Bridging the Technological Gap between Academia and Industry: Towards a Successful e-Commerce Graduate Program

1. Bridging the Technological Gap between Academia and Industry: Towards a Successful e-Commerce Graduate Program Yeong-Tae Song, Goran Trajkovski, Sungchul Hong Dept of Computer and Information Sciences Towson University

2. Motivation • Implementing e-Commerce track • Resolving a gap between industry and academia in e-Commerce • Versatile nature of, so called, “current technology” • Need flexible courses for current technology

3. MSIS 2000 Model Curriculum • Graduate programs in Information Systems. • Building Blocks • Foundation • Backgrounds: Business and Information Systems • Core • A set of primary courses • Integration • Integration components required after the core • Career track • Specific career tracks that are representative of current organizational needs

4. MSIS 2000 Suggested e-Commerce Courses • Internet, Intranets, and Extranets • Electronic Commerce • WWW and the Value Chain • Consumer Relationship Marketing

5. MSIS 2000 Suggested Program Goal • 1. A core of e-Business knowledge, across the managerial, technical and ethical/legal aspects • 2. Integrated knowledge of technological and business principles • 3.Broad business and real world perspectives • 4.Communication, interpersonal and team skills (values)

6. MSIS 2000 Suggested Program Goal • 5.Analyticaland critical thinking skills • 6. Specific skills leading to a career (professional degree).

7. e-Commerce Related Software • e-Business Application Software • Middleware • Web Servers • Database Management Systems, and • e-Commerce Interoperability Standards

8. E-Business Application Software • e-Business application software is software that uses the Internet or other electronic medium for business transactions and services. • Electronic catalog

9. MIDDLEWARE • Middleware is a mechanism to move information and shared business logic • Remote Procedure Calls (RPC) type • Message Oriented Message (MOM) type • Message Broker type

11. Web Servers • The main functions of a web server are receiving requests from the clients, forwarding the received requests to the appropriate applications if necessary, and send back the results to the client. • Apache HTTP Server • MS IIS • MS Commerce Server • IBM @server • Jakarta Tomcat

12. DATABASE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS • Data oriented B2B applications heavily depend on access to databases. • Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) • Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) • Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) • Adaptable Database (Adabas) • Object Linking and Embedding Database (OLE DB)

13. E-Commerce Interpretability Standards • B2B interoperability standards involve description of message formats exchanged, relationships to transport protocols, and other features, such as security. • Extensible Markup Language (XML) • Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) • Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) • Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM)

14. E-COMMERCE INTEROPERABILITY STANDARDS • Remote Method Invocation (RMI) • Component Object Model (COM+) • Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) • ebXML (electronic business XML) • RosettaNet

15. STATE OF ACADEMIA • Certificate programs • There has not been a unique agreement, nor model. • Predominantly management-oriented programs • Predominantly technology-oriented programs • Predominantly ethics and legal issues oriented programs

16. Management-Oriented Programs • Stand-alone tracks in graduate business schools • Emphasize the business side of the e-Commerce • Technical details are not emphasized

17. Technology-Oriented Programs • Emphasize the programming aspects of doing e-commerce.

18. The Legally Oriented Programs • The legally oriented programs are almost a rarity, and are seldom offered as stand-alone programs.

19. SUGGESTED CURRICULUM • Managerial Challenges in e-Commerce • Networking for e-Commerce • Distributed systems in the Internet • XML technology for e-Commerce • Internet supply chain management • Web programming • Web application design methodology • Legal, Ethical and Societal issues in e-Commerce

20. Managerial Challenges in e-Commerce • e-Business models (B2B, B2C) • Internet file management • Supporting the information architecture. • Databases. Payment systems. • Transformational aspects of e-Business and new business models. • Financial implications for e-Business. • Cost/benefit, business plans and the need for venture capital.

21. Networking for E-commerce • Frames and Packets, IP, TCP, UDP • Interconnection devices: hubs, switches, routers • IP addressing – IP addressing, subnetting • classless addressing • Routing of IP packets • WWW and mobile IP • Network/Internet security

22. Networking for e-commerce (2) • DNS • Socket interface • Multicasting and multicasting routing protocol • Network management

23. Distributed systems in the Internet • Clients and Servers • Middleware • CORBA, COM/DCOM, and RMI • Database server and Distributed Database • Transaction processing

24. XML technology for E-commerce • XML fundamentals • XML parsers – SAX, DOM, Xerces • XML-RPC, SOAP • XML security • ebXML

25. Internet supply chain management • Value chain • Supply chain • Planning and design e-Commerce supply chain

26. Web programming • HTML/DHTML • ASP.Net • JSP/Java

27. Web application design methodology • Life-cycle models • UML fundamentals • Software requirements analysis • Functional/ non-functional requirements • Use cases • Data flow diagrams • State transition diagrams/ Sequence diagrams

28. Web application design methodology (2) • Web navigation diagram • Software architecture • Client/server • Distributed Database schema design • User Interface (accessibility) Design • Software testing • Software maintenance

29. Legal, Ethical and Societal issues in e-Commerce • Privacy and property issues in e-Business • Federal, State and International laws • Web accessibility