Web Services Information Technology for E-Business - Dissertation Example

Web Services Information Technology for E-Business. Abstract The paper presents Web services information technology, which offers promising opportunities to e-business in organizations. Web services information technology is intended primarily for business-to-business Internet software applications, but also can be used in other areas of e-commerce. Web services technology allows a seamless interface to Web system between information provider and consumers. The requirements to the information provided by the system are timeliness, reliability, security and flexibility of presentation. In this work Web services architecture is described that can be adopted as a new service delivery model that incorporates implementation of user and functionality requirements, business processes, design patterns and existing technologies use defining an accomplished B2B e-commerce process solution. The Web services model allows any user access through the use of XML tags for information exchange using the other three standards: SOAP, UDDI, and WSDL. The distinguishing feature of Web services technology is that it allows provider and consumers to not be tied in to a particular service set and truly minimizing the impact of change to switch service providers. Thus information system built on Web services allows companies to seamlessly integrate provider’s functionality into their enterprise software applications, such as Supply Chain Management, Enterprise Resource Planning and others. 1. Growing Needs for e-Business 1.1. Use of information technologies in business Use of the Internet for expanding business of the company is a reality, so those who ignore the high technologies will lose the race for competitive advantage. On the other hand, those who have embraced the power of e-commerce solutions are innovators. According to Australian Bureau of Statistics, 83% of businesses used computers, 71% of businesses use Internet access, and 23% of businesses had web sites in June 2003. Proportion of businesses placing or receiving orders via the Internet or web was 25% in purchasing and 6% in selling in 2001-2002 and 28% in purchasing and 13% in selling in 2002-2003. Business income attributable to receiving orders via the Internet or web was 5% or more for 42% of companies in 2002-2003. At that time main business perceptions of the benefits for the business of receiving orders via the Internet or web were increased number of customers (28%) and faster business processes (53%). Main business perceptions of placing orders via the Internet or web were time saving (86%) and ability to track orders (20%). (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2006, para.11-18) An important issue for development of information technologies for application in e-commerce is Internet penetration. UNCTAD Report (2006, p.4) finds that number of Internet users continues to grow in all regions, in particular in Africa, whereas the market is the most mature in the United States. Despite high growth in many developing countries, Internet penetration rates are still very low. For example, China, the second largest Internet market in the world after the United States, has a penetration rate of only 6.3 per 100 inhabitants. While the number of computers is increasing substantially in developing countries, particularly in some of the emerging markets, computer penetration remains very low. The Report reveals that enterprises’ Internet use is high (up to 90%) in developed countries and among medium-sized and large enterprises in developing countries. Small enterprises in developing countries are less connected, in particular those in rural areas. (UNCTAD Report, 2006, p. 4) Use of information technologies in various aspects of electronic commerce gives company a number of advantages. The Internet gives to business a better way to do the things they do. The Internet has the capability to cut costs for selling organizations, automated functions and instant data information, it can cut purchasing cycle times, reduce human resources costs, and lower transaction costs for suppliers. Further to cost reductions, there is increased efficiency. Online functions for customer service, product information, product ordering and order-tracking functions are available to customers 24 hour 7 days a week. 1.2. E-commerce E-commerce continues to grow in all sectors. In the United States (the largest e-commerce market), it is the most prominent in manufacturing and wholesale trade, although growth rates are highest in retail trade (B2C) and services. The Report also shows that the proportion of enterprises selling online decreases with size, but that online purchasing is more common that online selling. Most enterprises in developing countries use the Internet for e-mailing or basic information search, in particular those with slow models of access. On the other hand, broadband access is spreading quickly among firms in developed countries and in Asian countries such as the Republic of Korea and Singapore, which use the Internet for more advanced e-business activities, banking and financial services, or filling out government forms. (UNCTAD Report, 2006, p.5) 1.3. E-finance Another promising area of e-business is electronic finance that is well expanded in developed countries. However, in most developing countries financial service providers are not yet in a position to use modern credit risk management techniques to provide capital, and in particular trade finance, to local enterprises on competitive terms. One of the main reasons for this situation is the fragility and insufficient level of skills in the financial sector and in particular the lack of elaborate credit reporting system. The inability of creditors to access borrowers’ risk owing to a lack of credit information namely information on the financial state and payment record of the borrowers, is one of the main impediments to introducing a modern credit-based economy in those countries. Moreover, while enterprises in the formal sector face difficulties in accessing credit owing to their own weaknesses or to structural deficiencies of the economy, those in the informal economy lack a documented track record, and are therefore excluded from formal financial intermediation. (UNCTAD Report, 2006, p.6) There is the need to improve the quality of credit information and simultaneously to make it available at low cost by actively using opportunities provided by modern Internet computer technologies. Transacting economic agents are trying to overcome as much as possible information asymmetries. In that respect, modern Internet computer technologies are creating qualitatively a new environment permitting considerable advances in the right direction. That underscores the importance for developing countries of creating the necessary regulatory and institutional environment and making the establishment of credit information services a policy priority. Major international efforts, including public-private partnerships, technical assistance and other capacity building, should not be spared to achieve that end. (UNCTAD Report, 2006, p.7) 1.4. E-tourism Contemporary online tourism market is a very dynamic one, with highly competitive newcomers and powerful concentration mechanisms. Over the years, the number of online tourism providers has increased, and the market has experienced a gradual consolidation in the hands of the larger and the better-funded companies. As was the case for the tourism industry before the Internet, information on tourism opportunities in developing countries is mainly generated and maintained by overseas service providers, who also conduct most of the sales transactions and take a large percentage of the profits. In developed countries, large recourses are being invested by tourism providers to design user-friendly destination management systems based on innovative technologies and tools offering various functionalities, such as online reservation and booking systems, to meet growing customers’ expectations. Building reliable and secure destination management systems with comprehensive packaging will be essential for destination management organisations in developing countries in order to meet consumers’ needs. Public and private partnerships should be encouraged to gradually and successfully implement the destination management system. Security issues, in particular those related to the transmission of credit card information, have to be addressed at the national level. In the end, the lack of confidence, security and user-friendly and high-quality frameworks is influential in customers’ decisions. (UNCTAD Report, 2006, p.8) 1.5. E-logistics The use of Internet systems for e-business gives a number of advantages for logistics business, such as new market penetration, targeted advertisement of new services, increase of quality of services, acceleration of information processing and customers’ feedback improvement. Also high requirements are presented to the information system’s integrability and reliability, that’s why cost of qualitative logistics information system development is also high. There are a lot of small and medium transport companies that could improve their business through offering their services and providing customer support via Internet. Creating an information system through which transport companies can take orders for delivery would help them to take an advantage of high technologies. Contemporary state of affairs in transport industry is that small and medium transport companies, or delivery agents, offer broad range of services and have a lot of specific location, price, delivery or other conditions. Often these companies have no advanced web presence with detailed description of services they provide, also they can’t hire experienced specialists in Internet marketing and advertisement. Other great challenge that needs solving is tracking of shipment delivery, immediate delivery notification and other information from small and medium transport companies that are important for their customers. (Zhang and Chang, 2002) 2. Definition and History of Web Services 2.1. Definition of Web Services Web services technology provides a unified mechanism for information supply via Internet. One company is provider of commercial information, while other companies may request and obtain this information using mediator and special network protocols. Web services are one of the most promising information technologies for e-business. Cerami (2002) defines web service as ‘any service that is available over the Internet, uses a standardized XML messaging system, and is not tied to any one operating system or programming language.’ Cerami names several alternatives for XML messaging, such as XML Remote Procedure Call (XML-RPC), SOAP and HTTP GET/POST for pass of XML documents. He also advises that web service may have two additional properties: A web service should be self-describing. A web service should be discoverable. (Cerami, 2002, p.7) Web services provide a layer of abstraction above existing software systems, such as application servers, CORBA, .NET servers, messaging and packaged applications. Web services work at a level of abstraction similar to the Internet and are capable of bridging any operating system, hardware platform, or programming language, just as the Web is. Unlike existing distributed systems, web services are adapted to the Web. The default network protocol is HTTP. Most existing distributed computing technologies include the communication protocol as part of their scope. With web services, the communication protocol is already there, in the far-flung, worldwide Web. New applications become possible when everything is web service enabled. Once the world becomes web service enabled, all kinds of new business paradigms, discussion groups, interactive forums, and publishing models will emerge to take advantage of this new capability. (Newcomer, 2002) The web service architecture provides an interesting alternative for drastically decoupling presentation form content. For example, a site could consist of nothing but container pages that pass parameters to the real logic via SOAP or XML-RPC. This makes it easy to change presentation and also lets humans and computers “share” a single web service. (Cerami, 2002) 2.2. History of Web Services The history of Web services includes the following major events: September 2000: WSDL 1.0 is published March 2001: WSDL 1.1 is submitted to W3C April 2001: W3C organizes a workshop on Web services 2001: First proposals are got from vendors (UDDI, security extensions, flow languages) January 2002: Creation of the Web Services Activity with 2 new Working Groups: Web Services Architecture Working Group Web Services Description Working Group 2002: More proposals from vendors (reliability, and choreography) June 2003: The World Wide Web Consortium today released SOAP 1.2 as a W3C Recommendation April 2004: SOAP Resource Representation Header is published October 2004: Development transport-neutral mechanism to address Web services messages has started January 2005: Recommendations of XML-binary Optimized Packaging, SOAP Message Transmission Optimization Mechanism and Resource Representation SOAP Header Block are published (Haas, 2006) So the technology Web services are still in process of development. As Vogels (2003) writes, Web services technology is still evolving even at the most basic levels, but many vendors, trade magazines, and venture capitalists have already tagged the technology as the trigger for a new wave of applications, enabled by federated interoperability. This early exposure has generated many incomplete and incorrect publications, toolkit releases that have little or no architectural vision, and fights among different standardization bodies seeking the right to control the underpinnings of Web services. The waters are further muddied by the fact that many of the vendors who jumped on board to promote Web services also have vested interests in Web and applications servers or distributed object technologies. Web services are going to play an important role in the future of distributed computing, significantly impacting application and system development. However, developers and researchers in both industry and academia must work to clear up common misconceptions about the technology, or else we will end up with architectures that have severely limited functionality and performance. (Vogels, 2003, para. 60-61) 2.3. Web Services Now The nature of e-business is changing now. Companies are experiencing an explosion of interactions both internally and externally. This results in an increasing need for dynamic business relationships that drive companies to use reusable, flexible, adaptive software assets for the creation of their e-business solutions. From a technical standpoint, Web Services offer following benefits to dynamic e-business: Easier development, service, and upgrade of solutions Reuse of existing, proven assets Reduced dependence on implementation specifics From a business standpoint, Web Services allow business to: Concentrate development efforts on computing assets that drive revenue Out-source services that provide no business value-add Evolve business models and relationships as necessary Reduce costs of internal integration and of testing emerging market opportunities Establish interactions with marketplaces more efficiently Deliver business functions to a broader set of customers and partners, if appropriate To summarize, Web Services decouple applications and infrastructure. This decoupling allows a business to quickly compose and deploy solutions based on reusable components from the lowest cost provider, no matter whether it is internal or external. Further, such solutions can change the target and even the nature of interactions based on changing business conditions. Thus a business can leverage flexible and dynamic business models, through just-in-time integration. As a result, dynamic e-businesses can maximize their reach to customers, partners, suppliers, and marketplaces, and minimize their costs and time to market. (Flurry, 2001, para.8-11) 3. Technological background 3.1. Network protocols Web Services are based on Extensible Markup Language (XML). The following base protocols formed the initial specification for Web Services: Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) - defines the runtime message that contains the service request and response. SOAP is independent of any particular transport and implementation technology. Web Services Description Language (WSDL) - describes a Web Service and the SOAP Message. It provides a programmatic way to describe what a service does, paving the way for automation. Universal Discovery, Description, Integration (UDDI) - UDDI is a cross industry initiative to create a standard for service discovery together with a registry facility that facilitates the publishing and discovery processes. (Brand, 2002, para.6-9) Application of these protocols for Web services is shown in the Figure 1. Figure 1. Web Services Base Protocols Application (IBM Corporation 1999, 2004) Web Services technology works in the following way. One Web system is service provider. Web services are created, described and published at UDDI.org. Other companies, or agents are service consumers. They find appropriate Web service at UDDI.org, implement its interface for use by their enterprise software and invoke remote calls for Web service’s functionality from the Web system Web services architecture is built from layers of technology and standards on which services can be implemented and deployed. Each layer on the Web services stack depends on the layers below it. IBM Conceptual Web Services stack (Table 1) is chosen for the project from many variations of this architecture. (IBM Web services overview, 1999-2004) Table 1. IBM Conceptual Web Services Stack Layer Tool/Technology Service Negotiation TPA (Trading Partner Agreement) Service Flow WSFL Service Description /Service Publication /Service Directory/Endpoint Description UDDI+WSEL Service Implementation WSDL XML-Based Messaging SOAP Network HTTP, HTTPS Business Issues Managing transport services, orders, prices, payments, tracking shipments The IBM Web Services Stack associates the Network layer with IBM MQSeries messaging systems (now called WebSphere MQ) and the Internet Inter-ORB Protocol (IIOP) - a protocol CORBA uses to transmit data, information, and messages between applications. These do not appear in the WebServices.Org stack. IBM considers WSDL as a description of the service endpoints where individual business operations can be accessed. WSFL uses WSDL for the description of service interfaces and their protocol bindings. WSFL also relies on WSEL (Web Services Endpoint Language), an endpoint description language to describe non-operational characteristics of service endpoints, such as quality-of-service properties. Together, WSDL, WSEL, and WSFL provide the core of the Web Services computing stack. IBM perceives UDDI in two categories: static and direct. Static UDDI refers to a service directory established after applying WSFL to Service Flow, while dynamic UDDI pertains to service publication of directory items. The IBM stack applies QoS, management, and security to all layers. Software and tools that enable businesses to create, publish, securely deploy, host, and manage Web Services applications use the IBM Services Stack as the framework. They include WebSphere Application Server Version 4.0, WebSphere Studio Technology Preview for Web Services, WebSphere Business Integrator, DB2 Version 7.2, Tivoli Web Services Manager (to monitor performance of all aspects of the Web Services environment), and Lotus software suite (to enable Web collaboration, knowledge management and distance learning). WebSphere was originally the collective name of IBM's J2EE application server family. It has since been stretched to include most of their Middleware and application development offerings, such as MQSeries Workflow now (known as WebSphere Process Manager). IBM currently offers a Web Services ToolKit (WSTK) to help in designing and executing Web Service applications so they can find one another and collaborate in business transactions without programming requirements or human intervention. 3.2. Data exchange Data flow mechanism between the Web System and corresponding e-business applications uses Web service in connection with the EJB-based architecture. The adaptation layer is used to create a connection template while the dynamic data binding mechanism integrates real-time data into the defined connection template. Data flow mechanism is used by basic architecture of EJB-based client/server Web system’s application. The client side of an EJB architecture contains the EJB interfaces needed for invoking business-specific methods on an EJB, as well as for managing handles to server-side objects. Transport companies’ software developers should create it. The server side of EJB architecture contains the instances of the actual EJB component implementation, as well as the container code that maps calls to and from clients and EJBs after appropriate service-management infrastructure logic has been executed. 3.3. Cooperation with other technologies Web services are loosely coupled computing services that can reduce the complexity of building business applications, save costs, and enable new business models. They are the next wave, fuelling e-commerce, application integration, and business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce. This is mainly because the driving force behind Web services is cooperation and mutual benefit for a win-win situation. (Mahmoud, 2005, para.1) The cooperation mechanism of the Web system is shown in the Figure 2. Main components of the mechanism interact as following: EJB client applications utilize the Java Naming and Directory Interface (JNDI) to look up references to home interfaces and call home and remote Web service interfaces to utilize all EJB-based functionality from EJB implementation. Web service home interfaces provide operations for clients to create, remove, and find handles to Web services remote interface objects. Underlying stubs marshal home interface requests and unmarshal home interface responses for the client. Web service remote interfaces provide the business-specific client interface methods defined for a particular EJB. Underlying stubs marshal remote interface requests and unmarshal remote interface responses for the client. EJB implementations are the actual EJB application components implemented by developers to provide any application-specific business method invocation, creation, removal, finding, activation, passivation, database storage, and database loading logic. It uses Java Naming and Directory Interface (JNDI) to get Java DataBase Connectivity (JDBC) connection from the connection pool and utilizes it for data retrieval. The EJB container manages the distributed communication skeletons used to marshal and unmarshal data sent to and from the client. Containers also may store EJB implementation instances in a pool and use delegates to perform any service-management operations related to a particular EJB before calls are delegated to the EJB implementation instance. 4. Further development of Web services Web services are presently a new flavour of standards-based software technology that lets programmers combine existing computer systems in new ways, over the Internet, within one business or across many. (Brand, 2002, para.3) Web services let companies bridge communications gaps, for instance, between software written in different programming languages, developed by different vendors or running on different operating systems. Moreover, Web services in their perfected future state are intended to allow such communications to go on without people First, they run over the Internet and over intranets or other Internet protocol-based networks, which are common inside companies. Second, major technology vendors, including BEA Systems, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and Sun, have agreed to support a set of standard software technologies that spell out how different computer systems should interact with each other, that displays high level of cross-industry cooperation. However, Web services technology has still has a number of challenges to overcome. For example, Eckles names budget constraints, tight project deadlines, finding and retaining talented project team members, and technical issues are challenges that affect virtually any software project. Of course, Web services integration projects are not immune to these challenges, but the real roadblocks to a successful implementation appear to be the following: 1. Making the business case. Web services are uncharted territory, so it’s difficult to find benchmarks for estimating expected returns on internal integration projects. These projects rarely directly affect the bottom line, making estimation even more difficult. Executives have also been burned by overly optimistic expectations with past projects like CASE, ERP, internet, etc., so selling these executives on the benefits of Web services will not be easy. 2. Achieving interoperability. Until vendors come together to create implementations that embrace the spirit of the specifications, Web services are in danger of repeating the history of OSI.Lack of interoperability locks an enterprise into a single Web services solution and robs integration projects of many of their advantages. 3. Evolving standards. The simple fact is that the standards and specifications that define Web services are immature. They do, and will continue to, evolve rapidly. Hitting such a moving target is a difficult task for both vendors and project managers trying to use these standards to achieve integration among enterprise applications or processes. 4. Security for Web services. Standards for Web services security just don’t exist yet. There are proposed solutions available, and organizations may find ways to integrate Web services security with existing enterprise security. But, because the standards are still under development, we can expect the shape of these solutions to change over time, creating maintenance and possibly a security problem. (Eckles, n.d.) Proper definition of required functionality and constraints of the Web system facilitates information system’s design. Following open questions are crucial and should be regarded to confirm possibility of implementation of Web services in information system: How to use Web services standards for linking to other information systems? How to make information system’s messages to be correctly interpreted by external systems? What topology of server side components provides the best solution for productivity? How to choose and place firewall to make the Web system insensitive to hackers’ attacks? How to make user interface friendly for both delivery agents and customers? What is the cost of the Web system development? What would be a continued running cost? Answers for these questions will help to outline the information system’s limits. The information system can be created with definite level of functionality that provides its predestination. Conclusion Web services now are one of the most rapidly developing information technologies in e-commerce systems. The Web services technology satisfies a number of important issues that contemporary organization faces in Internet, such as timeliness, reliability, security and flexibility of presentation. The most important issue that must be taken in mind while creating a multi-user Internet system is security. User authorization and authentication via Web services should be sophisticated enough to protect users, but performance suffers if they are too complicated. Web services technology uses HTTPS protocol for a user session that solves the problem of security, so additional research on this technology should be made. The next issue is that the Web services architecture requires a backend database to be accessed by all users; therefore a secure access is required. Also the database requires high availability; secure workload management and fail-over support, such as hot standby (automatic take over on failure) or at least a cold standby i.e. manual swap over. Web services technology assumes high-level access to database, so it takes upon itself database specific features and bottlenecks. The last issue concerns compatibility of the Web services Internet system with external actors, such as agents, customers or other Web systems. 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