B2C B2E Systems Concepts and Architectures

7/30/2019 B2C B2E Systems Concepts and Architectures

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ECommerce Concepts and Technologies WS 02/03 Hupe, Matthes, Schmidt 2002http://www.sts.tu-harburg.de/teaching > ECommerce

1Chapter 4 - B2C, B2E Systems: Concepts and Architectures

4-1Electronic Commerce (WS-02/03)

4. B2C,B2E Systems: Concepts and Architectures4.1 Business-to-Consumer Systems

Architectures and Components

4.1.1 Shop Functionalities, Architectures, Selected Components

4.1.2 Comparison: Shops vs. Malls

Sample Systems

4.1.3 OpenShop Business

4.1.4 Intershop Enfinity

4.2 Business-to-Employee: Enterprise Information and Knowledge Management


ECommerce Reference Model

Base Technologies

(Internet-, Communication-, Security-, DB-, Software-Technology)

Forms of

Payment

Security,

Trust

Transact.

Control

Agent

Technlgy

Mediation,

NegotiationEDI

Political

and

Legal

Aspects

of

EC

Business Process Reengineering (BPR) Tools

Electronic

Trading Systems

(Shop Systems)

Virtual

Organizations

Kinds of

Cooperation

Applications for horizontal and vertical sectors

Technical

issues

Organi-

zational

issues

[MeTuLa99]


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Online Shops

Shop system vendors have established knowledge about online shops (e.g., Intershop exists since1994).

Shop vendors can be classified as

o specialized shop providers (Intershop, OpenShop, ...)

o standard software providers (Microsoft, Oracle, ...) which integrate shops into their softwaresuites.

An online shop is more complex than it seems to be at first glance.

NOTE: Some concepts introduced or mentioned in chapter 4 will be refined in chapter 5, e.g.,

o Product information and catalog structure

o Payment models and systems

o Online Analytical Processing (OLAP), Recommendation Engines,

o User profiling

o Security and Trust

DefinitionAn Online Shop System defines the buyer / seller interface using Internet

technology. It supports mainly the Business-to-Consumer (B2C) business

model.


Online Shops: Core Functionality

o Product Catalog Management maintains a (flat, hierarchical, ) directory of

Hard (tangible) goods (examples: books, cars, clothing)

Soft (intangible) goods (example: software product, license, news)

o Search Engine

o Shopping BasketManagement links customers & products

o Customer Identification (example: visitor vs. buyer vs. preferred customer, )

o Billing & Payment

Taxation

Shipping fees


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Online Shops: Desirable Functionalityo Banner Management

o Statistics Report, Data Mining

o Integration of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) functionality

Customer Profiling

Customer Classification

Call Center Integration

Campaign Management

o Bridge to Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Backend System

Controlling

Inventory management (are there sufficient hard goods on stock?)

Accounts payable (German: Kreditoren)

o Legal issues: Electronic Contracts

Exchange for binding legal statements / electronic contracts betweencustomer & merchant


Online-Shop: Reference Architecture

[Merz99]

Shop

Users

Pay-

ment

/

Billing

Provider

Editorial System Core Shop System Banner-Mgmt

Unstruct.Content

CatalogStructure

ProductInform.

TXData

UserProfiles

DownloadArea

BannerPool

OLAP ToolsRecommendation

Engine

Data Exchange

Interfaces

Data

WarehouseERP

Internet

Banner

Manager

Shop

Editor

P

G

Inter-

net

PG =

Payment

Gateway


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Pay-

ment

/

Billing

Provider

P

G

Selected Shop System Components: Editorial System

[Merz99]

Shop

Users

Pay-ment/

Billing

Pro-

vider

Editorial System Shop System Banner-Mgmt

Unstruct.

Content

Catalog

Structure

Product

Inform.

TX

Data

User

Profiles

Download

Area

Banner

Pool


Engine

Data Exchange

Interfaces

Data

WarehouseERP

Internet

Inter-

net

Shop

Editor

Editorial System

Unstruct.

Content

Catalog

Structure

Product

Inform.

Data Exchange

Interfaces

ERP

Banner

Manager


Selected Shop System Components: Editorial System

An Editorial system is used to manage and administrate a shop:

o Manage

product information

product catalog structure

unstructured content (examples: logos, headline, footer, copyright notice)

o Import product information from ERP systems

NOTE: Sample online shop for starting is usually provided by shop system vendor


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Selected Shop System Components: Product DBThe Product Information Database contains

o Product classification information (categorization) and

o Product information, e.g.:

Product attributes (name, price in different currencies, ...)

Image / 3D model

Descriptions

Discounts, Advertising intensity

Links to related products

Product information databases may support staging process (see later).

Required: Adaptability and extensibility of

o Categorizations

o Product specifications (attributes)


Pay-

ment

/

Billing

Provider

P

G

Selected Shop System Components: Core Shop System

[Merz99]

Shop

Users

Pay-

ment/

Billing

Pro-

vider

Editorial System Shop Software Banner-Mgmt

Unstruct.Content

CatalogStructure

ProductInform.

TXData

UserProfiles

DownloadArea

BannerPool


Engine

Data Exchange

Interfaces

Data

WarehouseERP

Inter-

net

Shop

Editor

Unstruct.Content

CatalogStructure

ProductInform.

TXData

UserProfiles

DownloadArea

BannerPool

Unstruct.Content

CatalogStructure

ProductInform.

Banner

Manager

Core Shop System

Internet


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Selected Shop System Components: Core Shop SystemA shop software presentation system is part of the core shop system.

It controls the visualization aspects of an online shop. Two main objectives:

o Aggregation of content to be displayed as a whole. A page contains, e.g.,

product information

ads from banner pool

news feed

personalized content

download links, ...

o Rendering of content

format

resolution

Pro

duct

request

User

HTML

response

HTML

templateAds

See chapter 3 for architecture and

realization technologies.


Selected Shop System Components: Payment Gateway

[Merz99]

Shop

Users

Pay-

ment /

Billing

Pro-

vider

Editorial System Banner-Mgmt

Unstruct.Content

CatalogStructure

ProductInform.

TXData

UserProfiles

DownloadArea

BannerPool


Engine

Data Exchange

Interfaces

Data

WarehouseERP

Internet

Shop

Editor

Unstruct.Content

CatalogStructure

ProductInform.

Pay-

ment

/

Billing

Provider

P

G

Inter-

net

Banner

Manager

Shop Software


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Selected Shop System Components: Payment GatewayA Payment gateway is the interface from the shop system to a banks clearing server.

o Not developed by shop system providers, but by electronic payment systemvendor.

o Separately bought as plug-in / cartridge

o Usually integrated as a shell script or component

Payment Gateway vendors usually provide credit-card payment clearing service only.

Examples for credit-card payment gateway vendors:

o PSiGate

o Merchant Commerce & Payment Services (MCPS)

o eWAY

See chapter 5 for more information on payment models, payment systems, andstandards.


Selected Shop System Components: Admin

The Administration Component (not shown in diagram) is used to administrate the

entire shop system (components and their interconnections), e.g., editorial system, coreshop system, banner management, databases, interfaces to ERP systems, etc.

This components is usually realized as a separate management console. Administration

over the web also possible (see security aspects).

Administrative tasks:

o Conduct staging process (updating the published shop appearance)

o Define shop entrance point (URL of start page)

o Configure Payment Gateway

o Define database schemata of product information database, user profiles,transaction data


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Comparison: Shop and Mall

Benefits / Liabilities

for the client:

o Mall may provide meta catalog (catalog of all products of all shops)

o Wider product range as compared to a single shop

o Mall can be looked and felt and walked through

for the shop provider:

o Outsourcing of shop development, payment clearing, and client solvency checks

o Does not control the integration into mall (mall provides integration of shop pages)

for the mall provider:

o Integration of shops by quantity or quality

o Increase of overall visits

DefinitionAn Online mall is a system that integrates multiple online shops.


4. B2C,B2E Systems: Concepts and Architectures

4.1 Business-to-Consumer Systems




Sample Systems





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OpenShop Business Architecture (1)Common properties of OpenShop Business version 1 and 2 (www.openshop.com)

Lean Architecture (core shop functionality)

o No catalog server (DB)

o No integrated database (is provided externally)

o Staging of system not supported

Idea:

o Integrating OS-specific instructions (tags) into html sources which are

preprocessed into binary format. HTML pages are generated by a page generator.

The OpenShop scripting language specializes on online shop functionalities

o Compact set of script commands

o Ease of understanding and use


OpenShop Business Architecture (2)

Reduced functionality:

o The OpenShop functionality is based primarily on the concept of a shopping cart.

Plus:

o FlowEditor: Simple one-way process editor (only for early prototyping)

(one-way = no reverse engineering of customized shops)

oStatistics support

o Payment gateway support via macro-based program invocation

o Automatic email notification of sales person after order completion

o Automatic order log written after order completion


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Reference Architecture vs. OpenShop Business

[Merz99]

Shop Users

Pay-

ment

/

Billing

Provider


Unstruct.

Content

Catalog

Structure

Product

Inform.

TX

Data

User

Profiles

Download

Area

Banner

Pool


Engine

Data Exchange

Interfaces

Data

WarehouseERP

Inter-

net

Shop

Editor

Internet


OS Business Architecture in Detail

Page

Generator

Catalog

Structure

Product

Inform.

Flow

Editor

Pay-

ment/

Billing

Pro-

vider

Inter-

netPayment

GatewayHTML

Templates

Customized

Macros

Binary

TemplatesBinary

Macros

TXData

User

Profiles

Internet

Shop

EditorShop Users File

Database

Pre-

processor

invoke

edit


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OpenShop Business FlowEditor

A process definition is denoted as steps (= Web pages) connected by

transitions (= Web links).

A red F represents form input (= HTML form), a red arrow form data processingA green arrow illustrates a product added to the shopping cart.

Sample online shop:

Online Pizza Shop


OpenShop Business Concepts (1)

Database

o Data maintenance on database (via DB tools...).

o No staging: Changes are reflected instantly in the shop.

o Extensible OpenShop standard schemes.

o Short DB transactions. No session-spanning transactions, no TP-Monitor interface.

Web Server

o No Load Balancing

o Web session data is not made persistent


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OpenShop Business Concepts (2)User Roles

o Client and administrator.

o Administrator can change shop remotely: Altered files are transferred via FTP.Online access to Preprocessor.

Session Management

Clients: Session ID (URL rewriting), cookies are not supported

o For each session history scripts (variable values, etc.) are created. These are

deleted after session timeout.

o Session IDs can be transferred to external services which can then resume /

continue the session.

Administrator: Login and Internet Protocol (IP)-based authentication

NOTE: External services cannot prolong session timeoutfi Can cause unexpected

session timeouts.



Templates

o Separation of Business Logic (macros) and Layout (HTML Templates withvariables and calls to macros).

o Special-purpose control structures based on the notion of a "current item"

embedded as HTML-Comments into HTML pages.

o Template processing works on any HTML, XML, WML, ECML documents

augmented by HTML / XML comments.

o For extended functionality a SDK can be purchased allows extended access tothe server

Macros

o Purpose: Connecting to databases and to external modules (executables)

o Must be defined in a specific macro file (macro.mac).

o Invoked from within templates via the OS-Tag OS-MACRO:


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OpenShop: Sample Product List PageScreenshot: List of products matching Pizza search expression.


OpenShop: Sample Product Database

Productand CatalogDatabase Tables Relationship

ProductDatabase Table


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OpenShop Template: Product List(1)

Product List:

This is what we found for you. For more information click on oneof the items.

{product}

Macro invocation

Loop through output of macro

Current item

variable

Variable set

by macro

Variable initialized

(used by macro)


OpenShop Template: Product List(2)

There are even more items.

next

previous

Sorry, we didn't find anything matching your search.

Try again!

Next block: executed only if next block of items exists

Previous block: executed only if previous block of items exists

Empty block: executed only if no products were found


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OpenShop Macro: prodlist (Fetch ProductList) :macroprodlistodbc

select ProdNo, Name, Description, Price, Tax,Image_File from Items where {condition_prodlist}

source=ec-demo

account=ec

passwd=db

:data

art_number

productdescription

price

vat

img_file

ProdNo

Name

Description

Price

Tax

Image_File

Macro name

Database macro

SQL statement

Database,

Account &

Passwd

Query results are

bound to these

OpenShop

variables

Implied mapping of

SQL results to

OS variables



HTML-Page generation: The page generator (PG)

o transforms binary code (generated by preprocessor) to HTML-Pages at runtime.

o evaluates and substitutes variables

o executes macros (DB access, process execution)

o finally generates the page.

Statistics:

o User behavior can be tracked using statistics tools.

o Statistics tools analyze log files.


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OpenShop Business: Process

Development Runtime Statistics

Time

o Process Definition(FlowEditor)

o Macro Definition for

Program invocation(Payment gateway

as .exe file)

DB Access (viaODBC)

o Manual HTML SourceAdaptation

o Preprocessing

o Page requestfi

o Page generatorfi

o Macro invocationfi

DB Access (Oracle, ...)

ERP Access (SAP, ...)

Payment Gateway

Access

o Page impressions(number of pages

requested from the

server, see chapter 5)

o Customers statistics

partly by [PrismaOpenGate]

OnlineOffline


4. B2C,B2E Systems: Concepts and Architectures

4.1 Business-to-Consumer Systems




Sample Systems





17/23




Intershop Enfinity (1)Intershop Enfinity is a full-fledged shop software for large businesses (Example: Intel, Otto

Versand), (www.intershop.de).

Architecture:

o Enfinity (version 5): First Intershop version that is based on J2EE Architecture and uses

Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB).

Note: The Intershop EJB Server does not use the standardized Java Remote Method

Invocation protocol (RMI) for performance reasons > not fully compatible.

o Former versions were based on Perl scripts.

Components:

o Catalog Server (eCS) Live eCS and Staging eCS

Manages product catalogs, product information

o Transaction Server (eTS): Manages

Manages product orders and HTML Page templates

o Database (Oracle DB included in distribution)


Intershop Enfinity (2)

Staging supported

o A separate server can be configured as Offline server, where product catalogand product data changes are prepared.

o Staging:

Transfer: Offline Serverfi Staging eCS

Switching: Staging eCS Live eCS

Extensibility

o Intershop Enfinity can be extended by Third-Party Cartridges.

o API defined for cartridge integration (eCAPI).

Connectivity

o Intershop offers Cartridges for ERP Integration (SAP)

o Cartridges for Payment Service Integration


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Enfinity vs. Online-Shop Architecture

[Merz99]

Shop Users

Pay-

ment

/

Billing

Provider


Unstruct.

Content

Catalog

Structure

Product

Inform.

TX

Data

User

Profiles

Download

Area

Banner

Pool


Engine

Data Exchange

Interfaces

Data

WarehouseERP

Internet

Inter-

net

Shop

Editor


Enfinity Management Console: Product DB: (1)

Hierarchical product catalog structure


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Enfinity Management Console: Individual Product

Product information (id, descriptions)


Enfinity Management Console: Pricing / Taxing

Product prices and tax class


20/23




Enfinity Management Console: Process Management

Process Definition includes error and exception handling


Firewall

Enfinity Deployment: Single Server Option

Transaction

Server

Catalog

Server

RDBMS

(Oracle 8i)

share

HTTP

Manage-

ment

Console

immediate

manipulation

Shop

Admin

Shop Users

Web Server + Adapter

= Dispatcher

Web Server Web Server

NOTE: share folder:

Page templates reside

in this folder


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Single Server Option: Benefits & LiabilitiesBenefits

o Single server administration.

Liabilities

o Failure implies complete system failure

o Immediate DB manipulation requires server shutdown when changing catalogs,

database.


Enfinity Deployment: Staging System Option

Running System:

o The Web Adapter forwards incoming HTTP requests to the Live Catalog Serverand Transaction Server.

Staging:

o Files: The shared files directory share of the offline server is copied to a

subdirectory (named share/~share) on the Transactions server.

o Database: An image (dump) of the offline server database is created and restored

at the Transaction Server (using a different user name).

Switching:

o Web Adapter: The Web Adapter is switched: It now forwards incoming requests to

the new Live Catalog Server.

o Files: The subdirectory share/~share is renamed to share. The old share directory

becomes share/~share.

o Database: The database is accessed using the new database users account.


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Firewall

Enfinity Deployment: Staging SystemShop Users

Shop

Admin

Offline

Testing

TX

Server

Cat.

Server

share

HTTP

Mgmt-

Cons

Disp.

RDBMS

Offline Server

Transaction

Server

RDBMS

share

TS

Dispatcher

Catalog

Server

HTTP

RDBMS

CS live

RDBMS

Catalog

Server

CS staging

HTTP

Web Server Web Server Web ServerWeb Web

Editor System Productive System


Firewall

Enfinity Deployment: Staging Process

Shop Users

Shop

Admin

Offline

Testing

TX

Server

Cat.

Server

share

HTTP

Mgmt-Cons

Disp.

RDBMS

Offline Server

Transaction

Server

RDBMS

share

TS

Dispatcher

Catalog

Server

HTTP

RDBMS

CS live

RDBMS

Catalog

Server

CS staging

HTTP

image transfer

Web Server Web Server Web ServerWeb Web

file transfer


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Firewall

Enfinity Deployment: Switching ProcessShop Users

System

Admin

Offline

Testing

TX

Server

Cat.

Server

share

HTTP

Mgmt-

Cntr

Disp.

RDBMS

Offline Server

Transaction

Server

RDBMS

share

TS

Dispatcher

Catalog

Server

HTTP

RDBMS

CS staging

RDBMS

Catalog

Server

CS live

HTTP

switching

Web Server Web Server Web Server Web Web


Staging System Option: Benefits and Liabilities

Benefits

o No time down

o Switch on failure: Hot staging server & Cold offline Server

Liabilities

o Four or five serversfi administration-intensive

o Only Catalog Server can be staged (Transaction Server: announced)

fi Transaction Server does not scale (yet)

Documents

B2C B2E Systems Concepts and Architectures