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

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

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

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

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)

MSIS 2000 Suggested Program Goal 5. Analytical and critical

thinking skills 6. Specific skills leading to a

career (professional degree).

e-Commerce Related Software e-Business Application Software Middleware Web Servers Database Management Systems,

and e-Commerce Interoperability

Standards

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

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

Application Application

Application Application

Application Application

Queue

Message Broker

Application

RPC type

MOM type

Message Broker type

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

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)

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)

E-COMMERCE INTEROPERABILITY STANDARDS

Remote Method Invocation (RMI) Component Object Model (COM+) Simple Object Access Protocol

(SOAP) ebXML (electronic business XML) RosettaNet

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

Management-Oriented Programs Stand-alone tracks in graduate

business schools Emphasize the business side of the

e-Commerce Technical details are not

emphasized

Technology-Oriented Programs Emphasize the programming

aspects of doing e-commerce.

The Legally Oriented Programs The legally oriented programs are

almost a rarity, and are seldom offered as stand-alone programs.

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

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.

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

Networking for e-commerce (2) DNS Socket interface Multicasting and multicasting

routing protocol Network management

Distributed systems in the Internet Clients and Servers Middleware CORBA, COM/DCOM, and RMI Database server and Distributed

Database Transaction processing

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

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

supply chain

Web programming HTML/DHTML ASP.Net JSP/Java

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

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

Legal, Ethical and Societal issues in e-Commerce Privacy and property issues in e-

Business Federal, State and International

laws Web accessibility