Internet applicationsE-commerce components: An overview [Archives:2003/677/Education]

Najeeb Yahya
Al-Sharafi
NCC Education – Yemen

There are three basic components to every E-commerce solution:
• communications;
• standards;
• software.

Communications options include:
• Telephone: dial-up connection or leased line.
• ISDN: basic rate or primary rate.
Value Added Networks.
• X.400 – an International Standards Organization (ISO) standard for
secure messaging.
• Networks: local area networks, wide area networks or intranets.
• The Internet: messaging, file transfer, Telnet, the World Wide Web, XML.

Standards
Standards are the means by which data is sent in an agreed format by Ecommerce trading partners.
In Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), standards pertain specifically to the syntax used to prepare messages for exchange. They enable, for example, one accounts system to understand an electronic version of an invoice sent out by another accounts system because the relevant pieces of data (e.g. invoice number) are always located in the same part of the message. In the case of EDI, these standards are generally nationally and internationally agreed by designated standards bodies, but in other applications proprietary standards have been adopted as de facto standards. An example is the ‘.gif’ graphics format developed by CompuServe and now used for the incorporation of graphics in web pages. The ‘.jpg’ format also used in web pages is, however, internationally ratified by the International Standards Organization.
It is preferable in the broader context of E-commerce, therefore, to look at standardization as ‘the adoption of any standard way of formatting data adopted by a community of users’.
For example, in addition to GIFs and JPGs, surfers of the World Wide Web use:
• HTML – accepted as the standard HyperText Mark-up Language;
• PERL – accepted as a standard way of running scripts on-line;
• JavaScript – a script language from Netscape;
• Java – a programming language expressly designed by Sun
Microsystems for use in the distributed environment of the Internet. Standards ensure that all the members of a community can communicate with each other without needing to adopt individual relationships with any one supplier. To return to the example of EDI, imagine there are four trading companies each of which does business with all the others.
This may seem a little far-fetched, but it is not so long since import/export companies were using separate software packages to communicate with each of the major shipping lines they dealt with.
There are numerous standards used in the world of E-commerce, most of them specific to the type of application.

Software
Software is important at various stages in an E-commerce system. Broadly speaking, there are six functions of the software in the actual Ecommerce process:
• data extraction from relevant application(s), or data entry;
• data encoding to agreed standard format;
• data transmission to recipient(s);
• data receipt by recipient(s);
• data decoding for internal applications;
• data insertion into relevant application(s).
Of course, software is used in a variety of other ways, such as for editing, programming, graphics, etc., but in terms of E-commerce, these are its key functions.
As an example, encoded data received from the World Wide Web is decoded by a web browser for the user to read in a predetermined format. As discussed above, the browsers have been written to use adopted standards such as GIFs, JPGs, HTML, PERL, JavaScript and Java. They are also ready to accept ‘plug-ins’, programs which use the standard interface of the browser to literally plug-in to it and add software capability (such as the ability to play a type of sound file).
Particularly significant for the development of E-commerce applications has been the emergence in 1998 of Extensible Markup Language (XML).
This has led to a significant increase in the power of E-commerce and other types of Internet-based data interchange. While XML was originally designed for the distribution of documentation via the World Wide Web, it is now widely accepted as a generalized method for interchanging information between computer programs over the Internet. Typical uses include the automatic updating of software, the interchange of secure payment instructions between computers, and the exchange of information between databases.

Business-to-Business E-commerce
There are four key areas of business-to-business E-commerce:
• Electronic Data Interchange (EDI);
• enhanced messaging: e-mail, voice mail, fax;
• teleconferencing;
• Integrated systems: intranets/extranets, database publishing, workflow.
Business-to-business E-commerce is experiencing massive growth, with US analyst Gartner Group forecasting a rise from a global spend of $145 billion in 1999 to $7.3 trillion by 2004 (accounting for 7% of all sales transactions).
In the UK, analyst Durlacher Research predicts that the business-to-business E-commerce market is set to open up in the European Union (EU). Business-to-business is forecast to be worth $1.27 trillion in the EU in 2004, up from $76 billion this year. It is expected to account for 12.7% of the EU’s gross domestic product in 4 years’ time.

Electronic Data Interchange
As the personal computer became more and more ubiquitous so more and more information came to be processed and stored by companies electronically on in-house computer systems. It soon became apparent that about 70% of the data being input into a company’s computer system had been output from its trading partners’ computers. This meant data that was accurate and available electronically was physically being re-entered by hand, which was both time-consuming and liable to introduce errors.
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) was developed to eradicate the need for re-keying in data, using agreed standards to enable computers to exchange electronic versions of standard forms (such as purchase orders and invoices). The aim was:
‘to transfer data application to application, regardless of platform or operating system, without human intervention’.
A host of generic messages were provided for companies to exchange data, and industry-specific messages were developed in a number of areas (such as the motor industry). The most common EDI messages are used to send invoices and purchase orders, but there are many, many other uses in a wide variety of industry sectors, including the health sector, banking, government, pharmaceuticals, and the automotive industry. The introduction of EDI made it possible to speed up the exchange of data and the processing of data which had profound effects on the ways some companies organized their businesses.
Sensitivity of the data meant that companies generally chose to send their messages via secure ‘Value Added Networks’ or VANs. They added value by offering users a complete audit trail of when the message was sent and received, and offering guaranteed service levels. (Offering guaranteed service levels on the Internet is far more complicated as there are so many companies operating various parts of the interconnecting networks.)

Enhanced Messaging
Not all information falls into the category of EDI messaging where the information can be taken directly from application to application, but the benefits of rapid delivery of information in various formats direct to the desktop of an individual within an organization soon became apparent. E-mail enabled messages to be sent quickly to one or many business contacts. Voice-mail could do the same thing with recorded messages. Enhanced fax enabled people to send and receive faxes from their own computer. Furthermore, received faxes could be reasonably accurately turned into text files using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. Enhanced messaging solutions have even been set up to take advantage of different time zones – in some cases American companies are getting data processing done in places such as Ireland which are several hours ahead of them. This means that the work is ready as their own offices open in the morning.
The introduction of high bandwidth communications enabled videoconferencing to become a realistic option for businesses.

Teleconferencing
As higher bandwidth telecommunications options became available, it became possible to send and receive video and audio data simultaneously, and teleconferencing became a financially viable business tool. Teleconferencing is prearranging a telephone meeting between two or more participants and it requires much more bandwidth than a simple two-way phone connection (although audio conferencing does not). Where the teleconference uses cameras to send pictures it is called a videoconference, and participants can see still or motion video images of each other Generally speaking, the special telecommunication equipment is set up in a designated room at the office of each participant. The business benefits are obvious for, although it is expensive, it is a lot cheaper than getting several participants to travel to a single destination for a meeting. As high-bandwidth connections become more commonplace, videoconferencing via desktop or even mobile computers is becoming a reality.
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