IR Vorlesung

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Enabling Technologies for EC Requirements,
Standards, Problems A Min Tjoa Vienna
University of Technology tjoa_at_ifs.tuwien.ac.at htt
p//www.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/ifs Gerti
Kappel Johannes Kepler University of
Linzgerti_at_ifs.uni-linz.ac.at http//www.ifs.uni-l
inz.ac.at XV. IFIP World Computer
Congress Vienna/Budapest, 31.8-4.9. 1998
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Outline

• Introduction
• Enabling Technologies for EC
• Workflow Management Systems
• Database Systems and Open Hypermedia Systems
• Data Mining and OLAP
• EDI
• Conclusion

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Introduction (1/3)Electronic Commerce

• EC comprises all selling and buying activities on
  the Internet
• commercial transactions between businesses
• retail sale of tangible goods
• digital delivery of goods and services, etc.
• Businesses in virtually every sector of economy
  are beginning to use the Internet to
• manage supplier relationships
• streamline logistics and inventory
• reach new and existing customers, etc.
• According to a study of the International Data
  Corporation
• 8 billion worth of business was transacted in
  1997
• that figure will grow to 333 billion by 2002

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Introduction (2/3) Requirements on EC Enabling
Technologies

• A major challenge is to identify appropriate
  enabling technologies for EC and to integrate
  them into a common application framework
• in this respect, the existence of standards
  constitutes an important selection criteria
• Numerous requirements origin from the unique
  nature of EC
• distributed, autonomous and heterogenous
  information sources
• vast amounts of hypermedia data
• a wide range of users specialties and abilities
• various services which should be supported e.g.,
  suppliers search and negotiation, establishment
  of initial contracts, sales, pre- and post-sales
  support and secure electronic payment

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Introduction (3/3)Exemplary EC Enabling
Technologies Concerning ...

• Business process aspect of EC
• Workflow Management Systems (WFMS) could serve as
  the backbone of EC business processes
• Pre-sales phase of EC
• Database Systems (DBS) and Open Hypermedia
  Systems (OHS) could be employed for realizing
  electronic catalogues
• Post-sales phase of EC
• Data Mining and OLAP (Online Analytical
  Processing) Technology could be used to establish
  web usage tracking

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Outline

• Introduction
• Enabling Technologies for EC
• Workflow Management Systems
• Database Systems and Open Hypermedia Systems
• Data Mining and OLAP
• EDI
• Conclusion

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WFMS for EC Processes (1/3)

• WFMS support the design, execution and monitoring
  of long-lasting business processes that typically
  involve
• multiple activities,
• multiple collaborating persons,
• in a distributed environment
• With respect to EC, WFMS can be seen as the glue
  between previously independently modelled
  business processes of different organizations,
  thereby realizing inter-organizational workflows
• All phases of an EC business process ranging from
  pre-sales via sales to post-sales activities
  could be supported by WFMS

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WFMS for EC Processes (2/3)Adaptability
Requirement

• EC processes, especially their pre-sales and
  post-sales phases, are to a certain extent
  unstructured and unpredictable
• therefore, deviations from a predefined workflow
  type capturing a sequence of tasks should be
  allowed at runtime
• meanwhile, consistency and correctness of the
  whole business process has to be preserved
• EC processes have to adapt to rapid changes in
  the business environment
• therefore, there is a need to dynamically
  reengineer and optimize the workflow type itself
  while possibly several workflow instances of that
  type are active

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WFMS for EC Processes (3/3)Interoperability
Requirement

• EC workflows involve multiple, possibly
  heterogeneous and autonomous parties
• thus, interoperability between WFMS is of major
  concern
• Different levels of interoperability should be
  supported
• tight coupling with strict synchronization needs
• loose coupling for the electronic exchange of
  business documents on the basis of protocols such
  as EDI or OTP
• Two standardization groups deal with these
  problems
• the Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC)
• the Object Management Group (OMG) aims at
  integrating a workflow management facility into
  CORBA

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DBS and OHS for Electronic Catalogues
(1/2)Electronic Product Data Management

• Clients of EC systems should quickly and easily
  obtain all the product data needed to make
  informed purchase decisions
• Many existing electronic product data is stored
  together with HTML commands in files
• this leads to problems concerning maintenance,
  consistency, concurrency and authorization
• DBS could be employed to support the consistent
  multi-user management of distributed hypermedia
  information
• product data can be highly structured by means of
  the DB schema
• retrieval can be done by precise Boolean queries
  possibly based on the SQL standard
• many DBS support multimedia datatypes

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DBS and OHS for Electronic Catalogues
(2/2)Interoperability of OHS

• Content providers and consumers should be enabled
  to easily locate and acquire whatever product
  data they desire from other catalogues
• By means of the link server functionality of OHS,
  every link can perform arbitrary behavior on
  remote catalogues such as
• querying
• controlling access
• presenting the remote product data in context of
  the original local catalogue
• On the basis of standard protocols, similar or
  complementary products can be easier located in
  other catalogues
• cf., e.g., the XML and RDF initiatives of the W3C
  consortium

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Data Mining and OLAP for Web Usage Tracking

• The analysis of how users are accessing a Web
  site is critical for
• determining effective marketing strategies
• generating user profiles for personalizing a site
• optimizing the logical structure of a site
• User access patterns can be discovered out of Web
  transactions by means of data mining techniques
  such as
• path analysis
• association rules
• classification rules
• The analysis of access patterns may be served by
  OLAP techniques

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Interfaces in EC - EDI

• Human - Human
• e.g. e-mail
• Human - Machine
• e.g. electronic forms (WWW)
• Machine - Human
• e.g. computer-generated e-mail
• Machine - Machine
• only EDI

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Definition of EDI
electronic exchangeof structured data between
Enterprise 1
Enterrpise 2
Application 1
Applicaation 2
Independent from Hardware Software Communication
Networks
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Definition of EDI

• is the exchange of electronic business data
  between applications via a network based on a
  format which is understood by both (all) business
  partners

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EDI Standard

• Syntactic rules defining the allowed symbols and
  the sequence in which they may be used
• Vocabulary of allowed words, Definition
• Message design that structures the information in
  a defined sequence

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EDI Standards
SWIFT
ODETTE
sector dependent
ANSI X.12
EDIFACT
sector independent
national
international
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EDI Components
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EDI Process
SENDER
ExportedFiles
Communications Protocol
Database
Converter
EDI Format
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Advantages of EDI

• More efficient use of personnel
• Faster transactions - shorter transaction time
• Recent, quickly accesible information across the
  whole enterprise
• Better planning
• Just-in-Time (JIT) Production
• Smaller amount of merchandise in the warehouses
• Smaller amount of interest

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Summary

• EC can largely benefit from already existing
  enabling technologies
• A major challenge in successfully designing EC
  applications is to identify and combine these
  technologies
• Thereby, standardization efforts play a major role

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The nice thing about standards ...

• ... there are so many of them to choose from
• ... by the time things become standards, theyre
  obsolete
• ... real standards are set by the market, not
  committees
• Standards - the only way that everyone can play
• tragedy of the common
• where do you want to go today?

Larry Masinter, Tutorial at the 7th WWW
Conference, April 1998
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Standards follow Innovation
Standardization, Convergence
Innovation, Divergence
Larry Masinter, Tutorial at the 7th WWW
Conference, April 1998
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Standards vs. Design

• Design
• choose between alternatives (A, B, or C)
• optimize function, performance, reliability
• Standard
• choose one, some, all, undefined,
  implementation dependent, discoverable
• optimize flexibility, interoperability, politics,
  extensibility, enforced operation

Larry Masinter, Tutorial at the 7th WWW
Conference, April 1998
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Who writes (Web/EC) standards?

• Standard organizations
• Consortia
• Companies
• Individuals

• IETF
• W3C
• ISO
• IEEE
• ANSI

Larry Masinter, Tutorial at the 7th WWW
Conference, April 1998