E-systems Research and Development (IT Infrastructure Manager)

Evaluation Report for Assignment 2

2009-06-23T08:53:00.000-07:00

Dear all course mates,

After I have gone through all exercises and workshops, I know the infrastructure of e-commerce systems much better than before. (Actually, I not only learn the e-commerce infrastructure but also, the applications.) Honestly, in my workplace, we have different teams dedicated to networking infrastructures and application developments. I seldom get to know the work of the other team. This time really gives myself an opportunity to understand something that I got to understand but I didn’t understand for years.

The ‘Ruby on Rails’ workshops have enabled me to be familiar with the design of a web application by using the MVC technique. I really admit that the MVC technique is a good approach to develop an application. Nowadays, the life of software or an application is getting shorter as the technologies are progressing very fast as well as the business environment. Therefore, we can’t afford to spend plenty of time designing the application. The technique such as System Development Life Cycle might not be applicable at the era.

Overall, I have benefitted a lot from this course and got very good exposure to the new technologies.

System Integration

2009-06-17T23:42:00.000-07:00

The final topic is for group reflective study using the wiki tool in CSU Interact and a way for you to add a final reflective comment on systems integration and make your closing remarks to your Developers blog.

1.Choose ONE of the four ways to manage and develop integrated systems as listed below;

I chose "portal and service-oriented architectures (SOA)" to manage and develop integrated systems.

2.Summarise your understanding and describe its relevance (250 words max) in either your study at university or in your work environment;

SOA as an architecture relies on service-orientation as its fundamental design principle. If a service presents a simple interface that abstracts away its underlying complexity, users can access independent services without knowledge of the service's platform implementation. Barry (n.d.) defines that ‘a SOA is essentially a collection of services. These services communicate with each other. The communication can involve either simple data passing or it could involve two or more services coordinating some activity. Some means of connecting services to each other is needed. Today, SOA and Web services become very popular but it is not something new. The first SOA for many people in the past was with the use DCOM or Object Request Brokers (ORBs) based on the CORBA specification.

I just put aside the principles and technical requirements of SOA and only refer to the above definition when illustrating how SOA is adopted in the system design at my workplace. The essential applications including (email, financial system, intranet, office applications and documents) are unified on the web portal via a single interface illustrated in Fig.1.

Fig.1

It provides a consistent look and feel with access control and procedures for multiple applications, which otherwise would have been different entities altogether. Behind the simple interface, there are complexities and depencies associated with the applications. Take Citrix as a good example, it is very different from other applications accessible through the portal. It actually takes you to an independent platform and users need to install the local Crtrix client prior to accessing it. From this perspective, it achieves the principle of 'loose coupling',

A small set of simple and ubiquitous interfaces to all participating software agents. Only generic semantics are encoded at the interfaces. The interfaces should be universally available for all providers and consumers (He 2003).

Of course, there are still many principles of SOA but I have no intention detail them here. I just attempt to put SOA in this context.

References
Barry, D n.d., Service-oriented architecture (SOA) definition, Barry & Associate, viewed 20 June 2009, <http://www.service-architecture.com/web-services/articles/service-oriented_architecture_soa_definition.html>.

He, H 2003, What Is Service-Oriented Architecture, posted 30 Sep, O'Reilly Media, Inc, viewed 21 June 2009, <http://webservices.xml.com/pub/a/ws/2003/09/30/soa.html>

M-commerce and the e-wallet: Innovation and mobile devices

2009-06-17T23:39:00.000-07:00

Explore ONE of the problems associated with mobile technology or their suppliers, from 1 to 4 below:

1.What is meant by a location based service?

According to Wikipedia (2009), 'a location based service (LBS) is an information and entertainment service, accessible with mobile devices through the mobile network and utilizing the ability to make use of the geographical position of the mobile device'. For example, online game or SMS is one of the LBS applications that operates on handheld devices. However, LBS creates a privacy issue because it needs to track the location of the handheld device in order to provide the services at a particular spot.

2.Visit A location-based service (LBS) is an information and entertainment service, accessible with mobile devices through the mobile network and utilizing the ability to make use of the geographical position of the mobile device Web site and search for information on WAP or SMS access to booking airline services. Do the same for WAP or SMS services in banking. How do both industries compare?

Both Airline and Banking are service industries. However, what can be doing in the airline services might not be applicable to the banking services. The information delivered by the airline company is normally less sensitive and personal like the schedule of the flights or airfares. Most of these information are public. The worst case is the itinerary of a person is disclosed. This should be far less harmful than disclosing a person's financial information.

3.Visit the W3C website and find the status of the VoiceXML project. When do you think it will affect business on the Web and what will its impact be?

The second draft of VoiceXML 3.0 was just published by W3C on 4 June 2009 (W3C n.d.). The W3C Speech Interface Framework is a suite of markup specifications. When the VoiceXML is standardised and mature, we can actually use our cell phones with the voice browser to do the following:

Accessing business information, including the corporate "front desk" asking callers who or what they want, automated telephone ordering services, support desks, order tracking, airline arrival and departure information, cinema and theater booking services, and home banking services.
Accessing public information, including community information such as weather, traffic conditions, school closures, directions and events; local, national and international news; national and international stock market information; and business and e-commerce transactions.
Accessing personal information, including calendars, address and telephone lists, to-do lists, shopping lists, and calorie counters.
Assisting the user to communicate with other people via sending and receiving voice-mail and email messages.

As a result, the voice data can be browsed and transmitted freely over the Internet. The e-commerce and m-commerce will become much more popular and increase the volumne of the transactions as users (even the peolpe with hearing and speaking impairments) can place their orders by phone calls or voice mails and the business organisations can manage these requests based on the infrastructure.

4.According to Nokia:

The Nokia One Mobile Connectivity Service provides easy and secure access to email, calendar, directory and more from a mobile phone, PDA, PC or fixed-line phone - take your corporate applications mobile.

Why is a company like Nokia – http://www.nokia.com – described as having end-to-end expertise?

References

Nokia Siemens Networks n.d., End to End Expert, Insight, viewed 19 June 2009, <http://www.nokiasiemensnetworks.com/jp/Insight/end-to-end/>.

W3C n.d.,"Voice Browser" Activity, viewd 19 June 2009, <http://www.w3.org/Voice/>.

Wikipedia 2009, location based service, last updated, 10 May, Wikimedia Foundation Inc., US, viewed 19 June 2009, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Location-based_service>.

Virtual business worlds and cyberagents

2009-06-17T23:37:00.000-07:00

Search the Web for a site that uses a cyber character or cyber agent to host a business site. (If you create a successful cyber agent, you may be able to get large companies to use it to sell their products online.)

1.Differentiate the various types of software agents.

Software agents carry out tasks associated with software. For example, Windows Update notifies the user of any new updates to an existing system, downloading updates and even applying an update when it is received (Ince 2005, p.396). Other agents normally only collect information from websites with specific purposes. For example, Governments agents collect statistics or extract the updates from the regulations of government and News agents notify you the breaking news and news updates.

2.Describe how techniques such as artificial intelligence and statistical techniques are used in software agents.

Like an auction agent, Bidder Edge, it scans auction sites onthe Web and continuously updates its catalogue of products. There are two ways that you can access the Bidder’s Edge Web site: first by scanning the various categories that are listed; second by personalising the Web site to your own interests, for example you can inform the site that all you are interested in is bidding for computer equipment and it will then only display items which fall under this category (Ince 2005, p.396). Certainly, it adopted the AI technique to identify you interests and the statistical technique to interpret your shopping habits. That's why it can recommend you the desired products or services.

3.Identify various activities in e-commerce where software agents are currently in use.

Amazon also employed similar techniques as mentioned above. It sends you the product update by email according to your shopping habits and interests.

4.Computing ethics and bot programming case study: rocky

a.Get an account username and password from the lecturer to LC_MOO at http://ispg.csu.edu.au:7680 and login to the Welcome Lobby.

b.Hold a 5-minute discussion with Rocky on a special topic. Commands: act rocky (start bot) hush rocky (stop bot)

c.Rocky is an ELIZA-like bot. Report your findings.

I logged in to the Welcome Lobby with the account 'train1' but couldn't get it to function as expected. But I know the bot was running because I attempted the second time and got the warning message, ' I didn't abort last time...'.

Searching mechanism

2009-06-17T23:35:00.000-07:00

1.What is a spider? What does it do?
According to Ince (2005), Spider is normally used to describe software which harvests information for search engines and other allied sites, the image here being of a program which wanders around the strands of the Internet. It searches the information over the Internet in order to serve the following purposes:

alert users when a particular of event such as a web site being changed occurs
perform email address harvesting (the email addresses are sold to the business owners who will use them for sending bulk emails advertising a product or a service)
use for search engine indexing

2.What is a meta-search engine? Provide some examples.
Meta tags are HTML tags which provide information about a web page. A meta-search engine just looks at the meta tags in the HTML of the web pages, especailly the home page of web sites. The results will be aggregate in a database which is being accessed by search queries. It can also search the keywords and gather the hit rate of web sites in order to evaluate the popularity of them.

The following are the popular meta-search engines.

Brainboost is designed to provide specific answers to questions asked in natural language. Currently it only supports English.
Dogpile fetches results from Google, Yahoo!, Live Search, Ask.com, About.com, MIVA, LookSmart and several other popular search engines, including those from audio and video content providers.
Info.com provides results from leading search engines and pay-per-click directories, including Google, Yahoo!, Bing.com, Ask, LookSmart, About and Open Directory.

3.How can you get your site listed at major search sites; and how could you improve your site ranking?
You can just register my web site via the registration page of the search engine site. For example, you can just access the url to get your web site registered at Google.

http://www.google.com/addurl/

You can increase the number of hits on your website and therefore, the ranking of your site will improve accordingly. This can be achieved by the operation of bot. Just let a bot access repeatedly access your site.

References

Ince, D 2004, Developing distributed and e-commerce applications, 2nd edn, Harlow, Essex, UK: Addison – Wesley, pp. 391-406.

Shopping cart specifications II

2009-06-17T23:33:00.000-07:00

Differentiate between software systems such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, Business-to-Business e-commerce programs and Supply-Chain Management (SCM) software.

CRM is a software system which is utilised by an enterprise to enable its marketing departments to identify and target their best customers, manage marketing campaigns and generate quality leads for the sales team (Williams 2009). Most likely, CRM would be accessed by the internal users including management, sales team and marketing department.

SCM software is the oversight of materials, information, and finances as they move in a process from supplier to manufacturer to wholesaler to retailer to consumer. Supply chain management involves coordinating and integrating these flows both within and among companies. The ultimate goal of an effective supply chain management system is to maintain inventory tothe "Just-fit" level (TechTarget 2009). Since the whole supply-chain process is involved a few parties, SCM software will need to be accessed by those parties as well.

B2B e-commerce model is highly adopted in SCM system. This is because it requires every company in the supply chain to move quickly to process an order from a company which follows it in the chain and the old practices could no longer cope with the demands of the supply chain process. The stakeholders of the supply chain understand that they need to drop the old practices, (i.e. elimination of waste bureaucracy and indirect connections between companies). Instead, they require to get the online information and place orders within minutes. The volume of transactions is growing exponentially. The ideal here is for a company higher up in the supply chain to share its data with companies further down the chain (Ince 2004). The internet will be the platform for them to trade with one another and exchange the information. CRM is an internal system for an enteprise. Very unlikey, the client information will be shared with other companies and no direct trade will occur with other companies as well via the CRM system.

References

Ince, D 2004, Developing distributed and e-commerce applications, 2nd edn, Harlow, Essex, UK: Addison – Wesley, pp. 6-8.

TechTarget 2009, Supply chain Management, last updated 24 Feb, TechTarget, viewed 20 June 2009, <http://searchcio.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid182_gci214546,00.html#>.

Williams, E 2009, Customer Relationship Management, lasted updated 23 Sep 2008, TechTarget, viewed 20 June 2009, <http://searchcrm.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid11_gci213567,00.html>.

Shopping cart specifications I

2009-06-15T22:22:00.001-07:00

Develop the class diagram for the following shopping cart specifications:

A shoppingCart object is associated with only one creditCard and customer and to items in itemToBuy object. Persistent customer information such as name, billing address, delivery address, e-mail address and credit rating is stored in the customer object. The credit card object is associated with a frequentShopper discount object, if the credit rating for the customer is good. The customer can make or cancel orders as well as add and delete items to the shopping cart product. The credit card object contains the secure method for checking that the charge is authentic.

Modeling with UML

2009-06-15T22:21:00.001-07:00

Use Case, Class, Sequence, Collaboration, State chart, Activity, Component and Deployment diagrams are used in UML. Describe each of the eight (8) main diagrams used in UML.

I refer to Wikipedia (2009) for the following descriptions.

Use Case diagram shows the functionality provided by a system in terms of actors, their goals represented as use cases, and any dependencies among those use cases.

Class diagram describes the structure of a system by showing the system's classes, their attributes, and the relationships among the classes.

Sequence diagram shows how objects communicate with each other in terms of a sequence of messages. Also indicates the lifespans of objects relative to those messages.

Collabration diagram displays an interaction organized around the objects and their links to one another. Numbers are used to show the sequence of messages.

State Chart diagram describes many systems, from computer programs to business processes with standardized notation.

Activity diagram represents the business and operational step-by-step workflows of components in a system. An activity diagram shows the overall flow of control.

Component diagram depicts how a software system is split up into components and shows the dependencies among these components.

Deployment diagram serves to model the hardware used in system implementations, and the execution environments and artifacts deployed on the hardware.

Use Case and Activity Diagrams help you to describe system functional requirements - it is important to note that the user may be a human or another software or hardware process. In either case it is referred to as an actor. Use Cases help with the problem of definition of requirements and analysis.

The following Use Case diagram shows a credit card processing system. The actors are the parties who interact with the system and the use cases are the functionalities of the system.

Actor: Customer, Shipping & Customer Service

Use Case: Update Order Staus, Update Inventory, View Outsatanding Orders, Get Product Information, Check Order Status, Add Product to Order Form, View Order Form, Place Order, Credit Card Rejected & Calculate Total.

Fig1. (Source: SmartDraw 2007 template)

The following Activity diagram shows the workflow of the Order Processing system. It starts with 'Place Order' and ends with 'Receive Order'.

Fig.2 ( Source: SmartDraw 2007 template)

Use a table (see below) to start your thinking, where business processes are taken from the SME and an object modelling table is used to help show development of your ideas, using very simple object modelling techniques. Here is a simple way to model your objects. Use the level 1 and 3 tables for designing any object in the e-business application:
Level 1 - User and system tasks table

Fig.3

Level 2 – Abstraction

The next step is called finding the level of abstraction, where the business objects build on each other to form classes from the most general and abstract – root class, to the more refined and concrete. What could be more concrete than an automatic telling machine (ATM)? Here the actor is human and the use case are withdraw cash; make a deposit; or request a balance.

Level 3 - Object description table

Use the level 3 table below to detail your design with the example used in object-oriented design.

Fig.4

Reference

Wikipedia 2009, Unified Modeling Language, Wikipedia, The free encyclopedia, last modified 15 June 2009, Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., US, viewed 17 June 2009, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Modeling_Language>.

TP monitors and transaction protocols

2009-06-15T11:53:00.000-07:00

1.Give a description in your own words of the ACID properties of a transaction.

ACID stands for Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation & Durability which are the properties of a transaction. Atomic means that when a transaction is being executed, it is not interrupted by any other process from another transaction. Consistency means that a transaction must leave stored data in a consistent state until the whole (e.g. update) proccess has been completed. Isolation means that a transaction must not be interrupted by another transaction. Durability means that after a transaction has completed its operations, the results are reflected to the data (Ince 2005, pp.356-357).

2.Describe a TP monitor environment. How can a TP monitor stop an operating system being overwhelmed?

Normally, a TP monitor operates in a multi-thread system (e.g. mainframe computers or distributed client/server system) because it manages the concurrent execution of the threads and processes that make up a transaction and ensure that the ACID properties are enforced. It schedules threads so the low-priority transactions are allowed a smaller share of resources than high-priority transactions such as online transactions and enable load-balancing when an operating system is being overwhelmed (Ince 2005, pp. 363-364).

3.What is difference in load balancing with traditional and transactional MOM, RPC and conversations?
First of all, we need to have some undersrandings on these terminologies.

The process of sharing the processing load in a distributed system equally among the servers in the system, which is known as load balanacing (Ince 2005, p.386).

The process of executing code on a remote computer by invoking it from another computer often known as RPC (Ince 2005, p.259).

In Enterprise Javabean, message-oriented middleware (MOM) is a software which manages the transactions that pass from a client to a server and vice versa (Ince 2005, p.364).
In Enterprise Javabean, a conversation is a potentially long-running sequence of interactions (document exchanges) between multiple web services. In many situations, the backend logic triggered as part of these conversations may be transactional because of their transactional properties (Frolund, S and Govindarajan, K, n.d.).

Load balancing is a design to evenly distribute the resources among the servers. This is a server-side operation. The rest of them occur on both the client-side and the server-side operations.

4.Why is a two-phase commit protocol better than a one-phase atomic commit protocol?
One-phase atomic commit protocol can only ensure that all or none of the operations in a distributed transaction either commit or abort is to keep sending a commit or abort. Two-phase commit protocol can handle the operations of the nested transactions that one-phase atomic commit protocol can't handle. For example, a transaction that has many sub-transactions and each sub-transaction can make a decision to abort or provisional decision to commit to a transaction. A transaction will only commit if all its sub-transactions are provisionally committed. However, commitment can still occur even if some of its sub-transactions have been aborted. In order words, the sub-transactions can be aborted without causing their parent transaction to abort. This is because the parent transaction may contain code which handles any abortion of its sub-tansactions (Ince 2005, pp.358-360).

References

Ince, D 2004, Developing distributed and e-commerce applications, 2nd edn, Harlow, Essex, UK: Addison – Wesley, pp. 259,355-389.

Frolund, S and Govindarajan, K, n.d., Transactional Conversations, Hewlett-Packard Company, viewed 17 June 2009,<http://www.w3.org/2001/03/WSWS-popa/paper50>.

Concurrency terms

2009-06-14T07:10:00.000-07:00

Find definitions for eight terms and concepts used in threaded programming:

Thread Synchronisation - This is a popular terminology used in the programming languages such as .Net, Java, Python and ...It means the coordination of multiple threads that must access shared data in Java language (Venners 1997).

Locks - This can ensure that only one thread at a time is given access to a resource (Ince 2005 pp.341-342).

Deadlock - This occurs when there is a contention between two transactions for two items of data and would occur in all distributed systems where there is shared access; however, in those systems where there are a number of clients which hold data for a long time (the typical interactive system) it is a major occurrence (Ince 2005, p.351).

Semaphores - This is a protected variable or abstract data type which constitutes the classic method for restricting access to shared resources such as shared memory in a parallel programming environment. A counting semaphore is a counter for a set of available resources, rather than a locked/unlocked flag of a single resource (Wikipedia 2009).

Mutex (mutual exclusion) - Mutex algorithms are used in concurrent programming to avoid the simultaneous use of a common resource, such as a global variable, by pieces of computer code called critical sections. A critical section is a piece of code where a process or thread accesses a common resource. The critical section by itself is not a mechanism or algorithm for mutual exclusion. In other words, Mutex is a not default algorithm in a program which includes critical sections (Wikipedia 2009).

Thread - A thread is anexecution of a chunk of code which can be carried out in parallel with the execution ofother chunks of code. On a computer with a number of processors the threads can beexecuted concurrently, with each instruction of each thread being executed at the sametime (Ince 2005, p.336).

Event - This is an action or a request that is usually initiated outside the scope of a program and that is handled by a piece of code inside the program. Typically events are handled synchronous with the program flow, that is, the program has one or more dedicated places where events are handled. In the threaded programming environment, when one event holds up the thread, the other thread can make use of the processor that has been forced to be idle. For example, a request for some data from a computer resident on a wide area network suchas the Internet (Ince 2005, p.336).

Waitable timer - According to Microsoft Developer Network (2009), Waitable Timer is a synchronization object whose state is set to signaled when the specified due time arrives. The operations of threads are prioritised by the timer objects.

References

Ince, D 2004, Developing distributed and e-commerce applications, 2nd edn, Harlow, Essex, UK: Addison – Wesley, pp. 336-373.

Microsoft Developer Network 2009, Waitable Timer Objects, Library, viewed 15 June 2009, http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms687012(VS.85).aspx>.

Venners, B 1997, 'How the Java machine performs Thread Synchronization' , JAVAWORLD, posted 1 July, viewed 14 June 2009, <http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-07-1997/jw-07-hood.html>.

Wikipedia 2009, Semaphores (Programming), Wikipedia, The free encyclopedia, last modified 5 June 2009, Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., US, viewed 14 June 2009, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaphore_(programming)>.

Wikipedia 2009, Mutual exclusion, Wikipedia, The free encyclopedia, last modified 4 June 2009, Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., US, viewed 14 June 2009, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_exclusion>.

Authentication and Encryption systems

2009-06-13T03:04:00.000-07:00

1.Visit an e-commerce website and survey the mode of payment allowed. Would you trust the site with your business?

I have purchased goods from a few different e-commerce. Nearly all of them require me to settle the payments by a credit card. Just one or two can offer me an alternate payment method (e.g. paypal). To a great extent, I trust those e-commerce websites. Normally, I only purchase goods from the well-known companies such as Amazon, Symantec and other software distributors. Besies, I tend to use a virtual credit card with very low credit limit to make the payments because it would minimise the possible loss in case of fraud.

2.What measures should e-commerce provide to create trust among their potential customers? What measures can be verified by the customer?

Most of e-commerce websites have enabled SSL encryption to secure the communications between the websites and the clients. If the customer is able to view the web address begins with 'https' and the 'lock' image as illustrated below.

The website should have enabled the SSL encryption.

3.Visit the Verisign web site - what solutions does it offer for e-commerce?

Verisign offers a number of products and services to various types of customers. There are four main categories of its products.

Consumer Authentication - protect consumer online identities and accounts with a trusted, convenient authentication experience and behind-the-scenes, real-time fraud detection.
Enterprise Authentication - address business challenges and regulations around strong authentication, encryption, and digital signatures with secure and scalable PKI and OTP solutions.
Government Authentication - PKI and OTP solutions for Federal, state, and local agencies and government contractors.
Authentication for individuals - Digital signing, digital certificates and credentials for individuals and organizations to secure and protect online identities.

Not all of above are applicable to the e-commerce practice. Consumer Authentication would be designed for B2C e-commerce transactions and Enterprise Authentication is more for B2B e-commerce transactions.

4.Visit the TRUSTe web site. Describe what services and solutions are offered.

TRUSTe is an independent, privately held organisation which certifies the businesses with its Web Privacy Seal .and Email Privacy Seal. The following is the mission statement of TRUSTe.

TRUSTe helps consumers and businesses identify trustworthy online organizations through its Web Privacy Seal, Email Privacy Seal and Trusted Download Programs. TRUSTe resolves thousands of individual privacy disputes every year (TRUSTe n.d.).

In order to acquire a seal from TRUSTe, the busniesses need to meet the privacy rules set by TRUSTe as well as the legal requirements. However, some people just treat it as a marketinh tool rather a security benchmark (Cline 2003).

References

Cline J 2003, 'Web site privacy seals: Are they worth it?', Computerworld, network & internet, posted 8 May 2003, viewed 13 June 2009, <http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=81041>.

Truste n.d., Advancing Privacy and Trust for a Networked World, mission statement, viewed 13 June 2009, <http://www.truste.org/>.

VeriSign n.d., Products and Services, Verisign Inc., viewed 13 June 2009, <http://www.verisign.com/products-services/index.html>.

Pretecting and archiving data

2009-06-12T20:24:00.000-07:00

1.What makes a firewall a good security investment? Accessing the Internet, find two or three firewall vendors. Do they provide hardware, software or both?

Ince (2005) notes that a firewall is an extra layer of protection placed around a network or around a particular application. A firewall placed around a network will usually employ a router which can be programmed to deny access to a network, for example it can be programmed to deny access to any packets of data which have been sent to a particular dedicated port. The following diagram illustrates the operation of a simple firewall.Figure 1 A Simple Firewall (Ince 2005 Fig. 11.2)

My firm employs Check Point and WatchGuard as the firewalls for different sites. I myself installed Norton 360 developed by Symantec Corporation on my home machines, which also has the firewall facility. These three firewall products can possibly meet the needs of users from different markets. Check Point is very popular software firewall for enterprises and WatchGuard is a hardware firewall welcomed by SMEs. Norton 360 is a home anti-virus software that also acquires the personal firewall.

2.Find out if your university or workplace has a backup policy in place. Is it followed and enforced?

My firm certainly has a backup policy which is thoroughly implemented. It has multiple backup devices including magnetic tapes and optical disks. They just barely meet our needs and are still manageable. Apart from that, everyday we used up a few backup tapes and optical disks and as time gone by we have accumulated a huge volume of them. Therefore, the metadata of tapes and disks are getting more and more important, which highly affects the recovery process. We all know that the recovery of data is very time consuming and never an easy task. However, we are usually required to fulfil the requests from users with a tight time frame. As a result, this is crucial to implement an effective backup and recovery solution with holistic view.

3.Most of the antivirus software perform an active scanning of the user activity on the Internet, detecting downloads and attachments in e-mails. Hackers have readily available resources to create new viruses. How easy is it to find a virus writing kit?

From the given website, it doesn't take long for someone to create a virus. I just recall what happened about 9 to10 years ago. The 'ILOVEYOU' virus successfully attacked tens and thousands of computers around the world. It created super email storms over the networks in order to give denial-of-service (Dos) attacks to email services. The virus wass actually a simple VB program. After we had analysed the source code of the program, my colleague worked out a solution within 24 hours. The solution was to cheat the virus that the machine had got infected and therefore, it would not execute itself. How? The infected machine would have been inserted a registry key by 'ILOVEYOU' and the virus only attacked the computers wiithout this key. We inserted this key to all computers on the network as a 'vaccine'. According to Wikipedia (2009), 'ILOVEYOU' infected10 percent of all computers connected to the Internet.

References

Ince, D 2004, Developing distributed and e-commerce applications, 2nd edn, Harlow, Essex, UK: Addison – Wesley, pp. 321-322

Wikipedia 2009, ILOVEYOU, Wikipedia, The free encyclopedia, last modified 28 May 2009, Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., US, viewed 12 June, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ILOVEYOU>.

Electronic payments and security II

2009-06-10T07:35:00.000-07:00

1.What are cookies and how are they used to improve security?

Ince (2004) notes that 'a cookie is a file which is placed on a client running a browser and which usually contains details of a particular transaction, for example the products which someone has bought from an e-tailing site.'

According to Wikipedia (2009), there are a few uses of cookies.

Cookies were introduced to provide a way to implement a shopping cart a virtual device into which a user can store items they want to purchase as they navigate the site.
Cookies allow the server to know that the user is already authenticated, and therefore is allowed to access services or perform operations that are restricted to a user who is not logged in.
Many websites also use cookies for personalization based on users' preferences.
Some websites use the cookies to track internet users' web browsing habits for on-line advertising purpose (e.g. Google).

Users typically log in by inserting their credentials into a login page; cookies allow the server to know that the user is already authenticated, and therefore is allowed to access services or perform operations that are restricted to a user who is not logged in. In this sense, cookies become the authentication token of users' login.

2.Can the use of cookies be a security risk?

In general, a cookie itself is not dangerous. They may potentially infringe upon the host's privacy, but they are easily removed. A tracking cookie cannot cause any system instability. However, the use of cookies might trigger the following security risks.

Inaccurate identification - this problem might arise when multiple users share the same user account on a computer.
Cookie hijacking - attackers can use packet sniffing to steel the cookies which are being sent back and forth over the unencrypted http connections and then, intercept the cookies of other users and impersonate them on the relevant websites.
Cookie theft - by design the cookie specifications constrain cookies to be sent back only to the servers in the same domain as the server from which they originate. However, the client-side scripts can redirect the values of cookies to a different server. Thus, the attackers can collect the cookies of other users.
Cookie poisoning - while cookies are supposed to be stored and sent back to the server unchanged, an attacker may modify the value of cookies before sending them back to the server.
Cross-site cooking - this is similar to cookie poisoning, but the attacker exploits non-malicious users with vulnerable browsers, instead of attacking the actual site directly. The goal of such attacks may be to perform session fixation.
Inconsistent state on client and server - the use of cookies may generate an inconsistency between the state of the client and the state as stored in the cookie. If the user acquires a cookie and then clicks the "Back" button of the browser, the state on the browser is generally not the same as before that acquisition.

References

Ince, D 2004, Developing distributed and e-commerce applications, 2nd edn, Harlow, Essex, UK: Addison – Wesley, pp. 305-306.

Wikipedia 2009, HTTP cookie, Wikipedia, The free encyclopedia, last modified 3 June 2009, Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., US, viewed 7 June 2009,<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrusion_detection_system>.

Electronic payments and security I

2009-06-07T05:43:00.000-07:00

1.List and describe your experiences with a secure Web site.

Very often I use online banking services to settle my bills and manage my financial transactions. HSBC online banking website adopted two-factor authentication and is equiped with EV SSL certificates. Not only I need to logon it with my user id and password but also, enter a one time password generated by the given hardware token. The password is only effective for 15 seconds.

I have experience of purchasing goods from Amazon. When I make a payment for the selected items, I will have to sign in the secure server for processing the transaction. Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is adopted in the payment module of the Amazon website. There are a few methods to settle the payment. I have chosen the credit card option in my account since day one.

2.What is SET and how does it compare to SSL as a platform for secure electronic transaction? Is SET in common use?

Secure Electronic Transactions (SET) is a protocol which is used for sending credit card information over the Internet. It consists of three major components: Electronic Wallet, SET Server and Payment Server. For details, please refer to my previous blog entry.

Both SET and SSL employed Cryptography to secure the information exchanged over the Internet. This would be tremendous important for online transactions. SET was launched in 1996 but was not very popular in the market even though 'SET was ultimately the strongest technology for securing online payments, businesses tended toward the less sophisticated models as a means of establishing for themselves an online presence' (Free Encyclopedia of Ecommerce n.d.).

Wikipedia (2009) explains why SET could win the market due to the following factors:

Network effect - need to install client software (an e wallet).
Cost and complexity for merchants to offer support and comparatively low cost and simplicity of the existing SSL based alternative.
Client-side certificate distribution logistics.

Free Encyclopedia of Ecommerce (n.d.) also claims that SET is a sophisticated model but users favour the less sophisticated model, SSL. Nowadays, SSL has been the most popular protocol for securing e-commerce transactions. Lee, Malkin & Nahum (2007) have evaluated the adoption and evolution of Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)/ Transport Layer Security (TLS) through 19,000 servers. Most of the well-known e-commerce sites (e.g. Amazon, Buy.com), auction sites (e.g., eBay), on-line banking (e.g., Citibank, Chase), stock trading (e.g., Schwab), and even government (e.g., irs.gov) have adopted the SSL protocol. Communication with these sites is secured by SSL or its variant, TLS, which are used to provide authentication, privacy, and integrity. A key component of the security of SSL/TLS is the cryptographic strength of the underlying algorithms used by the protocol. It is crucial to ensure that servers using the SSL protocol have employed it properly. The adoption rate of SSL 3.0 is very positive.The on-going developments of SSL/TLS really enable them to win the e-commerce market.

References

Free Encyclopedia of Ecommerce n.d., Secure Electronic Transaction (SET), <http://ecommerce.hostip.info/pages/925/Secure-Electronic-Transaction-SET.html>.

Lee HK, Malkin T & Nahum E 2007, 'Cryptographic strength of ssl/tls servers: current and recent practices', Internet Measurement Conference: Proceedings of the 7th ACM SIGCOMM conference on Internet measurement, San Diego, California, USA, pp.83-92, also available as pdf file, <http://www.imconf.net/imc-2007/papers/imc130.pdf>.

Wikipedia 2009, Secure Electronic Transaction, Wikipedia, The free encyclopedia, last modified 1 April 2009, Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., US, viewed 7 June 2009, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_electronic_transaction>.

Designing for a secure framework

2009-06-01T06:23:00.000-07:00

Find out about SET and the use of RSA 128-bit encryption for e-commerce.

SET is a protocol which is used for sending credit card information over the Internet. It consists of three major components as listed below:

Electronic Wallet - stores the customer's credit card details in an encrypted file on the customer's computer. At the same time, the software associated with SET will produce a public and a private key for processing.
SET Server - attaches the digitial signature to the encrypted credit card details received from customers and then, send them to the payment server located at the bank or credit card company.
Payment Server - validates the credit card details received from the SET server located at the vendor and then, sends a receipt to both the vendor and the customer.

The beauty of SET is to protect the customer's credit card details and the transcation details from being disclosed to the people handling the transactions (Ince 2004, pp. 319-320).

RSA is the most well-known public key cryptograpy system, which was developed by three professors: Ronald Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adelman at MIT. RSA128-bit encryption is an algorithm that uses a system of public and private keys to encrypt and decrypt messages over an insecure line (Ince 2004, p. 314). Normally, 128-bit is refering to a symmetric key size which is equivalent to a RSA 3072-bit asymmetric key size, in terms of the level of security (Kaliski 2003). Certainly, the longer the key size means the harder to be broken. Kirk (2007) claims that 'the strength of the encryption used now to protect banking and e-commerce transactions on many Web sites may not be effective in as few as five years, a cryptography expert has warned after completing a new distributing-computing achievement'. Kaliski (2003) also points out that RSA1024-bit will be able to protect the security of data until 2010. By that time, the distributed computation capacity will be to break the encryption.

Both SET and RSA encryption can secure the data exchanged in the Internet, which is extremely important in e-commerce transactions.

What can you find out about network and host-based intrusion detection systems?

A network intrusion detection system (NIDS) is an intrusion detection system that tries to detect malicious activity such as denial of service attacks, port scans or even attempts to crack into computers by monitoring network traffic (Wikipedia 2009).

A host-based intrusion detection system (HIDS) consists of an agent on a host which identifies intrusions by analyzing system calls, application logs, file-system modifications (binaries, password files, capability/acl databases) and other host activities and state (Wikipedia 2009).

What is 'phishing'?

Webopedia (2009) gives the following definition of 'phishing'?

The act of sending an e-mail to a user falsely claiming to be an established legitimate enterprise in an attempt to scam the user into surrendering private information that will be used for identity theft. The e-mail directs the user to visit a Web site where they are asked to update personal information, such as passwords and credit card, social security, and bank account numbers, that the legitimate organization already has. The Web site, however, is bogus and set up only to steal the user’s information.

As mentioned above, very often phishing scams rely on placing links in e-mail messages, on Web sites, or in instant messages that seem to come from a service that you trust, like your bank, credit card company, or social networking site. We can identify 'phishing' scams or fake websites by carefully examining the suspicious website addresses:

any typos on the address,
whether the address is a masked address, and
whethere extended validation SSL certificate is applied

This will alert us to the phishing scams or fake sites.

References

Ince, D 2004, Developing distributed and e-commerce applications, 2nd edn, Harlow, Essex, UK: Addison – Wesley, pp 295-320.

Kaliski, B 2003, TWIRL and RSA Key Size, RSA Laboratories, 6 May, RSA Security, viewed 6 June 2009, <http://www.rsa.com/rsalabs/node.asp?id=2004>.

Kirk, J 2007, Researcher: RSA 1024-bit Encryption not Enough, PCWorld, 24 May, viewed 6 June 2009, <http://www.pcworld.com/article/132184/researcher_rsa_1024bit_encryption_not_enough.html>.

Wikipedia 2009, Intrusion Detection System, Wikipedia, The free encyclopedia, last modified 3 June 2009, Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., US, viewed 7 June 2009,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrusion_detection_system>.

Webopedia 2009, phishing, last updated 1 May 2009, <http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/p/phishing.html>.

WK7:End of the line

2009-05-29T18:37:00.000-07:00

What are the hosting solutions?

There are many web hosting solutions in the market. The hosting services allows individuals and organizations to provide their own website accessible via the World Wide Web. In the context of the Rail application, OTBS, we can start with a simple a hosting solution at the development stage. Later, when we move to the production stage, a complex hosting solution for a more comprehensive package that provides database support and application development platforms, is required. According to Wikipedia (2009), the following hosting solutions can be considered for OTBS.

Shared web hosting (development stage) - one's Web site is placed on the same server as many other sites, ranging from a few to hundreds or thousands. Typically, all domains may share a common pool of server resources, such as RAM and the CPU. This solution will be more cost-effective as we can run a few projects one server.

Virtual Dedicated Server (production stage) - It divides server resources into virtual servers, where resources can be allocated in a way that does not directly reflect the underlying hardware. This solution will be more cost-effective as we can run a few projects one server.

Dedicated hosting service - The user gets his or her own Web server and gains full control over it. The user has full administrative access to the box, which means the client is responsible for the security and maintenance of his own dedicated box.

Managed hosting service - the user gets his or her own Web server but is not allowed full control over it. The user is disallowed full control so that the provider can guarantee quality of service by not allowing the user to modify the server or potentially create configuration problems. (Engine Yard provides this service, managed ralis hosting.)

Will our Rails applications run on a cloud computing service in future?

Cloud computing is a new type of hosting platform that allows customers powerful, scalable and reliable hosting based on clustered load-balanced servers and utility billing. Removing single-point of failures and allowing customers to pay for only what they use versus what they could use Wikipedia (2009). Without doubt, OTBS will be moved to the cloud computing service one day as this is the trend for web applications. The internet will be the platform on which the web application run.

Can we make a deployment and maintenance plan by team consensus?

According to Hartl & Prochazka (2007), I work out the following deployment and maintenance plan for OTBS.

Software/Hardware option - Use Mongrel as the OTBS appliaction server and deploy to some flavour of Linux. This is recommended to run Apache in front of a single Mongrel if taking dedicated hosting solution.

Run OTBS in production mode - Deployed OTBS needs to be run in the production environment. The purpose of this section is to practice the steps need to deploy OTBS.

Configure Production Server - Install the same software on the production server that we have running on the development machine and configure them accordingly.

Scaling - Use caching to off load the the production server. Rails has a powerful caching system to help avoid the computational and database access expense of generating dynamic HTML.

Version Control - Capistrano is vey good version control system which can automate deployment and roll back of application source code. It optimises single-server or multiserver deployments.

Debugging - Use production.log to debug OTBS, the entire application.

References

Hartl, M. & Prochazka, A. 2007, Railspace, Building a social networking site with Ruby on Rails. Addison Wesley Professional, pp.505-516.

Wikipedia 2009, web hosting service, last updated 17 June, Wikimedia Foundation Inc., US, viewed 22 June 2009, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_hosting_service>.

WK6:Enjoying the Ride

2009-05-28T18:36:00.000-07:00

Are we certain that Ruby on Rails is the right platform for Web development?

Ruby on Rails (ROR) is a good choice for the development of OTBS in terms of the cost, flexibility and scalability. ROR is an open source web application framework for the Ruby programming language. In the market, ROR is getting more popular and is welcomed by developers. We can find many plugins and programs on the Internet. Apart from that, the Agile development methodology can enable us to build the scaffolding of OTBS and put it on production within a short time. Later, we can enhance it or add a new module subject to the business needs.

.Net and Java are the most common programming frameworks in the market. Both can be considered to develop OTBS.

Microsoft .NET’s Common Language Runtime (CLR) and Java’s Java Virtual Machine (JVM) are the most popular web application development frameworks. Without installing either one on your computer, many web applications will be able to run on your computer.

The .NET framework's Common Language Runtime (CLR) is much similar to Java Virtual Machine (JVM), in terms of garbage collection, security, just in time compilation (JIT).

Java platform views the Internet world as one language running on different operating systems (OS), whereas .NET framework views the world running on one OS with a programmers having choice of multiple languages. Therefore Java platform interpolates multiple operating systems, and .NET framework interpolates multiple languages. Therefore, SUN Java does not focus on the GUI development as we know the server side programming does not really need GUI. On the contrary, Microsoft dominates the client side desktop market.

So far Microsoft has issued three development tools including C#, VB.NET and C++, including for developments plus five execution containers hosting this runtime, namely: ASP.NET, Windows Shell, VBA scripting host for Office suite, Visual Forms container and IE (Internet Explorer). Much like Java it contains a rich set of API and lib.

Besides, Microsoft has done an excellent job to standardise .Net framework CLI/CLR in European Computer Manufacturing Association (ECMA) and standardise Simple Oject Access protocol (SOAP) through W3C. These will help to take hold the web application development market.

Reference

Banerjee A 2001, .NET framework comparison with Java Architecture, Mindcracker Network, viewed 26 April 2009, <http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/UploadFile/abanerjee/DotNetforJava11292005023419AM/DotNetforJava.aspx>.

WK5:Admiring the scenery

2009-05-27T22:47:00.000-07:00

Part A: Survey of mobile device capability and Web 2.0 tools

What is Web 2.0?

First of all, we need to have an idea of what Web 2.0 is about. It has been a very hot topic in the Internet world. At this stage, Web 2.0 is still very cloudy and many people (including researchers, developers and users) are having different interpretations on it. I have actually read through a few comtemporary research arcticles and can only give a very general summary based on the majority views.

Without doubt, Web 2.0 encourages interaction and collaborative work through the Internet no matter you are a developer or an user. Nowadays, many popular websites such as FaceBook, Google Maps and My Space are operating according to this concept (O'Reilly 2005). Social networking is one of the outcomes of Web 2.0. From the perspective of developers, web becomes the development platform by which applications the services are delivered (Pilgrim 2008).

Wigand, Benjamin & Birkland (2008) claims that '...Web 2.0 is a paradigm shift how users use the web, a development that questions everything that has been developed and applied so far. Pilgrim (2008) also agrees with the shift in the paradigm of users' behaviour. In addition, he criticises that the rush to embrace Web 2.0 has resulted in many developers overlooking principles of good design and usability established over the last decade. This is an imperative issue for designing OTBS with the concept of web 2.0 but shouldn't go beyond the pre-defined scope.

1.Find out and recommend what type of mobile devices are suitable for:Just the SMS message service;

a.Just the SMS message service;

I have reviewed a few taxi-booking systems in the major cities such as Perth, Ho Chi Minh City, Sinagaporeb and etc. This is practical and economically and technically feasiable to use the SMS message service the OTBS. In the market, there are many taxi booking systems are available and they employs SMS as one of the communication means between the passengers and the service centre.

b.The full user experience via SMS, GPS Taxi tracking and Google Maps

In Ho Chi Minh City, the taxi booking system, DiaDiem integrates the global positioning system (GPS) and touch screen devices inside a vehicle with the ability to communicate with a mobile phone or website. It focuses on three different perspectives: the customer, call center and taxi.The customer will first use a website, a mobile application or an SMS message to place a taxi pickup order. The website will be launched by DiaDiem later. The order placing process is conducted with the support of a DiaDiem software via a transmission medium (SMS, GPRS or Wi-Fi)( TN 2009).

2.Describe any new hardware, networking, software, systems, procedures and personnel that would be needed by the taxi company Website to support this stage 2 development.

Hardware: touch screen devices with GPS in each taxi, Cell phone or wireless devices with GPRS or 3G that can browse Google map

Software: OTBS backend server and WebSMS software used by the service centre; and Google map used by both passengers and drivers

Networking and system: SMS system including WebSMS, GPS system for GPS tracking

Implementation/Training: cost incured on the implementation and training

Part B: The enhanced customer experience through Web 2.0 technology

1.Use a table to describe how the customer experience is improved by:
a.Horizontal scalability (eg ordering a taxi by mobile phone call or SMS, mobile Internet, desktop or laptop computer)
b.Service oriented features (eg SMS updates using location data, knowing the driver’s name before the ride and being greeted by your name etc)
c.Other customer services enabled by Web 2.0 (eg reputation system)

Part C: Online Taxi Business Process Modelling

Apart from the business basics of offering a clean car, safe driving, being on time, consider the business processes involved and construct a Simple Online Taxi business process model using any suitable drawing tool.

References

O'Reilly, T 2005, What Is Web 2.0:Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software, O'Reilly Media, Inc, viewed 27 May 2009,
<http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html>.

Pilgrim, JC 2008, 'Improving the usability of web 2.0 applications', Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia:Proceedings of the nineteenth ACM conference on Hypertext and hypermedia, Pittsburgh, PA, USA, pp. 239-240, <http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/1380000/1379144/p239-pilgrim.pdf?key1=1379144&key2=9831173421&coll=GUIDE&dl=GUIDE&CFID=38231369&CFTOKEN=10579826>.

TN 2009, First GPS Integrated Taxi booking system to debut, Vietnam Business Finance, posted 27 April, viewed 6 June 2009, <http://www.vnbusinessnews.com/2009/04/first-gps-integrated-taxi-booking.html>.

Wigand, TR, Benjamin, IR & Birkland, LHJ 2008, 'Web 2.0 and beyond: implications for electronic commerce', ACM International Conference Proceeding Series: Proceedings of the 10th international conference on Electronic commerce, Innsbruck, Austria, vol 342, article 7, also available in pdf format, <http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/1410000/1409550/a7-wigand.pdf?key1=1409550&key2=9823863421&coll=GUIDE&dl=GUIDE&CFID=38172456&CFTOKEN=67009489>.
Zajicek, M 2007, 'Web 2.0: Hype or Happiness?', ACM International Conference Proceeding Series:Proceedings of the 2007 international cross-disciplinary conference on Web accessibility (W4A), Banff, Canada, vol 225 pp. 35-39, <http://www.w4a.info/2007/prog/k2-zajicek.pdf>.

Evaluation Report for Assignment 1

2009-05-17T07:13:00.000-07:00

Dear all peers,

The following is my elevator pitch for this blog.

I have shared my research on E-system through this blog. I really wrote down my experience of doing the exercise and workshops of course, including my joys and frustrations.

I have been an IT specialist for over 15 years and truly I have gained my expertise through my job. I am good at database management, business process analysis and project implementation. This time is really a good chance for me to extend my knowledge to e-commerce systems. To refresh me a lot even though I have got many troubles to get PHP, MySQL, Apache and Instant Rails to work on my computers. This is a good experience to expose myself to Open Source World and Online community.

I think I have spent quite some time on the research of Online Community or social networking. This is my favourite topic. You can enjoy it.

All the while, I have been very behind in the class. This is the main reason I don’t interact very with my course mates. I do get helps from Sam Kwong and Dennis Leung and refer to their blogs a lot. Like Workshop 3, I found it difficult to complete it until I read through Sam’s blog.

Honestly, the coverage of ITC 594 is very broad and not easy to complete the programming exercise. Anyway, I have been benefitted through the practical work. Now I know the free tools such as MySQL Query Browser, Aptana Studio ... which are not worse than MS SQL Query Analyer, Visual Studio...

If I had more time, I believe I would do much better.

Thank you for reading my blog.

WK4: Riding the Rails with Ruby

2009-05-16T07:55:00.000-07:00

1.)If you are running Instant Rails, you can start Ruby Console Windows as illustrated below:

I execute "dogyears.rb" at Ruby Console Windows as follows:

2.)The difference between Ruby and Javascript in terms of the syntax. Take "If... statement" as an example, there is no "end" for it in Javascript. I extract the script from the dogyears program and rewrite in Javascript. Please see below.

Ruby

if age <> 110
puts "Frankly, I don't believe you."
else
puts "That's #{age*7} in dog years."
end

JavaScript

if (age<>
{
document.write("Negative age?!? I don't think so.");
}
else if (age <> 110)
{
document.write("Frankly, I don't believe you.");
else
{
document.write("That's #{age*7} in dog years.");
}

3.) JavaScript and Ruby both are metaprogramming tools and object oriented programming languages. They have the following similarities:

Both are web appliaction development tools.
Both are scripting language (lightweight programming language).
Both are usually embedded directly into HTML/XML pages
Both are interpreted language (means that scripts execute without preliminary compilation)

4.) I have written the programs "catnames.rd" and "fizzbuzz.rd" illustralled as follows:

The results of the above programs are listed below:

Reference

W3Schools n.d., JavaScript Introduction, viewed on 17 May 2009, <http://www.w3schools.com/JS/default.asp>.

WK3: MySQL and Database design

2009-05-11T07:54:00.000-07:00

1.)I install the tool, MySQL Query Browser verson 1.2.17. which is not a bad tool. However, later I realise that PhpMyAdmin bundled with Instant Rails (IR) is even better.

I use MySQL Query Browser to execute the script to create a few databases including (OTBS, dev_OTBS and test_OTBS) and created each database a table, "passengers".

I generated the following script from MySQL Query Browser

CREATE TABLE 'otbs'.'passengers' (
'index' int(11) NOT NULL auto_increment,
'name' varchar(20) default NULL,
'job_id' varchar(5) default NULL,
'contact_number' int(8) default NULL,
'suburb_origin' varchar(15) default NULL,
'street' varchar(20) default NULL,
'street_number' int(4) default NULL,
'building' varchar(8) default NULL,
'suburb_destination' varchar(20) default NULL,
'passenger_number' int(1) default NULL,
'taxi_type' varchar(8) default NULL,
'Call_date' date default NULL,
'time_required' varchar(4) default NULL,
PRIMARY KEY ('index'))
ENGINE=MyISAM AUTO_INCREMENT=2 DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;

2.)Start "Manage Rails Applications..." from IR

3.)Create the Rails application by entering "rails -d mysql OTBS" at ..railapps>

4.)Hit "Refresh List", check OTBS and run "Start with mongrel"

5.)Test the connection by entering "http://127.0.0.1:3000/"

I need to copy "libmySQL.dll" from \mysql\bin\ to \ruby\bin\ to resolve the following error

I need to config "database.yml" to resolve the following error:

Mysql::Error in Rails/infoController#properties unknown database

Adding the following entries to "database.yml"
development: adapter: mysql encoding: utf8 database: dev_OTBS host: localhost username: root password:

test: adapter: mysql encoding: utf8 database:test_OTBS host: localhost username: root password:

production: adapter: mysql encoding: utf8 database: OTBS host: localhost username: root password:

6.)Create Model for Passenger by typing "ruby script/generate model passenger" at ..railapps\OTBS>

7.)Create Controller for Passenger by typing "ruby script/generate controller passenger" at ..railapps\OTBS>

8.)Install "Scaffold" plugin to create a set controller methods for CRUD operations of OTBS by typing "ruby script/plugin install scaffolding" at ..railapps\OTBS>

9.)Install paginate plugin to work with Scaffolding by typing "ruby script/plugin install svn://errtheblog.com/svn/plugins/classic_pagination"

However, this is not very easy to get it installed on your machine based on my experience. First of all, you need to unblock the snv connection from the firewall of your machine. Secondly, the connection is not very stable and get time out very often. Therefore, I switch to another plugin, "Will_paginate". You can download it from the following website. Unfornately, it doesn't work my version of Ruby (1.8.6). Please don't attempt!

http://github.com/mislav/will_paginate/tree/master

10.)Modify the controller of "passenger" (i.e. passenger_controller.rb) by adding "
scaffold:passenger" (Aptana is a good programming tool!)

11.)Test the connection by entering "http://127.0.0.1:3000/passenger" Geat! I can get it to work eventually. It takes me a week to work it out.

I use Mongrel instead of WEBrick even through most of Ruby tutorials are using WEBrick.

I qouted the definition from (trac n.d.)

What is Mongrel?

Mongrel is a fast HTTP library and server for Ruby that is intended for hosting Ruby web applications of any kind using plain HTTP rather than FastCGI or SCGI. It is framework agnostic and already supports Ruby On Rails, Og+Nitro, Camping, and IOWA frameworks. Mongrel was originally written by Zed A. Shaw.

Trac n.d., What is Mongrel, <http://mongrel.rubyforge.org/>.

WK2: Understanding of MVC

2009-05-09T06:01:00.000-07:00

Ruby on Rails is adopting the principle of Convention over configuration.

What is Convention over configuration?

It is a software design paradigm which seeks to decrease the number of decisions that developers need to make, gaining simplicity, but not necessarily losing flexibility.

When the convention implemented by the tool you are using matches your desired behavior, you enjoy the benefits without having to write configuration files. When your desired behavior deviates from the implemented convention, then you configure your desired behavior. In brief, you would write less code and less repetition (Wikipedia 2009).

What is MVC?

I qouted the following paragrahs from (Squeak 2006).

MVC stands for Model-View-Controller, which is a paradigm that the user input, the modeling of the external world, and the visual feedback to the user are explicitly separated and handled by three types of object, each specialized for its task.

The view manages the graphical and/or textual output to the portion of the bitmapped display that is allocated to its application.

The controller interprets the mouse and keyboard inputs from the user, commanding the model and/or the view to change as appropriate.

The model manages the behavior and data of the application domain, responds to requests for information about its state (usually from the view), and responds to instructions to change state (usually from the controller).

After reading the article, "The Model-View-Controller Design Pattern", I can grasp the concept of MVC much better. It illustrates the application of MVC very well by a simple program design. It describes the responsibilities and the characteristics of Model, View and Controller in the design plus the interactions among those three. The followng illustrate the responsbilities of MVC in the program design.

Source: Moock C (2004) http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/articles/mv_controller.html

The MVC paradigm can be applied to a full scale project or just a button on an user interface of an application.

References

Moock C (2004), The Model-View-Controller Design Pattern, Adobe Developer Connection, viewed 10 May 2009, <http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/articles/mv_controller.html >.

Squeak 2006, MVC, last updated 16 Jan 2006, Squeak Swiki, viewed 9 May 2009, <http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/1767>.

Wikipedia 2009, Convention over configuration, Wikipedia, The free encyclopedia, last modified 3 May 2009, Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., US, viewed 10 May 2009, ,<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_over_Configuration>.

WK1: What is "Ruby on Rails"?

2009-05-08T08:07:00.000-07:00

First of all, we need to have an overview on "Ruby on Rails".

Ruby is a cross-platform interpreted language which has many features in common with other ‘scripting’ languages such as Perl and Python. However, its version of object orientation is more thorough than those languages and, in many respects, it has more in common with the great-granddaddy of ‘pure’ OOP languages, Smalltalk. The Ruby language was created by Yukihiro Matsumoto (commonly known as ‘Matz’) and it was first released in 1995.

Rails (often called simply “Rails”) is a framework for building web applications with Ruby.

Honestly, it was not easy to get it to work properly. Basically, it is just a development tool and therefore, I need another two components for the MVC project which are the web server and the database. I chose Apache and MySQL as the other two components. I have some exprience with the MVC development approach. The tools I am familiar with are SQL Server, IIS, ASP, VB script and Javascript. I have ever used these tools for the MVC project.

I have taken hours to install Ruby and MySQL on my Vista machine. I just think my Vista machine is not very stable and also, I am not sure whether I have installed the right version of Ruby and MySQL on it. With such uncertinty in mind, I decided to take a step back and download the comparatively mature version of Apache, MySQL, PHP and Ruby and installed on my another machine on which Windows XP are running. Finally I take a short cut by installing Instant Rails. However, I can't believe I have been struggling for a couple days with the setup of "Ruby on Rails".

In the first place, I really wanted to take a shortcut by installing "Instant Rails" on XP machine. However, I couldn't get it tp work very well. The problem is I have actually installed MySQL 5, Apache 2 and PHP 5 on my machince and then, I still put on "Instant Rails". Basically, two different versions of the mentioned software are running on my machines. I have been working very hard to resolve the conflicts among them. Then, I switch to my Vista machine and try to install "Instant Rails" again. Before I do this, I need to uninstall MySQL & Ruby from this machine first. I couldn't believe I could still get a strange error. This time the PHP library couldn't be loaded. Eventually, I could manage it to function as expected after a few tries. The following Youtube video clip is an excellent demonstration on installing "Instant Rails" on Vista. Great ! I can move on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbKV1sndLGo&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fbroadcast%2Eoreilly%2Ecom%2F2008%2F12%2Finstalling%2Dinstant%2Drails%2Don%2Dwi%2Ehtml&feature=player_embedded

I summerise the steps as follows:

1.Unzip InstantRails-2.0-win.zip
2.Click OK to locate config files
3.Manage Rails Applications
4.Creata New Rails App...
5.Create a New Rails Application by typing "rails hello" at command line
6.Start with Mongrel
7.Test the host with IE by typing "http://127.0.0.1:3000/"
8.Diplay "Welcome aboard" web page

9.Open Ruby Console Window to generate code
10.Go to application directory (e.g...rails_apps\hello>ruby script/generate controller hello index)
11.Open Windows EXplorer to view the files of hello
12.test "hello" with IE by typing "http://127.0.0.1:3000/hello"

Great! This is the first web application I created by Ruby on Rails

References

Collingbourne, H. 2008, The Little Book Of Ruby, 2nd edn, Sapphiresteel Software, Dark Neon Ltd., also available as pdf file, viewed 9 MArch 2009,

XML Introduction

2009-05-02T01:11:00.000-07:00

It is relatively simple to verify that a document is well-formed or validated XML, because the rules of well-formedness and validation of XML are designed for portability of tools. The idea is that any tool designed to work with XML files will be able to work with XML files written in any XML language (or XML application). You can use Firefox or Internet Explorer (which is embedded with XML parser) to load XML documents. Besides you can parse the XML documents in Ruby (Wikipedia 2009).

If the XML schema for business sector can be standardised, it will greatly improve the data exchange in e-commerce transactions. As I mentioned earlier, HKIPD provides the efiling services to filers so they can choose to file their Trademark/Patent/Design applications via the internet. Basically, the filers need to convert all the supporting documents to the XML format according to the schema issued by HKIPD and submit them together with the application to the designated website. For patent applications, sometimes the supporting documents are over hundred or even thousand pages and can be found from other overseas IP offices. If the XML schema is standardised in the Intellectual Property context, this will enhance the data exchange among within the industry.

W3C defines "SMIL" as follows:

The Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL, pronounced "smile") enables simple authoring of interactive audiovisual presentations. SMIL is typically used for "rich media"/multimedia presentations which integrate streaming audio and video with images, text or any other media type. SMIL is an easy-to-learn HTML-like language, and many SMIL presentations are written using a simple text-editor.

With using it, the multimedia presentations on the Internet will be handled by the same standard. This will greatly ease the multimedia development over the Internet.

References

W3C 2003, Synchronized Multimedia, W3C Interaction Domain, viewed on 28 April 2009, <http://www.w3.org/AudioVideo/>.

Wikipedia 2009, XML, Wikipedia, The free encyclopedia, last modified 27 April 2009, Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., US, viewed 30 April 2009, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML>.

Application Server Platforms in e-commerce

2009-05-01T07:52:00.000-07:00

The top Database Systems suppliers have issued their e-commerce products/solutions. Refer to the following table, you would see MySQL and its partners have issued the most e-commerce applications. All the while, MySQL is an open source database system as being claimed "The world's most popular open source database" in its official website.

What is AJAX?

I summarise the information about AJAX from (W3Schools n.d.). AJAX stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, which is not a new programming language, but a technique for creating better, faster, and more interactive web applications. With AJAX, your JavaScript can communicate directly with the server, using the JavaScript XMLHttpRequest object. With this object, your JavaScript can trade data with a web server, without reloading the page. AJAX uses asynchronous data transfer (HTTP requests) between the browser and the web server, allowing web pages to request small bits of information from the server instead of whole pages.The AJAX technique makes Internet applications smaller, faster and more user-friendly.

The web standards used in AJAX are well defined, and supported by all major browsers. AJAX applications are browser and platform independent. In other words, the web pages that developed by AJAX can be run across different platforms (e.g. .NET or Java). Now "Web 2.0" gives us a direction of future development of the Internet. I quote the following statement from (Wikipedia 2009).

Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as a platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform.

Banerjee (2001) believed that Java and .Net will converge one day as a single platform before the concept of "Web 2.0" was introduced in 2004. The Internet is becoming a develpment platform. It is moving a step forward by using AJAX to develop the internet applications. AJAX can enrich the web interfaces so that the interactivities of web applications are highly improved. For example, Flickr adopted the Web 2.0 cencept. Nowadays enterprises are adopting the approach of social network. Instant Message is widely used in some commerical organisation. It also means AJAX will be taking an important role in the enterprise software architecture. The corporate interanet or extranet will be moving to this direction.

The mode-view-controller (MVC) is the paradigm of distributed system. In MVC, the model represents the information (the data access) of the application; the view corresponds to elements of the user interface such as text, checkbox items, and so forth; and the controller manages the communication of data and the business logics used to manipulate the data to and from the model (Wikipedia 2009).

Actionscript and Ruby on Rail both object oriented pragramming language and use MVC paradigm to develop web based applications.

References

Banerjee A 2001, .NET framework comparison with Java Architecture, Mindcracker Network, viewed on 26 April 2009, <http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/UploadFile/abanerjee/DotNetforJava11292005023419AM/DotNetforJava.aspx>.

W3Schools n.d., AJAX Introduction, viewed on 24 April 2009, <http://www.w3schools.com/Ajax/ajax_intro.asp>.

Wikipedia 2009, Web 2.0, Wikipedia, The free encyclopedia, last modified 1 May 2009, Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., US, viewed 29 April 2009, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0>.

Wikipedia 2009, Model–view–controller, Wikipedia, The free encyclopedia, last modified 1 May 2009, Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., US, viewed 29 April 2009, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model-view-controller>.

PHP and MySQL database access

2009-04-29T09:12:00.000-07:00

I created a database named "mydatabase" and a table named "employees" in MySQL.

I inserted one record into the Employees table and try to execute the PHP script to show the record.

I always get the error message "HTTP 500 - Internal server error..." and then I check the Apache errorlog and find out the real cause is "PHP Fatal error: Call to undefined function mysql_connect()". Finally, after I have read through the following url, I know how to fix the problems now.

http://docs.phplivesupport.com/viewarticle.php?uid=1&aid=73&pid=3

I really don't know why I always engage with the setup problems but really thank God I can resolve them eventually. This is a good exprience.

I insert a new record through "add_record.html".

The new record is uploaded to the table correctly by "add_record.php".

I execute the script show_records.php to display multiple records.

Perfume Order Form

2009-04-28T05:36:00.002-07:00

I modified a pizza order form sourced from (Pickering, Powers & Johnson 1996) and which becomes the following Perfume Order form.

***************************************************
French Perfume

Pricing:

high
medium
low

Quantity

Brand Name

Fragrance Accessories:

Body Spray
Body Lotion
Shower Gel
Body Mist
Aftershave
Deodorant
Body Roll On

Name

Address

***************************************************

Not long ago I wrote a web form illustrated below which is being used in my form for handling IT equipment loan requests. The web form is an ASP web page written by both Visual Basic script and Java script, which is running on Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) platform. Behind the scene, the program is very complex as it incorporates a lot of business logics. In brief, it serves the following purposes:

Check the access right of users as a measure of security
Capture the data from users
Validate the data through the field controls, the client side programming
Pass the data to the middle tier programmig for examination (the business logics incorporated in the store procedures, the middle tier programming)
Click "Submit" to post the data to the database, the backend server (if no error is found)
Repeat step 2 to 4 until the data is posted successfully (if error(s) is/are found)

Can you modify the script to process the form?

The answer can be Yes or No. It really depends on how large degree you have modified the scripts of the form. Normally the web form will not be workable in other system ( I do not mean the platform e.g. IIS or Apache) even though you have modified the source codes/scripts. Because the web form is just the user interface of the web application and the business logics would be embedded in the client side programming for "thick client" and in the middleware or backend server for "thin client". For the web application with think client approach, you can modify the scripts of the web form according to the business logics of your application and process it on your system. However, this is not an easy task, you nearly reprogram the application in order to make it to work on your system. For thin client application, this is much more possible, you only need to change the field controls of the form to meet the requirements of the business logics.

Reference

Pickering G, Powers S & Johnson R 1996, Javascript How-To: The Definitive Javascript Problem-Solver, CH08, HT0801.HTM, CD-ROM, Waite Group Press.

User Input for database access with PHP

2009-04-28T05:36:00.001-07:00

I don't know why the parameter doesn't show on the php page but definitely, it has been successfully passed to it. Any idea? Finally, I can work out why the parameter was shown on the php web page. This is due to the syntax issue of different version of php. I replaced the varaible $myname with $_GET["myname"]. It works.

Some server practice with PHP

2009-04-28T05:35:00.000-07:00

I don't know why I can't get the values of the variable including ($REMOTE_ADDR $SERVER_NAME and $PHP_SELF) when running the EX61.php. But it works well with "hello_world.php" as well as "php_info.php".

After I have checked the ITC 594 Forum, I resolve the problem now.

Thanks a lot!

Network and programmng framework

2009-04-25T07:38:00.000-07:00

According to Hughes' demonstration, he just use a standard API to build the chat application which runs through TCP/IP socket. In brief, this is a client/server application, the chat server is responsible to read messages from the source chat clients through one thread and broadcast them to all connected chat clients through another thread, and the main thread is handling new connections. Every new ChatClient will connect to the ChatServer; this ChatServer will hand the connection to a new instance of the ChatHandler class that will receive messages from the new client. Within the ChatHandler class, a list of the current handlers is maintained; the broadcast() method uses this list to transmit a message to all connected ChatClients. The following illustrates the operations of the Char Client Server system.

Buyya (2002) defines 'the Grid is a type of parallel and distributed system that enables the sharing, selection, and aggregation of geographically distributed "autonomous" resources dynamically at runtime depending on their availability, capability, performance, cost, and users' quality-of-service requirements'. The Grid is “distinguished from conventional distributed computing by its focus on large-scale resourcesharing, innovative applications, and in somecases, high performance orientation”.

Peer to Peer (P2P) is somewhat like a Grid but Ledlie et al. (2003) gives a statement that ' P2p's focus on decentralization, instability, and fault tolerance exemplify areas that essentially have
been omitted from emerging Grid standards, but will become more significant as the system grows'.

The Grid community is currently authoring a Web Services-oriented API called Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA). The next generation of Globus us intened to be a reference implemetation of this API (Ledlie et al. 2003). P2P computing has been widely used for file sharing, distributed computation and anonymity. The pure P2P computing will not have server or client but every computer is a node in the network.

The development of the Grid and P2P will move to non client server model, more decentralised model. This will be good for massive information sharing and storage.

Comparing CLR and JVM

The .NET framework's Common Language Runtime (CLR) is much similar to Java Virtual Machine (JVM), in terms of garbage collection, security, just in time compilation (JIT).

References

Buyya R 2002, Grid computing info centre, viewed 24 April 2009, <http://www.gridcomputing.com/gridfaq.html>.

Hughes M 1997, Building an Internet chat system, Multithreaded client/server chat -- the Java way, Javaworld, viewed 23 April 2009, <http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-01-1997/jw-01-chat.html>.

Ledlie J, Shneidman J, Seltzer M & Huth J 2003, Scooped, Again, Harvard University, viewed 24 April 2009, <http://iptps03.cs.berkeley.edu/final-papers/scooped.pdf>.

E-systems Infrastructure

2009-04-24T05:31:00.000-07:00

Probably, every IT practitioner knows about the history of the TCP/IP protocol.

The TCP/IP Protocol Architecture is a result of protocol research and development conducted on the experimental packet-switched network, ARPANET, funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and is generally referred to as the TCP/IP protocol suite. It has 5 independent layers which are Application, Transport, Internet, Network Access and Physical (Stalling 2005 p.106).

Today Internetworking has highly adopted the TCP/IP architecture. The TCP/IP network has been dominating the market while there are many communications choices available, standardising on one particular protocol can make administration easier and reduce costs and complexity.

Internet Protocol (IP) is used at the Internet layer to define routing, logical IP addressing, the format of IP headers and packets, and interfaces. It provides routing function across multiple networks.

Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is used at the Transport layer that enables data to be reliably passed through a network. Why? TCP uses a header to hold important information for performing its tasks. The header fields includes source port, destination port, sequence number acknowledge number, header length, reserved, flags, window checksum, urgent, options and padding and data. TCP uses the port numbers to identify application process on the sender computer and the receiving computer. Besides, TCP can do the error-checking on the IP packet. In case of any error, the packet would be resent again (Knott & Odom 2006).

The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchic way of naming a computer on a TCP/IP network. The name of a network host is on the DNS hosted by the ISP.

The above are the fundamental components of the internetworks nowadays. In brief, IP is implemeted in all end systems and routers (which are bridging different networks). It acts as a relay to move a block of data (i.e. IP packets) from one host, through one or more routers, to another host. TCP is implemeted only in the end systems; it keeps track of the blocks of data being transferred to assure that all are delivered reliably to the appropriate application.

No matter you are running a close Local Area Network (LAN) or an open network if you adopt the TCP/IP model, you will need to have at least a DNS server within your network. All the hosts within the network need to find one another via the DNS server(s). Of course, behind the name of each host is identified by the IP address.

I can say, the Internet is actually the biggest network in the world. Your LAN, Wide Area Network (WAN), Intranet, Extranet and even your personal Wi-Fi gadgets are just the hosts of the Internet. Take the efiling service of Hong Kong Intellectual Property department (HKIPD) as an example, clients (most likely are legal firms) file their tradmark, patent or design applications through the official website https://iponline.ipd.gov.hk/base/bs0100.jsp. Of course, the clients need to registered their company accounts plus user accounts in advance. Money will be deducted from the accounts for each successful upload and e-receipts will be issued immediately. All the things are done over the Internet. Behind the scene, the process is far more complicated. First of all, the clients need to establish the e-system infrastructure for running the efiling service. Client sites need to follow the standard of HKIPD to setup their e-system infrasturcture. For example, a specific port number is required to open on the Firewall, official e-certificates are required for registering the accounts and the uploaded files must strictly follow the required formats.

The virtual private network (VPN) is a cost effective way to interconnect sites by using the Internet or other public network. For example, I can use VPN to connect two network sites located in two different countries. The beauty of VPN is offloading the wide area network management task to the public network provider. That same public network provides an access path for telecommuters and other mobile employees to log on to corporate systems from remote sites (stallings 2005). This can reduce the cost of B2B e-commerce and ease the operations.

The downside is the security of the public network would be out of control.

References

Knott T & Odom W 2006, Networking Basics CCNA 1 Companion Guide, Cisco Press, 800 East 96th Street, Indianapolis, IN 46240 USA, pp.462-463, 522-523.

Stallings W 2005, ‘Business Data Communications’, International Edition, 8th edn, Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458, pp.98-128.

Rapid evolutionary prototyping approach

2009-04-23T02:56:00.000-07:00

Rapid software prototyping is an approach which attempts to remedy some of the shortcomings of the life-cycle model. There are three types of prototyping: Throw-it-away, Evolutionary and Incremental.

Hekmatpour (1987) mentioned that 'Evolutionary prototyping is in complete contrast to the life-cycle model and regards development as consisting of three stages of design, implementation and evaluation, where these are carried out iteratively until the prototype converges to final system'.

The rapid software prototyping approach is very applicable to develop small scale projects. I myself are taking this approach to develop a simple web application at my firm. In the first place, I started developing the most fundemental modules of the appliaction by writting a couple of web pages and creating a rather simple database plus a few store procedures. This would be a prototype for users to give their comments. After I collected the comments from the users, I would modify the design of the application and program it accordingly. Then, I asked the users to evaluate and test it. I iterated this process a few times until it could meet the requirements for the first phase roll-out. That means I leave some requirements to the next phase. When the application is in production, I am adding more modules to it and prepare for the second phase roll-out. Meanwhile, I am designing it for the phase three roll-out. In short, addition and modification are two essential features of the entire development process.

According to Wikipedia (2009), Agile software development refers to a group of software development methodologies based on iterative development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing cross-functional teams. I can say Evolutonary Prototyping approach is similar to Agile software development as they both do not focus on the initial design but focus on the development process. The iterative development enables the product to be in production in relatively short time. Besides, the design will be perfected throughout the entire development process. This approach is highly adaptive to the volatile business environment. Imperatively, the development life cycle of an application is much shorter in the era. Maybe this is due to the fast moving of the technologies. For example, Microsoft SQL server is one of the most successful products of Microsoft, which released newer version in 2000, 2005 and last year. You can see there is a new delivery every 4 or 5 years. Probably, the frequent release is more likely subject to the business perspective rather than the actual technological breakthrough.

Developers do not afford to have a thorough study and a detail design for a project because this is too costly and risky. I can say longer the development process you take and lesser the production time ythe appliaction has. Therefore, rapid evolutionary prototyping is a more practical approach to software development.

References

Hekmatpour, S 1987, ‘Experience With Evolutionary Prototyping in a Large Software Project’, SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes, vol.12, no.1, ACM, also available as PDF, pp. 38-41.

Wikipedia 2009, Agile software development, Wikipedia, The free encyclopedia, last modified 21 April 2009, Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., US, viewed 23 April, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_development>.

The evolution of e-commerce

2009-04-23T02:46:00.000-07:00

Further to my blog yesterday, I would like to follow this path to share more about the development of e-commerce. Probably, everyone can get the meaning of “e-commerce” from Wikipedia or any other online knowledge bases over the Internet. The growth of e-commerce is highly related to the changes of the infrastructures of e-systems.

Nowadays, e-commerce has extended to various media. We can basically do business transactions through our mobile devices as the wireless networks like Wi-Fi, WiMax, 3G or even 4G and mobile devices are very well-developed.Therefore, it comes up with so-called M-commerce, T-commerce, U-commerce and so on.

Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (2008) illustrated M-commerce very well with examples below. However, it also mentioned other concerns the consumers need to consider.

Using your mobile phone to buy products and services is becoming a part of everyday life. Examples of this kind of trade—sometimes called m-commerce—include voting for reality TV shows, downloading ring tones and paying for car parking, and airline and concert tickets.
While using your phone in this way can be fun and convenient, there can be risks. To avoid them, you need to understand the costs and conditions of any products or services you buy.

Amazon Mobile, launched earlier this week, allows consumers to search for items on Amazon.com, update their shopping carts and wish lists, and make purchases from their iPhones.We can find many other ecommerce businesses over the internet.

Like HSBC ebanking, it offers the mobile mode, clients can use their mobile to access the ebanking services.

Many teens really enjoy downloading music or videos from the internet. Apple targets this market and successfully launched their products and services such iPod, iPhone, iTune and... They can shop through the Apple websites http://www.apple.com/.

Mobile games are very hot to young consumers. They download the games from the mobile games websites. Alternatively, they can actually subscribe the online games services. For example, "EVE Online" provides many different multiplayer games.

For adults, Britannica Online Encyclopedia is a paid service. You can get to its information by subscription. http://www.britannica.com/

References

Australian Competition & Consumer Commission 2008, Shopping on your mobile (m-commerce), Commonwealth of Australia, viewed 23 April, 2009, <http://www.accc.gov.au/content/index.phtml/itemId/266899>.

Meisner, J 2009, ‘New App Lets iPhone Users Photo Shop Amazon’, Ecommerce Times, Mobile Apps, viewed 23 April, 2009, <http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/65390.html?wlc=1240476927>.

The success of e-commerce II

2009-04-21T23:52:00.001-07:00

Nowadays, Amazon is no longer an online bookshop but has extended a wide range of products for sale. In fact, the online community approach has made it very successful to grow in the market. Otterbacher (2009) illustrated why the online community design (the “helpfulness” method of social navigation) makes Amazon so successful.

What is the “helpfulness” method of social navigation?

Online communities displaying textual postings require measures to combat information overload. One popular approach is to ask participants whether or not messages are helpful in order to then guide others to interesting content. Adopting a well-established framework for assessing data quality, we examine the nature of “helpfulness” (Otterbacher 2009, p. 955).

Amazon’s community has successfully adopted this methodology in its design. Participants post their quality book reviews which are rated by other participants in terms of helpfulness. Therefore, participants can select the book reviews based on the rating. As we all know that at the information era, we are flooded with information. This design can help participants to get the quality information.

Besides, the search engine of Amazon is very powerful and user friendly, I use it to locate the book I need. The price comparison model is also useful for users to see the differences among the commodities.

I myself have bought a few books and DVDs through Amazon. My experience is very positive. I can actually chase the shipments of my products and view my purchase from account. Like other online shops, I settle the payment by credit card.

Reference

Otterbacher, J 2009, ‘“Helpfulness” in Online Communities: A Measure of Message Quality’, Proceedings of the 27th international conference on Human factors in computing systems, Boston, MA USA, pp. 955-964.

The success of e-commerce I

2009-04-08T10:20:00.000-07:00

IDC, ACM & Alibaba are commercial websites, which more or less have adopted the characteristics of Online Community such as issuing membership, linking with local sense, providing blog and forums for sharing and etc. On the other hand, they all have differences in their approaches of Online Community.

IDC is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets (written in its website), which is profitted by selling their research papers and giving consultions. As an IT research company, she keeps in touch with the IT markets and IT professionals. To achieve this, IDC issue questionairs and news updates to their members regular and awards those who participate with the research with credit points and members can use those credit points t o purchase articles or research papers and the places for events/forums. Of course, you can choose to pay online by credit card. This is a typical e-commerce website and provides very little online community activities.

ACM is the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society, delivers resources that advance computing as a science and a profession. ACM provides the computing field's premier Digital Library and serves its members and the computing profession with leading-edge publications, conferences, and career resources (written in its website). Certainly, ACM is very different from IDC as it is a professional body. The members are governed by the code of ethics and Professional Conduct of ACM and are required to pay the membership fees yearly. ACM offers many news update, online forums and blogs. However, generally the particition rates are pretty low. It also accept online payment by credit card.

Alibaba is B2B e-commerce/e-auction company and claims as the world's largest B2B online marketplace, which offers membership, forums, trade shows, free websites and news. Besides, members can post their purchase requests and display their products for free. Members can trade wide range products through Alibaba. The side product of Alibaba, aliblog is very successful, which can draw many sellers and buyers to participate. Like ebay, it has very strong local sense of community and highly regards locality. But Alibaba is a free platform for buyers and sellers. The owner of Alibaba makes profit through advertising and therefore, it assumes no responsibility for transactions. This is purely the deal between the seller and the buyer. That's why the high participation rate is very vital for its success. Over 23 millions people visited the site in 2008 only (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., 2009).

Reference

Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., 2009, Alibaba Group, Wikipedia, The free encyclopedia, last modified 14 April 2009, Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., US, viewed 25 September, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alibaba_Group>.

The trend of the Internet - online community (II)

2009-04-05T08:00:00.000-07:00

When we look into the popular online auction web site - ebay, we can observe that it has very strong sense of locatily with online communities. Under the top level domain http://www.ebay.com/, it has many sub-domains by country. The default page of each sub-domain has its locality.

Virtanen & Malinen (2008) claimed that "people tend to have a positive emotional bond to familiar places, and this psychological relation between people and their environment is referred to as place attachment". I greatly agree with this statement. That is why we can find immigrants with the same race would settle down together and build up their own communities through various means in Australia. For example, we can find China town, Korean town, Eastern Orthodox Churchs or Jewish synagogues in Australia, people build up their connection through these places.

Locality can give members a strong sense of virtual community. That is why the well-organised online communities such as Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Wikipedia and etc strongly focus on the locality. Very often, the languages to be used is the online communities are subject to the locality.

According to Virtanen & Malinen's studies, Facebook started as a geographically-based campus community, with its members sharing mainly local offline connections. It was launched outside US on 2006, quickly became popular in Finland in the autumn 2007and is now the 8th most popular web site in Finland. The result is prominent. That is why the great success of the online communities have pushed the growth of e-commerce.

References

Virtanen, T & Malinen, S 2008, ‘Supporting the Sense of Locality with Online Communities’, MindTrek: Proceedings of the 12th international conference on Entertainment and media in the ubiquitous era 2008, Tampere, Finland, pp. 145-149.

The trend of the Internet - online community (I)

2009-03-11T09:29:00.000-07:00

I have attended quite of number seminars or events organised by IT research company, University or technology vendors since 2007 till now. Basically, they gives me the same message which is the future development of the Internet. I can really say that the internet becomes part of our lives to different extent as our social networks have been building on the Internet. We shop through the Internet; share ourselves/meet friends through blog, Facebook, MSN and ...;and do not get the latest news from newspaper, radio, TV or your friends but from the SMS of your cell phone or the browser of your laptop.

Nowadays, the network infrastructures and the Internet are very well-developed and we can therefore, establish our online communities highly effective. First of all, we need to give a clear definition to "online community" and then we can continue our discussions. According to Wikipedia (2009), “Online Community” is a synonym of “virtual community”. It states,

Virtual Community is a group of people that primarily interact via communication media such as newsletters, telephone, email, internet social network service or instant messages rather than face to face, for social, professional, educational or other purposes. If the mechanism is a computer network, it is called an online community.

It sounds very straight forward and not difficult to understand. However, when we try to understand the nature of Online Community, we would raise a few practical issues. Probably, I will further discuss this issue later. we can consider another view of VC. Ince (2004) gave an even more narrow definition of VC.

A virtual community is a web site which sells some product or service. In this respect there is no difference from an e-shop.

He also gave a perfect example to illustrate his view which is Amazon. Basically, Amazon is an online shop which allows members to submit product reviews and questions for sharing.

Blanchard & Markus (2004) only regarded the commercial interest oriented websites as "virtual settlements" and further illustrated that only those virtual settlements in which the members have develped affective bonds qualify as "virtual community".

They also indicated that a sense of community is to determine the beneficial outcomes of a community. By comparing "community” to "virtual community", the sense of virtual community (SOVC) should have the following behaviours:

Membership, boundaries, belonging, and group symbols
Influences, in terms of enforcing and challening norms
Exchange of support among members
Shared emotional connections among members

Zope is a popular open source online community which has the above behaviours. In order to gain a login to Zope, you need to register an account first. You can exchange ideas with other members and make more or less contributions to the community. Through these activities, you would have a strong sense of community. For example, "Children with diabetes" is a non-profitable online community which is a social network for supporting the kids, families and adults with diabetes.

Yahoo is another form of online community however, it has much lesser SOVC. The influences and objectives of the communities are very blur. Apparently, Yahoo is a content provider which has comprehensive services such as email, blog, dictionary, auctions, knowledge sharing, news, advertising and etc. These are more for commercial interests rather than the communities. Anyway, they can still build customer loyalty and enable the company running the web site to receive large amount of feedback on the product or service they sell.

Lewis (2008) demonstrated in his paper how human computer interaction (HCI) practitioners utilise an online community to drive commercial product innovation, definition, and development through a case study. The lead architects used the blogs and forums as the main avenues of communication to interact with users. Within two months of the community launch, there were over 200 registered users and this number were growing exponentially. There were over 2000 posts to the forum, from internal developers as well as external consumers. It shows that the particition of online community grows at a great extent is the key to the success of e-commerce.

I don't want to talk too much today.

To be continued

References

Blanchard, AL & Markus, ML 2004, 'The Experienced "Sense" of a Virtual Community: Characteristics and Processes', The DATA BASE for advances ininformation Systems - Winter 2004, vol. 35, no. 1, pp. 65-79.

Ince, D. (2004), Developing distributed and e-commerce applications, 2nd edn, Harlow, Essex, UK: Addison – Wesley, p.32.

Lewis, S 2008, ‘Using online communities to drive commercial product development’, Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems: CHI '08 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, Florence, Italy, pp. 2039-2043.

Virtanen, T & Malinen, S 2008, ‘Supporting the Sense of Locality with Online Communities’, MindTrek: Proceedings of the 12th international conference on Entertainment and media in the ubiquitous era 2008, Tampere, Finland, pp. 145-149.

Wikipedia 2009, Virtual Community, last updated, 18 March, Wikimedia Foundation Inc., US, viewed 21 March 2009, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_communities>.

First Time

2007-10-09T09:16:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I just followed the guidelines to set up Ruby and MySQL on my Vista machine. It was really time-consuming. I really don't know whether I set up everything correctly or not.

I have been an IT specialist for a long while. I was a MS SQL Server and ORACLE DBA before and now focus more on web development and CRM system. I have some experience to develop web page by VB script, Javascript, HTML and ASP. However, both Ruby and MySQL are new to me. I believe this will be a good opportunity to explore new DBMS and web development tool.

By the way, I would like to share with you the blog I wrote around two years ago. http://itc594research.blogspot.com/

I actually took ITC594 two years ago but was unable to finish it. Why? I broke my forearm in the middle of the course. I hope this time I will do much better than before.