Bridging the Technological Gap between Academia and Industry:  
Towards a Successful e-Commerce Graduate Program

Yeong-Tae Song,     Goran Trajkovski,     Sungchul Hong
Dept of Computer and Information Sciences
Towson University
8000 York Rd. Towson, MD




Abstract

	Nothing is more important in the IT world than having the right skill sets in the in right time. Recent advances in 
e-Commerce technologies draws a lot of attention from both industry and academia. The former is looking for the people with the skill set that can be applicable immediately and the latter is trying to meet thoseat needs. However, due to the rapid changes in e-Commerce technologies and unwillingness of  the inertia in academia to cope reflect with such these changes in their curriculum-wide, make the industry’s need hard to be met.it hard to meet industry’s needs. Industry is always concerned is seems to always be obsessed in keeping up with new technologies for the fear of getting left behind. On the other hand,  and the programs offered in academic institutions that academia offers seem to are always be outdated.behind.  In this paper, we try to dissectcompare current  e-Commerce technologies and compare towith those with the  currentlythe currently availableexisting e-Commerce graduate programs in the United States, thus  factually and identifying the apparent gap between academia and industry. With our suggested e-Commerce graduate program, we We propose a solution attempt to that attempts to bridge such this gap.

Keywords: e-Commerce curriculum, e-Commerce graduate programs, e-Business application software

that is vital to the industry’s needs through our suggested e-Commerce graduate program. 



1. INTRODUCTION

It is a our common beliefs that e-Commerce plays a major role for most of the companies world-wideworldwidearound the world in , in their efforts to survive and gain competitive advantage in surviving in the dDigital eEconomy. ToFor many of the companies, it this is still a new way of doing business and for them it takes a paradigm shift is necessary prior to  to implementing any e-Commerce initiatives. 

E-Commerce is not just buyer-side or seller-side packaged application. It goes far beyond than traditional commerce applications that simply allow buying and selling of the products/services. E-CommerceIts applications include supply- chain management, vendor management, online catalog management, customer relationship management (CRM), order management, marketing and advertisement (Fingar, 2000)[Fingar, 20001] [12].

There have been numerous e-Commerce applications available ion the market to meet those needs. with aforementioned requirements in mind. However, many companies have still use legacy applications, company specific enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and client/server systems as their internal system foorr doing  commercebusiness. There have to be some interface mechanism that provides interfaces for those applications to the outside world.  As more companies adopted e-Commerce as their preferred way of doing business and as more vendors provide various e-Commerce related software products on the market, interoperability among different applications and establishment ofing the standards are  becoming a the keybig issues.  As the vendors are busy pumping out the products on the market, companies are struggling to recruit experienced personnel who can develop and maintain their e-Commerce systems using these rapidly changing technologies. History shows that Companies know from their experience that technologically -savvy companies have a better chance of survival at the time of trouble in the global market.


Academia has been trying to answer the demands from of the industry. However, gettingfinding the right person with the requiredright knowledge at the right time is always normally a difficult task for the industry. The knowledge from academia is always outdatedrarely up-to-date and it takes a too much a lot ofdecent amount of  time and effort to boost up new employee’s knowledge to the needed level that the company needs.

In the United States, mMany colleges and universities are currently offering a variety of e-Commerce related programs that in the United States. Since However, e-Commerce is such a huge topic to coverfit into one program, those programs normally concentrate on fall into one orof the following three several are categorized into several concentrations – either the technical, managerial, and/orand ethics/ and legalal aspects of e-Commerce. Even though these programs try to cover what is necessary from for the industry, it is always students’ responsibility to fill in the blanks part of the program to make those his/her skill- sets complete.

In this paper, we are would like to want to proposeing a comprehensive e-Commerce curriculum that follows the current directions of would touch  identify those blanks as much as possible and attempt to cover  all aspect of e-Commerce. The paper is organized as follows. : section Section 2 is for the surveysurveys the  of currently available e-Commerce technologies. S; sSection 3 overviews  is for the current academia status in this of this discipline. Section 4; section 4 is for presents  theproposes theesents the suggested curriculum,  that that , which attempts to bridge the gaps between industry and academia. In the final section we  and finally we conclude the paper with the remarks on our findings.

2. E-COMMERCE TRENDS IN INDUSTRYE-COMMERCE TRENDS IN INDUSTRY

Retail e-Commerce sales in the forth quarter of 2003 was about $11.921 billion and this figure is 4.4 % up from the fourth quarter of 2002 (www.census.gov, 2003)[2].  Figure 2.1 shows the growth of the e-Commerce retails from U.S. Census Bureau between 4th quarter of 1999 and the 1st quarter of 2003. To support this growth, many e-Commerce related software products were developed and used in the entire e-commerce supply chain activities (Linthicum, 2001)[3].  However, due to the large number of the software products, it is not easy to choose the right software for a company. Many new e-Commerce software products have been introduced and disappeared in relatively short period of time.  This dynamic change of software continues to cause confusion in academia when software education is concerned.  To identify the trends and interrelationship among e-Commerce related soft

Figure 2.1 Estimated Quarterly U.S. Retail E-commerce Sales: 4th Quarter 1999 - 1st Quarter 2003 (in billions of dollars)


ware, several categorization of the software came about (Linthicum, 2001)[3](Robertson et al., 2002)[4](Ge et al., 2000)[5].  Inspired by previous software categorizations (Linthicum , 2001)[3](Ge et al., 2000)[5], we attempt to identify the technologies and commercial software products used in recent e-Commerce area.  Due to the complexity and amount of the work, we would like to cover only the major ones. Some of the software products do not clearly fall into single category. Rather, they span over several categories. The categories we use in this paper, and whose main features we discuss,  are, are:


1. e-Business Application Software,
2. Middleware,
3. Web Servers,
4. Database Management Systems, and
5. e-Commerce Interoperability Standards.



In this section we discuss their main features.


Figure 2.1 Estimated Quarterly U.S. Retail E-commerce Sales:
4th Quarter 1999 - 1st Quarter 2003 (in billions of dollars)






2.1 E-BUSINESS APPLICATION
SOFTWAREe-Business Application Software

e-Business application software is software that uses the Internet or other electronic medium for business transactions and services.  A typical example of application software is an electronic catalog that works as an interface between business and customer (B2C) or business and business (B2B) between applications.  During business transactions, the middleware hides the complexity of the underlying operating system and network and allows information exchange on be half of the application programs (Linthicum, 2001).

Figure 2.2 Message Broker Types


2.2 MIDDLEWAREMiddleware

Middleware is a mechanism to move information and shared business logic.  There are three types of middleware according to the types of communication.  These types are Remote Procedure Calls (RPC) type, Message oriented message (MOM) type, and Message Broker type (Figure 2.2).


 The RPCs connect applications point-to-point by using a simple pipe to allow one application to link to another application. A direct link or links must be maintained during messaging service for message synchronization. In contrast, the MOM type uses a queue between two parties so parties don’t need to maintain a point-to-point connection. However the two parties must connect by a specified queue. In message broker type middleware, multiple parties can participate in transactions and message services asynchronously.  This type of brokers has following advantages: it works with B2B application servers, distributed objects and intelligent agents.  Distributed objects allow B2B application to create portable objects that run on a variety of servers, objects that communicate using predefined messaging interface over the Internet.  And the degree of B2B application integration is very high. Adding to those benefits, message brokers facilitate information movement between two or more resources and can account for differences in application semantics and platforms by using common rules and routing engines.


Some products do not clearly fall into one of these categories. For example, TP Monitors are application servers as well as transactional middleware products. They provide a mechanism for communications between two or more applications. Application servers provide not only sharing and processing of application logic, but also connections to back-end resources like databases, ERP applications, etc.  A selected list of middleware is in Table 2.1..



Name
Type
Company
Distributed Computing Environment (DCE)
RPC
The Open Group
MSMQ
MOM
Microsoft
MQSeries
MOM
IBM
CORBA
Message broker
OMG
RMI
Message broker
JavaSoft
Table 2.1 Middleware Examples


 One of the popular middleware solutions in e-Business is SAP R/3.

SAP R/3

SAP AG has developed the business DP (Data Processing) system R/3 that is a three-tier distributed model. R/3 is realized as a multi-level client-server system with the components of a database server (MVS, UNIX, Windows NT), multiple application servers (UNIX, Windows NT), and several presentation servers (Windows NT, UNIX). R/3 also has modules that can build up business models. Its business functionalities can be summarized as follows (Slama ,Slama, 1999)[6]:

* Client capability
* Scalability and parameterability by customizing
* Integrated authorization system
* Complete separation of the user-view from the DP-view
* SAP workflow between modules to handle business processes
* Process modeling with the ARIS toolkit
* Secure mass data import (migration) using batch input
* Executive information systems
* Coupling of external systems (archive, CAD)
* R/3 industry solutions, such as for banks, insurance companies, hospitals, and energy supply utilities.

2.3 WEB SERVERSWeb Servers

The main functions of a web server are receiving requests from the clients, forwarding the received requests to the appropriate applications if necessary, and send back the results to the client. Typical web server provides service of large number of documents including HTML, Common Gateway Interface (CGI) for server side applications, API (Application Programming Interface) for server side programming, and Managing Secure Socket Layer (SSL).

Some of the popular web servers are Apache HTTP Server, MS IIS, MS Commerce Server, MS BizTalk Server, IBM @server, and Jakarta Tomcat.
2.4 DATABASE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMSDatabase Management Systems

Database Management Systems (DBMS) are an important component of the e-Commerce related systems. Data oriented B2B applications heavily depend on access to databases.  Database-orientated middleware layer helps data access any number of databases regardless of their platform.  The access is generally accomplished through interfaces such as ODBC (Open Database Connectivity) or JDBC (Java Database Connectivity). Some examples of database interfaces are following:

* Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) is a standard that Microsoft created. ODBC simplifies database access from Windows by allowing that a single API call.
* Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) is a set of procedures that can be called from outside the application to get it to do something. 
* Java Database Connectivity (JDBC), from JavaSoft, is functionally similar to ODBC. JDBC provides Java developers with a uniform interface to most popular relational databases.
* Adaptable Database (Adabas) provides a high-performance database environment primarily for mainframes. One powerful functional characteristics of Adabas it that it provides a nested relational structure.
* Object Linking and Embedding Database (OLE DB) is a specification that defines a set of data access servers capable of linking to multiple data sources. OLE DB uses a standard COM interface to grant access to data.

2.5 E-COMMERCE INTEROPERABILITY STANDARDSE-Commerce Interoperability Standards

B2B interoperability standards involve description of message formats exchanged, relationships to transport protocols, and other features, such as security (Dogac, 2002)[7]. Selected examples of standards are listed in Table 2.2.

As we have discussed in this survey, there are numerous technologies related to e-Commerce, but none of these dominates the whole market. The e-Commerce technologies go through continuous changes as the demands from the users change. The current trends in e-Commerce are the distributed approaches and the use of middleware protocols, which means that the major portion of the e-Commerce transaction processing is done by distributed objects or components using networked computers. The burden of interfacing legacy applications is also distributed objects’ responsibility. Many organizations are adopting the concept of component repository for component reuse and ease of maintenance to reduce the development cost and to meet the time to market constraints. The communication between business entities or between processes is getting faster and more efficient thanks to middleware technologies and standard data format such as XML.



Table 2.2  Examples of Standards
Name
Description
XML (eXtensible Markup Language)
XML is a standardized way of representing structured data as text files. It uses markup tags to denote a block of text like HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language). XML has only contents without presentation and it is an interchange format, as well as an extensible format. This framework is used as a base content format in many current e-Commerce software.
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)
Historically, EDI is the best-known e-Commerce application. Originally created for linking together the business partners in the transportation industry, EDI has become a common tool for many organizations working with their suppliers and partners. A typical example of EDI is sharing data such as order and payment.
Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA)
CORBA is a standard mechanism to share application services both within and between applications by OMG (Object Management Group). It provides a powerful framework for accomplishing building and implementing software system across the enterprise. And CORBA is also an object-based distributed middleware that is based on the idea of an Object Request Broker (ORB). CORBA combines two important trends in the computer industry: object-oriented software development and client/server computing. The CORBA facilities offer standardized approaches to solving domain-specific problems.  
Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM)
DCOM allows developers to create automation servers and make them available for other COM-enabled B2B applications on the network. DCOM is not commercial ORB (Object Request Broker), but a part of the operating system (NT 4.0, Windows 98 and Windows 2000). With DCOM, the COM-enabled application checks the registry of the Windows operating system to locate and use remote COM-enabled ORBs, finding and calling the service it requires.
Remote Method Invocation (RMI)
RMI is a product of JavaSoft and it is a simple synchronous mechanism that allows applets to communicate with one another and invoke each other’s methods as needed. RMI provides an easy-to-use approach to distributed computing, but does not support the advanced architectural features of COIRBA-compliant ORBs.
Component Object Model (COM+)
COM+ is a new version of COM. It uses OLE (Object Linking and Embedding) model as its basis of design.  COM is also based on automation, is a standard on most Windows desktops and a feature of most Windows-based development tools.
Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP)
SOAP is an XML-based protocol for invoking RPCs. It uses a method-invocation mechanism where return values are carried as HTTP requests and responses, allowing the protocol to operate even through firewalls.
ebXML (electronic business XML)
ebXML consists of a group of related specifications that are maintained by the United Nations Center for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT, the overseers of EDI) and OASIS.  ebXML provides means for companies to integrate their processes easily. EDI provides business communication tools with more complicated and higher priced than XML. XML, as a platform-independent language, has multiple usages than simple data exchange between companies.  Exam registries hold information on potential trading partners in the form of Collaboration Protocol Profiles (CPPs). CPPs are XML documents that use a specific vocabulary to identify business processes that a company is willing and able to take part in, the roles that it can play, and technical information about its capabilities.
RosettaNet
RosettaNet is an independent, self-funded, non-profit consortium dedicated to the development of XML-based standard e-Commerce interfaces. The consortium includes IBM, Microsoft, EDS, Netscape, Oracle, SAP, Cisco Systems, Compaq and Intel.  Its framework consists of Partner Interface Processes (PIPs), a master dictionary and RosettaNet implementation framework (RNIF) (Dogac, 2002)[7]..

In order to design these rapidly changing and distributed systems, component-based approach should be employed since:

* The development time is reduced by assembling the components,
* The components are loosely coupled with each other since they may come from different vendors, and
* The components communicate through message passing, which reduces dependencies among the components.

To design systems that comply towith these requirements, the industry has adopted a new design standard – the Unified Modeling Language (UML), which provides object-oriented design methodology. It has been proven to be effective and also the most widely accepted design methodology.


* * * PLEASE CITE IN APA STYLE (AUTHOR, YEAR), SINCE IT WILL BE A MESS LATER WHEN WE TRAY TO PUT ALL REFERENCES BACK TOGETHER ***


2. E-Commerce Ttrends in industryIndustry

        Retail e-commerce sales in forth quarter of 2002 wereas about $14.3 billion and it has gaining its share in total retail sales  [6].  To support this growth, many e-commerce related software products were developed and used in the entire e-commerce Commerce supply chain activities,  [2].  However, due to the huge variety of the software products, some degree of difficulties has havebeen arisenit is not easy to choose right one for a company. MToo muchany new e-Commerce software products were weswere introduced in and disappeared from the industry in relatively short period of time.  This dynamic change of software causes continues to cause  confusioncause confusion in academia when relevant  for software education is concernsidered.  To identify the trend and interrelationship among e-commerce Commerce related software, categorizations of the software were tried [6][2][3].  Based Inspired byon previous software categorizations [2][3], a classificationwe suggest another one  is suggested in this paper.  This categorization will , to serve as a vehicle for identification ofattempt to identify the technologies and commercial software products most recentused in recent e-commerce Commerce relatedarea software. for e-commerce Commerce technology education. Due to the complexity and amount of the work, we would like to cover  However, the list of software in this categorization is far from complete.  This is a complex task, and our calssification is far from being fully comprehensiveonly the major ones. And also, tIn addition to this, here is some there is a multitudeSome of the software packages and products do notthat do not clearly fall into one or otherspecific category, but.  rRather, they coverspan over several of the classes we decided to usecategories.software that have multiple characteristics and belong to multiple categories.  For convenience, this software are assigned to a category according to their major function.  These categories are following [2][3]we would like to use are:
        

1. E-business Application Software
2. Middleware
3. Secure Web Server
4. Database Management Systems
54. Database Management Systems
5. E-commerce Interoperability Standards

In this section we discuss their main features. The surveyeddetail classification can be found in Appendix A.

2.1 E-business Application Software

E-business application software is the software that uses the Internet or other electronic medium for business transactions and services.

A typical example is an electronic catalog that works as an interface between business and customer (B2C) or business and business (B2B).

2.2 Middleware

Middleware is a mechanism that transportsto move information from one place to another and enables shared business logic between applications.  During business transactions, the middleware hides the complexity of the underlying operating systems and networks and allows information exchange on be half of the application programs [2].

There are three types of middleware according to their types of communication types.  These types are following:They are:

* Remote procedure calls (RPC) type
* Message oriented message (MOM) type
* Message Broker type.

The RPCs connect applications point-to-point. Point-to-point middleware by  usinges a simple pipe to allow one application to link to one otheranother application. A direct link or links must be maintained during messaging service for message synchronization.

The MOM type uses a queue between two parties so parties don’t need to maintain a point-to-point connection. But However, the two parties must connect by a specified queue.

In message broker type middleware, multiple parties can participate transactions and message services. This type of brokers could work with B2Bi servers, application servers, distributed objects and intelligent agents.  And theThe degree of B2B application integration is very high. in this middleware type.

TP Monitors are application servers as well as a transactional middleware product. They provide a mechanism for communications between two or more applications.

Application servers provide not only for the sharing and processing of application logic, but also for connecting to back-end resources like database, ERP applications.

Message brokers can facilitate information movement between two or more resources and can account for differences in application semantics and platforms.  This middleware can combine many applications by suing common rules and routing engines.

Distributed objects allow B2B application to create portable objects that can run on a variety of servers, objects that can communicate using predefined messaging interface over the Internet.


**** This in Appednidix A ****

A selected list of middleware is following:

* DistributedComputing Environment (DCE) from the Open Group. (RPC)
* MSMQ from Microsoft (MOM)
* MQSeries from IBM (MOM)
* Tuxedo from BEA systems (TP Monitors)
* MTS from Microsoft (TP Monitors)
* CICS from IBM (TP Monitors)
* Enterprise JavaBeans from SUN (application server)
* SAP R/3 (application server)
* COM+ (with AppCenter) from Microsoft (application server & distributed objects)

SAP R/3

SAP AG has developed the business DP (Data Processign) system R/3 that is a three-tier distributed model. R/3 is realized as a multi-level client-server system with the following components:

* A database server (MVS, UNIX, Windows NT)
* Multiple application servers (UNIX, Windows NT)
* Several presentation servers (Windows NT, UNIX)

R/3 also has modules that can be build up a business model. Its business functionalities are following [7]:

* Client capability
* Scalability and parameterability by customizing
* Integrated authorization system
* Complete separation of the user-view from the DP-view
* SAP workflow between modules to handle business processes
* Process modeling with the ARIS toolkit
* Secure mass data import (migration) using batch input
* Executive information systems
* Coupling of external systems (archive, CAD)
* R/3 industry solutions, such as for
- banks
- insurance companies
- hospitals
- energy supply utilities
.

2.3 Secure Web Servers

The main functions of a web server are receiving requests from the clients, forwarding the received requests to the appropriate applications if necessary, and send back the results to the client. Typical web server provides following services:

Serve large number of documents including HTML.
Provide Common Gateway Interface (CGI) for server side applications
Provide API (Application Programming Interface) for server side programming.
Managing Secure Socket Layer (SSL).


A list of web servers is following:

* Apache HTTP Server
* MS Commerce Server
* MS BizTalk Server
* IBM @server.


2.4 Database Management Systems

The Database management systems (DBMS) is anare an  important component of e-commerce Commerce related systems. Especially, dData oriented B2B applications heavily depends on the database access.  The Database-orientated middleware layer helps data access to any number of databases regardless of the platform.  This access is generally accomplished through interfaces such as ODBC (*** introduce the acronyms here first, then use them below…) or JDBC (***same here).

(**** in Appendix ***)

Selected topics of database interfaces are following:

* Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) is a standard that Microsoft created. ODBC simplifies database access from Windows by allowing that a single API call.
* Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) is a set of procedures that can be called from outside the application to get it to do something.
* Java Database Connectivity (JDBC), from JavaSoft, is functionally similar to ODBC. JDBC provides Java developers with a uniform interface to most popular relational databases.
* Adaptable Database (Adabas) provides a high-performance database environment primarily for mainframes. One powerful functional characteristics of Adabas it that it provides a nested relational structure.
* Object Linking and Embedding Database (OLE DB) is a specification that defines a set of data access servers capable of linking to multiple data sources. OLE DB uses a standard COM interface to grant access to data.

2.5 B2B Interoperability Standards

B2B interoperability standard involves the description of the message formats exchanged, bindings to transport protocols, the sequencing, process, and the security features [10].

Examples of standards are following:

* RosettaNet
* ebXML (electronic business XML)
* XML (eXtensible Markup Language)
* Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)
* Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA)
* Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM)
* Remote Method Invocation (RMI), Java
* Component Object Model (COM+), Microsoft
* Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP)

RosettaNet

RosettaNet is an independent, self-funded, non-profit consortium dedicated to the development of XML-based standard electronic commerce interfaces. RsettaNet consortium includes IBM, Microsoft, EDS, Netscape, Oracle, SAP, Cisco systems, Compaq and Intel.  RosettaNet Framework consists of Partner Interface Processes (PIPs), a master dictionary and RosettaNet implementation framework (RNIF) [10].

ebXML (electronic business XML)

ebXML provides a means for companies to integrate their processes easily. Business needs communication and EDI has provided this service. The problem of EDI is that it is expensive. A solution for the cost and maintenance problem of EDI is XML. XML has the following advantages:

1. It is simpler than EDI.
2. It has multiple usages than simple data exchange between companies
3. It is a platform independent language.

ebXML consists of a group of related specifications that are maintained by the United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT, the overseers of EDI) and OASIS.

ebXML registries hold information on potential trading partners in the form of Collaboration Protocol Profiles (CPPs). CPPs are XML documents that use a specific vocabulary to identify business processes that a company is willing and able to take part in, the roles that it can play, and technical information about its capabilities.

Transactions can be done by using of a Collaboration Protocol Agreement (CPA). A CPA is composed from of the CPPs of each trading partner, specifying what collaborations take place and the specifics about them.

Once the companies have generated and agreed to the CPA, this single document can be used to configure the application, or Business Service Interface, on both side.
By this way, both Trading Partners are working from the same information, and there is no confusion about who should be doing what.

ebXML steps:

1. Search for a Trading Partner
2. Create a CPA.
3. Negotiate any issues regarding the CPA.
4. Configure both Business System Interfaces using the CPA.
5. Begin performing Business Processes.

Business processes and business documents are documented using the Business Process Specification Schema (BPSS) and stored in an ebXML registry so that can be referenced from CPPs, CPAs, and other structures.

Business models define how business processes are discovered, defined and documented. ebXML registry does not store actual documents or specifications, but rather metadata about documents.

One important goal of the ebXML project is to use an open message format that can accommodate extensions later.  The ebXML Message Service (ebMS) is based on the SOAP with Attachments.

This message is packaged in a Document document envelope, which is then packaged in a Transport transport Envelopeenvelope.

A Business Business Collaboration collaboration is a choreographed set of Business business Transaction transaction Activities activities which two trading Partners partners exchange documents [9].

XML (eXtensible Markup Language)

XML is a standardized way of representing structured data as text files. XML uses markup tags to denote a block of text like HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language). XML has only contents without presentation and it is an interchange format as well as an extensible format. XML is used as a base content format in many current e-commerce software.

EDI

Historically, EDI is the best-known e-commerce application. Originally created for linking together the business partners in the transportation industry, EDI has become a common tool for many organizations working with their suppliers and partners. A typical example of EDI is sharing data such as order and payment.

CORBA

CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) is a standard mechanism to share application services both within and between applications by OMG (Object Management Group). It provides a powerful framework for accomplishing building and implementing software system across the enterprise. And CORBA is also an object-based distributed middleware that is based on the idea of an Object Request Broker (ORB). CORBA combines two important trends in the computer industry: object-oriented software development and client/server computing. The CORBA facilities offer standardized approaches to solving domain-specific problems.  The CORBA elements are following [8]:

* CORBA object is an abstract entity with an identity.
* Servant is a concrete programming language entity that implements the functionality of a CORBA object.
* Client, server. Clients invoke on CORBA objects that reside in server.
* CORBA component. A CORBA component is implemented by a set of CORBA objects, and provides a more complex service than a singe object normally would.
* Component entry pint. A component will usually provide an entry point, that is, a dedicated object that is the first point of contact for the user of a component.

A CORBA ORB has the following four main parts:

* ORB
* Object services
* Common facilities
* Application objects.

DCOM (Distributed Component Object Model)

DCOM allows developers to create automation servers and make them available for other COM-enabled B2B applications on the network. DCOM is not commercial ORB (Object Request Broker) but is part of the operating system (NT 4.0, Windows 98 and Windows 2000). With DCOM, the COM-enabled application checks the registry of the Windows operating system to locate and use remote COM-enabled ORBs, finding and calling the service it requires.

RMI (Remote Method Invocation)

RMI is a product of JavaSoft and it is a simple synchronous mechanism that allows applets to communicate with one another and invoke one another’s methods as needed. RMI provides an easy-to-use approach to distributed computing but does not support the advanced architectural features of COIRBA-compliant ORBs.

COM+ (Component Object Model)

COM+ is a new version of COM. It uses OLE (Object Linking and Embedding) model as its basis of design.  COM also based on automation, a standard on most Windows desktops and a feature of most Windows-based development tools.

SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol)

SOAP is an XML-based protocol for invoking RPCs through firewalls. SOAP uses a method-invocation mechanism where return values are carried as HTTP requests and responses, allowing the protocol to operate through firewalls.


As we have discussed in this survey, tThere are numerous technologies related to e-Commerce but none of these dominates the whole market. The e-Commerce se technologies go through continuous changes as the demands from the users change. The current trends in the e-Commerce applications are inherently became distributed and use of middleware protocols, which means that major portion of the e-Commerce transaction processing is done by distributed objects or components using networked computers. The burden of interfacing legacy application is alsobecame a part of distributed objects’ responsibility. Many organizations are adopting the concept of component repository for component reuse and ease of maintenance to reduce the development cost and to meet the time to market constraints. The communication between business entities or between processes is getting faster and more efficient thanks to middleware technologies and standard data format such as XML.
In order to design such rapidly changing and distributed systems, component-based approach should be employed for the following reasons:

* modification to the components localized
* reduce the development time by assembling the components
* components are loosely coupled each other since they may come from different vendors
* components communicate through message passing which reduce the dependencies among the components
The industry adopted a new standard for the development of such software system – Unified Modeling Language (UML). UML provides object-oriented design methodology and it has been proven to be effective and also the most widely accepted design methodology.
Challenges
E-Commerce software development requires an orchestra of modern computer technologies and is also facing the following challenges:
* rapidly evolving E-commerce markets with frequently proposed new standards
* demanding customers with ill-defined requirements (inadequate e-commerce business plan and volatile tech environment.)
* requirements to simultaneously managed both product software development and project software development (customer specific applications)




3. STATE OF ACADEMIAState of Academia

The e-Commerce, in colloquial terms, studies the principles underlying the development process of doing business online. This section overviews our findings on the state of academia with respect to existing graduate programs in e-Commerce, and closely related areas.
3. 1. E-COMMERCE AND RELATED DISCIPLINESE-Commerce and Related Disciplines

It is imperative that existing programs in e-Commerce respond to the state of technology and the demands of the economyindustry. Setting up a stable base and working foundation to a this discipline in the first course in the track of courses that compose the major requirements is more than a critical task and may have many unpredictable side effects if not approached carefully.
Mistakes made in its setup can have far-reaching consequences.
With the boom of the industrial trend of doing business online in the convenience and wealth of the global village, and the demand for workers that would satisfy the demand of the job market, the academic programs related to e-Commerce witnessed a fast development in the late 1990’s. Due to the enormous scope of e-Commerce, and the need for diversified personnel to support the demandit, many schools came up with quick fixes to thise demand. In the pilot programs many schoolsof t hem decided to offer certificate programs that would heavily relyied on the technical and other skills covered in a given related undergraduate program, and would quickly vertically develop skills in relation to one or several aspects of e-Commerce.
Soon, many undergraduate and graduate solutions for these types of programs followed. 
There has not been a unique agreement, nor model in the past or the present to be followed by the majority of the programs that have been being developed for the needs of the local and national industryin e-Commerce. The goal of this section is to give an overview of the flavors , and give a sense of the of various solutions of master’s graduatelevel programs in e-Commerce, and give a framework for comparison. Together with the comments on the industry needs, this section will lay grounds for proposing a unified graduate program in e-Commerce that would serve a wide range of demand, and cover the current, mostly technical, needs of e-Comthe electronic commerce, which, although with recession trends followingin the national and global economy, still shows a high need for well trained specialists.

Figure 3.1 gives an overview of several related disciplines with respect to their coverage of systems topics. The Computer Science programs study the principles underlying the development process of computing systems. CIS programs emphasis the intricacy involved in large-scale information systems development and management. IT programs train the students to be able to facilitate the environment for implementation of technology, whereas IS IS programs stress on the environment for system development and maintenance. MIS programs emphasize the oversight of IS/IT used in Decision Making.

Depending on the flavor of the program offered, the e-Commerce programs are being called a wide range of names. The ones that are most frequently used are e-Commerce, for programs of mixed management and industry flavor, e-Business, for the managerial ones, and Web Programming for programs that concentrate on the technological aspects of e-Commerce. The technology-flavor programs seem to offer the greatest range of “titles”, such as Web Development, and even Internet Engineering. The inconsistencies in the names, again, are due to the age of the discipline of e-Commerce, which is still in its inceptions, and there is not a widely agreed definition of what the terms means. Indeed, they are similar, and technically most of the times e-Business is cited as superset of the
   





















Figure 3.1. The classification of foci of various related curricula from the systems perspective. The gray 


area represents the area of interest of this paper.



e-Commerce, but there are some authors thatwho disagree on this.

3.2. OVERVIEW OF EXISTING MASTER PROGRAMS IN E-COMMERCEOverview of Existing Master Programs in E-Commerce

The approaches in setting the major tackgraduate in  e-Commerce curriculuma varyies considerably by school. An strategy  appropriate strategy for one school may not fit the overall goals and objectives of another school. The current graduate programs in e-Commerce normally fall into one or several of the following three categories:

1. Predominantly management-oriented programs
2. Predominantly technology-oriented programs
3. Predominantly ethics and legal issues oriented programs

The word “predominantly” in the above classification is used purposely, because we do not believe that there can be a program that falls into one category only, due to the multidisciplinary characteristics of the discipline of e-Commerce.

The first category of programs is traditionally offered as stand-alone tracks in graduate business schools. They emphasize the business side of the coin, and stress on doing business on the Internet, without going into details on the technological perspective of the topic. Basic web programming skills are usually taught as a part of the curriculum.

The technology-oriented graduate programs, offered normally under the auspices of departments that house computer science, or computer engineering, concentrate on the programming aspects of doing e-Business, without going into details on management side when topics on gaining competitive advantage on doing business in the Internet are concerned. They tend to be less management that the management-oriented programs are technical.
The legally oriented programs are almost a rarity, and are seldom offered as stand-alone programs. They and concentrate on the legal, ethical, societal, and international issues concerning the global electronic ce-Commerce.

Most programs that are currently being offered consist of a mixture of courses from all the three categories. Based on the schools that offers them, they tend to lean towards thethe management side, or the technological side in one way or another. After covering the core materials that reflects the flavor of the program, students choose a number of elective courses that serve their goals, and needs.

As hard as figuring out the technical details on products, packages, and platforms used in the industry, it is learning what of those is beingshould be taught in detail or case studies in the graduate programs. The catalogues that are publicly available, almost neverdon’t reveal details on the programming languages and packages that are used as a base for instructional development. The course descriptions are kept vague, and without technological details. Due to the rapid development and sudden and often frequent changes in the e-Business, i.e., its technology, specifying these details is contra productive to the leaning process. Due to the standard procedures that are in place in the schools, vague and, technology-specifications-free descriptions offer space for adjusting the courses to the current future needs, and abilities of the instructional force.

E-Commerce programs are young, and still calibrating to the needs of the students, where most of the input comes from. In order to keep up with the needs of the industry, on one hand, and the lack of qualified instructors on the other, schools often opt to hire part-time faculty (that who works full-time in the industry setting) to teach more advanced courses.

Table 1Table 3.1. is intended to give a global look at the state of academia at present.  Presented are 20 30 graduate programs with major e-Commerce programs with a diverse flavorwith diverse flavors of coverage.

Regardless of those problems in the study, it is a general conclusion that currently most schools choose to have an intensive JAVA training early in the program. Most schools have decided to call this part of the program “JAVA Boot camp”. Afterwards, the other courses take the students deeper in the disciplines of focus. No particular commonalities have been noticed across all the programs surveyed.


Table 3.1. Summary of 30 existing e-Commerce and related
graduate programs in US, chosen based on the availability of information.

(M: management, T: technology, L: ethics, legal. The numbers refer to credit hours.)

UNIVERSITY
COMPULSORY
ELECTIVES
SCHOOL or
COLLEGE
MS/MBA

#
M
T
L
#
M
T
L


[8] 
Loyola University of Chicago
3
M


15
M


School of Business
MBA
[9] 
Barrington University
12
M








[10] 
Carnegie Mellon Institute for E-Commerce
20

T

6
M
T


MS
[11] 
Creighton University
9

T

11

T

College of Business Administration
MS
[12] 
Dalhousie University
7
M
T
L
21
M
T
L
multiple schools
MS
[13] 
DePaul University
9

T

26

T

School of Computer Science, Telecommunications and Information Systems
MS
[14] 
North Carolina State University
1
M


11



College of Management & College of Engineering
MBA
[15] 
University of IlliniosIllinois at Chicago








College of Business Administration
MBA
[16] 
The Wharton School  University of Pennsylvania
4
M


32
M
T

Multiple schools
MBA
[17] 
Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt
5
M


16
M


School of Management
MBA
[18] 
Duquesne University
6
M


1
M


School of Business Administration
MBA/MS
[19] 
Stevens Institute of Technology
12
M


3
M


School of Technology Management
MS
[20] 
University of Washington
2
M


7
M


School of Business
MBA
[21] 
RMIT University
11

T

1

T

School of Computer Science & Information Technology

[22] 
Regent University




4
M


School of Business
MBA
[23] 
Barry University  Andreas School of Business

M






School of Business
MS
[24] 
Capitol College
12
M



M



MS
[25] 
Drexel University
7
M






College of Business
MBA
[26] 
Golden Gate University
7

T

22

T

School of Technology & Industry
MS
[27] 
Mercy College
6
M


4
M



MS
[28] 
Metropolitan College of New York
16
M


8
M
T
L
School of Business
MBA/MS
[29] 
National University
12
M






School of Business & Information Management

[30] 
Notre Dame De Namur University
10
M






School of Business & Management
MS
[31] 
San FransicoFrancisco State University
7
M


5
M


College of Business
MBA
[32] 
Temple University The Fox School of Business and Management
2
M


2
M


School of Business & Management
MBA
[33] 
University of Advancing Technology








College of Technology Commerce
MS
[34] 
University of Maryland University College
9
M


1
M



MS/MBA
[35] 
University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee
8
M


9
M


School of Business Administration
MS
[36] 
University of Washington
4
M






School of Business Administration
MBA
[37] 
Stuart School of Business
8
M


11
M


School of Business
MBA












UNIVERSITY

COMPULSORY


ELECTIVES

SCHOOL
MS/MBA

#
M
T
L
#
M
T
L


1
Loyola University of Chicago
3
M

15
M


School of Business
MBA
2
Barrington University
12
M


N/A
N/A
3
Carnegie Mellon University
20

T

6
M
T

Institute for E-Business
MS
4
Creighton University
9

T

11

T

College of Business Administration
MS
5
Dalhousie University
7
M
T
L
21
M
T
L
multiple schools
MS
6
DePaul University
9

T

26

T

School of Computer Science, Telecommunications and Information Systems
MS
7
North Carolina State University
1
M

11

College of Management & College of Engineering
MBA
8
University of Illinois at Chicago
N/A
College of Business Administration
MBA
9
The Wharton School  University of Pennsylvania
4
M

32
M
T

multiple schools
MBA
10
Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt
5
M

16
M

School of Management
MBA
11
Duquesne University
6
M

1
M

School of Business Administration
MBA/MS
12
Stevens Institute of Technology
12
M

3
M

School of Technology Management
MS
13
University of Washington
2
M

7
M

School of Business
MBA
14
RMIT University
11

T

1

T

School of Computer Science & Information Technology
N/A
15
Regent University

4
M

School of Business
MBA
16
Barry University  Andreas School of Business

M


School of Business
MS
17
Capitol College
12
M


M

N/A
MS
18
Drexel University
7
M


College of Business
MBA
19
Golden Gate University
7

T

22

T

School of Technology & Industry
MS
20
Mercy College
6
M

4
M


N/A
MS
21
Metropolitan College of New York
16
M

8
M
T
L
School of Business
MBA/MS
22
National University
12
M


School of Business & Information Management
N/A
23
Notre Dame De Namur University
10
M


School of Business & Management
MS
24
San Francisco State University
7
M

5
M

College of Business
MBA
25
Temple University The Fox School of Business and Management
2
M

2
M

School of Business & Management
MBA
26
University of Advancing Technology
N/A
College of Technology Commerce
MS
27
University of Maryland University College
9
M

1
M

N/A
MS/MBA
28
University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee
8
M

9
M

School of Business Administration
MS
29
University of Washington
4
M


School of Business Administration
MBA
30
Stuart School of Business
8
M

11
M

School of Business
MBA

3.3. Academic Programs and Industry Needs
As hard as it is to figure out the platforms used in the industry, is figuring out the platforms being taught in the graduate programs. The catalogues that are publicly available, almost never reveal details on the programming languages and packages that are used as a base for instructional development. The course descriptions are kept vague, and without technological details. Due to the rapid development and sudden and often changes in the e-Business, i.e., its technology, specifying these details is contra productive to the process. Due to the standard procedures that are in place in the schools, vague, technology-specifications-free descriptions offer space for adjusting the courses to the current needs, and abilities of the instructional force. E-Commerce programs are young programs, and still calibrating to the needs of the students, where most of the input comes from. In order to keep up with the needs of the industry, on one hand, and the lack of qualified instructors on the other, schools often opt to hire part-time faculty (that works full-time in the industry setting) to teach more advanced courses.
3.34. THE ISSUES OF ACADEMIA
IN E-COMMERCE EDUCATIONThe Role Issues of Academia in Ee-Commerce Education

What is the role of the academia has been a burning question for a long time, especially in courses/programs that are of more technical nature, such as the one we are discussing. How deep into the academic and how deep into the “vocational” part should the program go?

There are two solutions to this problem. The first one is a quick fix, more suitable for the certificate programs, where the academia is just teaching technical skills that the (usually local) industry needs at the time. But, for a degree program, it is necessary to make sure that a certain level of theoretical basis are covered, so that the trainees are not bound only to the current state of the art at the time the course has been offered. Not only the tool, butbut also the principles on which the tools have been built, as well as alternative existing and potential solutions must be overviewed. The project part of the courses need to be exploring deeper into the principles, rather than heavily relying on sterile application development on existing platforms, wherever possible and appropriate.




 
3.5. 
Program Implementation Issues
This section deals with several implementation problems of a graduate program in e-Commerce. A program of tThis type of program requires quite a bit of planning, and commitment, especially in the logistics area. The obstacles that are usually we have encountered in the implementation of this courseprogram are discussed in this paragraphsection. Lack of clear vision is an obstacle that needs to be overcome by the designer of the courses, especially while setting the goals and the scope of the courses. If the vision is missing, there will be a lack of leadership, and a diminished support and participation by senior administration. It is critical to know the state of the disciplines at the institution, and to design the courses to satisfy the current mission and goals of the universityprogram.

The implementation of a stand-alone course program is not likely to be met withsupported by administrativeon, faculty orand political barriersthe industry. When proposing the courses and the whole program, examples of existing successful courses in engineering schools are normally a sufficient argument to gain support in the persuasion of the need of the introducingtion of such a courses in the evolving curriculum. If the school is inflexible to changes, problems resulting from this should be anticipated, and a strategy for addressing them based on historical archived approachespast experience should be developed accordingly.

New courses that have not yet been established in the curriculum provide the instructors with the flexibility in the designmeeting the current needs and teaching approaches. Since each section of the course offered has its own personality, it is imperative that the instructor keeps the course opened for modifications and on-the-run adjustments to keep up with the technological state of the art in the discipline taught. The courses should be general enough to enableallow the instructor to infuse topics on the current developments onin the covered areas. As the students begin to engage in the discussion in class activities, or choose their topics for individual article critique, or research paper, the instructor may get the sense of a domineerating topics of interest by the student audience, which should trigger him/her to supplement the course with additional reading materials.
 based on students’ areas of interest.
The question of the number and the size of projects given within courses is another important oneissue in the setting that we are observingthe program. As it usually happens, one semester is too short for students to completeof a time to do a comprehensive project of academic value. They need more time to get, in order for the students to get  the full understandingsensation of what the domain of e-Commerce requires , and to see different sides of the coin, i.e.and to get familiar with the different roles in the e-Commerce world. Therefore it is crucial that the committee that is designing the program and the instructors involved in teaching the courses for the program (normally in the same team), sit together and come up with a problem project the modules of which that students can work on across several courses. would be worked on in the three mandatory and the three elective courses in the program. Based on the culture of the school, the quality and needs of students, the questions of whether the projects should be individual or team projects, and whether the program should have a capstone course should be carefully discussed, and examined before reaching any consensus.


Preparing to Teach the Courses

      The first step in setting up a course is looking into the state of academia with respect to similar courses being taught, and considering modules for incorporating in the course. Mataric (Mataric 2003) gives a list of some of the Robotics courses
      When preparing to teach a new course, every instructor is compiling its own resource database. It is reasonable to assume that, due to the wide coverage of areas in such a course, that the instructor cannot possibly be an expert on all the fields. The process of compiling a current database of resources is imperative in teaching any course in a fast-changing field. The instructors came up with a list of additional readings from the Internet, and the recent publications. This list further evolved as the course was being implemented and taught, due to the emergence of new literature containing more up to date information, suitable for sharing with the students.
      The first step in the preparatory process is reviewing the postrequisites of the course in the program at hand. Interviewing with colleagues that have been teaching those courses will help the instructor understand the extent of coverage of topics. If the course is not taught by a team of instructors, then other faculty’s expertise and resources should be used to the greatest possible extent. 
      An array of creative approaches for student projects, research papers, and other learning experiences are appropriate for this course. Incorporating real world dimensions by means of a speaker from the personnel in charge of maintaining the institution’s information systems, or a community business leader would be beneficial to the educational process, but is limited to the available resources, and the willingness of the surrounding educational community to participate in these interdisciplinary efforts. These activities demand extensive planning, and should be initiated at least one semester prior to the beginning of the course.
      Incorporating service learning in the fundamental course for the program demands establishing good working relationships with the surrounding industrial community, extensive planning, and coordinating on the side of the instructor. However studies in learning and cognition, do encourage the utilization of this approach, and provide the students with hands on experiences that they will further use to build up on by the means of the knowledge acquired in the courses to be taken later in the program. 
          Since a part of the course involves lab activities, and even possibly preparations for a capstone competition at the end of the semester, the instructor should decide what approach he or she will have as far as the laboratory setup is concerned
          This course would normally require two textbooks to service the lecture and the laboratory part of the course. A good textbook, in the authors’ opinion, guarantees a good outcome of the course. During the first run of the course, due to the need of calibration and extensive experimentation in the new venture, for the theoretical part one can chose to develop his/her own lecture notes, or use separate chapters form a variety of textbooks (course pack). Based on the platform chosen for the laboratory part of the course (ours is Lego Inventor Kit), an instructor would normally need to develop his/her own lab exercises that would reflect the state of the available equipment. 
          



4. 

SUGGESTED CURRICULUMSuggested Curriculum


FromWith the survey in the previous sections, we have discussed the current required knowledgetechnologies for thebuilding and maintaining efficient eE-cCommerce sites construction and the their transaction processing. Also the currently available e-Commerce programs currently available in the US. are discussed.

Although there are model curricula to be followed, (www.washington.edu, 2003)[37], they do not fit well with our intentions, because they are IS-focused, neglecting the technical aspect of Computer Science.


One of the challenging tasks in In order to be a competitive and useful e-Commerce application,software industry is that iItt hasis certain imperativethat E-commerce  site has to meet continuously changing various and continuous requirements from their industry users as quickly as possible. Several solutions can be considered in that regards includinging  rapidincremental development life cycle that can be achieved by prioritized and iterative component-based development or evolving from existing siteapplications. Even though the strategic decisions such as rewrite or evolution should be done in collaboration with other made from domain expert, once the decision is made, the Ee-cCommerce programmers should be readyquickly fulfill the requirements for the current technologies and development processes to implement the decision. 
To be able to cope with such situation, eE-cCommerce programmers personnelapplication developers should understand and proficient with not only technological side of it but also with well-defined development methodologies, distributed systems, web-based programmingmanagement side such as  and Internet supply chain management for fundamental domain knowledge.

Our suggested curriculum Hence wWe would likeattempts to apply such abilitycomponents into e-Commercethe the curriculum so that any student who has finishemastered the coursescurriculum program can be able to handle such demandssituations. We can categorize such required skill sets into several areas – networking Networking for eE-cCommerce, Wweb programmingProgramming, distributed Distributed systems Systems in on the Internet, XML tTechnology for business communication, Wweb engineeringEngineering, and the Internet supply Supply chainChain, and the Ethical Issues in E-Commerce.


Table 4.1. The modules of our suggested curriculum for a graduate program in e_Commerce.
Area
Major Topics
Managerial Challenges in e-Commerce
e-Business models (B2B, B2C)
Internet file management
Supporting the information architecture. 
Databases. Payment systems. 
Transformational aspects of e-Business and new business models.
Financial implications for e-Business. 
Cost/benefit, business plans and the need for venture capital.
Networking for E-commerce
Frames and Packets, IP, TCP, UDP
Interconnection devices: hubs, switches, routers
IP addressing – IP addressing, subnetting, and classless addressing
Routing of IP packets
WWW and mobile IP
DNS
Socket interface
Multicasting and multicasting routing protocol
Network management
Network/Internet security
Distributed systems in the Internet
Clients and Servers
Middleware
CORBA, COM/DCOM, and RMI
Database server and Distributed Database
Transaction processings
XML technology for E-commerce
XML fundamentals
XML parsers – SAX, DOM, Xerces
XML-RPC, SOAP
XML security
ebXML
Internet supply chain management
Value chain
Supply chain
Planning and design e-Commerce supply chain
Web programming
HTML/DHTML
ASP.Net
JSP/Java
Web siteapplication design methodology
Life-cycle models
UML fundamentals
Software requirements analysis
Functional/ non-functional requirements
Use cases
Data flow diagrams
State transition diagrams/ Sequence diagrams
Web navigation diagram
Software architecture
Client/server
Distributed
Database schema design
User Interface (accessibility) Design
Software testing
Software maintenance
Legal, Ethical and Societal issues
in e-Commerce
Privacy and property issues in e-Business
Federal, State and International laws
Web accessibility
* The Ssuggested contents for each topic are given in Table 4.1.  Networking for E-commerce
o Frames and TCP/IP fundamentals: Layered architecture based on RFC 791 and RFC 793, pPackets, IP, TCP, UDPprotocols for IP layers and up
o Interconnection devices: hubs, switches, routers
o IP addressing – IP addressing, subnetting, and classless addressing
o Routing of IP packets
o WWW and mobile IP
o DNS
o Socket interface
o Multicasting and multicasting routing protocol
o Network management
o Network/Internet security

* Distributed systems in the Internet
o Clients and Servers
o Middleware
o Object-oriented middleware
o CORBA, COM/DCOM, and RMI
o XML-RPC, SAOP
o Database server and Distributed Database
o Transactions


* XML technology for E-commerce
o XML fundamentals
o XML parsers – SAX, DOM, xerce?Xerces
o XML-RPC, SOAP
o XML security
o ebXMLSAML

* Internet supply chain management
o Value chain
o Supply chain
o Planning and design e-Commerce supply chain


* Web programming
o HTML/DHTML
o ASP.Net
o JSP/Java

o Web site design methodology
o Life-cycle models
o UML fundamentals basics
o Software requirements analysis
* Functional/ non-functional requirements
* Use cases
* Data flow diagrams
* State transition diagrams/ Sequence diagrams
* Web navigation diagram
o Software architecture
* Client/server
* Distributed
o Database schema design
o User Interface (accessibility) Design
o Software testing
o Software maintenance
* Legal, Ethical and Societal issues in e-Commerce
o Privacy and property issues in e-Business 
o Federal, State and International laws
o Web accessibility

The curriculum topic above aretopics above are organized in sixeight modules (courses), which correspondscorrespond to the traditional organization of graduate studies in most schools, where space equivalent to two courses is left for electives.

When designing the courses in details and choosing the topics to be covered in details, no team should focus on the state-of –the-art technologies, and the emerging technologies, but must also make sure that sufficient space is left to cover the appropriate theory, underlying principles and concepts. As suggested in Gorgone et al. (1999)[39], graduates should have obtained a decided-upon level of skills and knowledge. Although this is not an IS-only-focused program that we are proposing, in the spirit of the MSIS 2000 suggestions (Gorgone et al., 1999)[39] by the end of the program, students will have

1. A core of e-Business knowledge, across the managerial, technical and ethical/legal aspects
2. Integrated knowledge of technological and business principles 
3. Broad business and real world perspectives
4. Communication, interpersonal and team skills (values)
5. Analytical and critical thinking skills
6. Specific skills leading to a career (professional degree).

.

5. CONCLUSIONSConclusions


E-Commerce software development requires an orchestra of modern computer technologies and is also facing the following challenges:
* rapidly evolving E-commerce markets with frequently proposed new standards
* demanding customers with ill-defined requirements (inadequate e-Commerce business plan and volatile tech environment)
* requirements that manage both product software development and project software development (customer specific applications) simultaneously


In this paper we proposed a blueprint for an e-Commerce graduate program that best suits the current industrial needs. We identified the discrepancies in the academic institutions profile outputs and the needs of the e-Business employers. Our proposed curriculum is flexible enough to embrace the ongoing changes in the cyberspace, but yet, is based on cutting-edge technological and managerial perspectives. Its legal/ethical component can and should change as the legalities in this domain change.

6. REFERENCESReferences:

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1. 2. --, retrieved online on June 2, 2003 at  www.census.gov/mrts/www/current.html, 4th quarter 2002 .
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1. 
1. 
1.  APPENDIX B
1. List of Schools used in the Study
1. 
1. UNIVERSITY
1. COMPULSORY
1. ELECTIVES
1. 
1. SCHOOL
1. MS/MBA
1. 
1. #
1. M
1. T
1. L
1. #
1. M
1. T
1. L
1. 
1. 
1. 
1. Loyola University of Chicago
1. 3
1. M
1. 
1. 
1. 15
1. M
1. 
1. 
1. School of Business
1. MBA
1. 
1. Barrington University
1. 12
1. M
1. 
1. 
1. 
1. 
1. 
1. 
1. 
1. 
1. 
1. Carnegie Mellon Institute for E-Commerce
1. 20
1. 
1. T
1. 
1. 6
1. M
1. T
1. 
1. 
1. MS
1. 
1. Creighton University
1. 9
1. 
1. T
1. 
1. 11
1. 
1. T
1. 
1. College of Business Administration
1. MS
1. 
1. Dalhousie University
1. 7
1. M
1. T
1. L
1. 21
1. M
1. T
1. L
1. multiple schools
1. MS
1. 
1. DePaul University
1. 9
1. 
1. T
1. 
1. 26
1. 
1. T
1. 
1. School of Computer Science, Telecommunications and Information Systems
1. MS
1. 
1. North Carolina State University
1. 1
1. M
1. 
1. 
1. 11
1. 
1. 
1. 
1. College of Management & College of Engineering
1. MBA
1. 
1. University of Illinios at Chicago
1. 
1. 
1. 
1. 
1. 
1. 
1. 
1. 
1. College of Business Administration
1. MBA
1. 
1. The Wharton School  University of Pennsylvania
1. 4
1. M
1. 
1. 
1. 32
1. M
1. T
1. 
1. Multiple schools
1. MBA
1. 
1. Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt
1. 5
1. M
1. 
1. 
1. 16
1. M
1. 
1. 
1. School of Management
1. MBA
1. 
1. Duquesne University
1. 6
1. M
1. 
1. 
1. 1
1. M
1. 
1. 
1. School of Business Administration
1. MBA/MS
1. 
1. Stevens Institute of Technology
1. 12
1. M
1. 
1. 
1. 3
1. M
1. 
1. 
1. School of Technology Management
1. MS
1. 
1. University of Washington
1. 2
1. M
1. 
1. 
1. 7
1. M
1. 
1. 
1. School of Business
1. MBA
1. 
1. RMIT University
1. 11
1. 
1. T
1. 
1. 1
1. 
1. T
1. 
1. School of Computer Science & Information Technology
1. 
1. 
1. Regent University
1. 
1. 
1. 
1. 
1. 4
1. M
1. 
1. 
1. School of Business
1. MBA
1. 
1. Barry University  Andreas School of Business
1. 
1. M
1. 
1. 
1. 
1. 
1. 
1. 
1. School of Business
1. MS
1. 
1. Capitol College
1. 12
1. M
1. 
1. 
1. 
1. M
1. 
1. 
1. 
1. MS
1. 
1. Drexel University
1. 7
1. M
1. 
1. 
1. 
1. 
1. 
1. 
1. College of Business
1. MBA
1. 
1. Golden Gate University
1. 7
1. 
1. T
1. 
1. 22
1. 
1. T
1. 
1. School of Technology & Industry
1. MS
1. 
1. Mercy College
1. 6
1. M
1. 
1. 
1. 4
1. M
1. 
1. 
1. 
1. MS
1. 
1. Metropolitan College of New York
1. 16
1. M
1. 
1. 
1. 8
1. M
1. T
1. L
1. School of Business
1. MBA/MS
1. 
1. National University
1. 12
1. M
1. 
1. 
1. 
1. 
1. 
1. 
1. School of Business & Information Management
1. 
1. 
1. Notre Dame De Namur University
1. 10
1. M
1. 
1. 
1. 
1. 
1. 
1. 
1. School of Business & Management
1. MS
1. 
1. San Fransico State University
1. 7
1. M
1. 
1. 
1. 5
1. M
1. 
1. 
1. College of Business
1. MBA
1. 
1. Temple University The Fox School of Business and Management
1. 2
1. M
1. 
1. 
1. 2
1. M
1. 
1. 
1. School of Business & Management
1. MBA
1. 
1. University of Advancing Technology
1. 
1. 
1. 
1. 
1. 
1. 
1. 
1. 
1. College of Technology Commerce
1. MS
1. 
1. University of Maryland University College
1. 9
1. M
1. 
1. 
1. 1
1. M
1. 
1. 
1. 
1. MS/MBA
1. 
1. University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee
1. 8
1. M
1. 
1. 
1. 9
1. M
1. 
1. 
1. School of Business Administration
1. MS
1. 
1. University of Washington
1. 4
1. M
1. 
1. 
1. 
1. 
1. 
1. 
1. School of Business Administration
1. MBA
1. 
1. Stuart School of Business
1. 8
1. M
1. 
1. 
1. 11
1. M
1. 
1. 
1. School of Business
1. MBA
Dogac, Asuman, Yusuf Tambag, Pinar Pembecioglu, Sait Pektas, Gokce Laleci, Gokhan Kurk, Serkan Toprak, and Vildiray Kabak. 2002. “An ebXML Infrastructure Implementation through UDDI Registries and RosettaNet PIPs,” Proceedings of the 2002 ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data, June.
Fingar, Peter, 2000. “Component-based Frameworks for E-Commerce,” Communications of the ACM, pp. 61–66, October.
Ge, Yuzhen and Sun Jiangeng, 2000. “E-Commerce and Computer Science Education,” ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, Proceedings of the Thirty-first SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, March.
Gorgone, John T. and Paul Gray, 1999. MSIS 2000: Model Curriculum and Guidelines for Graduate Degree Programs in Information Systems, ACM.
Linthicum, David S., 2001. “B2B Application Integration,” pp3-34, Addison Wesley, Indianapolis, IN
Robertson, Bruce and Valentin Sribar, 2002. “Enriching the Value Chain,” Addison Wesley, pp. 227-272, Indianapolis, IN, January.
Slama, Dirk, Jason Garbis, and Perry Russell, 1999. Enterprise CORBA, pp1-34, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ.


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