Last updated: 10/21/03
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Agenda for Class 8 on October 21
(eCommerce only)

  1. Announcements
    1. Don't forget to sign in online tonight.
    2. Lab hours are the same as Center hours.
    3. Online grade reports are working.
      1. Before these will work for you, you must previously have used the Information Form to change GradeReports from No to Yes
      2. Please pay attention to the dates for each grade - some are about one week old.
      3. If you disagree with what you see there, let me know. One of the purposes of these reports is to settle any disagreements before the end of the semester.
      4. I am unsure myself about the status of some of the 3270-specific assignments.
    4. In the news - New York Times Tue 10/21/03 Business Section (Section C):
      1. Page C9. The practice of filing travel expense reports online is growing. Expenses on corporate credit cards are used instead of paper receipts, and can be brought into the report using point and click. Expenses are intially classified automatically, but employees can override these classifications. Employees get a faster process with less hassle, and corporations get more detailed and accurate reports, with more control over fraud.
      2. Page 10. Victoria's Secret settled with the New York Attorney General Elliot Spitzer for leaving customer information possibly open to hacking on its web site. As discovered by customer Jason Sudowski, those checking order status could also see the names and recent orders of other customers. Victoria's Secret reportedly brushed off Mr Sudowski's initial call, saying that since credit card numbers were not displayed, there was no problem. Mr Sudowski then called a reporter, and the story was reported on MSNBC. Following this publicity, Victoria's Secret apparently closed down that part of the web site and had customers check order status via an 800 telephone call. The New York Attorney General got involved, claiming deceptive advertising, because Victoria's Secret's web site claimed that it protected customer information. The settlement included a $50,000 payment to the State.
      3. An email currently making the rounds (I have received five or six copies) is purportedly from Security@Microsoft.com, saying that a critical update is attached, which should be installed immediately. Instead, the email seems to have a virus, at least according to the WSU email virus scanner.
  2. Reminder of what you should be doing online on a regular basis -- these are part of the grade
    1. Signin, from the lab, only on days for the class(es) you are taking
    2. Weekly course report (if you are taking both classes, a single report will do)
    3. Conference postings (one for eCommerce, two for Computers, the Internet, and Society, three if you are taking both)
      1. Topics from Customers.Com are good topics here. Also comments on how files work together, problems that people are having, comments on how this technology could be used, other things you would like to know. Also relevant news stories.
    4. Not required, but do it anyway - check your email on at least a weekly basis. Don't have email: use hotmail - it's easy and free. See me if you need help.
  3. Time to begin planning - rough drawing - keep them simple, you can always make them complicated later:
    1. Overall scheme
      1. Basic information web site
      2. Order form
      3. ASP page to process order
        1. Response page to user
        2. Store to database
        3. Email confirmation
      4. Check order status?
    2. Response page for user, when purchasing - what should be on it?
    3. Email confirmation for user - what should be on it?
  4. Organizing and uploading your files - folders, no folders, what should you do?
    1. This has to do with absolute and relative URLs
      1. Absolute has all elements - example:
        http://www.is.wayne.edu/drbowen/inetf03/agenda8.htm
        Method - http
        Domain Name of server - www.is.wayne.edu
        Folders         - drbowen/inetf03
        File Name - agenda8
        Extension - doc
      2. File method is file:/// instead of http:// - gets a file from the client computer's local files
      3. Simplest relative has only file name and extension
        agenda8        .htm
    2. Web pages contain three types of URLs
      1. Links <a href="URL">
      2. Images <img src="URL">
      3. Forms (form action="URL" ...>
    3. Simplest practice, and what I do myself
      1. Make sure that ALL URLs contain ONLY file name and extension
      2. Keep all files for both Project1 and eCommerce in the root folder of the floppy diskette. Use a separate floppy diskette for your personal web site.
    4. Alternatives
      1. Keep all Project1 and eCommerce files in one folder, and all personal web site files in a separate folder. Alternatively keep all three sets of files in separate folders. Upload the contents of the folders, not the folders and contents. Bear in mind that your Project 1 and eCommerce web sites will coexist in one folder on the web server.
      2. Use sub-folders to organize your sites. Make all URLs contain only the sub-folder names without leading slashes (e.g. folder/file.htm not /folder/file.htm). Upload the sub-folder structure as well as the files themselves.
    5. In no case should the file method (file:///) appear in a URL in any of your files, since this refers to a local file on the user's client computer.
    6. Any of these alternatives will let you test your site on the floppy diskette using a web browser, by double-clicking on the file, or opening a file in your browser. Only the ASP scripts will not work, since they absolutely require a web server. Upload the files to the server, knowing that they will work there.
  5. Individual design of order forms, planning of responses - are these ready, or not?
    1. Processing and responding to orders
    2. Three files that have to be coordinated: HTML form, ASP page and database file. Easiest thing is to have the field names be the same in all of them.
    3. Formulae for response, programming
      1. Adding, multiplying and concatenating demos using client-side Javascript and server-side ASP.
    4. ASP Email demo
    5. ASP demo - building a table
  6. Working with your database file
    1. FTP your database from its DUM folder to your floppy diskette
    2. Primary Key - use this - why is it there?
      1. A key allows you to go straight to the record you want in a database, without having to read through all of the earlier records. While this is not important for the smaller files you will be generating for this course, it is critical for large systems.
    3. Specifying data types
    4. SQL
    5. Pulling information out of the database - SQL
      1. In ASP sqlQuery = "SELECT * FROM GradeInfo WHERE FirstName = '" & Request("FirstName") & "' AND LastName = '" & Request("LastName") & "'"
      2. Result might be sqlQuery = SELECT * FROM GradeInfo WHERE FirstName = 'David' AND LastName = 'Bowen'
        1. SELECT *: extract all fields (*)
        2. FROM GradeInfo: from the table GradeInfo
        3. WHERE FirstName = 'David' AND LastName = 'Bowen': where the first and last names match
  7. From Customers.Com - how can you do some of these?
    1. Make it easy for customers to do business with you
    2. Focus on the end customer for your products and services
    3. Redesign your customer-facing business processes from the end customer's point of view
    4. Wire your company for profit: design a comprehensive, evolving electronic business architecture
    5. Foster customer loyalty, the key to profitability in electronic commerce
    6. Target the right customers. American Airlines: Pg 75. National Semiconductor: design engineers or purchasing agents?. Know as much about your customers as you can.
    7. Own the customer's total experience.
    8. Streamline business practices that impact the customer
    9. Provide a 360-degree view of the customer relationship. Diagram Pg 179.
    10. Let customers help themselves. Buying a computer online from Dell.
    11. Help customers do their jobs. B2B
    12. Deliver personalized service. Security is important - Timothy McVeigh and AOL
    13. Foster community. Set up different areas for different interests, introduced customers to each other, introduce common terminology and values, let customers strut their stuff, encourage customers to become part of the in crowd.
  8. Unresolved issues
    1. Web security
      1. Users care about the security of their information, and online merchants must respond to this.
      2. Proprietary Vs public standard security
      3. Symmetric encryption - same key to encode and decode
      4. Asymmetric, or public key / private key
      5. Prime numbers
      6. Examples
      7. Security of information after it has been securely transported to the merchant (Dyson, Release 2.1)
    2. Multipart forms
    3. Confirming orders