For course policies and information about textbooks and how to contact the instructor and teaching assistant, please see the Administrative Page.   For background material, refer to the ECOMMERCE TECHNOLOGY LINKS PAGE.

READ THE ADMINISTRATIVE PAGE FOR THE POLICY ON JOINT WORK.  THIS IS TREATED VERY SERIOUSLY AT CMU.

REMEMBER: Every MSEC students MUST make a personal appointment with Dr. Shamos.  See the Appointments Page.

ORIENTATION LECTURE SLIDES

Lecture 1 - OVERVIEW (Monday, August 25, 2003) – Course summary and objectives. Differences between ordinary commerce and eCommerce.  Survey of eCommerce technology.   Essentially a preview of each of the remaining lectures in the course.  Objective: familiarity with the fundamental technologies underlying eCommerce.  View SLIDES.

Note: viewing the course slides is easiest using Internet Explorer.   If you use Netscape, you will have to configure it to use PowerPoint when it sees a file with the extension .ppt.  Internet Explorer knows this already.

Readings: Chan Chapter 1.

Lecture 2 - ECOMMERCE INFRASTRUCTURE (Wednesday, August 27, 2003) – The Internet: backbone structure, packet switching, network addressing, routing, TCP/IP, the future Internet, IPv6. Objective: understand how the Internet works and why it is the fundamental eCommerce technology.  Homework 1 available.  View SLIDES.

Readings: Chan Chapter 2.  Also How Web Servers and the Internet Work (howstuffworks.com).

NOTE: NO CLASS LABOR DAY, MONDAY SEPTEMBER 1

Lecture 3 - WIRELESS TECHNOLOGIES (Wednesday, September 3, 2002. –  Differences between wired and wireless communications; the radio spectrum.   SDMA, TDMA, CDMA.  Cellular systems: GSM, UMTS.  Satellite communications.  Wireless LAN, Bluetooth, UWB.  Global Positioning System (GPS).  Objective: appreciate the critical importance of cells and the difficulties and opportunities in implementing wireless eCommerce.  View SLIDES.

Readings: Chan Section 9.2, Mobile Networking Through Mobile IP (Charles Perkins), Internet Protocol/Intelligent Network Integration Tutorial (IEC), The Global Positioning System (Aerospace Corp. 11-page pdf file).

Lecture 4 - WEB ARCHITECTURE (Monday, September 8, 2003) – Structural design of eCommerce systems.  Client-server architecture, 2-, 3-,n-tier design, server farms, scalability.  ASP, JSP.  Integration of legacy systems.  Objective: Understand the structural components of web systems.  Homework 1 due.  Homework 2 available.  View SLIDES.

Readings: Chan Chapter 3.

Lecture 5 - SEARCH ENGINES (Wednesday, September 10, 2002) – Search engines as an answer to the discovery problem.  Document indexing, spiders and crawlers, query specification, importance metrics, hit ranking, link popularity.  Robot exclusion, spamdexing.  Document clustering.  Objective: appreciate the role of search engines at the starting point of eCommerce; understand how sophisticated the engines are and why they behave so differently.  View SLIDES.

Readings: Search engine links.   Also: Search Engine Features for Webmasters (searchenginewatch.com).

Lecture 6 - CRYPTOGRAPHY (Monday, September 15, 2003) – Encryption, symmetric v. asymmetric systems, public-key cryptosystems, the RSA algorithm.  The nature of signatures v. digital signatures.   Digital identity documents and digital certificates.  The public key infrastructure.  Objective: understand the capabilities and limitations of digital signatures and certificates.  Homework 1 returned.  Homework 2 due.  Homework 3 available.  View SLIDES.

Readings: Chan Chapter 7.  Also Cryptography A-2-Z (SSH Communications Security Ltd.), Identity Authentication and E-Commerce (M.D. Ford).

Readings: Chan Sections 8.1-8.9.  Also Biometric Verification/Identification (IDEX), Comparison of Biometric Techniques (Ruggles), Virus Tutorial (Computer Knowledge)..

Lecture 8 - DATA INTERCHANGE (Monday, September 22, 2003) – Exchanging data over the Internet.  XML, namespaces, XML schemas, XML implementations. ASN.1.   Objective: Learn how systems can locate and exchange data.  View SLIDES.

Readings: Chan Section 9.3.  XML: Structuring Data for the Web: An Introduction (Sall).  See also the ASN.1 links on the eCommerce Technology page.   UDDI Technical White Paper (uddi.org); Why UDDI Will Succeed (Stencil Group), Introduction to Web Services (Shohoud), Web Services Tutorial, XML Web Services Basics (Roger Wolter)

Lecture 9 - ELECTRONIC PAYMENT SYSTEMS (Wednesday, September 24, 2003) – Categories of electronic payments. Credit cards: the SSL and SET protocols.  The automated clearing house (ACH).  PayPal.  Micropayment systems. Online banking; EBPP (electronic bill presentment and payment).  Objective: Learn to select appropriate payment mechanisms.  Homework 2 returned.  Homework 3 due.  Homework 4 available.  View SLIDES.

Readings: Chan Sections 10.1-10.8.  Also Digital Money Online (inter://trader), Token and Notational Money in Electronic Commerce (Camp, Sirbu, Tygar)

Lecture 10 - DATABASES (Monday, September 29, 2003) – Nature of databases.  The relational model, SQL, E-R diagrams.  Transaction processing, locking.  Integrating DBMS with eCommerce applications.  Objective: Learn the role of database management in eCommerce.  View SLIDES.

Readings: Chan Chapter 5.

Lecture 11 - MASS PERSONALIZATION AND DATA MINING (Monday, October 6, 2003) – Automation of the customer relationship.   Use of data to customize the web experience.  Cookies and their risks: DoubleClick. Obtaining and using personal information.  Rule-based filtering, implicit profiling, collaborative filtering.  Data mining objectives and techniques. Classification, clustering, link analysis, predictive modeling, text analysis, visualization systems.  Objective: Learn how to acquire information about customers to influence their behavior in real-time.  Homework 3 returned.  Homework 4 due.  View SLIDES.

Readings: Chan Section 9.4, mass personalization links.  Also What is Personalization? (CNET), Cookies (cookiecentral.com), data mining links, An Introduction to Data Mining and Advanced DSS Technology (Kurt Thearling), Statistical Data Mining Tutorials (Andrew Moore, CMU).

Readings: Introduction to P3P (pdf, Lorrie Cranor), The Enterprise Privacy Authorization Language.

EXTRA LECTURE ON ESTIMATION PROBLEMS (Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2002, 4:00 p.m., WeH 4623).  View SLIDES.

Lecture 13 - ENTERPRISE RESOURCE PLANNING (ERP) AND SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT (SCM) (NOTE: FRIDAY, OCT. 10, 2003 8:30 - 10:20 POSNER 153) – The supply chain, now the supply network.  Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Enterprise Application Integration (EAI).  Structure of ERP systems.  Objective: Learn how large-scale enterprises use ERP and SCM tools to achieve efficiency.  View SLIDES.

Readings: Chan Chapter 12

Lecture 14 - AGENTS AND ELECTRONIC NEGOTIATION (Monday, October 13, 2002) – Use of computers in mediating and conducting business.  Intelligent agents.  Auction models, auction rules and strategies.  Multidimensional and combinatorial auctions.   Objective: Learn how auctions work and how negotiation between machines takes place.  Homework 4 returned.  View SLIDES.