Java E-Commerce

The term e-commerce encompasses a spectrum of trading interactions from the business-to-consumer (B2C) transactions that facilitate Web-based retail trade, to business-to-business (B2B) data exchange that increases supply chain efficiency. This book shows how the Java platform and Java technologies can be, and have been, employed to develop solutions that address these scenarios.

To allow readers to gain a full appreciation of the diversity of topics involved in building e-commerce solutions, the book consists of five main sections. We begin by looking at the general area of e-business and the commercial considerations surrounding such application development. We then look at the Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition (J2EE), XML, and XSLT. Building on this, we discuss the development of B2C sites for online selling and the design of effective portal sites. Our fourth section is devoted to the expanding area of B2B commerce where XML and XSLT are proving invaluable. Finally, we highlight new developments in the area of m-commerce and see how Java technologies can be used to facilitate trading anywhere. A particular feature of the book is the inclusion of case studies that provide hard won information on the challenges of building effective B2C and B2B applications in the real world.

Subrahmanyam Allamaraju is a Senior Engineer with BEA Systems. His interest in modeling led him from his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering to object-oriented programming, and then to distributed computing and software architecture. In this process, he drifted from his one-time home - the Indian Institute of Technology, to Computervision, and Wipro Infotech, and later to BEA Systems.

Ronald Ashri is a postgraduate researcher at the University of Southampton, working in the "Intelligence, Agents and Multimedia" group that is part of the Department of Electronics and Computer Science. His research is focused on infrastructures for agents in heterogeneous network environments, which range from the typical PC to Palm-style devices and mobile phones. This work is jointly funded by British Telecom and the University of Southampton. Other interests include the use of Jini network technology for the support of agent-based systems.

Earlier, Ronald worked for a short period at Adastral Park, BT's research center, focusing on security issues for mobile agents. He graduated from Warwick University with a First Class Honours degree in Computer Systems Engineering.

Chád Darby is the founder of J9 Consulting, a Java consulting firm. He has experience developing n-tier web applications for Fortune 500 companies and the Department of Defense. Chád has published articles in Java Report, Java Developer's Journal, and Web Techniques. He has also been an invited speaker at conferences including SD West 99, XML DevCon 2000, and JavaCon 2000.

Chád recently gave a presentation on WAP and XML in Sydney, Australia. In between consulting and writing projects, he teaches Java courses for Learning Tree International. Chád is a Sun certified Java developer and holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University.

Robert Flenner is an active author, independent contractor, and software developer. He has been involved in defining and designing E-Commerce systems for large enterprises. He has successfully coordinated application architecture strategies and led projects utilizing local and well as geographically dispersed development teams. He has extensive experience consulting with global companies on both strategic and tactical IT development and deployment. His technical consulting experience includes Web, CORBA, distributed object modeling, workflow, and high availability transaction processing. He is currently promoting and developing a framework for distributed development and collaboration. He can be contacted at rflenner@metronet.com.

Tracie Karsjens is a Minneapolis-based consultant working primarily in web based applications. She has been working with Java since 1996 and her experience covers every tier of enterprise Java applications. Tracie is a strong advocate for lightweight methodologies and techniques such as refactoring and unit testing.

Mark Kerzner has degrees in Math and in Computer Science, and 20 years of software development experience. He likes taking all available exams, so by now he has Microsoft, Java, and Weblogic certifications. He loves learning languages, both computer and human. He can be reached at kerzner@shmsoft.com.

Alex Krotov just defended his PhD at the University of Sheffield, UK in Computational Linguistics. He now lives in Portland, Oregon and works for the Center for Human-Computer Communication at Oregon Graduate Institute. His research interests include Natural Language Processing, and, in particular, language parsing and statistical NLP.

He was involved in developing CONVERSE, a 'talking computer', which won the Loebner Contest in New York in 1997.

Alex Linde has been worked as a consultant and professional developer in the Internet field for over 5 years. His experience ranges from designing large-scale Internet hosting solutions, to lead developer for the Psion Series 3 Internet browser. Initially a C/C++ programmer, he moved to CGI and ISAPI, then on to COM and ASP as the technology advanced. He has been working with Java since 1996, and recently architected a major portal system using J2EE.

For 30 years Jim MacIntosh worked as a journalist, primarily as a radio reporter and newscast lineup editor. Workplace cutbacks sent him back to school, to become a Sun Certified Java Programmer, and to whet his appetite for all things IT. He created his own consulting company, MacIntosh Technical, and spent most of the past year working as a writer, reviewer and instructor of Java related technologies.

James McGovern is an industry recognized technologist focused on strategy and architecture for high-profile e-Business web sites. He has worked on sites such as wingspanbank.com, lowestloan.com and Carbonek Financial Services. He serves as a member of the board of advisors for several emerging dot-coms.

He attended Charter Oak State College. He is a frequent speaker at key technology forums and conferences throughout the United States. He holds industry certifications from Sun, Microsoft, and Cisco. He can be reached at mcgovern@cyberservices.com.

Thor Mirchandani grew up in Sweden, where he studied medicine, electronic engineering, programming, and philosophy at the University of Uppsala. After graduation, he embarked on a short career in surgery, then returned to his first love, computers, switching careers to software development. Thor specializes in distributed and multi-tier architectures for commerce and manufacturing, preferably using Java and C/C++. He has about fifteen years experience in the field, mostly as a consultant. Thor is presently working as Director of E-Commerce and Emerging Technologies for Technisource, Inc., a Fort Lauderdale, and Florida based consulting and outsourcing company.

Bryan Plaster is an avid developer and software enthusiast who thrives on new technologies and engineering feats, whatever they may be. He also enjoys writing regularly for private and on-line publications.He has been developing commercial software for 15 years and developing in Java since 1996. Don has also been working on a open source Java compiler he plans to release in the near future. Don can be reached at don@reamey.com or dreamey@ibexone.com.

A contractor to Sun Microsystems, Dr. Poornachandra Sarang trains Sun's corporate clients on various courses from their official curriculum. He also conducts "Train The Trainers" program and "Instructor Authorization Tests" on behalf of Sun. As CEO of ABCOM Information Systems Pvt. Ltd., Dr. Sarang specializes in training and project development on the Java/CORBA platform. With almost 20 years of industry experience, Dr. Sarang has developed a number of products and successfully completed various industry projects. He is a regular speaker in national and international conferences and regularly contributes technical articles to reputed international journals and magazines.

Dave Writz is a principal and co-founder of Cornerstone Consulting, a Milwaukee, Wisconsin based service organization specializing in building distributed applications. Dave is responsible for the management of the consulting staff and their projects. Under his guidance Cornerstone has recently been named to Milwaukee's Future 50. This prestigious award recognizes entrepreneurial companies poised for success in the Milwaukee area.

Throughout his career, Dave has concentrated building software solutions using object-oriented analysis, design, and programming techniques. He has lead teams responsible for defining Internet and Intranet strategies, then evaluating, selecting, and introducing new technologies including Java, XML/XSL, CORBA, EJB, and other advanced technologies. While serving as a mentor, architect, and developer Dave has been able to help Fortune 1000 as well as emerging companies utilize information technology as a competitive advantage.