 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Tools For e-Commerce Major Keary |
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There's more to e-commerce than just promoting your wares on a Web
site, as many clients of DOT.CON carpet-baggers have learned to their cost. To conduct real
business using technology requires constant work, from design through development to maintenance.
Safe commerce, like safe sex, demands a constant state of preparedness. Protection of data and
communications is a paramount consideration, a subject discussed separately in this issue.
There are many well-established tools that lend themselves to e-commerce, and a growing number of
new tools have been - and are still being -developed for the purpose. Now, I know that readers are
saying something like, "He's going to carry on about XML"; well, just a bit - XML has become a core
tool in e-commerce applications.
ASP
Originally created by Microsoft, Active Server Pages (ASP) is available for many platforms and is
in wide use. "[ASP] is a technology originally created . as an answer to the sometimes complex
problems posed by CGI application development. It allows you to use any scripting language, from
VBScript to Python, to create real-world Web applications" [ASP in a Nutshell].
ASP is of interest primarily to developers and programmers, but there are many inspired amateurs
who will find it worth while exploring because of its ease of use. The user is enabled to generate
browser-neutral content with server-side scripts, the code for which can be created in any of the
many available scripting languages. The code is placed in dedicated tags within HTML page content.
That may sound complicated, but if you already know something about ASP there is an excellent
reference, ASP in a Nutshell. Even if you are a newcomer to ASP, this concise, plain language
reference uses annotated examples and is a good learning tool.
Another title that assumes familiarity with ASP is Professional ASP XML; it has been written for
ASP programmers who want to know about XML and how to use it in conjunction with ASP. Integral to
the comprehensive coverage is a group of case studies that use real-world applications (with all
the code) to illustrate how the two applications are used. Not for novices, but anyone who wants to
develop e-commerce applications should find it a valuable resource.
| A. K. Weissinger: ASP in a Nutshell 2/e ISBN 1-56592-843-1 Published by O'Reilly, 473 pp. RRP $75.00 incl. GST |
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Mark Baartse et al.: Professional ASP XML ISBN 1-861004-02-8 Published by Wrox, 883 pp., RRP $114.95 incl. GST |
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PHP
A scripting language, PHP began life in 1994 as Personal Home Page, and now stands for PHP
Hypertext Preprocessor, a server-side embedded scripting language that "works within an HTML
document to confer to it the capacity of generating content on demand". Now, there are other tools
capable of being used to do that, and one might ask: why the need for PHP? There are two good
reasons: PHP is simple, and it is open source. References to PHP pop up quite frequently in current
literature.
It can be downloaded from <http://www.php.net> where source code for *nix (Unix-like
platforms, including Linux) and other platforms is available along with executables for Windows.
There are two very good titles available.
Professional PHP Programming covers everything that Web developers might want to know about the
use of PHP for Web applications. Numerous illustrative code examples are used - all of which have
real-world application - as well as case studies. The book deals in detail with using PHP with XML,
MySQL, LDAP, and Apache in the context of database connectivity for e-commerce. The book is
supported by the Wrox Web site where code listings can be found with other information. There is
also a PHP Web site. Anyone with an interest in e-commerce applications should have a look at this
title if only for its very good overview of PHP's capabilities.
PHP4 Developer's Guide is a recent publication and, as the title indicates, it covers the latest
version, which includes enhanced Java and XML support. This title is a source-book written for
professional developers who may be approaching PHP for the first time. There is no introduction for
beginners, but extensive use is made of annotated example code and case studies. A chapter,
E-Commerce Web Sites, covers security, certificates, payment processing, and product delivery. A
very thorough and well-presented treatment of the subject. About half the book is dedicated to an
alphabetic function reference, which is a valuable resource in its own right.
| Castagnetto et al.: Professional PHP
Programming ISBN 1-861002-96-3 Published by Wrox Press, 909 pp., RRP $109.95 |
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| Blake Schwendiman: PHP4 Developer's Guide ISBN 0-07-212731-7 Published by Osborne McGraw-Hill, 775 pp., RRP $109.95 incl. GST |
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REBOL
The Relative Expression-Based Object Language (REBOL) is a very new scripting language - the
creator refers to it as a "messaging" language - that has three important features: it is machine
independent, it has a very small (200 kb) footprint, and it inspired a Dummies title. Also, you can
download the core program free; there are versions (some thirty-seven) for just about every
operating system, including Windows, Linux, Unix, BeOS, Mac, DOS, and Amiga. The scripts written
for one system run on any of the others, something that can't be said of all scripting languages.
"What about the line endings?", I hear someone say; REBOL looks after that automatically. REBOL
commands are much closer to natural English (or German, or . ) than you will find in other
programming languages, which is achieved by the use of dialects. There is not room here to explain
that concept, but Carl Sassenrath - the creator of REBOL - has applied it very effectively.
So what do you do with REBOL? It implements interactivity and dynamic content for Web pages. For
anyone who wants "to write quick-but-highly-useful Web applications without the bother" of the
complexities of other scripting languages [REBOL for Dummies], REBOL is the way to go. REBOL
is particularly suitable for e-commerce applications and fits especially well with CGI, as the case
study in REBOL: The Official Guide demonstrates.
The definitive text is REBOL:The Official Guide; this comprehensive and detailed reference
is particularly suited to those with some programming experience. However, tutorial style makes it
a very good introduction for novice programmers. The book uses a continuing case study to
illustrate the first, simple steps and progressively builds a real-world Web application ("a
complete online store using a distributed database management system, persistent objects, and a
consumer database dialect") with all the necessary complexities. It even shows how to set your own
machine up as a server for the purpose of testing an application.
A companion CD contains all the current distributions, the sample code used in the book, and other
material. A thorough and well-presented coverage.
Goldman and Blanton: REBOL: The Official Guide ISBN 0-07-212279-X Published by Osborne McGraw-Hill, 731 pp. + CD, RRP $69.95 incl. GST |
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| Ralph Roberts: REBOL for Dummies ISBN 0-7645-0745-1 Published by IDG Books, 446 pp. + CD, RRP $49.95 incl. GST |
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Oracle is a well-known product, and those who want the best in
texts should look at titles in O'Reilly's Oracle series. There are about a dozen of them. One in
particular, Building Oracle XML Application. It shows how "the power of XML as a universal
standard for data exchange [and its] . flexibility to easily transform XML data into any format
required" can be combined with Oracle. The book has been written for Java and PL/SQL developers who
want to use XML applications with Oracle databases. Readers are expected to know something about
SQL and Java or PL/SQL programming. A companion CD includes JDeveloper 3.1 with documentation.
The book is primarily about using the XML family of applications in the context of
Oracle.
The term, e-commerce, is generally taken to mean transactions conducted over a network (usually
the Internet), but there are other electronic applications, such as the processing of data at point
of sale. Delphi has been particularly suited to the purpose of developing applications for
that purpose. It has been a Windows-specific program, but now has a Linux version, known as
Kylix or CLX.
Version 6 of Delphi is about to be released (and may well be on the shelves by the time you read
this). McGraw-Hill's Delphi 6 Developer's Guide is the first book published on the new
version. It is a very well presented coverage and is suitable for developers who are new to
Delphi.
Of interest in the context of e-commerce is that Delphi 6 has new features that enable it to be
used for Web applications, a field that is well covered in the book.
| Steve Muench: Building Oracle XML
Applications ISBN 1-56592-691-9 Published by O'Reilly, 792 pp. + CD, RRP $110.00 incl. GST |
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| Paul Kimmel: Building Delphi 6
Applications ISBN 0-07-212995-6 Published by Osborne McGraw-Hill, 774 pp. + CD, RRP $109.95 incl. GST |
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Managing Gigabytes
An important aspect of e-commerce, in its widest sense, is the storage of large document collections in minimum digital space, but at the same time enabling rapid retrieval of any single document in the repository. Every large enterprise - commercial or government - has a need for document storage and retrieval, and there are many businesses that specialise in such services, as a check of the Yellow Pages under `Business Document Storage' will show.
Managing Gigabytes is the definitive text on document
storage and retrieval. At the core of any system is data compression. Lempel and Ziv of LZ fame
published two methods of lossless data compression, but made no comment as to how they could be
applied; others had to develop applications. The authors of this book are academics from Australia
and New Zealand who have conceived a remarkably efficient algorithm. ppm, and have developed the
means of application.
Their book describes all the current compression systems in fine technical detail in the context
of managing large collections of documents, which includes both text, textual images (such as fax,
and TIF files for OCR), and pictorial images (pictures, diagrams, plans, and drawings).
A typical scenario in which readily retrievable document images play an important role might be an
insurance company. A policy holder makes a phone call (or communicates by way of e-mail or a Web
site), either to add further information or to enquire about the progress of a claim. There was a
time when an operator would transfer the caller to a person responsible for handling the claim.
Assuming the enquirer had been connected to the correct person, the next step would be the
retrieval of a physical file (assuming it hasn't been misfiled, or is with someone else) that may
or may not contain all the relevant information.
With a proper document storage and retrieval system the person who answers the phone (no longer a
simple switchboard operator) - or responds to the electronic message - can call up an image of the
file within seconds (or even milliseconds) and inform the enquirer of the claim's status. If
necessary the file can be updated with new information.
As can be imagined, a system that delivers all the relevant information to a work station requires
sophisticated programs that enable access to huge volumes of data. Where the documents are forms
(such as a tax return) imaging is the optimum method, especially if part of a document is
handwritten. Where format is not an issue the content can be stored as compressed text. The
logistics of scanning, performing OCR transformation, or drawing data from digital files, are
daunting enough. The data has to be compressed, a function that is usually built into the
processing application, using programs for each format (formatted text, plain text, textual image,
picture, etc.
Software has also to be developed that enables the material to be indexed, searched, retrieved,
and decompressed.
The authors offer the source code for their implemented system, mg (which stands for managing
gigabytes) and is a "public domain full-text retrieval system that runs under . Unix . [and]
demonstrates some of the key ideas described in [the] book". It is a tool for use with very large
collections of documents and is also available for some distributions of Linux. An appendix
contains a guide to the mg system, including installation.
| Witten, Moffat, and Bell: Managing Gigabytes
2/e ISBN 1-55860-570-3 Published by Morgan Kaufmann, hard cover, 518 pp., RRP $134.20 incl. GST |
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Reprinted from the May 2001 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
