Chapters 5 and 6

Chapter 5

1. Describe the three network applications that we discussed in this section and the tools and technologies that support each one.
· Discovery: involves browsing and information retrieval, and provides users with the ability to view information in databases download it and or process it. Discover tools include search engines, directories and portals.
· Communications: networks provide fast inexpensive communications, via e-mail, blogs, call centers, chat rooms and voice communications

2. What are the business conditions that are leading to the increased importance of videoconferencing?
Businesses are competing in a global market, it is to hard and to expenses to communicate face-to face so through videoconferencing they combat these issues.

Section 5.2 1. Describe the underlying technologies, applications and types of Web sites that comprise Web 2.0.
The information technologies and applications used by Web 2.0 sites include XML, AJAX, tagging, blogs, Wikis, Really Simple Syndication, podcasting and video casting. The websites that comprise Web 2.0 include social media sites, aggregators and mashups.

2. Describe the function of Web services.
Web services are applications, delivered over the internet that users can select and combine through almost any device, from personal computers to mobile phones. By using a set of shared protocols and standards, these application permit different systems to talk with one another- that is , to share data and services without requiring human beings to translate the conversation. 3. Describe the function of service-oriented architectures. A service-orientated architecture (SOA) is an IT architecture that makes it possible to construct business applications using Web services. The Web services can be reused across an organisation in other applications.


Chapter 6

Section 6.1 - 1. Define e-commerce and distinguish it from e-business.
E-commerce describes the process of buying selling, transferring, or exchanging products, services, or information via computer networks, including the internet. E-business is a broader concept. In addition to the buying and selling of goods and services, e-business also refers to servicing customers, collaborating with business partners and performing electronic transactions within an organisation.

2. Distinguish among B2C, B2B, C2C and B2E electronic commerce.
-Business-to-consumer (B2C): the sellar are the organisations and the buyers are the individuals.
-Business-to-business (B2B); In these transactions, both sellers an buyers are business organisations.
-Consumer-to-consumer (C2C): an individual sells products or services to other individuals.
-Business-to-employee (B2E): an organisation uses EC internally to provide information and services to its employees companies allow employees to manage their benefits and to take training classes electronically.

3. List some benefits and limitations of e-commerce.
E-commerce benefits organisation by making national and international markets more accessible and by lowering the costs of processing, distributing and retrieving information. Customer’s benefit by being able to access a vast number of products and services around the clock. The major benefit to society is the ability to easily and conveniently deliver information, services and products to people in cities, rural areas and developing countries. EC has some limitations. Technological limitations include the lack of universally accepted security standards, insufficient telecommunications bandwidth and expensive accessibility. Non-technical limitations include the perceptions that EC is insecure, has unresolved legal issues and lacks a critical mass of buyers and sellers.

Section 6.2 - 1. List the major issues relating to e-tailing.
-Channel Conflict: can alienate the distributors, this can arise in areas such as pricing of products and services and resource allocation.
-Order Fulfilment: This can also be a source of problems for e-tailers. Any time a company sells directly to customers, it is involved in various order-fulfilments activities. It must perform many activities, though it is very difficult to accomplish these activities both effectively and efficiently in B2C, because a company has to ship small packages to many customers and do it quickly. For this reason companies involved in B2C activities often have difficulties in supply chains.

2. What are spamming, permission marketing and viral marketing?
-Spamming: is the indiscriminate distribution of electronic ads without permission of the receiver.
-Permission Marketing: as consumers to give their permission to voluntarily accept online advertising and e-mail.
-Viral Marketing: refers to online “word-of-mouth” marketing. The idea behind viral marketing is to have people forward messages to friends.

Section 6.4 1. List the various electronic payment mechanisms.
-Electronic Checks
-Electronic Credit Cards
-Purchasing Cards
-Electronic Cash
-Digital Wallets

2. What are micropayments?
They are small payments of a few dollars or less. Section 6.5 -1. List some ethical issues in EC.
-Presents some threats to privacy
-Issue of tracking
- It may eliminate the need for some of a company’s employees, as well as brokers or agents.

2. List the major legal issues of EC.
-Fraud on the internet.
- Domain names
- Cybersquatting
-Taxes and other fees
-Copyright

chapter 4

Chapter 4

1. What are some of the difficulties in managing data?

1. The amount of data increases exponentially with time
2. Data are frequently stored in numerous servers and locations and in different computing systems.
3. New sources of data (blogs, podcasts) are unstructured, meaning that there content cannot be truly represented in computer record.
4. Data decays over time
5. Data security and quality are crucial yet are easily jeopardized.


2. What are the various sources for data?
1. Internal sources (inside corperate databases)
2. Personal sources (individual thought, opinions and experiences)
3. External sources (commercial databases, government reports)


3. What is a primary key and a secondary key?
· Primary Key: is the identifier field or attribute that uniquely identifies a record.
· Secondary Key: An identifier field or attribute that has some identifying information, but typically does not identify the file with complete accuracy.

4. What is an entity and a relationship?
· Entity: A person, place, thing or event about which information is maintained in a record.
· Relationship: Is the connection between the entities.


5. What are the advantages and disadvantages of relational databases?
A relational database is made up of related tables. Theses tables can be joined when they contain common columns. This feature allows great flexibility in the variety of queries they can make. Despite these features, this model has some disadvantages. Because large-scale databases can be composed of many interrelated tables, the overall design can be complex and therefore have slow search and access times.

6. What is knowledge management?
Is a process that helps organizations identify, select organize and disseminate and transfer and apply information and expertise that are part of the organization memory and that typically reside within the organization in an unstructured manner.

7. What is the difference between tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge?
Explicit knowledge is the more objective, rational and technical types of knowledge whereas tactic knowledge is the cumulative store of subjective or experiential learning; highly personal and hard to formalize knowledge.

chapter 3

Chapter 3

1. Provide an IT example that relates to the ethical issues for the ideas of privacy, accuracy, property, and accessibility.
· Bluetooth: this is an information sharing system which is easily misused and has the ability to access large amounts of information from many different peoples mobile phones. The privacy is not very well protected and the process or idea of privacy is not protected.

2. What are the 5 general types of IT threats? Provide an example for each one
1 Technical Failures: problems with hardware and software
2 Natural disasters: floods earthquakes
3 Deliberate acts: information extortion.
4,5 Unintentional acts: Human errors, environmental hazards


2. Describe/discuss three types of software attack and a problem that may result from them
· Virus: Segment of computer code that performs malicious actions by attaching to another computer programme. They can cause software and hardware problems to the computer.
· Trojan horse: Software programmes that hide in other computer programmes and reveal there designed behaviour only when they are activated.
· Password attack/ dictionary attack: Attacks that try combinations of letters and numbers that are most likely to succeed, such as all words from a dictionary. This is very damaging as many private and confidential documents are protected by passwords.

3. Describe the four major types of security controls in relation to protecting information systems.
· Physical Controls: controls that restrict unauthorised individuals from gaining access to company’s computer facilities.
· Access Controls: Controls that restrict unauthorised individuals from using information resources and are concerned with user identification.
· Communication Controls: Controls that deal with the movement of data across networks.
· Application Controls: Controls that protect specific applications.

4. What is information system auditing?
IS auditing is an evaluation of IS integrity focusing on things like security.


5. What is the difference between authentication and authorization and why are they important to e-Commerce/give an example of their relevance to e-Commerce
Authorisation refers to a process that determines which actions, rights or privileges the person has based on verified identity. Where as authentication is a process that determines the identity of the person requiring access. They are important to e-commerce as they put businesses on an equal playing field where they only have as much access as one another and they must obey the same protocols.