Chapter 3
E-business Infrastructure
Learning Objective
Outline the hardware and software technologies
used to build an e-business infrastructure within
an organization and with its partners
Outline the hardware and software requirements
necessary to enable employee access to the
Internet and hosting of e-commerce services.
Typical problems faced by users of
E-business web sites
Web site communications too slow.
Web site not available
Bugs on site through pages being unavailable or
information typed in forms not being executed.
Ordered products not delivered on time.
E-mails not replied to.
Customers privacy or trust is broken security
problems such as credit cards being stolen or
addresses sold to other companies.
E-business infrastructure
The architecture of hardware, software, content and data
used to deliver e-business services to employees,
customer and partners.
Figure 3.1 A five-layer model of e-business infrastructure
Figure 3.2 Physical and network infrastructure components of
the Internet
Figure 3.4 The relationship between intranets, extranets
and the Internet
Firewall
A specialized software application mounted on a
server at the point where the company is connected to
the internet.
Prevents unauthorized access into the company from
outsiders.
Firewalls are necessary when creating an intranet to
ensure that outside access to confidential information
does not occur.
Figure 3.5 Firewall positions within the
e-business infrastructure of the B2B company
Figure 3.6 Information exchange between
a web browser and web server
Web Architecture
How the works for static contents (basic architecture)
TCP/IP
Stands for Transmission Control Protocol and
Internet Protocol.
Defines how data are routed from one end to another
end.
Divides messages into packets which are provided
with addresses and checks errors.
Figure 3.7 The TCP/IP protocol
TCP/IP
Uniform Resource Locator (URL) and domain names
Web addresses are structured in a standard way as
follows:
[Link]
What do the following extensions or global top level
domains stand for?
.com
.[Link]
.org or [Link]
.gov
.edu, .[Link]
.int
.net
.biz
.info
HTML and XML
HTML (Hypertext Markup Language)
A standard format used to define the text and
layout of web pages. HTML files usually have the
extension .HTML or .HTM.
XML or eXtensible Markup Language
A standard for transferring structured data, unlike
HTML which is purely presentational.
XML example
Product>
<Action Value5 Delete/>
<ProductID>118003-008</ProductID>
</Product>
<Product Type5Good SchemaCategoryRef5C43171801>
<ProductID>140141-002</ProductID>
<UOM><UOMCoded>EA</UOMCoded></UOM>
<Manufacturer>Compaq</Manufacturer>
<LeadTime LeadTime>2</LeadTime>
<CountryOfOrigin>
<Country><CountryCoded
CountryCoded>US</CountryCoded></Country>
</CountryOfOrigin>
Media standards
GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) A graphics format
and compression algorithm best used for simple
graphics
JPEG (Joint JPEG Photographics Experts Group) A
graphics format and compression algorithm best used
for photographs
Media standards
Streaming media. Sound and video that can be
experienced within a web browser before the whole clip
is downloaded e.g. Real Networks .rm format
Video standards include MPEG and .AVI Video
standards
Sound standards include MP3 and WMA ~ MP4
Figure 3.10 Components of an interactive digital TV system