Homework 3 (Revised)
(100 points)

1. [40 points] A vertical market is one that includes the distribution chain of a single industry, such as chemicals, finance, health. etc. The distribution chain includes manufacturers, distributors, retailers and so forth. Many vertical markets have adopted industry-wide XML standard document types defined by DTDs.

(a) [15 points] Choose some industry in the U.S. whose annual revenue is a least a billion dollars (and that does not appear in the slides of the XML lecture). Discuss the need for one or more XML based standards for a vertical market in that industry. Focus on the following issues:
(i) increasing the number of users that can access the market
(ii) lowering implementation, buying and selling costs
(iii) enabling web based trading "bots". (Suggested length: at least 1 paragraph per issue)

(b) [10 points] 

(i) In the absence of a global enforcing authority for industry XML standards, who will see to it that they are followed?
(ii) Why would competitors in the same industry accept them?
(iii) Can there co-exist multiple standards in the same vertical industry?
Justify your answers. (Suggested length: 1 paragraph per issue.)

(c) [15 points] Select an application of a B2B exchange marketplace in the food industry. Choose a sub-sector like meat, dairy, ethnic foods, exotic foods, etc. to make the problem more manageable). Make a list of the 15 most important data elements and sub-data elements relevant to this marketplace that could serve as the basis of an XML implementation. (You don't have to write a DTD, but you should list the tags you would be defining). Explain why you included the tags that you did and why you did not include others.

2. [40 points] You are an independent e-commerce consultant bought in by a leading cineplex chain. (It operates movie theatres with multiple screens, usually at least 10 screens in one location.) They want to track the movement of people in their movie theaters. This will allow them to (i) charge people according to the number of movies they watch and how long they stayed; (ii) understand people's tastes in movies and offer recommendations for future movies; (iii) relate food and refreshment sales to specific movies and times of day; and (iv) create personalized promotions and loyalty programs.

(a) [15 points] What technology would you suggest the chain use to implement a system across all its locations? Discuss specifically what the technology should look like at each location and how the different locations will communicate their results to the main office of the company. (Suggested length: 2 paragraphs)

(b) [15 points] What will the data requirements be ? List  

(i) the six main data elements that need to be collected 
(ii) how often each one needs to be collected
(iii) a cost-effective means of collecting & transmitting them
(Note: not all processes in the movie theatre need to be automated).

(Suggested length: 3 paragraphs)

(c) [10 points] The Cineplex chain has branches in Asia, Europe and the US. It would like to achieve multilingual communication (in at least 8 languages) so that people from one country should be able to view movie listings, select movies and sub-titles and make payments using a language they are comfortable in.

The Unicode standard is a 16-bit encoding standard (as opposed to 8 bits in ASCII) that can support more than 65,000 characters, including
all 8 languages the Cineplex intends to use. It is thus ideal for this application. (Click here for details). XML fully supports the Unicode standard, which means that tags and data can be in any language.

Suggest a way to use XML to globalize the Cineplex website for multilingual communication. (Suggested length: 2 paragraphs.)

3. Automatic Identification and Data Capture equipment allows users to uniquely identify objects and even track their movement, say within a
manufacturing plant. [20 points]

a) [10 points] What are the essential differences between AIDC systems and the Global Positioning System? When would you use one and not the other? (Suggested length: 1 paragraph)

b) [10 points] Consider a physical (as opposed to an Internet) shopping mall. List 4 applications of AIDC , 4 applications of GPS and 2 applications where either (or both) can be used. Just a list is enough; no explanations are required.

Bonus Question: (10 points)
The Digital Divide separates Third World countries with cheap labor and low technology from the First World. Using only concepts learnt in
the Data Interchange lecture, what business opportunity would you recommend to a friend in a Third World country? Why?

Assume for purposes of the bonus question that an RFID circuit cost $1, RFID readers cost $50, 32-bit smart-card processors cost $10 and readers for them cost $100. Also assume labor costs as $3 per day for data entry and $25 per day for installation & support engineers.