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Chang-Yang Lin
This chapter examines the various issues related to enterprisewide business applications in the context of the Web. Managers need to be aware of Web capabilities and limitations, including standards of security, performance, backup, and user management, as well as the processes for integrating the Web and corporate applications. Intranet solutions also are discussed.
The growth of the World Wide Web, or the Web for short, has been phenomenal since the popular multimedia Web browsers Mosaic and Netscape became available in 1994. Some 1996 figures show that 50% of the Web sites are used by commercial corporations, as compared with 13.5% in the previous year, and that percentage is increasing monthly, as more corporations discover the advantages of maintaining an online presence. Commercial Web sites are still mainly used as marketing tools to provide information about company history, locations, and products, as very few Web sites can respond to information inquiries on enterprise or legacy data that is mostly stored in mainframe computers. As for mission-critical applications (e.g., customer order entry, customer invoicing, billing, and accounts receivable), they are almost nonexistent in the Web sites. This is partially because current Web technology is not mature enough to facilitate effective and risk-free transaction processing over the Internet.
With the remarkable growth of the Web, users, both customers and employees, will inevitably request the ability to access enterprise data via the Web as well as to run Web-based enterprisewide applications. Managers have many issues to consider before setting a plan in motion to satisfy these users needs. In addition to providing background information on the Web and its capabilities, this chapter describes the four primary components of the Web. Key terms are examined, including HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP), HyperText Markup Language (HTML), and Uniform Resource Locator (URL). The chapter also discusses Web limitations and the unanswered business questions; the limitations of current technology are identified. Intranets and their use in corporate settings are examined. The chapter introduces approaches for tying the Web and enterprise systems into a coherent system. The development tools and products for the integration are also identified. Finally, the chapter presents planning issues useful in preparing for Web-based enterprisewide business applications.
The World Wide Web is a way of organizing the Internet that allows users to search for and retrieve information quickly and easily in a nonlinear way. This information is structured into small chunks, called pages, and it can be displayed page by page through electronic links. Pages may store information in a variety of formats, including numbers, text, graphic images, video, audio, and programs. Essentially, the Web is a collection of independent, yet interrelated, pages wired together by hypermedia links.
Technically, the Web is a kind of client/server networking technology for the purpose of requesting and providing services. The Web is composed of four components: clients, servers, publishing tools, and communication protocols.
A Web client acts as a front-end browser for requesting service from the servers. Popular Web browsers include Netscape Navigator, Mosaic, and Microsofts Internet Explorer. These browsers are generally equipped with graphical user interfaces (GUIs), which make Internet navigation relatively easy.
A Web server is the back-end distributing system that processes and manages requests for service from the clients. Popular Web servers include Netscapes Commerce Server, Microsofts Internet Information Server, Process Softwares Purveyor, and OReilly and Associates WebSite. These Web servers can be evaluated in terms of such factors as performance, security, and manageability.
The HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is an open platform language used to define Web pages. This language includes a set of tags that must be embedded in the text to make up a hypertext document. Thus, creating an HTML page involves primarily the process of tagging documents; HTML encoding can be done by inserting the code in a standard ASCII text file, inserting tags in a word processing program, or using special software programs that build the code for the user. Such programs allow the user to select, through menus and interactive commands, the desired effects; the program then builds the appropriate HTML code.
Although word processors and other text editors can be used to create Web pages from scratch, tools specifically designed to publish Web pages are available to make working with HTML easier. Examples of these publishing products include Interleafs Cyberleaf, SoftQuads HotMetal Pro, InContext Systems Spider, HTML Assistant Pro, HTMLed, and HotDog. All these products automate at least the tagging process by supporting intuitive what-you-see-is-what-you-get screens (WYSIWYG), menu, toolbar, and drag-and-drop interfaces. In addition, some products such as Cyberleaf are equipped with utility programs able to convert Microsoft Word or WordPerfect documents into HTML pages. The capabilities of these Web publishing tools can be classified loosely into four groups:
Whereas creating simple pages using these publishing tools requires no specific skills, rich and interactive online pages will require extensive knowledge and skills to integrate hyperlinks, multimedia, and embedded objects.
The Web depends on three protocols to facilitate communications. The Internet protocols include TCP/IP, HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP), and Universal Resource Locators (URLs) to communicate over the multiple networks. HTTP is the method that Web servers and Web clients use to exchange HTML pages. This method is built on the concept of hypertext/hypermedia that permits the nonlinear accessing of the pages.
URLs define the unique location where a page or service can be found. An example of URL would be http://home.netscape.com/comprod/index.html. This URL begins with the letters http as the transfer format, which indicates that the last portion of the address (i.e., index.html) is an HTML page. The section after ://, in this case, home.netscape.com, represents the host computer where the information is stored. This is also referred to as the home page or the web site of the Netscape Communications Corporation because it can be used as the starting point to explore other pages in detail. Anyone can publish a home page or start at someones home page. The rest of this URL is a path name to the file.
URLs do not always begin with the letters http. Other formats are also available, including ftp and News. Together, URLs and Internet protocols enable users to reach, in addition to the Web, other Internet resources, such as E-mail, ftp, gopher, telnet, and discussion groups via Web browsers.
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