own website or outsource it to a web server
provider. This is a typical make-or-buy decision, where the decision maker must consider the costs of
establishing the site and maintaining it, including the capital cost, the development cost, and the
maintenance cost, all of which require an investment in specialist staff. Because there is considerable
estimation in how much traffic will be handled by the site, in-house or hosted solutions should be
scalable.

Web server software

Web server software works with the server operating system to perform several functions, including the
following:
 Security and identification, including access control and encryption using user name or URL
 Retrieving and sending web pages using HTTP and HTML
 Website tracking, including logging visitor information and the URL, and what action has taken
place
 Website development with website development tools that come in a package, including a
development kit and instructions on how to use a language such as Java
 Web page construction software that uses editors and extensions to produce a static or dynamic
web page. A static page is unchanging, but a dynamic page responds to queries by searching
databases for current information relevant to that particular query. A server that handles
dynamic content must have ODBC.
Some of the more popular web server programs include ASP and Apache, which are available at no
cost from the Internet.

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E-commerce software
When you have built a site on a host server or selected a service provider, appropriate e-commerce
software must be selected. There are different requirements for B2B and B2C software. B2C must be
able to handle invoicing or direct payment that includes local sales-related taxes such as GST or HST
in Canada and VAT in the U.K. B2B software must be able to handle a variety of transactions between
business partners.
The five tasks that e-commerce software must handle are
1. Catalogue management, which is best done in a real-time environment using catalogue
management software .
2. Product configuration, which uses product configuration software to help buyers build the
product that they want, such as a computer system .
3. Shopping cart, which allows buyers to add items, change them, and build their total order, and
then leads to checkout procedures for order completion and payment information.
4. E-commerce transaction processing, software that automates the transaction processes and
enables communication between trading partners. The software may complete the purchase by
calculating all costs including shipping, and may automatically notify the carrier. Where the
company has outsourced the inventory management and order filling to a third party, the
software routes order information to the shipping companies. It is important to have good
back- office systems and processes to support transactions.
5. Web traffic data analysis. It takes website traffic analysis software to turn data that is
captured by a website into useful information.

E-commerce System Architectures

LOGICAL LAYERS SERVICES IN LAYER
Application layer B2B,B2C,C2C
Middleman services Hosting services, value added nets
payment services, Certificates

Secure messaging Encryption, EDI, Firewalls

World wide web services HTTP, HTML, XML, OLE

Software agents

Logical network Intranet, internet, extranet

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Physical network PSTN, LAN, Bridges, routers

ELECTRONIC PAYMENT SYSTEMS

Electronic payment systems are essential for the growth of e-commerce. While they currently comprise
only a small percentage of the dollar volume, this number is increasing. For web software to identify
users, a digital certificate is used. It is an attachment to an e-mail message or data embedded in a
website that verifies identity. A certificate authority (CA) is a third party that issues digital certificates.

Secure sockets layer

One reason many people are reluctant to shop on the Web is the fear that credit card and banking
information will be stolen. Sensitive data is secured by the secure sockets layer (SSL) that sits above
the TCP layer of the OSI model, and other protocols such as HTTP sit on top of it. The text describes
the SSL on page 331, and offers some tips on what to look for on your screen with the two main
browsers, Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Explorer. Notice also that the newest version of the
browser will usually have the best security.

Electronic cash
Electronic cash is an amount of money that is computerized, stored, and used in e-commerce.
Credit, charge, debit, and smart cards
With a credit card, you charge purchases and pay later, with interest accumulating on unpaid balances.
A charge card has no preset spending limit and doesn't charge interest. When you use a debit card, you
pay at the time of purchase, since the amount is automatically taken from your account. A smart card
has the appearance of a credit card but has a microchip embedded that contains information, codes,
and other information that is encrypted, as well as amounts available for spending.

Digital certificates
Note that digital certificates are included in Internet Explorer. Go to Tools, Internet Options, then click
the Content tab. A section is identified as "Certificates."

Secure Electronic Transaction Protocol

To use SET protocol it is assumed that
1. Each party involved in e-commerce transaction has a public and private key.A public key
encryption is used.
2. All parties have their public keys certified.
3. A standard hashing algorithm is used to create message digest for signature verification.

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Main Features
•Customers credit card number is not revealed to a merchant. It is revealed only to the acquirer who
authorises payment.
•Purchase invoice details are not revealed to the acquirer.Only the credit card number and total amount
are revealed to him
•Purchase invoice + credit card number is digitally signed by the customer. In case of a dispute an
arbitrator can use this to settle the dispute.

Electronic Cheque Payment

Most cheque based transactions will be between businesses -thus a special hardware is attached to
PC‘s for signing payments. Signature is encrypted by hardware. All public keys of business partners
authenticated by certifying agencies.

Steps in transaction
1. Purchaser sends purchase order and payment advice signed with his private key to vendor.He also
sends his public key certificate encrypted with vendor's public key to vendor
2. Vendor decrypts with his private key, checks certificate and cheque, attaches deposit slip, encrypts
with bank's public key and sends it to bank. he also sends his public key certificate
Bank checks signatures, credits and clears cheque. Credit advice goes to vendor, and consolidated
debit advice sent to purchaser periodically

Payment Gateways
Both PayPal and Paymate offer credit card to bank account payments. Using one of these services you
can invoice a customer, they can pay on Paymate and the funds will be deposited in your bank account
... less a transaction fee.
Unlike a credit card merchant facility you will not have ongoing, minimum monthly fees... and the
transaction fee is better than what most card companies offer small merchants. Additional these service
are being backed into other ecommerce sites and shopping carts. Ebay for example uses Paypal to
process some payments.

Smart card
A smart card, chip card, or integrated circuit card (ICC) is any pocket-sized card with embedded
integrated circuits. Smart cards are made of plastic, generally polyvinyl chloride, but sometimes
acrylonitrile butadiene styrene or polycarbonate.
Smart cards can provide identification, authentication, data storage and application processing. Smart
cards may provide strong security authentication for single sign-on (SSO) within large organizations.

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Smart cards serve as credit or ATM cards, fuel cards, mobile phone SIMs, authorization cards for pay
television, household utility pre-payment cards, high-security identification and access-control cards,
and public transport and public phone payment cards.
Smart cards may also be used as electronic wallets. The smart card chip can be "loaded" with funds to
pay parking meters and vending machines or at various merchants. Cryptographic protocols protect the
exchange of money between the smart card and the accepting machine. No connection to the issuing
bank is necessary, so the holder of the card can use it even if not the owner. Examples are Proton,
Geldkarte, Chipknip and Mon€o. The German Geldkarte is also used to validate customer age at
vending machines for cigarettes.
Visa: Visa Contactless, Quick VSDC, "qVSDC", Visa Wave, MSD, payWave
 MasterCard: PayPass Magstripe, PayPass MChip
 American Express: ExpressPay
 Discover: Zip

Debit card
A debit card (also known as a bank card or check card) is a plastic card that provides the cardholder
electronic access to his or her bank account(s) at a financial institution. Some cards have a stored value
with which a payment is made, while most relay a message to the cardholder's bank to withdraw funds
from a designated account in favor of the payee's designated bank account. The card can be used as an
alternative payment method to cash when making purchases. In some cases, the primary account
number is assigned exclusively for use on the Internet and there is no physical card.
In many countries, the use of debit cards has become so widespread that their volume has overtaken or
entirely replaced cheques and, in some instances, cash transactions. The development of debit cards,
unlike credit cards and charge cards, has generally been country specific resulting in a number of
different systems around the world, which were often incompatible. Since the mid 2000s, a number of
initiatives have allowed debit cards issued in one country to be used in other countries and allowed
their use for internet and phone purchases.
Unlike credit and charge cards, payments using a debit card are immediately transferred from the
cardholder's designated bank account, instead of the them paying the money back at a later date.
Debit cards usually also allow for instant withdrawal of cash, acting as the ATM card for withdrawing
cash. Merchants may also offer cashback facilities to customers, where a customer can withdraw cash
along with their purchase.

E-banking
Online banking (or Internet banking or E-banking) allows customers of a financial institution to
conduct financial transactions on a secure website operated by the institution, which can be a retail or
virtual bank, credit union or building society.It may include of any transactions related to online usage
To access a financial institution's online banking facility, a customer having personal Internet access
must register with the institution for the service, and set up some password (under various names) for
customer verification. The password for online banking is normally not the same as for telephone
banking. Financial institutions now routinely allocate customer numbers (also under various names),

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whether or not customers intend to access their online banking facility. Customer numbers are normally
not the same as account numbers, because a number of accounts can be linked to the one customer
number. The customer will link to the customer number any of those accounts which the customer
controls, which may be cheque, savings, loan, credit card and other accounts.
To access online banking, the customer would go to the financial institution's website, and enter the
online banking facility using the customer number and password. Some financial institutions have set
up additional security steps for access, but there is no consistency to the approach adopted.
The common features fall broadly into several categories
 A bank customer can perform some non-transactional tasks through online banking, including -
 viewing account balances
 viewing recent transactions
 downloading bank statements, for example in PDF format
 viewing images of paid cheques
 ordering cheque books
 Downloading applications for M-banking, E-banking etc.
 Bank customers can transact banking tasks through online banking, including -
 Funds transfers between the customer's linked accounts
 Paying third parties, including bill payments (see, e.g., BPAY) and telegraphic/wire
transfers
 Investment purchase or sale
 Loan applications and transactions, such as repayments of enrollments
 Financial institution administration
 Management of multiple users having varying levels of authority
 Transaction approval process

The Rise and Rise of Auction Sites

Auction sites such as Ebay and TradeMe have done an enormous amount to get ordinary people
involved in online trading. Today many Ebay merchants are establishing their own web sites to avoid
Ebay and Pay Pal fees. They have learnt about how to present their product in their Ebay store and
what issues are important to their customers in purchasing their product and now they are ready to start
their own web site.

ECOMMERCE SOFTWARE
EPages and fully integrated ecommerce software package that gives the web site owner control of ALL
aspect of the web site, not give a product catelogue. It integrates with Ebay and Froogle.
OSEcommerce is an open source ecommerce software solution. It covers most of the basics and is free,
but there is no support other than documentation and forums. Many php developers are available for
customisation.
Eway offers "real time" payments from your web site to your bank account - the "glue" if you like
between between your web site and bank. Let's say you have a web site that can take secure orders over
SSL, you get the credit card number and put through a manual debit. Eway takes away the manual debit

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part of the circle.
Mals-e.com offers a free shopping cart with customisable freight and payment options. Great for small
stores.

TRANSACTION PROCESSING
Businesses turn to information systems to speed up and integrate their daily transaction activities. Daily
transactions are what the business does every day, and because of their high volume, they were the first
candidates for computerization. The volume of input and output data is high, with relatively simple and
clearly understood processing. Transaction processing systems (TPS) are the basis for the more
sophisticated,
higher-level systems.

Overview of transaction processing systems (TPS)

Every business has both manual and automated transaction processing systems. TPSs assist in
performing and maintaining detailed records, and support business operations such as order entry,
payroll, inventory control, and sales. They also assist in adding value to the organization's goods and
services.

Traditional transaction processing methods and objectives

When traditional TPSs were automated, they began as file-based systems. These traditional systems
used input devices that grouped transactions in batches for future batch processing. The next step was
online input , but processing was delayed and transactions were still processed as batches. With online
transaction processing, applications are handled more effectively with processing occurring
immediately after each transaction was input online. However, certain applications are more cost-
effective processed in batches, particularly high-volume periodic processes such as payroll and billing.
Even under the file-based system, firms attempted to integrate their TPS applications.

TPS objectives
Because transaction processing is so important for daily operations and the data are so important for
decision support systems, a TPS should accomplish specific objectives , as follows:
 Process data generated by and about transactions (this is the prime function)
 Maintain a high degree of accuracy and integrity, including the avoidance of fraudulent
transactions
 Produce timely documents and reports
 Increase labour efficiency
 Help provide increased service

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  Help build and maintain customer loyalty
 Achieve competitive advantage

TPS cycle
All TPSs perform the basic data processing activities of capturing data from internal and external
sources, updating the databases, and producing documents and reports. The data goes through a
transaction processing cycle and consists of the following activities:
i)data collection — the first step in the cycle, which may take many forms. Wherever possible,
source data automation (SDA) is preferred.

ii)data editing — checks the data against predetermined parameters

iii)data correction — after an error is found, the data are corrected so that they can be re-
entered and the set of transactions will be complete
iv) data manipulation — performs arithmetic and logical operations according to the
programming. The initial data may be used in many ways for different purposes to produce many
outputs.
v) data storage — updates the database for use in management decision making
vi) document production and reports — produced on hard copy or displayed on-screen

TPS control and management issues

Because TPSs are vital both to operations and to other information systems, management must ensure
that TPSs do not fail.

TPS audit
A TPS audit is no different than any other systems audit. Its objectives are to ensure that the system
meets the need for which it was designed and developed, that controls and procedures are adequate and
reasonable, and that these controls and procedures are being followed and used properly. The audit
may be conducted by internal auditors or external auditors, and will be as detailed as is deemed
necessary under the terms of reference. Some audits include an audit of the programs themselves to
ensure they are all in the best interest of the company and perform according to program
specifications. Audits include a review of all systems documentation, checking or testing output
against input, and reviewing all procedures.
In order to ensure the propriety and integrity of data processing whereby all outputs can be traced back
to source documents, an audit trail is used wherever possible. In the old batch systems, this was
generated automatically and was easy to follow. In the modern online systems, an audit trail may be
difficult to establish or follow and may not exist due to the real-time nature of many online systems.

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Traditional transaction processing applications
Order processing systems
Order processing systems and subsystems are vital to businesses because without sales there can be no
profit.
Even not-for-profit organizations need to be able to fill orders for products or services. A systems-level
flowchart can be used to show the subsystems and information flows.
1. Order entry system captures data needed to process a customer order. There are many forms of
ordering, including mail, over-the-counter, door-to-door sales, telephone, and over the Internet. Orders
are generally initiated by a customer but may be initiated by the company using software developed
for that purpose. Ordering can be direct, company-to-company using EDI, or via a third-party
clearinghouse.

2. Sales configuration is a relatively new system that not only checks the customer's order but ensures
that products and services give the client what is expected and will work well together. An example is
the system telling the sales representative (or the customer) that a particular printer needs a specific
cable and a specific LAN card if connected to the network, so that the customer can order these
products if not already on hand. The system also tells the customer whether products they wish to buy
are compatible with specific products from other manufacturers.
3. Shipment planning manages the selection of items ordered from particular locations, produces
picking lists to tell warehouse employees where to find items, and schedules shipments. This can be a
complex process and can be linked to production scheduling.
4. Shipment execution is the application that coordinates the flow of products to the consumer
(including executing company policy concerning out-of-stock items), passes information to the
inventory control system, and produces packing slips for the customer as well as data for invoicing.
5.Inventory control is important not just for products and materials but also for services and reservation
applications. The inventory control system minimizes the costs of holding inventory and maximizes
delivery to the customer when needed.
6.Invoicing is essential so that the company gets paid for what it sells. The invoicing system ensures
that all data relevant to an order is accumulated and that all orders specific to a customer are billed to
that customer. It performs all necessary calculations. The invoicing system produces an automatic
entry to the accounts receivable system.
7. Customer relationship management (CRM) is a system that keeps track of all contacts with a
customer or prospective customer and provides valuable data that can be used to attract or retain
customers. CRM is becoming increasingly important to businesses.
8. Routing and scheduling. Routing systems use sophisticated calculations to determine the best
way to move goods and materials from one location to another in the most cost-effective
manner. Scheduling systems determine the best times to deliver goods and services in terms of
seasonal costs, and the use of the delivery mechanism to pick up other items on the return trip.
Routing and scheduling systems work together to provide cost-effective service.

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Purchasing systems
Purchasing transaction processing systems consist of the following:
1.Inventory control is already covered under order processing, but here, it pertains to
materials related to the manufacture and sale of products.
2.Purchase order processing includes the use of the Internet to form strategic partnerships.
3.Receiving system is used in addition to the traditional manual forms in traditional systems,
when companies send advance shipment notices electronically, against which the receiver can
check actual shipments. Bar code scanners can speed up the checking process when the goods
are received. However, containers still need to be inspected to ensure that goods are in good

condition and match the identification on the container.

4. Accounts payable has been made less costly by automating the process and transferring
data
from the purchase order processing and receiving systems to the accounts payable system. The

primary output is cheques or electronic payment, paying the right supplier the correct amount
at the best time for the goods and services received. The accounts payable system is designed to
improve the cash flow, control purchasing, increase profitability, and provide more effective
management of current liabilities. The accounts payable system feeds other systems by
identifying costs by type of expenditure and by department.

Accounting systems
Accounting systems have traditionally been early candidates for automation because they deal with
details and
volumes, use data created by other systems, and produce a multitude of outputs from that data.
At this point in your program of studies, you should be familiar with the concepts, purposes, processes,
and relationships between accounting systems.
1.Budget . Budgeting is a time-consuming, reiterative process for most organizations. The
budgeting system uses historic data from the general ledger system to begin the budget process,
applies current rules and policies, and produces a preliminary budget from which individual
departments or other organizational units can develop their budgets and forecast. Each department
uses automated techniques that help in estimating and forecasting budgets for calendar and fiscal
periods. The budgeting system then consolidates individual budgets according to the
organizational structure, by line item or however it is needed. Most budgeting systems allow
users to "drill down" from consolidated figures to various levels of detail. The budgeting
system assists development of the final budget by rapidly producing a variety of scenarios based on
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the assumptions and policies of decision makers.
2.Accounts receivable. The major output of the accounts receivable system is invoices or
statements sent to customers. Inputs to the accounts receivable system are invoice and credit
note data from the invoicing system, and payment information from the payment system. (The
payment system is not identified as an accounting system in the text, but includes systems to
handle and provide receipts for payments of cash, cheques, credit cards, or electronic payment
systems.) The primary output of the accounts receivable system is periodic (usually monthly)
statements to customers. There are a number of other outputs, including the important
aged analysis of accounts receivable, which is used to assist in making credit decisions and to

collect outstanding accounts. (Various notices are produced automatically by the system.) The
accounts receivable system helps the organization manage and improve cash flow and protect
its assets by assessing credit risks.
3.Payroll . A good payroll system will be able to take input data (such as hours worked,
category of work, and employee information) that is processed against pay rate information, contract
information, and deduction information to calculate gross pay, deductions, and net pay. The
outputs include cheques (or direct deposit through EDI), cheque stubs with details of
deductions, labour distribution to departments, and accounts payable data in respect to deductions.
Other outputs include a payroll journal (often known as a payroll register), and a variety of reports.
The payroll system also outputs information to other systems such as that which calculates
pension contributions by the employer. The payroll system is quite complex and is a good
candidate for outsourcing. On the other hand, payroll software packages are available that
serve the needs of many small to medium-sized companies.
4.Asset management . The asset management transaction processing system has the primary
function of managing capital assets, including calculating depreciation of assets under a
variety of tax rules in different jurisdictions. Some systems are linked to, or incorporate, data pertaining
to the use and maintenance cost of assets and can be used to determine if or when an asset should
be replaced. The asset management TPS may also be linked to maintenance management
systems and costs systems that charge the cost of assets to projects.
5. General ledger. You should be completely familiar with the general ledger system and the
use of the chart of accounts to record data and report results in many ways. The general ledger is the
central accounting system and all other money systems are reflected in the accounts of the
general ledger. The general ledger normally carries the summaries generated by other systems
such as payroll and accounts payable, but because accounting systems are generally fully
integrated, details can be found by accessing the other systems through the general ledger.

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International issues
Key international issues resulting from the increasing number of international corporations and
partnerships include
 different languages and cultures
 differences in information systems infrastructures
 varying customs and rules
 multiple currencies
You should understand these issues thoroughly as you may well encounter them in your career.

ENTERPRISE RESOURCE PLANNING (ERP)

Overview of enterprise resource planning
An enterprise resource planning (ERP) fully integrates all information systems across an organization,
with total communications, so that an action anywhere in the system will be transmitted to the
subsystem or person where an appropriate response should occur. In an ERP, the corporation's strategic
objectives are most important, and the ERP system is implemented to match the corporation's
management style. The objectives are to maximize performance of the corporation as a whole by
achieving corporate objectives and maximizing the cost-effectiveness of operations within the
corporate framework. ERP recognizes that every organization is different, but there are common
functions and processes as well as a need for complete integration of systems, including the physical
devices and the flow of data and information.
Because organizations are different, two approaches have been developed by ERP systems suppliers.
The first approach is to provide a very sophisticated system that has so many features and so much
functionality that no single business could possibly need them all, so the organization simply uses the
tools and features that it needs. The second approach is to provide ERP software that includes
customization tools that an organization can use to tailor the system to its own specific use.

Advantages and disadvantages of ERP

The business environment is becoming more competitive, particularly on a global basis, because
companies do not require a plant located in a particular country or location to do business in that
location. The growth of e- commerce in both B2B and B2C, and of communication systems locally and
internationally due to the Internet, has created a demand for access to information on a real-time basis
across the entire organization. Business executives have new needs for control over the total cost and
product flow through the entire enterprise. To respond to these needs, ERP software from a single
vendor has been offered as a solution.
Because no single vendor could produce custom packages for every possible need in every industry or
business, major ERP vendors are encouraging other software vendors to develop packages that tie in
directly to the ERP system.
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Advantages of ERP
The benefits of ERP include cost savings in eliminating old, inefficient systems, improvement of work
processes, increased access to data for operational decision making, and upgrade of technology
infrastructure.
1.Elimination of costly, inflexible legacy systems
. Legacy systems are older systems developed in the past. They are still operational, but are inefficient,
costly to maintain, and may be impossible to fix when they break down. An ERP brings new systems
to the organization so that its business needs can be met more appropriately and so that new demands
can be met. What's more, an ERP makes integration of systems necessary, which was usually
impossible with the old and cumbersome legacy systems.

2. Improvement of work processes

In order to implement an ERP properly, a company is forced to review its business processes. It is quite
possible to do this without implementing an ERP. The review of how things are done in order to
eliminate non-value-added steps and to improve both manual and automated processes is known as
process reengineering. Part of the implementation of an ERP is to conduct this review, and many ERP
vendors bring with them application modules that build in best practices, which are the most cost-
effective way to complete a particular business process.
3. Increase in access to data for operational decision making
The key to good operational decision making is access to current and reliable data. A company that
implements an ERP integrates its systems and therefore its data as well. Decision makers automatically
have up-to-date reliable data.
4. Upgrade of technology infrastructure
In most organizations, the technology infrastructure is a mixture acquired by various departments to
meet departmental needs over a period of time. Thus, there is no corporate standard, and the
technology is expensive to maintain and support, as well as difficult to integrate. By moving to an
ERP, an organization can determine which databases and systems it needs, upgrade those that need to
be upgraded, implement organization standards, and as a consequence, reduce operational and support
costs while simplifying integration problems.

Disadvantages of ERP
Implementation of an ERP can be costly and difficult and has the following disadvantages:
1.Expense and time in implementation
Implementation of an ERP is no easy task. It involves massive restructuring of the technology structure,
replacement of many existing systems, reengineering of business processes, and integration of systems.
It requires multiple project teams that have both staff and consultants as members, and commitment of
staff and management. It also takes many years and is usually expensive to implement. While all this is
going on, the organization must continue to do business and operate in a state of change.
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2. Difficulty of implementing change
- There is always a resistance to change of any kind. An ERP entails a long period of continual change,
including change to how business processes are handled. This can be traumatic for employees,
especially since it happens slowly and continues for some years. As a result, businesses may find that
employees leave, especially long-term employees who have the most experience. This can create
operational problems and leave the ERP projects short of knowledgeable staff.

3.Difficulty of integrating with other systems

It may be difficult for an ERP vendor to provide all the software for the business with the ERP
software. Thus, the other systems must be integrated with the ERP software. This integration can be
time consuming, costly, and difficult to accomplish.

4. Risks in using one vendor

When a company invests large amounts of money to acquire and implement an ERP system, it makes a
commitment to the vendor of that system. The vendor knows that once committed, management is
unlikely to make a costly change and write off the costs expended to date. The vendor therefore has
less motivation to respond to customer issues and complaints. The company is also gambling that the
ERP vendor will keep the ERP products up-to-date and will stay in business.

5.Risk of implementation failure

Implementation failure is the most serious disadvantage of ERP. The problem is that a huge amount of
resources must be committed to implementing the ERP by both the organization and the vendor. The
organization commits time, people, and money. An ERP is complex and time-consuming. Some CEOs
have nothing but praise for the results, while others have resorted to suing the vendors if
implementation fails.

Who should use an ERP

An ERP is not for everyone. While the potential gains can be very high, the risks are also high. The
decision must rest with senior management, based on their risk analysis, their understanding of the
organizational environment, their willingness to commit the necessary resources and to manage the
change process, among other factors. A small business is unlikely to need or afford an ERP because
many can simply use off-the-shelf application software or can undertake business or process
reengineering with some assistance.

THREATS TO E-COMMERCE
Several issues present threats to the continued growth of e-commerce. They must be addressed to
ensure that transactions are safe and customers are protected.

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Security
The importance of security cannot be overemphasized. This module has dealt with the need for
identification. A shopper wants to know that sites are legitimate, and e-businesses must be concerned
about customer information. This is particularly important when dealing with information that is
confidential or sensitive.
Biometrics is a technology used to identify individuals by unique physical characteristics such as
fingerprints and retina scanning. Biometrics can also be used in the context of security for e-
commerce. Fingerprint technology has the widest interest among corporate users because it provides a
cost-effective solution.

Intellectual property

Intellectual property is an idea or content that is protected by copyright, patent, or trademark.

Downloading copyright items from the Internet has given rise to many lawsuits, of which the most
well known is probably Napster's original model of making music freely available to anyone. Other
industries have concerns about the electronic transmission of copyrighted material. One area of
lawsuits is that against companies whose sites have the "look and feel" of another company's site.
The opposite side of the copyright issue is the concern that too much protection may slow down
economic activity. For example, some countries either do not recognize or do not allow legal action to
be taken in respect to copyrights. Whatever the outcome, there have always been "bootleg" copies of
popular material, regardless of copyright. You should be aware that these versions are illegal and their
use is unethical. In the United States, for example, individuals have been actively prosecuted by music
recording companies.

Fraud
Internet users need to be assured that they are dealing with legitimate businesses. Better Business
Bureau's BBBOnLine Reliability seal is one way to identify legitimate businesses. However, the seal is
not infallible, and some legitimate businesses do not necessarily have the seal. Despite the security
measures, you must be vigilant against swindlers who use the Internet to reach a huge number of
people in many countries. They need only to fool a small percentage of their audience to pocket large
sums of money.

Following is a description of some Internet fraud, including advice to protect you:

1. Online auction fraud: The person-to-person sites leave the buyer and seller to negotiate
terms with no guarantee or protection. The seller may take the buyer‘s money without delivering the
goods or services.
2. Phishing: Messages that request personal information appear to come from a legitimate site,
such as a bank, but are used for identity theft.

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 3.Spam: Unsolicited e-mail is sent to huge numbers of people at no cost to the sender and may
contain fraudulent advertising or deals. Variations of old tricks prevail, such as the one offering
you very large amounts of money for allowing a so-called foreign official to use your bank
account to, in effect, launder money. The best advice is never to give out financial or personal
information and to report attempts to obtain this information. This type of activity may be part of
organized crime, where the information is used to create documents and credit cards that give a
false identity to criminals.
4.Investment fraud is primarily related to the marketing and sale of fictitious investments
through SPAM e-mails.
5.Stock scams arise through the scammer using the Internet and newsgroups to spread rumours

or offer tips on stocks that the scammer has bought at a low price, and when the rumours cause
the price to rise, the scammer sells for a nice profit. One piece of advice is to use the free search
for opinions offered by several sites, obtain at least three or four opinions, and also look at the
price performance of the stock. The best advice is to learn how to use financial and other
information to make wise investments. In Canada, the Canadian Shareowner offers tutorials and
information.

Privacy
The privacy of individuals should be a concern to all who use the Internet. The development of
customer profiles to target groups and individuals has been addressed in earlier topics. There are two
independent nonprofit private initiatives designed to promote trust and consumer confidence when
using accredited websites — the Better Business Bureau OnLine and TRUSTe. Look for their seals on
websites. These two organizations promote consumer trust by reviewing the business‘s privacy and
securities practices and customer policies prior to allowing the use of the seals on the business‘s
website. There is also a set of safe harbour principles established to address the issues of notice,
choice, and access related to privacy. It appears that the European Union countries believe in strong
central control and apply government safeguards for their citizens, while North American governments
encourage the industry to regulate itself.

Pornographic sites
There is a huge number of pornographic sites on the Internet, many of which are not obvious as such.
Many sites automatically pick up information on a visitor, whether accessed by accident or design.
This is used to contact the person with e-mails and other material. The unsuspecting user should use
the capabilities of his software to delete these sites using the cookie manager feature or a similar tool.
Organizations should ensure that their website is identified in such a way that it will not be similar to a
pornographic site.
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Viruses
A major threat to e-commerce is attacks by viruses, spyware, and other criminal activities.

SECURITY OF E-COMMERCE
Transactions between organizations take place in many e-commerce applications using the Internet.
Internet is widely accessible and insecure as eavesdropping is possible. Hence, there is need to protect
company confidential information from snoopers. We also need to protect a company's network from
unauthorised entry. When an organization receives a message it has to be sure from whom it
came and whether the message is authentic and not changed by an unauthorised person. We thus need
a digital signature which can be used in a court of law.
On the Internet, security is handled by passing "keys" between Internet server and client browser. When
entering a secure site your browser is passed a public key by which transactions between you and the
web server are encrypted. The servers key is always kept private.
On your web site security can be handled two ways - depending on your budget. You can "piggyback"
on someone else's "key" or you can register and pay for your own key or SSL certificate at Thwate or
Verisign.
Generally today businesses who host web sites offer access to a secure server and you can use their
server and secure certificate for less than if you registered and paid for your own key.
However the person browsing your site will notice the URL change to one they do not recognise - or
trust. This may put your customers off (although there is no evidence of this). Therefore one of the
advantages of buying your own key would be to have a URL for your secure pages that is consistent
with the rest of your site.
Presently, in Australia, Verisign may sell you a key for over $800 while foreign ecommerce providers
like Instant SSL can sell it for $150. Although Verisign will argue that their key comes with a range of
value add benefits, the bottom line is the product, i.e. the key, is the same.

Network Security Using Firewall

Firewall is a security device deployed at the boundary of an organization' s network to protect it from
unauthorised external access. It links an organization's intranet to the internet and restricts the type of
traffic that it will pass, thus providing security. Simple firewalls may be implemented in
some routers, called packet filtering firewalls, they pass only some packets based on simple specified
criteria such as
-Type of access (such as email, ftp, telnet as determined by TCP port number)
-Direction of traffic
-Source or destination IP address

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 -Time of day

Proxy Application Gateway

Proxy application program running on a firewall machine is the one which acts on behalf of all
members of an organization wanting to use the internet. This program monitors all requests - allows
access to only designated addresses outside, limits use of certain browsers and disallows use of some
protocols with known security holes. Proxy application program may also be allowed to run on some
user's machine who have authorization for internet use.

Hardened Firewalls With Proxy Application Gateway

Any one from inside or outside an organization give their user id, password, service required to the
firewall machine which acts as one's proxy (ie.does ones work on his behalf). Proxy firewall is now
server to the requestor's desktop PC and also a client to some other requested service acting on
requestor's behalf. Firewall needs proxy agent for each service requested such as FTP, HTTP, TELNET
etc. Now proxy firewall is the initiator of all sessions and thus knows every activity - thus ensuring
security. Firewall with a proxy function replaces the source address of transaction requestor with its
own IP address
-this ensures that others on internet see only firewall's IP address
 all other IP addresses of organization are hidden
Data Encryption With Secret Keys
Data sent via a public network may be accessed and used by unauthorized persons. Thus it is
necessary to scramble it so that even if one accesses it, it cannot be understood. Similarly data stored
in data bases accessible via internet should be scrambled. Method of scrambling is known as
encryption.
Method of unscrambling is known as decryption.

Plain Text And Ciphertext

•Plain text is data in its natural form
•Encryption is taking data in any form(Text, Audio,Video etc.) and transforming it to another form
which cannot be understood
•Transformed data is known as cryptogram or cipher text

Public Key Encryption

In Private Key Encryption transmission of key without compromising not easy. It is necessary to
assign different private key to each business partner. When this is done a directory of keys should be
kept which should be secret. This is difficult. Only secure way is to change the private key every time
a message is sent. Public Key Encryption eliminates the key distribution problem. There is a pair of
keys for each organization - A Private Key and its Public Key. If A wants to send message to B, A
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encrypts the message with B's Public Key When message is received by B he decrypts it with his
Private Key .

Digital Signature
REQUIREMENTS
•Needed to ensure that a message received from say "A" is indeed from him
•Signature should be tied to the message sent by "A"

SENDING STEP
•Sender sends key using RSA system
•Sender sends plain text "M" using DES
•Receiver decrypts cipher text using DES and the key received from sender call it "MR"
•Sender hashes plain text "M' using a hashing function - let the hashed text be "H"
•Hashed text "H" encrypted by sender using his Private key
•DS is his signature as H encrypted with his private key
•DS decrypted by receiver using sender's Public key and obtains "H"
Authentication step
•Receiver hashes ―MR" using hash function and gets ―HR"
•Receiver compares ―H" with ―HR"
•If they match then it is a signed authenticated plain text
•TM is signed as sender has encrypted the hashed text using his private key which he only knows.If
H=(MR)(HASHED) = HR where MR is the received message then MR must have been sent by sender.
He cannot repudiate.

Credit Card Security

The credit card companies are constantly evolving more secure credit card purchasing on the Internet.
 Often you will be asked to give a three digit verification code on the reverse of your card. This
is to prove you have the card in your hand at the time you made the purchase.
 Card companies also monitor your card activity to check for suspicious or out of ordinary
purchases. They will contact you to verify it is you creating the usually break in the purchasing
pattern.
 A range of biometric security measure have been proposed for credit cards. None are in
widespread use at this time.
 Smartcards house a chip that has extra data in it about the card holder or carry an public key.
To give customers confidence in purchasing on the Internet however card companies generally stand by
customers who have had their card or card number stolen. This is not exactly the case for merchants
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though. The card company will alert the merchant to stolen cards and fraudulent transaction but do not
indemnify the merchant from losses.

FINDING AN ECOMMERCE PROVIDER/PARTNER

Generally your web developer will advise you on the various security options. Their recommendation
will consider things like
 volume of sales
 amount of data that needs to be captured per sale
 number of products in your store
 how often you need to change the product prices or other details
 your special freight requirements
 whether ordering has to interface with your banking/accounting system and so on
Smaller businesses generally only required a secure form that returns results to the business owner,
while a larger company with multiple products and locations will require a solution that takes the order,
banks the money and sends a message to outwards goods to dispatch the goods. Who you choose as an
ecommerce provider is therefore very much dependent on the size of your business and the range of
your products.

Banks
Banks were slow at first to embrace Internet technologies citing security fears. More recently though in
the drive for higher profits and greater shareholder return they have been moving more and more of
their business online.
Mostly this transition has gone smoothly. The only real difficulty is phishing scams where people are
tricked into logging into a web site designed to look like their bank, but instead traps their login details.
Banks have warned people not to click links in their email to login into the bank's web site, but to type
the URL into their browser window every time.
In Australia banks will soon issue a usb device required in conjunction with a PIN to access a bank
account. This will tighten security further.

Integration
Imagine a web site that would allow your customers to place an order for your goods and when they
sent their order to you, your stock or inventory database was updated immediately, outwards goods
were notified and the customer was sent an advice from packing staff when the goods were shipped.
Many businesses do each of these things but few join them together or "integrate" them. As businesses
become familiar with the Internet, it won't take long for business people to see that their order-taking,
stock control and delivery systems should be merged into one seamless function.
Indeed Microsoft Retail Manager offers precisely this function. Maintain one database in your store
and synchronise it in real time with your online database... meaning your web site is constantly up to
date.

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 WIRELESS APPLICATION PROTOCOL (WAP)
WAP specifies an application framework and network protocols for wireless devices such as mobile
phones, pagers and personal digital assistants. WAP�s specifications extend existing mobile
networking technologies such as wireless networking standards and extend some Internet technologies
such as XML, scripting and content formats.
Wireless hand-held devices preset a more constrained computing environment and platforms,
compared to desktop computers which most of the Internet technology was developed for.
The hand-held devices tend to have less powerful CPU�s, less memory, very restricted
power consumption and problematic MMI (smaller and variant displays, phone keypads etc.).
Furthermore the wireless networks present greater problems as communication infrastructures
they have less bandwidth, more latency and less connection stability and unpredictable
availability. WAP intends to overcome these difficulties by being interoperable, have
scaleable quality of service, efficient in the mobile network resources, reliable and secure.
The WAP programming model is similar to the WWW programming model. This provides
several benefits to the application developer community, including a familiar programming
model, a proven architecture, and the ability to leverage existing tools (eg, Web servers, XML
tools, etc.). Optimisations and extensions have been made in order to match the
characteristics of the wireless environment. Wherever possible, existing standards have been
adopted or have been used as the starting point for the WAP technology.
WAP content and applications are specified in a set of well-known content formats based on
the familiar WWW content formats. Content is transported using a set of standard
communication protocols based on the WWW communication protocols. A micro browser in
the wireless terminal co-ordinates the user interface and is analogous to a standard web
browser.
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Page 27 of 46
es a set of standard components that enable communication between mobile terminals and network
servers, including:
Standard naming model � WWW-standard URLs are used to identify WAP content on
origin servers. WWW-standard URIs are used to identify local resources in a device, eg call
control functions.
Content typing � All WAP content is given a specific type consistent with WWW typing.
This allows WAP user agents to correctly process the content based on its type.
Standard content formats � WAP content formats are based on WWW technology and
include display markup, calendar information, electronic business card objects, images and
scripting language.
Standard communication protocols � WAP communication protocols enable the
communication of browser requests from the mobile terminal to the network web server.
The WAP content types and protocols have been optimised for mass market, hand-held wireless
devices. WAP utilises proxy technology to connect between the wireless domain and the WWW. The
WAP proxy typically is comprised of the following functionality:
Protocol Gateway � The protocol gateway translates requests from the WAP protocol stack
(WSP, WTP, WTLS, and WDP) to the WWW protocol stack (HTTP and TCP/IP).
Content Encoders and Decoders � The content encoders translate WAP content into
compact encoded formats to reduce the size of data over the network.
This infrastructure ensures that mobile terminal users can browse a wide variety of WAP
content and applications, and that the application author is able to build content services and
applications that run on a large base of mobile terminals. The WAP proxy allows content and
applications to be hosted on standard WWW servers and to be developed using proven WWW
technologies such as CGI scripting.

Applications for WAP

The Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) is being used to develop enhanced forms of existing
applications and new versions of today�s applications.
The WAP will allow customers to easily reply to incoming information on the phone by allowing new
menus to access mobile services.
Early applications are modification of existing applications such as information, along with
applications such as mobile commerce, mobile banking and mobile games.

Mobile Commerce
Mobile commerce applications involve using a mobile phone to carry out financial transactions. This
usually means making a payment for goods or transferring funds electronically. Transferring money
between accounts and paying for purchases are electronic commerce applications.
There are several issues relating to the development of mobile commerce applications, such as security,
integration with the retail and banking hardware and systems, non-standardized mobile infrastructure
and competing e-commerce standards. Additionally, there is a lack of standards relating to the mobile
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phone to network interface, the interfaces between host and mobile platforms and between different
mobile platforms. As such, the scalability of mobile commerce is questionable.
There are also questions about the appropriateness of using a mobile phone as the interface to e-
commerce applications. The MMI (Man Machine Interface) on mobile phones is currently sub-optimal
and difficult for mass-market users to manipulate.
However, this area of electronic commerce applications is expected to contribute to grow significantly
in the future, as mobile phone penetration delivers a critical mass of potential customers for such
services.
It is expected that the mobile commerce will become just an extension of electronic commerce on the
Internet. There will not need to be any special applications developed for the mobile to take into
account screen, bandwidth and security limitations of the mobile device.
The value chain for mobile commerce took a step further in April 2000 with the announcement that
Motorola, Ericsson and Nokia had partnered to see mobile commerce standards. The possibility to
handle trusted electronic transactions from a personal mobile device is regarded as one of the most
important areas of the mobile Internet. As such, the aim of these companies is to offer solutions where
security and payment services will be integrated as a standard into the mobile devices in years to come.
Some of the key technology cornerstones will be WAP security functions, such as WTLS (Wireless
Transport Layer Security), WIM (Wireless Identification Module), wireless public key technologies
and others.

Mobile Banking
The successful implementation of mobile banking programs incorporates several different elements
such as private information services, WAP and security.
There are a few technology limits affecting how the mobile banking service is designed:
Any information that is useful to bank customers can be provided such as last 4 transactions, account
balances, overdraft limits and so on.
Information can be provided in a number of different ways. It can be pull based and requested on an
adhoc basis via a telephone call to an electronic voice menu to initiate the information. Alternatively,
the user could send an information request in and get an information message back, or the service can
be push based such that information is automatically generated at set intervals or on the basis of events.
The mobile banking service can run on all existing mobile phones or to be tailored for a particular
branded phone or protocol-compliant phone, e.g. WAP.
Protocols such as WAP allow not just information provision, but also secure mobile transactions and
electronic commerce.
Mobile banking suppliers using WAP include Materna (www.materna.com). Banks offering services
over WAP include Deutsche Bank and Visa International.
Banking services using WAP from around the world include:
In the UK, Woolwich company offered 100 of its customers interactive banking over a WAP enabled
mobile phone. Using a Nokia 7110 handset, customers will be able to view balances and transactions,
pay bills, and transfer money on current, savings and borrowing accounts.
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In Belgium, CCB (the Belgian bank) officially launched its mobile banking venture. This will allow
customers to check balances, carry out payments and transfers, and - in the future - buy shares from a
WAP mobile phone.

Games
Games are a huge service that many people see as being a key application for future mobile devices. In
the same way as music distribution will increasingly take place electronically, so too will games.
Instead of having to go to the video store to rent a game or video, we can download this from an
Internet site and charge this transaction to our mobile phone bill.
Mobile games suppliers using WAP include:
www.digitalbridges.com , http://www.wapholesun.com, www.k-mobile.com and others.

Ringtones
Another emerging service is downloading ringtones. Ringtones are the tunes that the phone plays when
someone calls it. With the same phone often sold with the same default tune, it is important for phone
users to be able to change their ringtone to distinguish it from others. Phones often come with a range
of different ringtones built into the phone�s memory that the users can choose from. However, it has
become popular to download new ringtones from an Internet site to the phones. These tunes tend to be
popular television of film theme tunes. Ringtones composers are also popular because they allow
mobile phone users to compose their own unique ringtones. Expect to see this application grow in
availability and popularity over time!style=""

Unified Messaging
Unified messaging is an emerging value-added network service that is particularly compelling because
it elevates communication above the technology used to communicate � the message takes
precedence over the media. Currently, it is difficult to manage all the different kinds of messages that
people get - they have to dial in and pick up emails, pick up their faxes from a fax machine, call in and
listen to voice mail, and so on. Unified messaging involves providing a single interface for people to
access the various kinds of messaging they use. Be the messages of any kind, they can be conveniently
accessed from a single point in the most actionable form.
The user typically receives a short message notifying them that they have a new message in their
unified messaging box. The short message often includes an indication of the type of the new message.
With WAP, users have a menu on the phone from which they can access and mange their unified
messaging box.

Internet Email
Upon receiving a new email in their mailboxes, most Internet email users do not get notified of this
fact. They have to dial in speculatively and periodically to check their mailbox contents. However, by
linking Internet email with WAP Push, users can be notified whenever a new email is received.
The Internet email alert is provided in the form of a short message that details the sender, the subject
field and first few words of the email message. Most of the mobile Internet email solutions incorporate
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filtering, such that users are only notified of certain messages with user-defined keywords in the subject
field, or from certain senders.
Because of the high and increasing usage of Internet email to communicate globally, and the benefit
from using WAP Push to notify mobile users about important new email messages, this is likely to be a
fast growing and popular application for WAP.

Affinity Programs
Affinity programs are the result of collaboration between mobile carriers and other companies in
different industries with large customer groups. Affinity partners include television companies, sports
clubs, supermarkets, hotels, airlines, banks and other retailers. WAP can be used to provide customers
with all kinds of remainders and information such as frequent flyer miles status, overdue videotape
rentals, appointment remainders and other notifications.
Some examples of partners between companies in different areas of the mobile value chain to develop
WAP services include:
Hong Kong network operator Hutchison Telecom has joined with Health Care International Holdings to
launch an online medical service portal, Healthcare2U.com. Subscribers to Hutchison�s network can
access the medical portal via WAP phones.
Finnair will enable passengers to make, alter and cancel reservations using WAP-enabled mobile
phones. The service operates in English, but currently is only available to customers with Finnish
phone service providers.
Ericsson announced a deal to make the guide Michelin travel publications available on WAP mobile
telephones. The new service will give the customers instant access to a database of some 60,000 hotels
and restaurants across Europe via WAP.

Customer Service
By providing mobile phone customers with information about their account, the WAP can help to avoid
the need for expensive person to person voice calls to customer service centers.
Customer service suppliers using WAP include Phone.com (www.phone.com) and Categoric
(www.categoric.com). Categoric specializes in �event alerts�. Every time an event of interest to
the customer happens, SMS or WAP are used to let them know.

Positioning
Positioning in mobile context can mean several things: location of vehicles or people or phones.
Vehicle positioning application integrates satellite positioning systems that tell people where they are
with WAP which lets people tell others where they are. The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a free-
to-use global network of 24 satellites run by the US Department of Defense. Anyone with a GPS
receiver can receive their satellite position and thereby find out where they are.
The SMS is ideal for sending GPS information such as longitude, latitude, bearing and altitude. GPS
information is typically about 60-character length, leaving room for other vehicle-specific information.

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Vehicle Positioning suppliers using WAP include www.wapolution.com.

Instant Messaging
Instant messaging is a cross between chat and email that allows people to view a listing of people they
frequently communicate with, determine if these people are currently available for communication (i.e.
online), and send and receive messages instantaneously. The tendency is to send instant messages to
people rather than emails if you find that they are online.
Instant messaging was launched in early 1997 and continues to grow in popularity with over 100
million total users.
Wireless Instant Messaging is another example of the extension of the same services that people can
access on the Internet becoming increasingly available on mobile phones. This is initially done through
gateways that perform protocol conversion and reduce the size of the communication down to that
which can be handled by low bandwidth wireless services. Over time, the gateways will not be needed,
as seamless access to unmodified services becomes more widespread.
Instant Messaging suppliers using WAP include AOL Tegich (www.tegic.com).

Chat
Chat can be distinguished from general information services by the information source: In chats, the
source of information is a person, whereas in general information services the source is usually in
Internet site. The amount of information transferred per message tends to be lower with chat, where
people are more likely to state opinions rather than factual data. In the same way as Internet chat
groups have proven a very popular application for the Internet, groups of like-minded people � called
communities of interest � have begun to use non-voice mobile services as a means to chat,
communicate and discuss.
Because of its association with the Internet, the General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) would allow
mobile users to participate fully in existing Internet chat groups rather than setting up their own groups
that are dedicated to mobile users.

Qualitative Information
A wide range of content can be delivered to mobile phone users ranging from share prices, sports
scores, weather, flight information, news headlines, lottery results, jokes and so on. This information
need not necessary be textual, it may be maps or graphs or other types of visual information.
The length of a short message of 160 characters suffices for delivering information when it is
quantitative such as a share price or a sports score or temperature. However, when the information is of
qualitative nature, such as a horoscope or news story, this 160-character length is too short. Therefore,
GPRS will likely be used for qualitative information services, but SMS will continue to be used for
delivering most quantitative information services.
Information services suppliers using WAP include Infospace.com, I3 Mobile and others.

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 ELECTRONIC DATA INTERCHANGE
Electronic data interchange (EDI) is the structured transmission of data between organizations by
electronic means. It is used to transfer electronic documents or business data from one computer system
to another computer system, i.e. from one trading partner to another trading partner without human
intervention. It is more than mere e-mail; for instance, organizations might replace bills of lading and
even cheques with appropriate EDI messages. It also refers specifically to a family of standard.
In 1996, the National Institute of Standards and Technology defined electronic data interchange as "the
computer-to-computer interchange of strictly formatted messages that represent documents other than
monetary instruments. EDI implies a sequence of messages between two parties, either of whom may
serve as originator or recipient. The formatted data representing the documents may be transmitted
from originator to recipient via telecommunications or physically transported on electronic storage
media." It distinguishes mere electronic communication or data exchange, specifying that "in EDI, the
usual processing of received messages is by computer only. Human intervention in the processing of a
received message is typically intended only for error conditions, for quality review, and for special
situations. For example, the transmission of binary or textual data is not EDI as defined here unless the
data are treated as one or more data elements of an EDI message and are not normally intended for
human interpretation as part of online data processing."
EDI can be formally defined as the transfer of structured data, by agreed message standards, from one
computer system to another without human intervention.
EDI provides a technical basis for commercial "conversations" between two entities, either internal or
external. Note the perception that "EDI" constitutes the entire electronic data interchange paradigm,
including the transmission, message flow, document format, and software used to interpret the
documents. EDI standards describe the rigorous format of electronic documents. EDI is very useful in
supply chains.
The EDI standards were designed by the implementers, initially in the Automotive industry, to be
independent of communication and software technologies. EDI can be transmitted using any
methodology agreed to by the sender and recipient. This includes a variety of technologies, including
modem (asynchronous and synchronous), FTP, e-mail, HTTP, AS1, AS2, etc. It is important to
differentiate between the EDI documents and the methods for transmitting them. When they compared
the synchronous protocol 2400 bit/s modems, CLEO devices, and value-added networks used to
transmit EDI documents to transmitting via the Internet, some people equated the non-Internet
technologies with EDI and predicted erroneously that EDI itself would be replaced along with the non-
Internet technologies.
Some major sets of EDI standards:
 The UN-recommended UN/EDIFACT is the only international standard and is predominant
outside of North America.
 The US standard ANSI ASC X12 (X12) is predominant in North America.
 The TRADACOMS standard developed by the ANA (Article Numbering Association now
known as GS1) is predominant in the UK retail industry.
 The ODETTE standard used within the European automotive industry

Advantages of EDI over paper systems

EDI and other similar technologies save a company money by providing an alternative to, or replacing,
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information flows that require a great deal of human interaction and materials such as paper documents,
meetings, faxes, etc.
Even when paper documents are maintained in parallel with EDI exchange, e.g. printed shipping
manifests, electronic exchange and the use of data from that exchange reduces the handling costs of
sorting, distributing, organizing, and searching paper documents. EDI and similar technologies allow a
company to take advantage of the benefits of storing and manipulating data electronically without the
cost of manual entry.
Another advantage of EDI is reduced errors, such as shipping and billing errors, because EDI
eliminates the need to rekey documents on the destination side.
One very important advantage of EDI over paper documents is the speed in which the trading partner
receives and incorporates the information into their system thus greatly reducing cycle times. For this
reason, EDI can be an important component of just-in-time production systems

HYPERTEXT MARKUP LANGUAGE (HTML)

HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is the main markup language for displaying web pages and
other information that can be displayed in a web browser.
HTML is written in the form of HTML elements consisting of tags enclosed in angle brackets (like
<html>), within the web page content. HTML tags most commonly come in pairs like <h1> and </h1>,
although some tags, known as empty elements, are unpaired, for example <img>. The first tag in a pair
is the start tag, the second tag is the end tag (they are also called opening tags and closing tags). In
between these tags web designers can add text, tags, comments and other types of text-based content.
The purpose of a web browser is to read HTML documents and compose them into visible or audible
web pages. The browser does not display the HTML tags, but uses the tags to interpret the content of
the page.
HTML elements form the building blocks of all websites. HTML allows images and objects to be
embedded and can be used to create interactive forms. It provides a means to create structured
documents by denoting structural semantics for text such as headings, paragraphs, lists, links, quotes
and other items. It can embed scripts in languages such as JavaScript which affect the behavior of
HTML webpages.
Web browsers can also refer to Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to define the appearance and layout of
text and other material. The W3C, maintainer of both the HTML and the CSS standards, encourages the
use of CSS over explicitly presentational HTML markup.

EXTENSIBLE MARKUP LANGUAGE (XML)

Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language that defines a set of rules for encoding
documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. It is defined in the XML 1.0
Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards.
The design goals of XML emphasize simplicity, generality, and usability over the Internet. It is a
textual data format with strong support via Unicode for the languages of the world. Although the design
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of XML focuses on documents, it is widely used for the representation of arbitrary data structures, for
example in web services.
Many application programming interfaces (APIs) have been developed for software developers to use
to process XML data, and several schema systems exist to aid in the definition of XML-based
languages.
As of 2009, hundreds of XML-based languages have been developed, including RSS, Atom, SOAP,
and XHTML. XML-based formats have become the default for many office-productivity tools,
including Microsoft Office (Office Open XML), OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice (OpenDocument),
and Apple's iWork. XML has also been employed as the base language for communication protocols,
such as XMPP.

LEGAL ISSUES IN ECOMMERCE

a. Contracts
At the heart of e-commerce is the need for parties to be able to form valid and legally
binding contracts online. Basic questions relate to how e-contracts can be formed,
performed, and enforced as parties replace paper documents with electronic equivalents.

b. Security
Security over the Internet is of immense importance to promote e-commerce. Companies
that keep sensitive information on their websites must ensure that they have adequate
security measures to safeguard their websites from any unauthorised intrusion. A
company could face security threats externally as well as internally. Externally, the
company could face problems from hackers, viruses and trojan horses. Internally, the
company must ensure security against its technical staff and employees. Security can be
maintained by using various security tools such as encryption, firewalls, access codes /
passwords, virus scans and biometrics. For example, a company could restrict access to
the contents on its website only through the use of a password or login code. Similarly
confidential information on websites could be safeguarded using firewalls that would
prevent any form of external intrusion. Apart from adequate security measures,
appropriate legal documentation would also be needed. For example, a company could
have an adequate security policy that would bind the all people working in and with the
company.

c. Authentication
Though the Internet eliminates the need for physical contact, it does not do away with the
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fact that any form of contract or transaction would have to be authenticated. Different
authentication technologies have evolved over a period of time to ensure the identity of the
parties entering into online transactions. However, there are some issues that need to be
considered by companies.

d. Privacy and Data Protection

An important consideration for every e-commerce website is to maintain the privacy of its users. Use of
innovative technologies and lack of secure systems makes it easy to obtain personal and confidential
information about individuals and organisations. In July 2001, a dozen privacy groups filed a complaint
in the US about the privacy issues in Microsoft‘s Windows XP operating system. Some features of the
Operating System store personal information such as passwords and credit card data so that users are
not required to constantly re-enter this information as they surf through websites. However, though the

Operating System was launched successfully on October 25, 2001, privacy groups have still have
criticised the Federal Trade Commission of not taking any action on the complaint.

Some of the important privacy concerns over the Internet include:

i dissemination of sensitive and confidential medical, financial and personal records of individuals
and organisations;
ii sending spam (unsolicited) e-mails;
iii tracking activities of consumers by using web cookies; and
iv unreasonable check and scrutiny on an employee‘s activities, including their email
correspondence.

e. Intellectual Property Rights

One of the foremost considerations that any company intending to commence e- commerce activities
should bear in mind is the protection of its intellectual assets. The Internet is a boundless and
unregulated medium and therefore the protection of intellectual property rights ("IPRs") is a challenge
and a growing concern amongst most e-businesses. While there exist laws in India that protect IPRs in
the physical world, the efficacy of these laws to safeguard these rights in e-commerce is uncertain
1. Determining the subject matter of protection: With the advent of new technologies, new forms
of IPRs are evolving and the challenge for any business would be in identifying how best its
intellectual assets can be protected. For example, a software company would have to keep in mind that
in order to patent its software, the software may have to be combined with physical objects for it to
obtain a patent.
2. Ascertaining novelty I originality: Most intellectual property laws require that the work / mark
/ invention must be novel or original. However, the issue is whether publication or use of a work I
invention I mark in electronic form on the Internet would hinder a subsequent novelty or originality

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claim in an IPR application for the work / invention / mark. An e-commerce company would have to
devote attention to satisfying the parameters of intellectual property protection including originality
requirements in its works to preclude any infringement actions from third parties who own similar
IPRs.
3. Enforcing IPRs: As will be discussed under the ―Jurisdiction‖ issue, it is difficult to adjudicate
and decide cyber-disputes. The Internet makes the duplication, or dissemination of IPR- protected
works easy and instantaneous and its anonymous environment makes it virtually impossible to detect
the infringer. Moreover, infringing .
A material may be available at a particular location for only a very short period of time. company
must also keep in mind that since IPRs are inherently territorial in nature, it may be difficult to adjudge
as to whether the IPR in a work or invention is infringed, if it is published or used over the Internet,
which is intrinsically boundless in nature. For example, if ‗Company A‘ has a trademark registered in
India for software products, but a web portal based in the US uses the same trademark for marketing
either software products or for marketing some other goods, it may become difficult for Company A to
sue for

infringement. Moreover, due to differences in laws of different nations, what constitutes infringement
in one country may not constitute infringement in another.
4. Preventing unauthorised hyperlinking and meta tagging: The judiciary in many countries is
grappling with issues concerning infringement of IPRs arising from hyperlinking and meta
tagging activities. Courts in certain jurisdictions have held that hyperlinking, especially deep-
linking may constitute copyright infringement, whereas meta tagging may constitute trademark
infringement. For example, Company A‘s website ―Hosts‖ and web page creators can delete
files within a matter of hours or days after their posting. India has not signed this treaty.
Pursuant to this treaty, the US Government has enacted that Digital Millenium Copyright Act to
afford protection to digital copyrights Article 11, WIPO Copyright Treaty, 1996.
5. Protection against unfair competition: Protection against unfair competition covers a broad
scope of issues relevant for electronic commerce. So far, electronic commerce has not been
subject to specific regulations dealing with matters of unfair competition. Companies on the
Internet, have to constantly adapt to and use the particular technical features of the Internet,
such as its interactivity and support of multimedia applications, for their marketing practices.
Problems may arise with regard to the use of certain marketing practices such as (i) Interactive
marketing practices (ii) spamming (discussed under the ―Privacy and Data Protection‖ section)
and (iii) immersive marketing. Further, questions regarding the territorial applicability of such
standards would also arise.
f. Domain Names
A company that commences e-commerce activities would at first have to get its domain name
registered. While registering domain names, if the company chooses a domain name that is similar to
some domain name or some existing trademark of a third party, the company could be held liable for
cybersquatting.
g. Jurisdiction
In addition to the nature of corporate structure, decisions will also have to be taken with respect to the
jurisdiction in which the corporate structure should be situated, as it will determine the extent of any
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liability that may arise against the website. According to the traditional rules of private international
law, the jurisdiction of a nation only extends to individuals who are within the country or to the
transactions and events that occur within the natural borders of the nation.
However, in e-commerce transactions, if a business derives customers from a particular country as a
result of their website, it may be required to defend any litigation that may result in that country. As a
result, any content placed on a website should be reviewed for compliance with the laws of any
jurisdiction where an organisation wishes to market, promote or sell its products or services as it may
run the risk of being sued in any jurisdiction where the goods are bought or where the services are
availed of.

h. Liability
Owners of websites should guard against the potential sources of liability which could lead
to legal claims against them. Since the Internet knows no boundaries, the owner of a website could be
confronted with legal liability for non-compliance or violation of laws of almost any country. Liability
may arise due to various activities inter alia due to hyperlinking (inserting a clickable link to another
site) and framing (incorporating another website into a frame or window appearing within a webpage
on the linking site), fraud, libel and defamation, invasion of privacy, trademark and copyright
infringement.
i. Taxation
The massive growth of e-commerce business has not gone unseen by the tax authorities. Realising the
potential of earning tax revenue from such sources, tax authorities world over are examining the tax
implications of e-commerce transactions and resolving mechanisms to tax such transaction.

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 STRATEGIES FOR SUCCESSFUL E-COMMERCE
E-commerce is a highly competitive market, with companies setting up websites daily. The issues and
threats were addressed earlier. The collapse of many dot-coms in 2001 may have affected how users
and companies view e-commerce. In order to be successful, a company must set up a website that
attracts customers, is easy to use, and meets the goals of the company, while being affordable and easy
to maintain.

1.Developing an effective web presence

Near the beginning of this decade, 60% of U.S. companies had in-house websites but only 20% sold
anything over the Web. These percentages are probably much higher today. It is vital that any company
setting up a website starts by deciding what objectives its site is designed to achieve.

2. Putting up a website
Any size of company can build a website. Previously, a company had to recruit experts for in-house
development or contract professionals to design, develop, maintain, and support websites, but now
there are other alternatives. Some companies offer website hosting services. They specialize in
assisting you in creating your website, getting your site up and running in a matter of days, and also
provide a host server free or for a small charge. Another option is a storefront broker, which acts as a
middleman between your company and the merchants who actually have the merchandise. You use the
broker‘s website but need to create your own web pages.

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3.Building traffic to your website
The first step in building a website is to obtain and register a domain name, preferably one that
represents the kinds of products or services you offer. You now have a website but so have thousands
of other companies. You need to attract customers to your website by making it easy for search engines
to find your site. This is done by including relevant keywords that can be picked up and indexed by
search engines.

4.Maintaining your website

If your website is well designed and offers what people want, business should grow. With more
transactions, you must ensure that response time does not go down. You may want to personalize
transactions to encourage repeat business and market special offerings geared to an individual's taste. It
is also important to ensure that your website content is kept up to date.

HYPERTEXT MARKUP LANGUAGE (HTML)

HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is the main markup language for displaying web pages and
other information that can be displayed in a web browser.
HTML is written in the form of HTML elements consisting of tags enclosed in angle brackets (like
<html>), within the web page content. HTML tags most commonly come in pairs like <h1> and </h1>,
although some tags, known as empty elements, are unpaired, for example <img>. The first tag in a pair
is the start tag, the second tag is the end tag (they are also called opening tags and closing tags). In
between these tags web designers can add text, tags, comments and other types of text-based content.
The purpose of a web browser is to read HTML documents and compose them into visible or audible
web pages. The browser does not display the HTML tags, but uses the tags to interpret the content of
the page.
HTML elements form the building blocks of all websites. HTML allows images and objects to be
embedded and can be used to create interactive forms. It provides a means to create structured
documents by denoting structural semantics for text such as headings, paragraphs, lists, links, quotes
and other items. It can embed scripts in languages such as JavaScript which affect the behavior of
HTML webpages.
Web browsers can also refer to Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to define the appearance and layout of
text and other material. The W3C, maintainer of both the HTML and the CSS standards, encourages the
use of CSS over explicitly presentational HTML markup.

EXTENSIBLE MARKUP LANGUAGE (XML)

Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language that defines a set of rules for encoding
documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. It is defined in the XML 1.0
Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards.
The design goals of XML emphasize simplicity, generality, and usability over the Internet. It is a
Page 40 of 46
textual data format with strong support via Unicode for the languages of the world. Although the design
of XML focuses on documents, it is widely used for the representation of arbitrary data structures, for
example in web services.
Many application programming interfaces (APIs) have been developed for software developers to use
to process XML data, and several schema systems exist to aid in the definition of XML-based
languages.
As of 2009, hundreds of XML-based languages have been developed, including RSS, Atom, SOAP,
and XHTML. XML-based formats have become the default for many office-productivity tools,
including Microsoft Office (Office Open XML), OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice (OpenDocument),
and Apple's iWork. XML has also been employed as the base language for communication protocols,
such as XMPP.

ACTIVE SERVER PAGES

Microsoft® Active Server Pages (ASP) is a server-side scripting technology that can be used to create
dynamic and interactive Web applications. An ASP page is an HTML page that contains server-side
scripts that are processed by the Web server before being sent to the user's browser. You can combine
ASP with Extensible Markup Language (XML), Component Object Model (COM), and Hypertext
Markup Language (HTML) to create powerful interactive Web sites.
Server-side scripts run when a browser requests an .asp file from the Web server. ASP is called by the
Web server, which processes the requested file from top to bottom and executes any script commands.
It then formats a standard Web page and sends it to the browser.
It is possible to extend your ASP scripts using COM components and XML. COM extends your
scripting capabilities by providing a compact, reusable, and secure means of gaining access to
information. You can call components from any script or programming language that supports
Automation. XML is a meta-markup language that provides a format to describe structured data by
using a set of tags.
As you work through the lessons in each module, save your work in the C:\Inetpub\Wwwroot\Tutorial
directory to view the content on your Web site. If you did not customize your installation of IIS,
C:\Inetpub\Wwwroot was created as the default home directory. To load and run the tutorial samples,
you must have administrator privileges on the computer running IIS. The default IIS security settings
should allow you to run the tutorial, but you may need to change your security settings on the directory
if you encounter access violations. See the product documentation for more information about IIS
security settings.

Write and Run an ASP Page

The best way to learn about ASP pages is to write your own. This lesson covers VBScript syntax and
coding samples. To create an ASP page, use a text editor to insert script commands into an HTML page.
Saving the page with an .asp file name extension tells the Web server how to process the script
commands. To view the results of a script, request the page using a Web browser. VBScript is the
default scripting language for ASP, and most of the examples in the tutorial are scripted in VBScript.
In HTML, you use brackets as delimiters around the tags:
<example>

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In VBScript, you use the percent sign with brackets as delimiters around the tags:
<%example%>

You can put many tags inside one pair of VBScript delimiters:
<%example, samples%>

Example 1
This example displays the words "Hello World". To run this example, cut and paste it into an empty file
and save it in the C:\Inetpub\Wwwroot\Tutorial directory as Example1.asp. Make sure to save your file
with an .asp extension. Some text editors automatically change the file name extension to .txt when the
Text Document option is selected in the Save dialog box. To prevent this, select the All Files(*.*)
option. Exit your text editor as the server may not be able to display an HTML page that is open in a
text editor. View your page with your browser by typing http://<Your Server
Name>/Tutorial/Example1.asp in the address bar.
When running Example 1, the page is processed by the Web server in the following sequence:
1. Assigns the text "Hello World" to the variable FirstVar.
2. Uses HTML to make an HTML page.
3. Uses <%FirstVar%> to print out the value of the variable FirstVar.
4. Ends the HTML page.
<%@ Language=VBScript %>
<html>
<head>
<title>Example 1</title>
</head>
<body>
<%
FirstVar = "Hello world!"
%>
<%=FirstVar%>
</body>
</html>

Example 2
This example incorporates a FOR loop in the ASP page. The FOR loop is a statement that prints "Hello
World" 10 times. To create Example 2, use the file from Example 1 and add the FOR loop code as
shown in the following code sample. Save the file as Example2.asp. View it in your browser.
<%@ Language=VBScript %>
<html>
<head>
<title>Example 2</title>
</head>
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<body>
<%
FirstVar = "Hello world!"
%>
<%FOR i=1 TO 10%>
<%=FirstVar%>
<%NEXT%>
</body>
</html>

Example 3
In this example, a time stamp is added to the ASP page. The word time is a function; it is a predefined
VBScript function variable containing the current time. There are more than 90 functions in VBScript.
Add the code for time shown in the following code sample to Example2.asp and save it as
Example3.asp. View it in your browser.
<%@ Language=VBScript %>
<html>
<head>
<title>Example 3</title>
</head>
<body>
<%
FirstVar = "Hello world!"
%>
The time is: <%=time%> <BR>
<%FOR i=1 TO 10%>
<%=FirstVar%>
<%NEXT%>
</body>
</html>

Example 4
This example displays the message "Good Morning Everyone" if the hour is between 4:00 A.M. and
6:00 P.M. It displays the message "Good Night Everyone" if the hour is between 6:00 P.M. and 4:00
A.M. Add the IF THEN statement in the code shown below to Example3.asp and save it as
Example4.asp.
<%@ Language=VBScript %>
<html>
<head>
<title>Example 4</title>
</head>
<body>
<%IF Hour(time)>18 OR Hour(time)<4 THEN%>
Good Night Everyone.
<%ELSE%>

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Good Morning Everyone.
<%END IF%>
</body>
</html>

Send Information by Using Forms

A common use of intranet and Internet server applications is to process a form submitted by a browser.
With ASP, you can embed scripts written in VBScript directly into an HTML file to process the form.
ASP processes the script commands and returns the results to the browser. In this lesson, you create an
HTML page that displays various elements of an HTML form. Later in this module, you use this
knowledge of forms to build a guest book application on your Web site.
This lesson contains the following examples:
 Button example. Displays selection buttons in the form.
 Text example. Displays text boxes in the form.

Button example
In this example, there are three input lines that use "buttons," and two default buttons-RESET and
SUBMIT. The Post method is used to send data from the client browser to the Web server. Open your
text editor, create a new file, and paste in the following code. Save the file as Button.htm and view the
page in your browser.
<html>
<head>
<title>Button Form</title>
</head>
<body>
<FORM NAME="Button Example" METHOD="POST" ACTION="tutorial/button.htm">
Computer Programming Experience:
<P>
<INPUT TYPE="button" NAME="choice" VALUE="Less than 1">Less
than 1 year.<BR>
<INPUT TYPE="button" NAME="choice" VALUE="1 to 5">1-5 years.<BR>
<INPUT TYPE="button" NAME="choice" VALUE="More than 5">More
than 5 years.
</P>
<P><INPUT TYPE="reset" VALUE="Clear Form">
<INPUT TYPE="submit" VALUE="Submit">
</P>
</form>
</body>
</html>

Text example
In this example, you create text fields in a form. Open a new file in your text editor, paste in the

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following code, and save the file as Text.htm:

<html>
<head>
<title>Text Form</title>
</head>
<body>
<FORM NAME="Text Example" FORM METHOD="POST" ACTION="tutorial/text.htm">
<TABLE>
<TR>
<TD ALIGN="RIGHT" VALIGN="MIDDLE">Name?
<TD ALIGN="LEFT">
<INPUT TYPE="text" NAME="name" VALUE=""
SIZE="20" MAXLENGTH="150">
<TR>
<TD ALIGN="RIGHT" VALIGN="MIDDLE">Company?
<TD ALIGN="LEFT">
<INPUT TYPE="text" NAME="company" VALUE=""
SIZE="25" MAXLENGTH="150">
<TR>
<TD ALIGN="RIGHT" VALIGN="MIDDLE">
Email Address?
<TD ALIGN="LEFT">
<INPUT TYPE="text" NAME="email" VALUE=""
SIZE="25" MAXLENGHT="150">
</TABLE>
<INPUT TYPE="reset">
<INPUT TYPE="Submit" NAME="Submit" VALUE="Submit">
</form>
</body>
</html>

Display an Excel Spreadsheet in ASP

This lesson demonstrates a technique that can be used to display a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet in a
Web page. There are several standard server components supplied with IIS. One of these is the
ActiveX® Data Objects (ADO) component, which is used as a connection mechanism to provide
access to data. In the database lesson earlier, we used ADO. We use it again here to show you how to
view and edit a spreadsheet with a Web browser.
To prepare your Excel spreadsheet for display in an Active Server Page:
1. Create a spreadsheet using either Excel 98 or Excel 2000 and save it as ASPTOC.xls in the
C:\Inetpub\Wwwroot\ directory.
Note: Do not include any special formatting or column labels when creating the spreadsheet.
2. Highlight the rows and columns on the spreadsheet that you want displayed in the Web page.
3. On the Insert menu, choose Name, and select Define.
4. If there are any names listed, select them and select Delete.
5. Type a name for the workbook, select Add, and select OK.
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To display the spreadsheet in a Web page, you must create a DSN for the spreadsheet. The process is
the same as it was for the database lesson earlier in this module. The only difference is that you must
select the {Microsoft Excel Driver (*.xls)} option for the DSN.
Once you have created the spreadsheet and named the table in the spreadsheet, and also created a DSN
for the spreadsheet, you are ready to create the page that displays the contents. Paste the following code
into a new file and name it ASPTOC.asp. Save it in the C:\Inetpub\Wwwroot\Tutorial directory and
view the page in your browser.
<%@Language=VBScript %>
<html>
<head>
<title> Displaying An Excel Spreadsheet in an Web Page </title>
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000" >
<h1>ASP Table of Contents</h1>
<%
'Creates an instance of an Active Server Component
Set oConn = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")
'Connects to the Excel driver and the Excel spreadsheet
'in the directory where the spreadsheet was saved
strConn = "Driver={Microsoft Excel Driver (*.xls)}; DBQ=C:\Inetpub\Wwwroot\Tutorial\ASPTOC.xls;"
'Opens the connection to the data store
oConn.Open strConn
'Selects the records from the Excel spreadsheet
strCmd = "SELECT * from `ASPTOC`"
Set oRS = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Recordset")
'Opens the recordset
oRS.Open strCmd, oConn
'Prints the cells and rows in the table
Response.Write "<table border=1><tr><td>"
'Gets records in spreadsheet as a string and prints them in the table
Response.Write oRS.GetString (, , "</tr><td>", "</td></tr><tr><td>",
NBSPACE)
%>
</body>
</html>

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