The document discusses the key components of e-commerce infrastructure and applications. It describes the main elements that enable e-commerce such as the internet, web servers, application servers and databases. It also outlines important aspects of e-commerce including business to consumer and business to business transactions, advantages like increased sales and decreased costs, and considerations around security, payment systems and transaction processing.

1. Electronic Commerce and Digital
Marketing
LECTURE 6: E-Commerce Infrastructure
Faculty of Computing and Informatics-MUST
Wilson Tumuhimbise, PhD
based on Prof. Insup Lee’s Lecture on Electronic Commerce
Systems
7/12/2023 "The Just shall live by faith" Hab 2:4 1

2. LECTURE 6
By the end of this lecture, students should be
able to
• Describe the e-commerce infrastructure
• Discuss the main elements of e-commerce
7/12/2023 "The Just shall live by faith" Hab 2:4 2

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E-commerce applications
• Supply chain management
• Video on demand
• Remote banking
• Procurement and purchasing
• Online marketing and advertisement
• Home shopping
• Auctions

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Ecommerce infrastructure
• Information superhighway infrastructure
– Internet, LAN, WAN, routers, etc.
– telecom, cable TV, wireless, etc.
• Messaging and information distribution infrastructure
– HTML, XML, e-mail, HTTP, etc.
• Common business infrastructure
– Security, authentication, electronic payment, directories,
catalogs, etc.

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The Main Elements of E-commerce
• Consumer shopping on the Web, called B2C (business to
consumer)
• Transactions conducted between businesses on the
Web, call B2B (business to business)
• Transactions and business processes that support selling
and purchasing activities on the Web
– Supplier, inventory, distribution, payment management
– Financial management, purchasing products and information

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Advantages of Electronic Commerce
• Increased sales
– Reach narrow market segments in geographically dispersed
locations
– Create virtual communities
• Decreased costs
– Handling of sales inquiries
– Providing price quotes
– Determining product availability
• Being in the space

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Disadvantages of Electronic Commerce
• Loss of ability to inspect products from remote
locations
• Rapid developing pace of underlying technologies
• Difficult to calculate return on investment
• Cultural and legal impediments

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The process of e-commerce
1. Attract customers
– Advertising, marketing
2. Interact with customers
– Catalog, negotiation
3. Handle and manage orders
– Order capture
– Payment
– Transaction
– Fulfillment (physical good, service good, digital good)
4. React to customer inquiries
– Customer service
– Order tracking

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Web-based E-commerce Architecture
Client
Tier 1
Web Server
Tier 3
Tier 2 Tier N
Application
Server
Database
Server
DMS

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Web-based E-commerce Architecture
Web server: a software and hardware that uses HTTP (Hypertext
Transfer Protocol) and other protocols to respond to client requests
made over the World Wide Web.
Its role is to display website content through storing, processing and
delivering webpages to users
Application server: It is system software that resides between the
operating system (OS) on one side, the external resources (such as a
database management system [DBMS], communications and Internet
services) on another side and the users’ applications on the third side
Database server: is a server which uses a database application that
provides database services to other computer programs or to
computers, as defined by the client–server model.

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E-commerce Technologies
• Internet
• Mobile technologies
• Web architecture
• Component programming
• Data exchange
• Multimedia
• Search engines
• Data mining
• Intelligent agents
• Access security
• Cryptographic security
• Watermarking
• Payment systems

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Infrastructure for E-commerce
• The Internet
– system of interconnected networks that spans the globe
– routers, TCP/IP, firewalls, network infrastructure, network
protocols
• The World Wide Web (WWW)
– part of the Internet and allows users to share information with
an easy-to-use interface
– Web browsers, web servers, HTTP, HTML
• Web architecture
– Client/server model
– N-tier architecture; e.g., web servers, application servers,
database servers, scalability

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E-Commerce Software
• Content Transport
– pull, push, web-caching, MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions)
• Server Components
– CGI (computer-generated imagery), server-side scripting
• Programming Clients
• Sessions and Cookies
• Object Technology
– CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) designed to facilitate the
communication of systems that are deployed on diverse platforms
– COM (Component Object Model) used to enable inter-process communication object
creation in a large range of programming languages
– Java Beans/RMI
• Technology of Fulfillment of Digital Goods
– Secure and fail-safe delivery, rights management

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System Design Issues
• Good architectural properties
– Functional separation
– Performance (load balancing, web caching)
– Secure
– Reliable
– Available
– Scalable

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Creating and Managing Content
• What the customer see
• Static vs. dynamic content
• Different faces for different users
• Tools for creating content
• Multimedia presentation
• Integration with other media
• Data interchange
• HTML, XML (Extensible Markup Language)

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Cryptography
• Keeping secrets
– Privacy: interceptor cannot use information
– Authentication: sender’s identity cannot be forged
– Integrity: data cannot be altered
– Non-repudiation: sender cannot deny sending
• How to evaluate cryptography
• Secret key (symmetric) cryptography; e.g., DES
• Public key (asymmetric) cryptosystems; e.g, RSA
• Digital signatures, digital certificates
• Key management; e.g., PKI

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Security
• Concerns about security
• Client security issues
• Server security issues
• Security policy, risk assessment
• Authentication methods
– Something you know: passwords
– Something you have: smart card
– Something you are: biometrics
• Firewalls, proxy servers, intrusion detection
• Denial of service (DOS) attacks, viruses, worms

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Payment Systems
• Role of payment
• Cash
– properties: wide accept, convenient, anonymity, untraceability, no buyer transaction
cost
• Online credit card payment, Smart Cards
– Secure protocols: SSL (Secure Sockets Layer— standard technology for securing
an internet connection by encrypting data sent between a website and a browser
(or between two servers). prevents hackers from seeing or stealing any information
transferred, including personal or financial data.
– SET (Secure Electronic Transaction) is a system and electronic protocol to ensure
the integrity and security of transactions conducted over the internet
• Internet payment systems
– Electronic cash, digital wallets
• Micro-payments: are small transactions or payments usually of less than
a dollar
• Wireless devices

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Transactions Processing
• Transactions and e-commerce
• Overview of transaction processing
– The process of completing a task and/or user/program request either
instantly or at runtime
• Transaction processing in e-commerce:
– An online transaction processing system (OTPS) is an equivalent
system that online merchants use for e-commerce.
– Ensures that each transaction is successful by storing, sending and
receiving information via a database.
• Keeping business records, audit, backup
• High-availability systems
• Replication and scaling
• Implementation

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Other System Components
• Taxes
• Shipping and handling
• Search engines
• Data mining
• Intelligent agents
• Inventory management, enterprise resource planning
(ERP)
• Customer relation management (CRM)

21. Question
•Is there any question?
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