Electronic Commerce
Last Week
• Internet utility programs
– Finger, Ping, Tracert
• Web Client-Server Architecture
– Two-tier and three-tier architecture
• Communication protocols in client-server architecture
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HTTP protocol
Common Gateway Interface (CGI)
Application Programming Interface (API)
Database Gateways (ODBC, IDC, ADO)
• Markup languages
– SGML, HTML, XML
Electronic Commerce
Electronic Commerce
This Week
Web-Based Tools for Electronic Commerce
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Basic Requirements of a Web server
Setting Up a Web Server
Benchmarking Web Server Hardware and Software
Web Server Software Feature Sets
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Core capabilities
Site management
Application Development
Electronic commerce
– Web Server Software and Tools
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Apache HTTP Server
Microsoft Internet Information Server
Netscape Enterprise Server, and
O’Reilly WebSite Professional
Electronic Commerce
Basic Requirements of a Web server
• The basic requirement for a merchant to have a Web
presence or have an electronic commerce site, is
– (i) a connection to the Internet
– (ii) a Web server in the company network
• The Internet connection is provided by an ISP
through a leased line
• The two main ingredients in a Web server are
– its hardware
– its software
Electronic Commerce
Web Server Hardware
Selecting a computer to serve as a Web server depends on several
factors, such as:
• Operating system of the network
– Unix operating system is found to be more rugged than
Windows, but Unix is more complex to manage than
Windows
• Hardware requirement of the Web server software
– A PC with a midrange CPU, small hard drive, and 32
megabytes of memory will perform poorly when compared
with a high-end workstation or a powerful UNIX-based
computer.
Electronic Commerce
Web Server Hardware (Contd..)
• Expected traffic or the number of transaction per unit time
– Running a large, enterprise-class application server (such as an
ERP system) on a personal computer is not feasible.
• Other software running on the same computer
– For example, running a Web server and a database server can
significantly slow down the performance of a computer.
• Scalability of the hardware
– Means upgrade of components such memory, disk space, disk
mirroring, or even connect additional Web servers if necessary.
Electronic Commerce
Setting Up a Web Server
• One can build a small Web server with an
inexpensive PC (costing about $1,500) running on
Windows 98 or NT
• Although, it is a good idea to start with a server-type
computer offered by several leading PC
manufacturers that costs about $3000
• A merchant may consider some benchmarking
results of hardware and software combination before
purchasing or leasing a web server
Electronic Commerce
Benchmarking Web Server
Hardware and Software
Introduction
• Benchmarking a Web server is testing used to
compare performance of hardware and software
offered by various vendors
• The results of benchmark tests demonstrate that
there are measurable differences in various Web
server performance
Electronic Commerce
Benchmark Test
A benchmark test considers several factors such as:
• The computer hardware
• The Web server software
• Network connection
– A Web server on a T3 connection can deliver Web pages to clients
much faster than it could on a T1 connection.
• Throughput
– It is the number of HTTP requests that a particular hardware and
software combination can process in a unit of time.
• Response Time
– It is the amount of time that a server requires to process one
request.
• Type of Web page
– static versus dynamic
Electronic Commerce
Benchmarking Software
WebStone is a popular benchmarking software that measures
performance on various types of Web pages (static and
dynamic) such as:
• HTML: This is the standard static Web page containing only
HTML tags.
• CGI: Common Gateway Interface or CGI protocol causes the
Web server to run another program and return the result to the
Web server.
• API: Application Programming Interface or API is a set of
protocols that uses “multithreading” to handle user requests of
the dynamic Web pages.
– API is more efficient than CGI, as CGI requires an individual
program to be brought to the Web server memory when requested
by multiple users.
Electronic Commerce
Web Server Software Features
• All Web server software provide some basic features
which can be classified as:
– Core capabilities
– Site management
– Application Construction, and
– Electronic commerce
Electronic Commerce
Web Server Software Features
Core Capabilities
• Client Request Processing: A Web server processes client
requests that are sent using HTTP protocol, both for static and
dynamic pages
• IP-Sharing or Virtual Server: A Web server can work as many
virtual Web servers, serving many businesses with individual
domain names but all domains directing to the same IP address
of the computer
Electronic Commerce
Web Server Software Features
Core Capabilities (contd..)
• Logical File: A Web server can have a logical file name
corresponding to a physical file
– The physical file may be in the same computer or in another
computer, and also the logical name and the physical name do not
have to be same
– The Web server translates a logical URL into a physical file address
– Example, the physical file “c:\Inetpub\wwwroot\default.htm” may be
configured as logical URL: www.Mybusiness.com/home.htm
Electronic Commerce
Web Server Software Features
Core Capabilities (contd..)
• Security: Web servers are located publicly on the Internet or
privately in an organizational intranet, usually behind the
firewalls.
– The public documents are configured to be viewed by anonymous
users
– For extranet users, the files and folders are configured for validation
of username and password. Access controls provide or deny
access to files based on the username or by extranet company
URL
– Web servers allow processing digital certificates and
private/public key pairs.
– Web servers also support Secure Socket Layer (SSL)
Electronic Commerce
Web Server Software Features
Core Capabilities (contd..)
• FTP: Web servers provide File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
services. Thus users can transfer files to and from the server.
• Searching: Search engines and indexing programs are
standard components of the Web server.
– Search engines or search tools search either the existing site or the
entire Web.
• Site Analysis: Web servers can capture visitor information that
are stored in a log file. Information includes:
– who is visiting the Web site (the visitor’s URL)
– how long the visitor browsed the site
– the date and time of each visit, and the pages visited
Electronic Commerce
Web Server Software Features
Site Management
• A Web server provides tools to manage multiple Web sites, file
security, virtual file, and log file analysis
• Administration of a Web server can be performed from a remote
computer in the network
• Administrators can grant or deny Web access to individual
computers, groups of computers, or entire domains
• Administrators can stop and restart all Web services without
stopping and restarting the computer
• Site management also include authoring tools such as Microsoft
Front page 2000
Electronic Commerce
Web Server Software Features
Application Development
• Application development includes Web editors and extensions
to produce Web pages – either static or dynamic. These include
HTML editors such as FrontPage for static Web pages
• For dynamic Web pages, there are protocols such as Common
Gateway Interface (CGI), Application programming Interface
(API), and Active Server Pages (ASP) that are used by
programs such as Java, C++, and VBScriot to develop dynamic
Web pages
Electronic Commerce
Web Server Software Features
Application Development (Contd..)
• Active Server Pages (ASP):
– Developed by Microsoft, it is a server-side scripting technology to
build dynamic Web applications.
– With ASP, one can build Web pages with embedded query strings
for database manipulation using scripting languages such as
VBScript and JavaScript.
Electronic Commerce
Web Server Software Features
Application Development (Contd..)
• Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) and ActiveX
Data Object (ADO) mechanisms, both developed by
Microsoft, can be used to develop dynamic Web
pages that use database connection of variety of
databases from different manufactures (such as SQL
Server, DB2, and Oracle)
• Reference:
http://www.microsoft.com/data/techmat.htm
Electronic Commerce
Web Server Software Features
Application Development (Contd..)
• Java Database Connectivity (JDBC):
– Similar to ODBC, JDBC is another technology developed by
Sun Microsystems, that is used for Web-database
applications,
– It is written in Java
– It runs on Unix Web servers
– Reference: http://java.sun.com/products/jdbc/index.html
Electronic Commerce
Web Server Software Features
Electronic Commerce
• Some Web servers provide advanced services that
support online selling and buying (such as shopping
cart and catalog services)
• An electronic commerce software can also provide
templates and other tools to quickly develop an ecommerce site. This might include templates for
product browsing, shopping carts, and credit card
processing.
Electronic Commerce
Web Server Software Features
Electronic Commerce (contd..)
• An electronic commerce software is a separate software that
integrates with an existing Web server.
• Microsoft Commerce Server is an electronic commerce software
that enables businesses to engage customers, transact
business, and analyze commerce Web sites more effectively.
• Ref: http://www.microsoft.com/siteserver/commerce/default.htm
Electronic Commerce
Discussion Questions
• Name few companies that make Web servers
• At minimum what software are needed to run a Web server
• What does it mean by static Web page?
• What is a dynamic Web page?
• What technologies are used to create a dynamic Web page?
• What is ODBC?
• What is API?
• What is ADO?
• What CGI?
Electronic Commerce