Computer Science (COMP) 636
Enabling Technologies for E-Commerce

Overview | Course Objectives | Learning Outcomes | Outline | Evaluation | Course Materials - Textbook | Other Materials | Course Materials - Other | Course Workload | Special Course Features | Course Fees | Course Availability

Overview

E-commerce is transforming every element of business within the contemporary enterprise. To enable electronic commerce, developers need to integrate a wide range of computing technology, business models and information system components. This integration aspect makes E-commerce application one of the most complex and sensitive parts of the enterprise's information system

This course is designed to provide graduate students with the necessary quantitative reasoning and analysis to deal with critical questions for modern e-business development. Models for satisfying performance from a complex e-commerce application without wasting resources are presented and e-commerce programming technology will be reviewed. Other related topics such as security and Legal, Ethical and social issues are introduced. Students are expected to be able to integrate and apply programming techniques and knowledge learnt through the prerequisite courses. Students will gain 'hands-on' experience by implementing an E-commerce prototype.

Course Objectives

This course is designed to:

• Provide advanced concepts and technologies in depth for E-commerce.
• Provide the students with the necessary quantitative reasoning and analysis to deal with critical questions for modern e-business development.
• Introduce models for satisfying performance from a complex e-commerce application.
• Introduce related topics such as security and legal, ethical and social issues.
• Provide advanced concepts and technologies in depth for E-commerce.

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of the course, students will be able to:

• Integrate a wide range of computing technology, business models and information system components for enabling E-commerce.
• Models a complex e-commerce application without wasting resources.
• Obtain the knowledge of security, legal, ethical related to E-commerce.
• Gain hands-on experience by implementing an E-commerce prototype.

Outline

• Unit 1. Introduction to E-business and E-commerce
  This unit provides an introduction to Internet marketing technology and review different business models being implemented on the Internet.
• Unit 2. Modeling for E-business
  This unit covers the fundamental aspects of E-commerce website performance. A framework for analyzing and designing E-commerce websites is presented. The framework is based on a four-level model: business model, functional model, customer behavior model and IT resources model.
• Unit 3. E-business Infrastructure and Services
  This unit describes the various elements that comprise the IT infrastructure needed to support E-commerce. A quantitative analysis of performance is presented for authentication and electronic payment mechanisms.
• Unit 4. Capacity Planning for E-business
  This unit describes the methodology for capacity planning and the fundamentals of performance models.
• Unit 5. Methodology for Characterizing E-business Systems Workloads
  This unit discusses techniques that can be used to analyze and forecast the demand for E-business sites. It also shows how customer model graphs can be obtained and used to derive groups that accurately represent the workload.
• Unit 6. Application Cases
  This unit illustrates the use of the learned performance and capacity methodology for specific E-business cases.
• Unit 7. Introduction to Legal, Ethical and Social Issues
  This unit review issues regarding the application of traditional law to E-commerce, explores issues of Internet regulation, and examines aspects of online communities and global challenges.
• Unit 8. Advanced Topics
  This unit review advanced topics of E-commerce (Accessibility, Intelligent Agents, Data Mining, etc.)

Evaluation

To pass this course, students must achieve an average grade of at least 60% on the assignments (TME 1, TME 2 and the project) and students must achieve a grade at least 60% on the final examination.

To receive credits towards the Master of Science in IS, for Electives/Career Track, students must achieve a course composite grade of at least C+ (67%).

The weighting of the composite grade is as follows:

TME 1	Unit 3	15%
TME 2	Unit 6	15%
Project		30%
Final Examination		40%
Total		100%

Course Materials - Textbook

Supplemented with a list of pertinent documents online, this course will be based on the following textbooks:

1. Scaling for E-Business: Technologies, Models, Performance, and Capacity Planning. Daniel A. Menascé and Virgilio A. F. Almeida, Prentice Hall, 2000, ISBN 0-13-086328-9.
2. e-Business & e-Commerce How to Program. Harvey M. Deitel, Paul J. Deitel and Tem Nieto, Prentice Hall, 2000, ISBN: 013028419X.

Other References

1. E-Commerce: Fundamentals and Applications. Henry Chan, Raymond Lee, Tharam Dillon, John Wiley and Sons Ltd, 2001.
2. Java Developer's Guide to E-Commerce with XML and JSP. Bill Brogden et al., Sybex, 2001.
3. Web Design and Development for E-Business. Jensen J. Zhao, Prentice Hall; 2002.
4. Wireless Internet and Mobile Business: How to Program. Harvey M. Deitel, Paul J. Deitel, Tem Nieto, Kate Steinbuhler, Prentice Hall, 2002.

Course Materials - Other

The remainder of the learning materials for Computer Science 581 is distributed in electronic format. At this time, those materials include:

• Computer Science 636 Study Guide
• Detailed descriptions of the requirements for the individual assignments
• A course evaluation form
• Links to a variety of resources of the World Wide Web.

Additional supporting materials of interests to students of Computer Science 636 will be made available through a link guide on the course Web site.

Course Workload

This course schedule is based on working approximately 12 hours per week, so this would best translate into:
4 hours readings time per week.
4 hours synthesis/exercises time per week.
4 hours lab time per week.

Special Course Features

COMP636 will be offered in paced electronic mode in fall or winter. Electronic paced study is facilitated through a variety of computer-mediated communication options, and can be completed at the student's workplace or home.

Athabasca University reserves the right to amend course outlines occasionally and without notice.
Courses offered by other delivery methods may vary from their individualized-study counterparts.


Athabasca University
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Athabasca, AB T9S 3A3
(780) 675-6111, (800) 788-9041
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