Introduction to E-Business Technology

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Introduction

to E-Business Technology

·

Standards

– widely accepted norms or requirements that establish technical criteria and

processes often set by industry bodies

·

Protocols

– rules used by computers to communicate across a network/is a highly restrictive

form of language shared by computers which enables them to communicate with

each other

·

Platforms

– hardware or software framework that allow software to run

·

Architectures

- designs of information systems

·

Communications

Infrastructures - computer and mobile phone networks

What is e-business

management?

·

E-Commerce-

all electronically mediated information exchanges between an organization

and its external stakeholders

Networks

and the Internet

The

Internet refers to the physical network that links computers

across the globe. It consists of the infrastructure of network servers and communication

links between them that are used to hold and transport information between the

client PCs and web servers.

World Wide Web (WWW) The most common technique for publishing information

on the Internet. It is accessed through web browsers which display web pages of

embedded graphics and HTML/XML-encoded text.

Wireless Communications Electronic transactions and

communications conducted using mobile devices such as laptops, personal digital

assistants (PDAs) and mobile phones (and fixed access platforms) with different

forms of wireless connection.

Computers are made up of: -

1.

Hardware –

Input devices, Output Devices, Memory and CPU

2. Software – Operating Systems, Utilities

and Applications

·

Networks

-connected computers which create opportunities for communication,

collaboration and markets

Types of Networks: -

1. Local Area Networks (LANS) – a network

covering a small physical area

2. Wide Area Networks (WANS) – a network

that covers a broad geographical area

3.

Virtual

Private Networks (VPNS) – commonly used to secure communications through

the public internet

4.

Internetworks

– is made up of

a. intranets - private networks that

operate within an organization – where businesses want to restrict access to

important or sensitive information/aim to simplify access to information for

employees)

b. extranets – extend beyond the

boundaries to include suppliers, customers and other collaborators/used to

support supply chain management

c. internet – enables communication

between millions of computers worldwide/ large client/server system

[Chaffey (2009)]

·

The

Internet is both a WAN (it spans the

globe) and an Internetwork (because

of the protocols it uses)

·

Client computers – provide the interface to human users and perform local

processing

·

Servers – computers dedicated to providing services across the network. E.g.

Email – service provided by servers

·

Firewalls - used to protect the security of information flowing over an intranet or

extranet/ are software on servers where a company’s network interfaces with the

internet/required to prevent unauthorised users from accessing private networks

Networking Standards

·

Protocols

·

TCP

(Transmission Control Protocol) – breaks files into efficiently

sized chunks of data (packets)

o Packets are units of data routed between an origin (often a server) and

a destination (such as a client) on the internet

·

IP (Internet

Protocol) – communicates these chinks of data via a technique called packet switching

·

In summary,

TCP is the data. IP is the Internet location GPS

·

Applications

of TCP are email, file transfer and the web

The Web

·

The internet and the web are not the same thing.

The web is part of the internet

·

The web is based on the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) standard which is how we publish information on web pages.

·

To experience the web users must have a web browser- a software application that permits them to connect to servers to

access and view content online

·

Cloud Computing allows for word processing

or database applications to be done through the browser

·

Hypertext

Transfer Protocol (HTTP) - is a

standard for transferring requests for the delivery of web pages from servers

to browsers.

·

Universal

Resource Locator or web address (URL)

·

Domain

Names

·

IP

address

·

Domain

Name System (DNS)

Web 2.0

·

Old Web

- composed of static pages, written

by a site’s owners or administrators, infrequently updated

·

Web 2.0

– Dynamic, User-generated Content, Interactive and participatory – e.g,

Wikipedia – relies on user-generated content and governance.

·

Other Examples of Web 2.0 technologies – web

logs -“BLOGS”, “Social Networking” Sites, Widgets

– block of executable code that is

installed within web pages

Scripting Languages

1.

JAVASCRIPT is a scripting language used in web

design to write functions that enhance user interfaces and the dynamics of web

pages

2.

AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript) and XML - a set of technologies that work together to

retrieve data from servers asynchronously. E.g. – Googlemail and Flickr,

Amazon’s User Rating System