Internet Technology for Business Applications

Welcome to ELEC S321, an exciting course about developments in the field of e-business technologies. The course team have found this a demanding course to create, not least because the subject area is still being defined as new technologies and applications emerge and standards gain wider acceptance. There are few other fields of study where the pace of change is measured in weeks and months, not years. Every one of us has seen and felt the impact of these changes in our lives, be it in the way we interact with retailers and government, or in the changing nature of the work we undertake. The course team very much hope that you enjoy studying the course and that it proves to be both stimulating and rewarding.

Overall, the course aims to give you an understanding of a number of key technologies related to e-business, and to help you develop your skills as an effective and reflective learner.

In more detail, its aims are:

• To introduce you to a range of concepts and principles regarding e-business technologies so as to provide a framework of understanding that will enable you to keep abreast of future developments.
• To provide you with knowledge and understanding of some of the techniques, applications and issues relevant to e-business technologies.
• To develop your analytical, critical and creative skills in thinking about and discussing technology.
• To develop your communication skills through reading and writing documents related to e-business technologies using diagrams and design tools.
• To facilitate further study in technological subjects.

At a more detailed level the course is defined in terms of its learning outcomes. These are what the course team expect you to have achieved when you have completed your studies. Detailed learning outcomes for each block are provided in the individual companion documents. Here is a brief summary to whet your appetite.

After completing the course you should have knowledge and understanding of:

• Principles, concepts and techniques associated with e-business technologies.
• Theoretical and practical models associated with:
  communication protocols,
  the role of the extended markup language,
  web service design, operation and management,
  the orchestration of web services,
  technical descriptions of e-business technologies,
  a range of techniques and computer-based tools for modelling, developing and
  evaluating e-business technologies.

Key skills — you should be able to:

• Communicate effectively about e-business technologies.
• Improve your own learning and performance.
• Solve problems associated with e-business technologies.
• Work with others to discuss and resolve issues related to e-business technologies.
• Use ICT to search for, exchange and present information related to e-business technologies.
• Apply design and development skills to describe and analyse e-business technologies.
• Interpret and critically analyse literature on e-business technologies, techniques, applications and issues.

Practical and professional skills — you should be able to:

• Use ICT to prepare, deliver and communicate ideas and issues about e-business technologies.
• Execute and explore design tools relevant to e-business technologies.
• Search for and work with electronic resources.

E-business technologies cover an enormous field of study, from the low-level details of communication protocols, message schemas and web services, to the high-level goals and aspirations that shape a profitable business. The standards, techniques and tools underpinning e-business developments are continually evolving in divergent directions. The excitement and the challenge is that nothing is the same for very long.

Recognising this scale and pace of change, the course team decided that the most appropriate course structure to adopt would be a set of independent blocks. This allows greater flexibility to respond to changes and update the course to keep it topical.

What follows is a brief summary of what you can expect.

Block 1: E-business
This block lays the business foundations for the course and provides you with a thorough grounding in e-business as a concept. It presents a number of useful ways of making sense of e-business, drawing on several case studies that demonstrate the ways in which a range of organisations have put e-business into practice.

Block 2: Basic protocols
This block begins to look at the technical aspects of e-business, covering some of the fundamental protocols and standards that have come to be widely used in this area. At the heart of any e-business system is the exchange of information, and this block looks at two broad issues: what is exchanged and how it is exchanged. The first aspect includes standards for data and introduces XML; the second aspect considers protocols and looks at HTTP as a simple example that is used by web services.

Block 3: Web services
This block builds on your understanding of and experience with XML, HTTP and Eclipse, introducing a new approach to developing, making available and using applications across a network: web services. It examines the driving forces behind the emergence of web services and the principles behind them, as well as presenting a range of practical activities that provide further insights and experience by looking at examples and developing, making available, using and testing simple web services.

Block 4: Orchestration
The final block draws together what you have learnt about the technologies of document schemas and web services, and examines how these can be used to support the development of e-business processes. Borrowing from concepts originating in business process management, it explores how fine-grained web services can be orchestrated into business-centred processes using the Business Process Execution Language (BPEL).

Project
This is an individual project that provides the opportunity for you to demonstrate your understanding of the various technologies and issues addressed by the course, as well as put into practice the communication and other skills that you have developed and honed over the preceding weeks.

Table 1 summarises the structure of the course. Each of the first three blocks culminates in an assignment. The course finishes with an end-of-course assessment (ECA), an integrative and discursive project that takes the place of an examination.

Table 1 Structure of the course

Course web site

All the course material will be delivered via the course web site as PDF files. In addition to the block texts, there will be other resources such as links to external web sites, journal articles, files required for your practical work, Library activities and other resources (see also 'Library resources', later in this guide).

All these materials are intended for home study, but this does not mean that you will necessarily be working alone. You will be interacting with other students and your tutor via forums and in some instances other forms of electronic communication.

In addition we arrange a number of face-to-face tutorials and surgeries for you. Do make sure you check with the tutorial and surgery schedule and mark the dates on your calendar.

Companions

Each block of the course includes a companion that will introduce you to the block and guide you through it. Reading the companion should be your starting point for every block, not least because it includes details of the assignments that you will undertake.

Block texts

Each block of the course is divided into several parts. These parts vary in length and each one draws together a set of distinct ideas, concepts and methodologies around a particular subject. They are presented in the suggested order of study, but it may be that you are able to study some parts in a different order depending on your previous knowledge and experience. Advice on this is included in the block companions.

As you progress through the course you will be expected to carry out an increasing amount of practical work. Thus as well as the main parts that make up each block, Blocks 2-4 also have associated practical activity booklets and other documentation that will help you to use Eclipse. You may be referred out to these documents from within the main texts, or they may be self-contained. Again, the block companions provide advice on this.

In general, you will find that each block companion offers guidance on how best to study the components that make up the block, based on the course team's experience of teaching the particular topics, together with an indication as to the amount of time you might expect to spend on each part. This is an indication only — your personal pattern will vary with your prior experience of and skill in the topics covered -- and is intended as a planning aid. Don't be surprised if you spend more or less time on a single component.

Activities

All the blocks contain activities for you to undertake as you study. The course team have used a variety of labels for these activities to help you to understand their purpose and how you should approach them.

• Discussion activities ask you to come up with your own answer to particular questions and then share those answers with other students in the course forums. This will help you to look at a topic from different perspectives and gain a broader understanding of the subject.
• In-text activities are for you to see if you can work something out for yourself or to get you thinking about what is coming next. Comments will always follow directly, but do try not to look at the comments until you have given the question some thought!
• Online activities ask you to move beyond the course web site to do some research on the wider Internet. Sometimes you will be directed to specific third-party web sites; at other times you may be expected to find your own sources of information.
• Practical activities direct you to carry out some practical work, often using Eclipse. Detailed instructions for practical activities will usually be given in a separate booklet.
• Reading activities ask you to read specified documents. They may also ask you to answer some questions relating to your reading.
• Self-assessment activities provide you with the opportunity to test your understanding of the ideas and concepts covered in the text. An answer or comments will be provided at the end of the part.
• Video activities direct you to watch selected video resources. They may also require you to think about or make notes on particular topics as you watch.

The above list is not exhaustive, but does cover the major categories of activities used throughout the course.

DVDs

There are two DVDs provided with the course, which will be sent to you in the course mailing.

DVD 1 contains four short video programmes (approximately 15 minutes each). These illustrate how web services and their associated applications are being used across a range of business sectors, and explore the business goals driving the use of these new technologies. The course texts will direct you to view these at the appropriate points.

DVD 2 contains Eclipse, the software that you will use in Blocks 2–4, together with some short video tutorials giving an overview of the software (again, you will be directed to view these at relevant points in the texts). Instructions on how to install and use the software will be given in the appropriate block. This DVD also contains a talk given by Jeff Barr, Amazon's Technical Evangelist, which you will need for Block 1.

Course forum

The course forum is to support your course studies. You are expected to check into the forum at least once a week. The course forum is where you can interact with your tutor and the other students, ask and answer questions, share ideas and resources, and generally promote a learning community. The course team will also use the course forum to post late-breaking news items about the course and assignments.

The course team have taken great care to ensure that the assessment is both appropriate and sufficient to support the learning outcomes of the course. Each of the first three blocks and the project culminates in an assignment that is designed to assess both your grasp of e-business technologies and your learning skills. You will find the details in the block companions.

All assessment components will be marked out of 100. The four assignments are equally weighted in their contribution to the continuous assessment score for the course.

The overall continuous assessment (OCAS) and the examination (OES) are each worth 50% of your overall course score. To be sure of a pass result you need to achieve scores of at least 40% in each component.

Table 2 shows the individual weightings for each assessment item.

Table 2: Course assessment weightings

This course is a UKOU course: T320 Ebusiness technologies: foundations and practice.

Academic team
Neil Simpkins (Presentation Course Chair and Block 3 Author)
Nick Heap (Production Course Chair and Block 4 Author)
Ian Martin (Block 1 Author)
Jon Rosewell (Block 2 Author)
Andres Baravalle (Critical Reader)
Geoff Einon (Critical Reader)
Tony Hirst (Critical Reader)
Soraya Kouadri (Critical Reader and Project Author)
Glyn Martin (Critical Reader and AV academic consultant)
Emily Rice (Course Manager)

Production team
Alison George (Project Manager)
Fiona Bowtell (Library)
Jamie Daniels (Technical and Web)
David DuPlessis (Graphic Design)
Anna Edgley-Smith (Editor)
Carol Houghton (Rights)
Anh Huntingdon (Technical Tester)
Jon Owen (Graphic Art)
Lynn Short (Interactive Media)

This Course Guide is based on the original Course Guide of UKOU T320.