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Web Technologies Module 2

Web Technologies (APJ Abdul Kalam Technological University)

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MODULE2
WEB BROWSER(PREVIOUSLY ASKED UNIVERSITY QUESTION(2 MARKS))
● Web Browser is an application software that allows us to view and explore information
on the web. User can request for any web page by just entering a URL into address bar.
● Web browser can show text, audio, video, animation and more. It is the responsibility of a
web browser to interpret text and commands contained in the web page.
● Example: Internet Explorer, Google chrome

TYPES OF WEBSITES(previously asked university question(2 marks))

● Development Site
o A development site can reside on an existing PC and can be developed with
low-cost Web site building tools, such as MS FrontPage or Macromedia
Dreamweaver Testers can access the site through their PCs on the existing LAN,
possibly not accessible from the Internet
● Intranet
o Corporate intranets hold internal memos, corporate policy handbooks, expense
account worksheets, budgets, newsletters, and a variety of other corporate
documents . Intranets are shielded from the Internet; they do not require
additional security software to protect them against threats from outside the
company
● Extranet
o Extranets are intranets that allow certain authorized parties outside the company
to access certain parts of the information stored in the system . More control than
a freely available Internet site
● Transaction-Processing Sites
o business-to business and business-to-consumer electronic commerce sites .Highly
available for 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
o Reliability: spare servers to handle high traffic volumes
o Highly secure: must run security software to protect financial info

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● Content-Delivery Sites
o delivers content such as news, e-books, music, software or software components
text, MP3 files, PDF documents, executables fixed or streaming (e.g. daily news
or stock exchange live data)
o Content must be delivered rapidly on the visitor’s screen.Visitors must be able to
locate content quickly.
o Must be available 24x7.

WEB SERVER(previously asked university question(2 marks))

● A computer program that is responsible for accepting HTTP requests from web clients,
which are known as web browsers, and serving them HTTP responses along with
optional data contents, which usually are web pages such as HTML documents and
linked objects (images, etc.)
Working
Web server respond to the client request in either of the following two ways:
● Sending the file to the client associated with the requested URL.
● Generating response by invoking a script and communicating with database

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Web Clients and Web Servers

Client/server architectures are used in LANs, WANs, and the Web. In a client/server architecture,
the client computers typically request services, such as printing, information retrieval, and
database access, from the server, which processes the clients’ requests. The computers that
perform the server function usually have more memory and larger, faster disk drives than the
client computers they serve.

Static and Dynamic Web Page(previously asked university question(2 marks))

● A dynamic page is a Web page whose content is shaped by a program in response to
user requests
● A static page is an unchanging page retrieved from disk. Static page delivery requires
less computing power than dynamic page delivery.
On a website that is a collection of HTML pages, the content on the site can be changed only by
editing the HTML in the pages. It doesnot allow customized pages in response to queries from
site visitors. To customize pages on the fly, two approaches are available:
● Server-side scripting
● Dynamic page generation technology
Server-side scripting
● Programs running on Web server create Web pages before sending them back to the
requesting Web clients
Dynamic page-generation technologies
o Active Server Pages (ASP)
o JavaServer Pages (JSP)
o PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP)
Various Meanings of Server
• Server
– Computer used to provide files or make programs available to other computers
• Server software
– Used by server computer to make files and programs available to other computers
• Database server
– Server computer on which database management software runs
● E-mail Server

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- Server that handles incoming and outgoing emails.

Web Client-Server Architecture/Communication
(previously asked university question(10 marks))
When a person uses a Web browser to visit a Web site, the Web browser (also known as a Web
client) requests files from the Web server at the company or organization that operates the Web
site. Using the Internet as the transportation medium, the request is formatted by the browser
using HTTP and sent to the server computer. When the server receives the request, it retrieves
the file containing the Web page or other information that the client requested, formats it using
HTTP, and sends it back to the client over the Internet.

Two Types: (previously asked university question(2 marks and 10 marks))

• Two-tier client/server architecture
• N-Tier Architecture
Two-tier Architecture
• Has one client and server.
• The request message from a client to a server consists of three major parts:
o request line,
o optional request headers, and
o an optional entity body.

• Request line

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– Contains command, name of target resource, and protocol name and version
number
• Request headers
– Can contain information about types of files that client will accept in response to
request
• Entity body
– Used to pass bulk information to the server

Three-tier and N-tier client/server architectures

• A three-tier architecture extends the two-tier architecture to allow additional processing
to occur before the Web server responds to the Web client’s request.
• Has more than three tiers usually called n-tier architectures.

Working
• The client request is formulated into an HTTP message by the browser.
• The HTTTP request message is sent to the server over the internet.
• The server analyses the request and finds that it needs the help of servers database to
generate the response.
• The server sends a request to the database managemet software to search and return all
information.

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• The database info flows back through the dbms softwar to the server.
• The server formats the response into an HTML document and sends the document inside
an HTTP response message to client.

Web Server Hardware and Software Specifications

(previously asked university question(10 marks))
SOFTWARE FOR WEBSERVERS
Operating Systems for Web Servers
• Os is responsible for
• Running programs,
• Allocating computer resources (memory & disk space) to programs,
• Provide input and output services to devices used on the computer.
• Keep track of multiple usesrs on a network (for larger systems)
● Most Web servers run on computers that use one of the following operating systems:
o Microsoft Windows NT Server, Microsoft Windows 2000 or 2003 Server
products, Linux, or one of several UNIX-based operating systems, such as Solaris
or FreeBSD.
o UNIX based Web servers are more popular, and many users believe that UNIX is
a more secure operating system on which to run a Web server.
Web Server Software
The most popular Web server programs in use today:
● Apache HTTP Server,
● Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS), and
● Sun Java System Web Server (JSWS) (Netscape Enterprise Server).
These popularity rankings were accumulated through surveys done by Netcraft, a networking
consulting company in Bath, England, known throughout the world for its Web server survey.

Apache HTTP Server:

● Has dominated the Web since 1996 because it is free and performs very efficiently.

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● It is powerful enough that IBM includes it in its WebSphere application server

package.This is the most popular web server in the world developed by the Apache
Software Foundation.
● Apache web server is an open source software and can be installed on almost all
operating systems including Linux, UNIX, Windows, FreeBSD, Mac OS X and more.
About 60% of the web server machines run the Apache Web Server.
Internet Information Services (IIS)
● The Internet Information Server (IIS) is a high performance Web Server from
Microsoft. This web server runs on Windows NT/2000 and 2003 platforms. IIS comes
bundled with Windows NT/2000 and 2003.
● Used on many corporate intranets
● Supports the use of
o ASP
o ActiveX Data Objects
o SQL database queries
● Because IIS is tightly integrated with the operating system so it is relatively easy to
administer it.
Sun Java System Web Server
● This web server from Sun Microsystems is suited for medium and large web sites.
● The server is free but it is not open source.
● It runs on Windows, Linux and UNIX platforms.
● The Sun Java System web server supports various languages, scripts
and technologies required for Web 2.0 such as JSP, Java Servlets, PHP, Perl, Python, and
Ruby on Rails, ASP and Coldfusion etc.

WEB SITE AND INTERNET UTILITY PROGRAMS

People who develop websites work with a number of utility programs.There are many programs
that are used with Web server software. Some of these programs are on the server, while some
are on the computer being used by the Web designer.
• Finger Utility

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– Runs on UNIX operating systems

– Allows users to obtain information about other network users
– Command yields list of users who are logged on to network
• Ping (Packet Internet Groper)
– Tests connectivity between two computers connected to the Internet
– provides performance data about the connection between Internet computers, such
as the number of computers (hops) between them. It sends two packets to the
specified address and waits for a reply
• Tracert (TRACE RouTe)
– Sends data packets to every computer on the path between one computer and
another
– This provides an indication of the time it takes a message to travel from one
computer to another and back, ensures that the remote computer is online, and
pinpoints any data traffic congestion.
– Clocks packets’ roundtrip times
– Calculate and display number of hops between computers
– Calculate time it takes to traverse entire one-way path between machines
• Telnet and FTP Utilities
– Telnet
• Program that allows users to log on to a computer connected to the
Internet.
• Telnet client programs are available as free downloads on the Internet, and
Microsoft Windows systems include a Telnet client called Telnet.exe.
• Set of rules used by Telnet programs
– File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
• Defines formats used to transfer files between TCP/IP-connected
computers
• FTP can transfer files one at a time, or it can transfer many files at once
• ftp connection is established using ftp://
• Indexing and searching utility programs
– Search engines or search tools

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• Search either a specific site or the entire Web for requested documents

– Indexing program
• Can provide full-text indexing that generates an index for all documents
stored on server
• Can often index documents stored in many different file formats
• Data Analysis Software
– Web servers can capture
• Data about who is visiting a Web site
• How long the visitor’s Web browser viewed site
• Date and time of each visit
• Which pages visitor viewed
– Data captured by Web servers are Stored in a log file
• Link checking utilities
– Link checker
• Examines each Web page and reports on URLs that are
• Broken, seem broken, or are in some way incorrect
– Orphan file
• File on Web site not linked to any Page
– Dead link
• When clicked, displays error message rather than a Web page
– Eg: Elsop Linkscan
• Remote administration
– Web site administrator can control Web site from any Internet-connected
computer
– NetMechanic
• Offers variety of link-checking, HTML troubleshooting, site-monitoring,
and other programs

WEB SERVER HARDWARE

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● Companies use a wide variety of computer brands, types, and sizes to host electronic
commerce operations. Some small companies can run Web sites on desktop PCs.
Server Computers
● Web server computers generally have more memory, larger (and faster) hard disk drives,
and faster processors than the typical desktop or notebook PCs. Web server computers
use more capable hardware elements and more of these elements, they are usually much
more expensive than workstation PCs.
• Blade servers
– Placing small server computers on a single computer board, then installing boards
into a rack-mounted frame
• Virtual server (virtual host)
– Maintains more than one server on one machine
WEB SERVER PERFORMANCE EVALUATION

(previously asked university question(10 marks))

The process of evaluating the performance of Web server hardware and software is called
benchmarking.
It include the following elements:
● hardware
● operating system software
● server software
● connection speeds
● user capacity
● type of Web pages being hosted.
There are two factors used to determine the number of users that will be able to access the site:
● throughput
o Throughput is the number of requests a server can process in a given unit of time
● response time
o response time is the amount of time it takes for the server to fulfill one request.
● Another aspect of server performance involves the server architecture, or the layout of the
hardware used in the server.
Web Server Hardware Architectures

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● Large sites deliver millions of pages every day.They process thousands of customer and
vendor transactions each day .
● The large collection of servers that these sites have are called server farms
● Two approach
o centralised architecture:
▪ a few very large and very fast (and very expensive) computers
o distributed/decentralised architecture:
▪ a large number of relatively inexpensive servers
▪ Large decentralized sites must use load-balancing systems (divide the
workload among them)
Load Balancing
A load-balancing switch is a piece of network hardware that monitors the workloads of the
servers attached to it and assigns incoming Web traffic to the server that has the most available
capacity.
In a simple load-balancing system, the traffic that enters the site from the Internet, encounters
the load-balancing switch, which then directs the traffic to the Web server best able to handle the
traffic

In complex load balancing system, the incoming traffic entering from two or more routers on a
larger website is directed to groups of web servers dedicated to specific tasks.

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Benefits and drawbacks of centralized approach

● Requires expensive computers
● More sensitive to technical problems
● If one server is inoperable a large portion of sites capability is lost.
Benefits and drawbacks of decentralized approach
● Spreads risk over other servers
● If one server is inoperable others can continue to operate.
● Smaller servers are less expensive.

PROXY SERVER

(previously asked university question(10 marks))

● A proxy server is a computer that acts as an intermediary between the user's computer
(client) and the Internet. It allows client computers to make indirect network connections
to other network services.
● Basic functionalities of Proxy servers includes:

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o Firewall and network data filtering.

o Network connection sharing
o Data caching
Purpose of Proxy Servers
● Monitoring and Filtering
● Improving performance
● Translation
● Accessing services anonymously
● Security
TYPE OF PROXIES
● Forward Proxies
● Open Proxies
● Reverse Proxies
● Anonymous Proxies

Forward Proxies
● In this the client requests its internal network server to forward to the internet.
● Provides proxy services to a client or a group of clients. Client request must pass through
the forward proxy first. The request can be allowed or denied. If allowed, the request is
forwarded to the server. From the point of view of server, it is the proxy server that
issued the request and not the client. When server responds, it addreses its response to
the proxy.
● When forward proxy receives the response, it recognizes it as a response to the request
that went through earlier. Hence it sends that response to the client that made the request.

Open Proxies
● Open Proxies helps the clients to conceal their IP address while browsing the web.
● It forwards requests to and from anywhere on the internet.

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Reverse Proxies
● In this the requests are forwarded to one or more proxy servers and the response from
the proxy server is retrieved as if it came directly from the original Server.

Anonymous Proxy
● This type of proxy server does not make the client’s IP address available to the contacted
site and identifies itself as a proxy server.
Distorting Proxy
● This type of proxy server identifies itself as a proxy server, but make an incorrect
original IP address available through the HTTP headers on the data packets.

Working of proxy server

● Client computers connect to the proxy server, requesting some resources like web pages,
games, videos, mp3, e-books, any other resources which are available from various
servers over Internet. After getting the request, the proxy server will seek for the
resources from the cache in its local hard disk. If the resources have been cached before,

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the proxy server will return them to the client computers. If not cached, it will connect to
the original servers and request the resources on behalf of the client computers. Then it
'caches' resources from the remote servers, and returns subsequent requests for the same
content directly.
Benefits of proxy servers
● To hide the IP address of the client computer so that it can surf anonymous, it's mostly for
security.
● To speed up Internet surfing.
● To block undesired sites
● To bypass security restrictions and filters.
● Benefits of caching in proxy
o Reduces latency
o Reduces network traffic
o reduces number of requests on the server
o conserve bandwidth on the network, increasing its scalability.
o improve response time experienced by clients.

SEARCH ENGINES(previously asked university question(10 marks))

● Search Engine refers to a huge database of internet resources such as web pages,
newsgroups, programs, images etc. It helps to locate information on World Wide
Web.User can search for any information by passing query in form of keywords or
phrase. It then searches for relevant information in its database and return to the user.
● Eg: Google,yahoo
Search Engine Components
● There are three basic components of a search engine:
1. Web Crawler
2. Database(Index)

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3. Search Interfaces
Web crawler
● It is also known as spider or bots. It is a software component that automatically
searches the web to find web pages to gather information.
● When spider finds webpages that might interest search engine site visitors, it collects the
URL of page and information contained on the page.The information includes page’s
title, keywords included in page’s text and information about other pages on the
website.The keywords are enclosed in an HTML tag set is called meta tags.
Database
● The spider returns the information gathered to the database. All the information on the
web is stored in database. It consists of huge web resources.The storage element of
search engine is called index of database.The index checks to see if information about
webpage is already stored.If it is, it compares the stored information to the new
information and determines whether to update the page information.
Search Interfaces
● This component is an interface between user and the database. It helps the user to search
through the database.
Working of Search Engines
Web crawler, database and the search interface are the major component of a search engine that
actually makes search engine to work. Search engines make use of Boolean expression AND,
OR, NOT to restrict and widen the results of a search.

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Following are the steps that are performed by the search engine:
● Crawling
● Indexing
● Ranking
● Serving Results

Crawling
● The search engine looks for the keyword in the index for predefined database instead of
going directly to the web to search for the keyword.
● It then uses software to search for the information in the database. This software
component is known as web crawler.
● Once web crawler finds the pages, the search engine then shows the relevant web pages
as a result. These retrieved web pages generally include title of page, size of text portion,
first several sentences etc.
Indexing
● Indexing is when the data from a crawl is processed and placed in a database.
● Indexing process comprises of the following three tasks:
o Text acquisition

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▪ It identifies and stores documents for indexing.

o Text transformation
▪ It transforms document into index terms or features.
o Index creation
▪ It takes index terms created by text transformations and create data
structures to suport fast searching.
Ranking
● These search criteria may vary from one search engine to the other. The retrieved
information is ranked according to various factors such as frequency of keywords,
relevancy of information, links etc.
● Once a keyword is entered into a search box, search engines will check for pages within
their index that are a closest match; a score will be assigned to these pages based on an
algorithm consisting of hundreds of different ranking signals.These pages (or images &
videos) will then be displayed to the user in order of score.
● How to retrieve Most Relevant Pages
● A common measure is the search term frequency. Some search engines consider the
search term frequency as well as where they are positioned. ƒWords appearing earlier in
the document is given more importance. Which documents are most frequently linked to
other documents of the web.

Serving Results
● User can click on any of the search results to open it.

PLUG-INS AND HELPER APPLICATIONS

(previously asked university question(10 marks))

PLUG-INS
● Software component that adds a specific feature to an existing computer program. A
browser can be extended in its capability by adding small applications programs. Such

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programs that run within the browser are known as plugins. A number of plugins are
available from various vendors.
● It is a dynamic code module designed to extend the capabilities of the browser by
integrating a third party application program into the browser.
● New features can be added
● Reduce the size of application
● Eg: Media Player,Acrobat Reader, Shock Wave etc.
HELPER APPLICATION
● A program, external to the browser, which the browser is configured to use when it
downloads a file type which it cannot itself display/handle but which the browser knows
can handle the file type being downloaded.
● These are stand-alone programs which were developed totally independent of Web
browsers
● There are 2 ways to configure a browser to use a particular helper application.
o Manually
▪ The user enters the appropriate information in the fields of
the Helpers screen
o Browser-Assisted
▪ Many browsers will assist the user in configuring the helper application in
the case where the user has already installed the application, but not yet
configured the browser to use it.
● Eg: A browser is unable to directly play a MP3 file. If a browser receives a MP3 file, it
will access its list of helper applications to locate a compatible MP3 applications.

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//VERY VERY IMPORTANT TOPIC MORE QUESTIONS WERE ASKED FROM THIS TOPIC
IN MODULE2 DON’T SKIP THIS TOPIC

E-COMMERCE SOFTWARE (ELECTRONIC COMMERCE SOFTWARE)

● Electronic commerce means shopping/trading using the Internet called the World Wide
Web (the Web).
● Electronic commerce (or e-commerce) includes many activities, such as businesses
trading with other businesses and internal processes that companies use to support their
buying, selling, hiring, planning, and other activities.
Categories of Ecommerce
● The five general electronic commerce categories are
o Business-to-Consumer(B2C)
▪ Transaction between company and its consumers
▪ Eg: online Trading
o Business-to-Business(B2B)
▪ Transactions conducted between businesses on the Web.
▪ Ecommerce functions between manufacturer and wholesaler.
o Consumer-to-Business(C2B)
▪ Consumer providing service to an organization.
o Consumer-to-Consumer(C2C)
▪ Allows consumers to interact with each other.
▪ Eg:Online auctions
o Business-to-Government(B2G)
▪ Transactions carried out between businesses and government bodies usin
Internet technologies to support selling and purchasing activities.
▪ Eg: E-tendering solutions
o Consumer-to-Goverenment(C2G)
▪ Direct communication between consumers and government
▪ Eg:e-voting,e-health
BASIC FUNCTIONS OF ECOMMERCE
(previously asked university question(10 marks))

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● The size and objectives of electronic commerce sites vary greatly; thus, a variety of
software and hardware products are used to build those sites.
● The basic functions of electronic commerce includes:
● Catalog display
● Shopping cart capabilities
● Transaction processing
Catalog Display:
● A catalog organizes the goods and services being sold. These items are grouped into
departments. A small commerce site can have a very simple static catalog.
● A catalog is a listing of goods and services.
o A static catalog is a simple list written in HTML that appears on a Web page or a
series of Web pages. To add an item, delete an item, or change an item’s listing,
the company must edit the HTML of one or more pages.
o Larger commerce sites uses dynamic catalog. A dynamic catalog stores the
information about items in a database, usually on a separate computer that is
accessible to the server that is running the Web site itself.
● Small web stores provides catalog with simple list of products. organization of products
is not so important.Photos can be added to products which serves as a link to products
page.
● Large ecommerce sites should provide navigation aids in their catalog.organization of
products is important. Search engines can be used to facilitate easy buying.
Shopping Cart:
● In the early days of electronic commerce, form base shopping cart were used.
● Shoppers selected items they wanted to purchase by filling out online forms. Using text
box and list box form controls to indicate their choices, users entered the quantity of an
item in the quantity text box, the SKU (stock-keeping unit) or product number in another
text box, and the unit price in yet another text box.
● The problem with this approach is that if we fail to submit the order, we have no way to
check it ans so the order will not be processed. Also we may submit the order twice
thinking that we have not submit the order. This system was awkward for ordering more
than one or two items at a time.

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● The forms-based method is replaced with shopping bag or shopping basket nowadays. It
keeps track of the items the customer has selected and allows customers to view the
contents of their carts, add new items, or remove items. To order an item, the customer
simply clicks that item. All of the details about the item, including its price, product
number, and other identifying information, are stored automatically in the cart. If a
customer later changes his or her mind about an item, he or she can view the cart’s
contents and remove the unwanted items. When the customer is ready to conclude the
shopping session, the click of a button executes the purchase transaction.
Transaction Processing:
● This is the final check out phase.
● Transaction processing occurs when the shopper proceeds to the virtual checkout counter
by clicking a checkout button. Then the electronic commerce software performs any
necessary calculations, such as volume discounts, sales tax, and shipping costs. At
checkout, the customer’s Web browser software and the seller’s Web server software both
switch into a secure state of communication since it involves money transaction.
● Transaction processing can be the most complex part of the online sale. Computing taxes
and shipping costs are important parts of this process, and site administrators must
continually check tax rates and shipping tables to make sure they are current. Some
software enables the Web server to obtain updated shipping rates by connecting directly
to shipping companies to retrieve information.

Advanced features of electronic commerce software

● Middleware that integrates the electronic commerce system with existing company
information systems that handle inventory control, order processing, and accounting
● Enterprise application integration
● Web services
● Integration with enterprise resources planning (ERP) software
● Supply chain management (SCM) software
● Customer relationship management (CRM) software
● Content management software
● Knowledge management software

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Middleware
● Provides connection between ecommerce s/w and existing accounting system.Middle can
be purchased from a third party vendor or it can be self-written if the company has
enough technical staffs.Middleware vendors are IBM,Broadvision
Enterprise application integration
● A program that performs a specific function, such as creating invoices, calculating
payroll,or processing payments received from customers, is called an application program
or application software or, more simply, an application.
● An application server is a computer that takes the request messages received by the Web
server and runs application programs that perform some kind of action based on the
contents of the request messages.
● The actions that the application server software performs are determined by the rules
used in the business. These rules are called business logic.
● Application servers are usually grouped into two types: page-based and component-based
systems.
o Page-based application systems return pages generated by scripts that include the
rules for presenting data on the Web page with the business logic. Common
page-based server systems include Adobe ColdFusion, JavaServer Pages ( JSP),
Microsoft Active Server Pages (ASP), and Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP).
o Component-based application system separates the presentation logic from the
business logic. Each component of logic is created and maintained separately. Eg:
Enterprise JavaBeans (EJBs), Microsoft Component Object Model (COM), and
the Object Management Group Common Object Request Broker Architecture
(CORBA).
Integration with ERP Systems
● Enterprise resource planning (ERP) software packages are business systems that integrate
all facets of a business, including accounting, logistics,manufacturing, marketing,
planning, project management, and treasury functions.The two major ERP vendors are
Oracle and SAP.

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Web Services
● a Web service is a set of software and technologies that allow computers to use the Web
to interact with each other directly, without human operators directing the specific
interactions.
● Allows application software in one organization to communicate with other applications
in the network using protocols such as SOAP,UDDI,WSDL.
● SOAP Specifications
o Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP),which is a message-passing protocol that
defines how to send marked-up data from one software application to another
across a network.
● Web Services Description Language (WSDL), which is used to describe the
characteristics of the logic units that make up specific Web services.
● Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration Specification (UDDI), a set of
protocols that identify the locations of Web services and their associated WSDL
descriptions.

Customer Relationship Management Software

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● Understands customer needs. Gather data about customer activities on company’s site.
Supply Chain Management Software
● Coordinate planning and operations with their partners.
Content Management Software
● Helps to control text,graphics and media files.
Knowledge Management software
● Collect and organize information
● Share information among users
● Enhance the ability of users to collaborate
● Preserve the knowledge

PAYMENT SYSTEMS
(previously asked university question(10 marks))
The function of payment systems is the handling of payments over the Internet. Most electronic
commerce involves the exchange of some form of money for goods or services.
There are four basic ways to pay:
● Cash
● Credit card
● Cheque
● Debit card
Another payment medium is scrip. Scrip is digital cash issued by a company instead of by a
government. scrip cannot be exchanged for cash; it must be exchanged for goods or services by
the company that issued the scrip.
Payment Cards
all types of plastic cards like credit cards, debit cards etc that consumers (and some businesses)
use to make purchases.
● Credit card
o Provided by Visa or a MasterCard.

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o The spending limit of credi card is based on the user’s credit history.
o A bill will be generated every month for the credits.
o a user can either pay off the entire credit card balance or pay a minimum amount
each billing period. Credit card issuers charge interest on any unpaid balance.
o It is widely accepted.
● Debit Card
o Debit cards are issued by the cardholder’s bank and usually carry the name of a
major credit card issuer, such as Visa or MasterCard, by agreement between the
issuing bank and the credit card issuer.
o a debit card removes the amount of the sale from the cardholder’s bank account
and transfers it to the seller’s bank account.
● Charge card
o offered by companies such as American Express.
o carries no spending limit, and the entire amount charged to the card is due at the
end of the billing period.
● No interests and the entire amount has to be payed.

When using payment cards users have the fear of security. To overcome this Several payment
card companies began offering cards with disposable numbers. These cards are called single-use
cards, gave consumers a unique card number that was valid for one transaction only.It is least
used.
Advantages
1. Provides fraud protection for mechanism as they authenticate cards.
2. Worldwide acceptance
3. Useful for online transaction
4. Provides built-in security for merchants as cash will be paid by issuing companies.
Disadvantages
● Payment card service companies charge per-transaction fee and monthly processing fee.
Payment Acceptance and Processing
In physical store, a sales clerk runs the payment card through online card terminal, card amount
will be charged. In internet we use EMV standard is used.

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The steps for payment processing

1. The merchant authenticates the payment card to ensure it is valid and not stolen.
2. The merchant checks availability of user’s fund with with the payment card issuer.
3. Settlement occurs, usually a few days after the purchase, which means that funds
travel between banks and are placed into the merchant’s account.
Open and Closed Loop Systems
● In closed loop system, the card issuer directly pays the merchant.
● No intermediary bank is involved.
● Companies that support closed loop systems are: American Express and discover Card.

● In open loop systems three or more parties are involved in transaction. Systems using
Visa or MasterCard are examples of open loop systems.

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Processing Payment Cards Online

● Software having ecommerce software can handle payment card processing automatically
or merchants can contat with third party vendors for payment card processing.
● Payment processing service providers are Internetsecure and Firstdata.Services connect to
network of banks called Automated Clearing House(ACH) and credit card authorization
companies.

Working

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● Banks connect to an ACH through highly secure, private leased telephone lines.
● The merchant sends the card information to a payment card authorization company,which
reviews the customer account and, if it approves the transaction, sends the credit
authorization to the issuing bank.
● Then the issuing bank deposits the money in the merchant’s bank account through the
ACH.
● The merchant’s Web site receives confirmation of the acceptance of the consumer
transaction.
● After receiving notification of acceptance or rejection of the transaction, the merchant
Web site confirms the sale to the customer over the Internet.

ELECTRONIC CASH
(previously asked university question(10 marks))
● Electronic cash (also called e-cash or digital cash) is value storage and exchange system
created by a private (nongovernmental) entity.
● It does not use paper documents or coins.
● It can serve as a substitute for government-issued physical currency
Micropayments
● Payments for items costing from a few cents to a dollar
Small Payments

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● All paymenst of less than 10 dollar

Privacy and Security
● Concerns about electronic payment methods include:
o Privacy and security
o Independence
o Portability
o Convenience
Online and Offline cash
● Online cash storage means that the consumer does not personally possess electronic
cash.Instead, a trusted third party, an online bank is involved in all transfers of electronic
cash and holds the consumers’ cash accounts.
● Offline cash storage is the virtual equivalent of money kept in a wallet. The customer
holds it, and no third party is involved in the transaction.
Double-spending
● spending a particular piece of electronic cash twice by submitting the same electronic
currency to two different vendors.
Working
● consumer opens account with an ecash issuer.
● An e-cash issuer can be an ecash issuer bank or private vendor of ecash
● Customer can withdraw ecash by accessing issuer’s website by providing proof of
identity
● The identity proof can be a digital certificate or a combination of credit card number and
bank account number.
● Consumer is given ecash.
● E-cash vendor deducts the same amount from consumer’s account.
● Issuer might charge a small processing fee.
● Consumer can store e-cash in electronic wallet.
Advantages
● more efficient
● less costly than processing credit card transactions
● no additional costs.

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Disadvantages
● provides no audit trails
● money laundering( converts illegal money to cash)
● susceptible to forgery
Detecting double spending
● consumer creates a random serial number
● consumer sends it to the issuing bank
● bank uses it along with bank’s digital signature
● bank sends a package containing random number, ecash and digital signature to the
consumer.
● Consumer can use it for further transaction.

Providing security
● Cryptographic algorithms are used using keys to create tamper proof ecash.
● Anonymous electronic cash can be used.

ELECTRONIC WALLETS OR E-WALLET

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(previously asked university question(10 marks))

● Stores name, address and credit card information.
● It holds credit card numbers, electronic cash, owner identification,and owner contact
information and provides that information at an electronic commerce site’s checkout
counter.
● There are two categories
o A server-side electronic wallet stores a customer’s information on a remote server
belonging to a particular merchant or wallet publisher.Anyone can hack the server
and set user’s details.
o A client-side electronic wallet stores a consumer’s information on his or her own
computer.User need to download wallet software.It is not portable but has less
security breaches as compared to server side e-wallets.
Survivors of E-wallet
● Two survivors in the e-wallet arena are
o Microsoft Windows Live ID and
o Yahoo! Wallet.
● Microsoft Windows LiveID
o server-side electronic wallet operated by Microsoft
o obtaining a hotmail account or Microsoft MSN internet signs up for a passport
account.
o It provides four integrated services
▪ Passport single sign in service(SSI)
▪ Passport wallet service
▪ Kids passport service
▪ Public profiles
● Yahoo ewallet
o Server side wallet
o Yahoo! Wallet lets users store information about several major credit and charge
cards, along with Visa and MasterCard debit cards.
W3C Micropayment Standards Development Activity

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● Individual companies offer ewallet services.common standard built into the structure of
web.
W3C Electronic commerce Interest Group(ECIG)
● Common markup for micropayment per fee links
● Contains guidelines to embed micropayment information in a webpage

ECML standard
● Stands for electronic commerce modeling language
● Contains a set of XML tags

STORED VALUE CARDS(previously asked university question(10 marks))

● A stored-value card is an smart card with a microchip or a plastic card with a magnetic
strip that records the currency balance. The microchip can store more information than a
magnetic strip.
● Since cards are different and card readers are also different.
● Eg: prepaid phone,copycard etc
Magnetic Strip Cards
● These cards hold value that can be recharged by
o inserting them into the appropriate machines,
o inserting currency into the machine, and
o withdrawing the card;
● the card’s strip stores the increased cash value.
● Magnetic strip cards are passive; that is,they cannot send or receive information, nor can
they increment or decrement the value of cash stored on the card.
Smart Cards
● A smart card is a stored-value card that is a plastic card with an embedded microchip that
can store information. A smart card can store about 100 times the amount of information
that a magnetic strip plastic card can store.

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● A smart card can hold private user data, such as financial facts, encryption keys, account
information, credit card numbers, health insurance information, medical records, and so
on.
● Smart cards are safer than conventional credit cards because the information stored on a
smart card is encrypted.
● Eg:OCTOPUS

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