Elias M. Awad Third Edition ELECTRONIC COMMERCE From Vision to Fulfillment 6-1© 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc ELC 200 Day 14

6-2 © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc Agenda Questions from last class? Assignment 4 Corrected –2 A’s, 2 B’s, 2 C’s, 2 D’s, and 2 F’s –Problems with Publisher templates Assignment 5 Due Today Assignment 6 Posted –Due Nov 11:05 PM –2 more assignments after this one Begin Discussion On Web Portal and Web services

Elias M. Awad Third Edition ELECTRONIC COMMERCE From Vision to Fulfillment 6-3© 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc Web Portals and Web Services

6-4 © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc The focus of this chapter is on several learning objectives The concept of Web portal How portals transform a business The main techniques and functionalities of an enterprise portal Knowledge portals and their uses Web services and portals Who is building and sponsoring enterprise portals How to select a portal product

6-5 © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc What Are Portals? A portal is a Web page that offers links to other Web sites. Portals can be broad or narrow, specific or general Vertical portals are electronic exchanges that combine upstream and downstream e-commerce activities of specialized products and/or services Google Define: portal From the French word porte >> Latin porta

6-6 © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc Portals are Considered Virtual workplaces for the following functions: –Promoting knowledge sharing among different categories of end users –Providing access to structured data –Organizing unstructured data

6-7 © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc Portals Are Considered (Cont’d) Offering varieties such as –Portals on intranets –Customer-facing information portals –Supplier-facing information portals –Enterprise portals –The most promising tool for simplifying the access to data stored in various application systems –Facilitating collaboration among employees –Assisting the company in reaching its customers

6-8 © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc Portal Disadvantages Difficulty integrating with other applications Organizational and financial costs Culture shock The need for additional investment in technology The difficulty of retaining skilled staff Uncertainty of benefits Expense of technology Unprepared suppliers Incompatibility with existing IT infrastructure

6-9 © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc Quick Discussion What is the difference? –Data –A fact –Information –Understanding –Knowledge –Wisdom

6-10 © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc Bloom’s Taxonomy

6-11 © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc Portal Categories Horizontal Portal is an electronic exchange that focuses on MANY subjects Vertical Portal is an electronic exchange that focuses on ONE subject Enterprise Information Portal is a portal that ties together multiple, heterogeneous internal repositories and applications, as well as external content sources and services, into a single browser-based view that is individualized to a particular user’s task or role –UMFK Web SiteUMFK Web Site –Maine Street UMS portalMaine Street UMS portal

6-12 © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc Portal Categories (Cont’d) Knowledge portal is a Web page or a facility that offers a single, uniform point from which all of an enterprise’s data sources can be accessed –Knowledge worker is a person who transforms business and personal experience into knowledge through capturing, assessing, applying sharing, and disseminating it within the organization to solve specific problems or to create value –Knowledge producer interface –Knowledge consumer interface Maine Street UMS portal

6-13 © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc Knowledge Portals versus Information Portals

6-14 © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc Corporate Portal as a Gateway to Information

6-15 © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc Knowledge Based Corporate Portal Framework

6-16 © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc Functions of a Knowledge Portal

6-17 © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc Search Engines Software agents whose task is to find information by looking at keywords or by following certain guidelines or rules Like Yellow Pages for online businesses Crawlers are computer-automated programs that scour the Internet for Web links Site content and relevance are integral parts of automated search engines No search engine is free of drawbacks DMOZ project

6-18 © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc How Search Engines Work

6-19 © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc The Business Challenge The explosion in the volume of key business information already captured in electronic documents has left many organizations losing their grip on information –The speed with which quantity and content are growing means rigorous internal discipline to mine and integrate the sources of enterprise knowledge –Companies realize that they must develop strategies and processes designed to best utilize intellectual resources at strategic and operational levels

6-20 © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc Typical Business Pressures Shorter time to market –New products and services –Product life cycles much shorter Knowledge worker turnover –Loss of key employee means loss of key knowledge and abilities More demanding customer and investors –Customers want better quality and service at a lower cost (Free, Perfect, Now)Free, Perfect, Now –Investors want greater return on their investment

6-21 © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc Role of Portals in Facing Business Pressures Business Integration vs. Information Integration or Application Integration Process Integration Application and Information Integration Enterprise Metadata Repository

6-22 © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc Key Functionalities of Portal Gathering Categorization Distribution Collaboration Publish Personalization Search/Navigate

6-23 © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc Collaboration The goal of the collaboration tool is to support information sharing Two or more people working together in a coordinated manner over time and space using electronic devices Asynchronous collaboration is human-to-human interaction via computer subsystems having no time or space constraints Synchronous collaboration is computer-based, human-to- human interaction that occurs immediately (within 5 seconds) using audio, video, or data technologies

6-24 © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc Synchronous and Asynchronous Collaboration Tools Synchronous Collaboration Teleconferencing Computer Video/Teleconferencing Online Chat Forum Asynchronous Collaboration Electronic Mailing Lists Web-Based Discussion Forums Lotus Notes

6-25 © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc Requirements for Successful Collaboration Tools

6-26 © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc Content Management Also referred to as content management system (CMS); a system used to manage the content of a Web site Includes structured and unstructured internal information objects Complexity is handled by building sophisticated knowledge management taxonomy based on metadata CMS handles the way documents are analyzed, stored and categorized Extensible Markup Language (XML) is the specification developed by the W3C designed especially for Web documents

6-27 © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc Sample XML Document Tove Jani Reminder Don’t forget me this weekend!

6-28 © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc Services of Intelligent Agents Customized customer assistance with online services Customer profiling Integrating profiles of customers into a group of marketing activities Predicting customer requirements Negotiating prices and payment schedules Executing financial transactions on the customer’s behalf

6-29 © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc Web Services and Portals Web services are essentially business services, composed of standards that allow different platforms, operating systems, and languages to exchange information or carry out a business process together Improve the ways a company conducts electronic transactions with trading partners A simple “packaging” technology accessible over the Internet that does not require any technology tied to a vendor’s platform Web services are mobile and interactive More about successful business strategy than technology

6-30 © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc Major Aspects of Web Services A service provider that provides an interface for software that can perform specified tasks A client that invokes a software service to provide business solution or service A repository that manages the service

Elias M. Awad Third Edition ELECTRONIC COMMERCE From Vision to Fulfillment 6-31© 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc Web Services

6-32 © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc Figure 11-13: Ordinary Webservice versus Web Service HTTP Response HTTP Request Client PC Webserver SOAP- Capable Browser Web Service -- Interface Properties Methods SOAP Message Using XML Syntax Web Service Web services are objects (programs) Clients send them commands and data Web services send back results

6-33 © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc Figure 11-13: Ordinary Webservice versus Web Service HTTP Response HTTP Request Client PC Webserver SOAP- Capable Browser Web Service -- Interface Properties Methods SOAP Message Using XML Syntax Web Service Web service requests are sent via FTP They are sent as SOAP messages written in XML

6-34 © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc Figure 11-13: Ordinary Webservice versus Web Service HTTP Response HTTP Request Client PC Webserver SOAP- Capable Browser Web Service -- Interface Properties Methods SOAP Message Using XML Syntax Web Service Web services have interfaces that will accept commands Commands contain methods and properties (parameters)

6-35 © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc Figure 11-14: Simple SOAP Request and Response Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) Carried in HTTP request or response message Formatted using XML Syntax –Similar to HTML syntax but the sender and receiver can create new tags that they can then use in transactions, such as $33 HTTP Header SOAP Body

6-36 © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc Figure 11-14: Simple SOAP Request and Response Situation –There is a pricing object that returns the price if another object sends the part number, quantity, and shipping type (rush, etc.) on an interface –Objects can be on different computers Sending Object Pricing Object Request (PartNum, Quantity, ShippingType) Response (Price)

6-37 © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc Figure 11-14: Simple SOAP Request and Response SOAP Request Message HTTP Request Header pointing to program QA78d 47 Rush Note: xmlns specifies an XML namespace for the object

6-38 © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc Figure 11-14: Simple SOAP Request and Response SOAP Response Message HTTP Response Header $750.33

6-39 © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc Web Services: A More Complex Example Web service 1 (Object) Web service 3 (Object) Web service 2 (Object) Client PC With Browser Server Mainframe Minicomputer Service Via HTTP: SOAP + XML Service Via HTTP: SOAP + XML Service Via HTTP: SOAP + XML

6-40 © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc Figure 11-15: Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) Server for Web Services UDDI Functions: White Pages By name Yellow Pages By type Green Pages Details of how to use, payment, etc. Client PC UDDI Server Server with Web Service 1. UDDI Request for Information, Response 2. Web Service Interaction Interaction Between UDDI Servers to Fulfill a Request

6-41 © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc Web Service Description Language (WSDL) Protocol for asking a corporate webserver about the company’s SOAP- compliant services Client PC Corporate Webserver WSDL Request-Response Cycle

6-42 © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc Perspective on Web Services Benefits of Web Services –Offers a way to standardize interactions between objects over the Internet –Can make distributed computing far simpler once Web services standards are fully developed Concerns –High overhead (very chatty) –Standards immaturity –Security is embryonic

6-43 © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc Issues in Providing IT for Knowledge Sharing Responsiveness to user needs Content structure Content quality requirements Integration with existing systems Scalability Hardware-software compatibility Synchronization of technology with the capabilities of the user

6-44 © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc Planning and Developing an Enterprise Portal Identify the sore points in the business that a portal can help address. Identify the portal users and their role in the firm. Select, install, and incorporate portal technology and associated hardware.

6-45 © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc Chapter Summary A portal is a secure, Web-based interface that provides a single point of integration for and access to information, applications, and services for all people Portals have made their way into enterprises, bringing together not only information from the Internet, but in-house data as well The term data sources encompasses structured data and unstructured data, but also includes the data resulting from specific processes and enterprise applications

6-46 © 2007 Prentice-Hall, Inc Chapter Summary (Cont’d) Content management requires directory and indexing capabilities to manage automatically the ever-growing store of structured and unstructured data residing in data warehouses, Web sites, ERP systems, legacy applications Collaborative functionality can range from tracking to developing workplace communities