Electronic Business over Wireless Device

Research and practices in electronic businesses over wireless devices have recently seen an exponential growth. This chapter presents the basic concepts necessary to understand m-business applications and a case study of the voice driven airline-ticketing system that can be accessed at any time, anywhere by mobile phones. This application offers maximum functionality while still maintaining a high level of user convenience in terms of input and navigation.

World Wide Web Search Engines

The World Wide Web now holds more than 800 million pages covering almost all issues. The Web’s fast growing size and lack of structural style present a new challenge for information retrieval. Numerous search technologies have been applied to Web search engines; however, the dominant search method has yet to be identified. This chapter provides an overview of the existing technologies for Web search engines and classifies them into six categories: 1) hyperlink exploration, 2) information retrieval, 3) metasearches, 4) SQL approaches, 5) content-based multimedia searches, and 6) others. At the end of this chapter, a comparative study of major commercial and experimental search engines is presented, and some future research directions for Web search engines are suggested.

An Architecture for Authentication and Authorization of Mobile Agents in E-Commerce

Agent-based e-commerce is a new technology being researched extensively by many academic and industrial organizations. The mobility and autonomy properties of agents have offered a new approach of doing business online. To fully exploit the advantages of this new technology, a secure system to authenticate and authorize mobile agents must be in place. In this chapter, an architecture to ensure a proper authentication and authorization of agents has been proposed. The Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) is used as the underlying cryptographic scheme. An agent is digitally signed by the Agent Factory and its signature is authenticated at hosts using the corresponding public key. Agents can also authenticate the hosts to make sure that they are not heading to a wrong place. When an agent visits a host, agent’s expiry date, host trace, and the factory’s trustworthiness are checked during the authentication process. According to the level of authentication that the incoming agent has passed, the agent will be categorized and associated with a relevant security policy during the authorization phase. The corresponding security policy will be enforced on the agent to restrict its operations at the host. The prototype has been implemented with Java.

Virtual Marketplace for Agent-Based Electronic Commerce

This chapter proposes the architecture for a mobile agent-based virtual marketplace. As the Internet grows, the potential for conducting electronic commerce grows as well. However, given the explosion of online shopping, searching for particular products amongst the sea of commercial content could become a fundamental obstacle for Internet electronic commerce. Hence, an agent-based virtual marketplace is seen as the solution. The agents in the marketplace are autonomous, and so there is no need for user intervention once the agents have been deployed with the assigned task. The architecture of the marketplace has been specifically designed to facilitate agent negotiations by providing a trusted and secure environment. A novel dynamic pricing mechanism has also been implemented in the context of the airline ticketing industry and found to be rather successful.

System Development Methodologies for Web-Enabled E-Business

The fast-paced, rapidly changing e-business environment, coupled with its emphasis on brand image and the human-computer interface, and the creative nature of Web development teams combine to require changes in traditional system development methodologies. This chapter explores the fit between typical Web-based information system characteristics and existing development methodologies, from the traditional System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) to some of the newer rapid-response models. It concludes that, contrary to common practice in most organizations, one standardized development methodology is not best suited for all, or even most, e-business projects. Fifteen variables that are key to identifying the best methodology for a given e-business project are distilled, and a framework is constructed to aid development teams in the process of formulating a customized development methodology to serve as a basis for project management and control. Projections are made concerning the future of e-business system development methodologies.

E-Business Transaction Management in Web-Integrated Network Environment

This chapter describes the Operational Models, Programming Paradigms and Software Tools needed for building a Web- integrated network computing environment. We describe the various interactive distributed computing models (client server-CS, code on demand, remote evaluation, mobile agents, three and N-tier system), different logical modes of programming (imperative, declarative, subjunctive, and abductive), transaction and workflow models (that relax atomicity, consistency, isolation, durability and serializability properties), new protocols, and software tools (PJava/JDBC) that are needed. Some important application areas of these models are for telediagnosis and cooperative problem solving.

Retrieval of Multimedia Data on the Web

The objective of this chapter is to introduce the reader to a general architectural framework for a broad array of retrievals of multimedia data required by various applications. This framework contains more than the traditional client/server architecture and even more than the existing three-tier architectures. This chapter introduces the reader to many critical issues involved in multimedia retrieval over the Internet. A new architectural framework is proposed to cover a variety of multimedia applications over the Internet and the World Wide Web. This framework has the three main objectives of (1) proposing a layered architecture to facilitated design and separate different issues, (2) covering a large number of multimedia applications, and finally, (3) making use of existing and well-established technology, such as Mobile Agents, SQL databases, and cache managements schemes. The proposed architectural framework separates issues involved in multimedia retrieval into five layers, namely: keyword searching and data servers, proxy servers, domain and department archives, mobile user agents, and the users. Through these five layers, various customized solutions to a large array of problems will be proposed and applied. The chapter offers, but is not limited to, solutions for different problems that arise in retrieval of multimedia data. A list of important open problems is identified at the end of the chapter.

Expert Database Web Portal Architecture

The volume of data available on the World Wide Web makes it difficult for a domain novice to find reliable, accurate information. Such a novice may call upon a domain expert for information and advice. On the Web, this expert advice can be organized as an expert database behind a Web portal for the domain. The creation of such a database requires an architecture that captures the expert’s domain knowledge and finds and evaluates applicable Web pages from which data is extracted. This chapter outlines the components of an expert database Web portal, its design, and population.

Electronic Architectures for Bridging the Global Digital Divide

This chapter presents a comparative view of e-business systems designed to extend the benefits of e-business to the poor demographic segments of the developing world and to reach populations that are on the “wrong side of the digital divide.” Four such systems are selected: the Global Trade Point Network (GTPN) of the United Nations, Alcatel Telemedicine Network, Little Intelligent Communities (LINCOS), and Johns Hopkins International’s (JHI) Telemedicine Network. The four networks are compared across various network architecture dimensions. Our analysis indicates that LINCOS offers reduced capital cost, flexible architectures, and at the same time access to worldwide information systems, and hence has the highest potential to reach effectively the most excluded population in developing countries. Collaborations among technology marketers, national governments and international agencies are needed to identify the needs of the digitally excluded population and select appropriate architectures to serve the needs.

Issues in the Globalization of Electronic Commerce

This chapter presents globalization aspects of electronic commerce, describes the key issues in each area, and then analyzes approaches that could be Used to address these issues. "Globalization" is the marketing and selling of a product outside a company’s home country, and the most effective way to do that on the Internet is via localization of Web content. ‘Localization’ is the process and product of customizing Web content so that it is most understandable and usable to a person residing in a particular locale. That process involves several aspects including: Language, Culture, Laws/Regulations, Payment/Currency, Dates/Units, and Logistics. In each of these areas there are a number of both business and technical issues that are illustrated and analyzed in this chapter.