University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies A Conceptual Overview of E-Business Technologies Day 6 - Conceptual Overview of E-Business Technologies Software Solutions for E-Business Programming Languages for E-Commerce Search Engines Thinking Beyond the Box Case Study Series: Open Text Preferred Listings 1
Programming Languages for E-Commerce Front-end Publishing Languages PDF, HTML, DHTML and Style Sheets Data Content Driven Language XML Back-end Process Languages Microsoft: Active Server Page, C#, Visual Basic UNIX: CGI, Java Server Pages, JavaScript (discussed on Day 4) SOAP and BizTalk PDF Portable Document File Proprietary format from Adobe Best suited for distributing complex documents Preservation of original style, format etc. Can t be modified, tampered with if protected Standardizing the format layouts Adobe Acrobot Reader is freely available under www.adobe.com come with UNIX, Mac, Windows and Windows CE versions no charge for viewing the documents 2
HTML Hypertext Markup Language Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the standard formatting language for Web pages Most prevalent form of web pages is HTML. Both Microsoft I.E. and Netscape Communicator support it. HTML 4.01 is the latest version You need a HTML editor such as MS-FrontPage to create HTML documents MS-Word, MS-Excel, MS-Access and MS-PowerPoint can export HTML Demo - A Simple HTML File (DemoHTML.htm) <html> <head> <title> <body> <IMG SRC = dog.jpg border = 0> <A HREF= second.htm > second page </A> background="_background.gif valign="top" width="1% face="arial, Helvetica border="0" 3
Other Common HTML Tags <html> </html> <head> </head> <title> </title> <body> </body> <hn> </hn> <p> </p> <li> </li> <hr> <br> <b> </b> <i> </i> <u> </u> <table> </table> <form> </form> Marks the beginning of the document and end Specifies the beginning and end of header Indicate the title ; not displayed on web page Indicates the main part of web page Specifies the size of heading from 1 (large) to 6 Delimits a paragraph with a blank line Delimits the beginning and end of unordered list Inserts a horizontal line Indicates a cut in the flow going to next line Indicates that the text within is emphasized Indicates that the text within is italicized Indicates that the text is underlined Inserts a table in the document Inserts a form in the document DHTML Dynamic Hypertext Markup Language Dynamic behavior of a web page can be created using JavaScript, VBScript, Document Object Model (DOM), and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Features Highlights Event-driven animation in response to user input CSS providing uniform look and feel Support both absolute positioning and relative positioning Supported by IE and Netscape 4.x or up 4
Additional HTML Tags for DHTML Tags <div> and <span> <div> become a generic container <span> is used to specify the portion of a page that required additional formatting Elements that DHTML can control Ability to hide and unhide portions of pages Ability to include animation effects upon texts or images 5
DHTML Events OnBlur OnFocus OnLoad OnAbort OnChange OnClick OnError OnKeyDown Demo - A Simple DHTML File (DemoDHTML.htm) <script> style="position: relative!important" ondblclick="dynanimout(this)" language="javascript1.2 script file 6
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Designers will create style sheets and apply them to any web pages with a site Developers can define their own classes Advantages of CSS Separate the style and layout of HTML files from their informational content Provides relative measurement for any size of monitor screen or resolution Enable companies to implement a house look and feel on their site, promote branding Improve the printing of web documents instead of having unpredictable HTML transfer to paper Enable access to the web for people with disabilities (larger fonts, variation of colors) 7
Demo - Cascading Style Sheets (DemoCSS.htm) <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="demo.css"> Change H1 to H2 Web Site Design and Optimization Before starting any web projects, you should consider: Browser support and use of standards Style sheets Dynamic HTML Support for the scripting language 8
Web Site Design and Optimization (cont.) Page Content Optimize size of the page, use of client side scripts CSS and images Page Generation Server response time, hardware based accelerators, web and database server resource allocation Page Delivery Content delivery network, content caching, local and internet bandwidth Web Site Design and Optimization (cont.) Web site features that annoy users Links give error reports 401 errors Pages too slow to load or site time-out. Forced users to download plug-ins Poorly named links Too many clicks Crowed or confusing layout No skip button at flash introduction No search feature 9
Web Publishing Stored all the HTML pages on the web servers Publishing methods FTP (File Transfer Protocol) FrontPage Extension XML extensible Markup Language (XML) extensible Markup Language (XML) extensible Style Sheet (XSL) XML Schema Definition language (XSD) XPath and XML Query Document Object Model (DOM) Content - Used for describing and exchanging structured documents and data on the Internet. Appearance - Transforms the content of a XML document into another document that is different in format or structure Structure - Defines the required structure of a valid XML document Querying - XPath node properties can be used to search an XML source while XQuery provides features for retrieving and interpreting information from an XML source Programming - Object model for programmatically working with XML documents in memory 10
Demo extensible Markup Language XML with XSL and CSS Showing how a e-learning site is built upon XML DTD and XSD schema Showing XML files that comply to a DTD and an XSD SOAP and BizTalk SOAP Simple Object Access protocol Developed by Microsoft Specify how to encode an HTTP header and an XML file so that a program in one computer can call a program in another computer and pass information BizTalk Also developed by Microsoft, supported by B2B vendors such as SAP and CommerceOne A framework of published XML schemas to allow integration between business processes across enterprises 11
What is XML Web Services? XML Web Services allow service calls to be invoked and serviced by simply passing SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) coded XML documents with HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) across the Internet. COM Client on Windows / IIS Platform Web Service Proxy SOAP 1.1 HTTP and IP SOAP Envelop in an XML document XML documents over HTTP POST request with SOAPAction HTTP header JavaBean serving on J2EE / Apache Platform Web Service Proxy SOAP 1.1 HTTP and IP XML documents over HTTP POST request with SOAPAction HTTP header XML Web Services Empowered Web Sites SOAP is the primary technology that implements XML Web Services Web Server acts as SOAP clients.net/ Java server-side components XML messages Web Application Server Browser Internet SOAP servers acts as COBOL application proxy COBOL applications User Mainframe 12
Additional Resources For XML, CSS, HTML, SOAP and BizTalk http://www.xml101.com http://www.w3.org/style/css http://www.segment7.net/tutorial/html4.html http:// www.w3schools.com/soap http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/ Day 6 - Conceptual Overview of E-Business Technologies Software Solutions for E-Business Programming Languages for E-Commerce Search Engines Thinking Beyond the Box Case Study Series: Open Text Preferred Listings 13
Search Engines Intra-site search engine Inter-site search engine Intra-site Search Engine Index web pages with in a web site for example, Microsoft Index Server -Come with Windows NT/ 2000/2003 Servers - Full-text indexing on text, HTML, Word, Excel, PPT files - Query by properties - "Fuzzy" queries - Advanced searches (e.g. <, =, >, AND, OR, NOT) - Customizable query forms -Zero maintenance - Multiple language support 14
Inter-site Search Engine Index web pages across multiple web sites Spiders or Crawlers or Web bots (software robots) collect and search URLs, titles and web headings Page 175, E-commerce Business. Technology. Society. By Kenneth C. Laudon and Carol Guercio Traver Indexing a Search Engine Periodic scanning Nature of the site Submission 15
What does the Spider program look for? Header Title Keyword Description Body The linguistic patterns within the page body Different Types of Search Boolean Searching Phrase Search Proximity Search Wild card Search Concept Search Natural Language Search AND OR acid rain America NEAR warming *? computer virus Ask.com 16
Popular Search Engines Listed by Popularity in 2003 Google www.google.ca AOL search.aol.com Google engine Netscape search.netscape.com Google engine Yahoo search.yahoo.com Overture brought by Yahoo in 2004 AltaVista brought by Overture in 2003 MSN search.msn.com AskJeeves www.askjeeves.com Lycos www.lycos.com AskJeeves engine Search Strategy 1. Try with an explorative phrase first so that you get an idea what keywords or phases to search 2. Choose a suitable search engine that relevant Excite very commercialized; Altavista more comprehensive; Lycos more focus; Yahoo! more like a business directory 3. Given you have a list of phrases you know, make a search on the relevant search engine 17
Day 6 - Conceptual Overview of E-Business Technologies Software Solutions for E-Business Programming Languages for E-Commerce Search Engines Thinking Beyond the Box Case Study Series: Open Text Preferred Listings Thinking Beyond the Box Case Study Series: Open Text Preferred Listings In general, how can companies make money on the Web? What are the common pricing models in the Internet? You as a company, how can you measure the effectiveness of a search engine, which you have paid for? 18
Home Readings E-Commerce - Business, Technology, Society: Chapter 3.4-3.5, 8.1-8.3 Read Case: Metropolitan Life Insurance: E-Commerce Review Chapter 12 and 7.3 Thinking Beyond the Box Case Study Series: Metropolitan Life Insurance: E-Commerce How can MetLife s Interactive Commerce Department build profits from its Internet efforts? What are the issues involved in delivering a profitable (and successful) E-Commerce strategy? 19