Anatomy of E-Commerce applications

•Multimedia Content for E-Commerce Applications

•Multimedia Storage Servers & E-Commerce Applications

              i. Client-Server Architecture in Electronic Commerce   

              ii. Internal Processes of Multimedia Servers

              iii. Video Servers & E-Commerce

•Information Delivery/Transport & E-Commerce Applications

•Consumer Access Devices

Multimedia Content for E-Commerce Applications

•Multimedia content can be considered both fuel and traffic for electronic commerce applications.

•The technical definition of multimedia is the use of digital data in more than one format, such as the combination of text, audio, video, images, graphics, numerical data, holograms, and animations in a computer file/document. See in Fig.

•Multimedia is associated with Hardware components in different networks.

•The Accessing of multimedia content depends on the hardware capabilities of the customer.

Multimedia Storage Servers & E-Commerce Applications

•E-Commerce requires robust servers to store and distribute large amounts of digital content to consumers.

•These Multimedia storage servers are large information warehouses capable of handling various content, ranging from books, newspapers, advertisement catalogs, movies, games, & X-ray images.

•These servers, deriving their name because they serve information upon request, must handle large-scale distribution, guarantee security, & complete reliability

i. Client-Server Architecture in Electronic Commerce

•All e-commerce applications follow the client-server model

•Clients are devices plus software that request information from servers or interact known as message passing

•Mainframe computing , which meant for “dump”

•The client server model, allows client to interact with server through request-reply sequence governed by a paradigm known as message passing.

•The server manages application tasks, storage & security & provides scalability-ability to add more clients and client devices( like Personal digital assistants to Pc’s. See in fig.

ii. Internal Processes of Multimedia Servers

•The internal processes involved in the storage, retrieval & management of multimedia data objects are integral to e-commerce applications.

•A multimedia server is a hardware & software combination that converts raw data into usable information & then dishes out.

•It captures, processes, manages, & delivers text, images, audio & video.

•It must do to handle thousands of simultaneous users.

•Include high-end symmetric multiprocessors, clustered architecture, and massive parallel systems.

iii. Video Servers & E-Commerce

The electronic commerce applications related to digital video will include

                       1. Telecommunicating and video conferencing

                       2. Geographical information systems that require storage &     

                            navigation over maps

                       3. Corporate multimedia servers

                       4. Postproduction studios

                       5. shopping kiosks.

•Consumer applications will include video-on-demand.

•The figure which is of video–on demand consist video servers, is an link between the content providers (media) & transport providers (cable operators)

Information Delivery/Transport & E-Commerce Applications

•Transport providers are principally telecommunications, cable, & wireless industries.

   

    Information Transport Providers                    Information Delivery Methods

•Telecommunication companies                    long-distance telephone lines;

                                                                           local telephone lines

•Cable television companies                         Cable TV coaxial, fiber optic &

                                                                           satellite lines

•Computer-based on-line servers                  Internet; commercial on-line

                                                                          service providers

•Wireless communications                           Cellular & radio networks;

                                                                          paging systems

                                                                            

Consumer Access Devices

  Information Consumers                                        Access Devices

•Computers with audio & video                    Personal/desktop computing

      capabilities                                                   Mobile computing

•Telephonic devices                                      Videophone

•Consumer electronics                                   Television + set-top box Game

                                                                            systems

•Personal digital assistants (PDAs)                Pen-based computing, voice-

                                                                            driven computing