This node is a component of the key systems of BASE Pty. Ltd., an imaginary company used in the IBM Redbook (in English) B2B e-commerce with WebSphere Commerce Business Edition V5.4, Patterns for e-business Series to illustrate the concepts surrounding the development of a Sell-Side Hub eMarketplace.

This node can be an already existing database server containing cata log data. In some cases, catalog data is imported from a back-end system into the Commerce Suite store catalog. If the commerce database is not the master cata log database, the replication of data from the back-end system will be run on a regular basis. Data can be imported into the commerce database from the back-end system.

This node is a component of the key systems of BASE Pty. Ltd., an imaginary company used in the IBM Redbook (in English) B2B e-commerce with WebSphere Commerce Business Edition V5.4, Patterns for e-business Series to illustrate the concepts surrounding the development of a Sell-Side Hub eMarketplace.

In the Redbook example, as well as here, it is assumed that the Price System Node is a pre-existing part of the BASE Pty. Ltd. system, and will not be altered as part of the new Sell-Side Hub solution being developed.

This node is a component of the key systems of BASE Pty. Ltd., an imaginary company used in the IBM Redbook (in English) B2B e-commerce with WebSphere Commerce Business Edition V5.4, Patterns for e-business Series to illustrate the concepts surrounding the development of a Sell-Side Hub eMarketplace.

In the Redbook example, as well as here, it is assumed that the Inventory System Node is a pre-existing part of the BASE Pty. Ltd. system, and will not be altered as part of the new Sell-Side Hub solution being developed.

This node is a component of the key systems of BASE Pty. Ltd., an imaginary company used in the IBM Redbook (in English) B2B e-commerce with WebSphere Commerce Business Edition V5.4, Patterns for e-business Series to illustrate the concepts surrounding the development of a Sell-Side Hub eMarketplace.

In the Redbook example, as well as here, it is assumed that the Fulfillment System Node is a pre-existing part of the BASE Pty. Ltd. system, and will not be altered as part of the new Sell-Side Hub solution being developed.

This node is a component of the key systems of BASE Pty. Ltd., an imaginary company used in the IBM Redbook (in English) B2B e-commerce with WebSphere Commerce Business Edition V5.4, Patterns for e-business Series to illustrate the concepts surrounding the development of a Sell-Side Hub eMarketplace.

In the Redbook example, as well as here, it is assumed that the HR System Node is a pre-existing part of the BASE Pty. Ltd. system, and will not be altered as part of the new Sell-Side Hub solution being developed.

The directory and security services node supplies information on the location, capabilities, and attributes (including user ID/password pairs and certificates) of resources and users known to this Web application system. This node can supply information for various security services (authentication and authorization) and can also perform the actual security processing, for example, to verify certificates. The authentication in most current designs validates the access to the Web application server part of the Web server, but this node also authenticates for access to the database server.

See Also

• Database server

Additional Resources

• (in English) ESS

This Node's function is to provide persistent data storage and retrieval in support of the user to-online buying transactional interaction.

Customer related data that is stored is relevant to the specific business interaction, for example, the shopping cart and shipping address information. Some sites are registering users and storing customer profile data such as address, clothing sizes, preferences, and gift wish lists that others can access when buying presents. Most sites today do not store credit card information on this server for security reasons.

Also stored here is the product and catalog information used to dynamically build HTML pages for presentation during the shopping process.

The mode of DB access is perhaps the most important factor determining the performance of this Web application, in all but the simplest cases. The recommended approach is to collapse the DB accesses into a single or very few calls. This can be achieved using coding and invoking Stored Procedure Calls on the database. Typically many commerce servers share only one database server in a high volume site, so the technology to implement this node must be able to scale vertically.

This node provides a registration facility for the customers of BASE Pty. Ltd., an imaginary company used in the IBM Redbook (in English) B2B e-commerce with WebSphere Commerce Business Edition V5.4, Patterns for e-business Series to illustrate the concepts surrounding the development of a Sell-Side Hub eMarketplace.

In the Redbook example, as well as here, it is assumed that the Customer Registration Node is a pre-existing part of the BASE Pty. Ltd. system, but will have some changes made to it as part of the new Sell-Side Hub solution being developed.

Doing business is a series of Collaboration processes. It requires interaction between employees, vendors, suppliers and business partners. While e-mail is one example of an indispensable communication tool used by companies around the world, a number of other collaborative applications are increasingly coming into play. These applications enable local workgroups, or even geographically dispersed teams, to work together using real-time information sharing and distribution across the Internet. The applications include e-mail, group calendaring and scheduling, shared document libraries, discussion databases, newsgroups, and so forth.

This node provides the infrastructure for the presentation and business logic of the online buying solution. The commerce application server may be part of an application server node.

The function of the workflow server node is to manage the flow of operations for users and applications within the e-Marketplace. The scope of workflow management is categorized into the groups macro and micro.

Macro

At the macro level, the workflow server manages functions at a broad level, such as governing a complete business process.

Micro

At the micro level, the workflow server manages lower-level tasks, such as the flow of user interaction associated with an online product purchase.

This node provides a document management system that contains the technical documents of BASE Pty. Ltd., an imaginary company used in the IBM Redbook (in English) B2B e-commerce with WebSphere Commerce Business Edition V5.4, Patterns for e-business Series to illustrate the concepts surrounding the development of a Sell-Side Hub eMarketplace.

In the Redbook example, as well as here, it is assumed that the Technical Document Repository Node is a pre-existing part of the BASE Pty. Ltd. system, and will not be part of the new Sell-Side Hub solution being developed.

A firewall is a hardware/software system that manages the flow of information between the Internet and an organization's private network. Firewalls can prevent unauthorized Internet users from accessing private networks connected to the Internet, especially intranets, and can block some virus attacks -- as long as those viruses are coming from the Internet. A firewall can separate two or more parts of a local network to control data exchange between departments. Components of firewalls include filters or screens, each of which controls transmission of certain classes of traffic. Firewalls provide the first line of defense for protecting private information, but comprehensive security systems combine firewalls with encryption and other complementary services, such as content filtering and intrusion detection.

Firewalls control access from a less trusted network to a more trusted network. Traditional implementations of firewall services include:

• Screening routers (the Protocol Firewall)
• application gateways (The Domain Firewall)

A pair of Firewall Nodes provides increasing levels of protection at the expense of increasing computing resource requirements. The Domain Firewall is typically implemented as a dedicated server Node.

See Also

• Protocol Firewall Node

Additional Resources

• (in English) ESS

A firewall is a hardware/software system that manages the flow of information between the Internet and an organization's private network. Firewalls can prevent unauthorized Internet users from accessing private networks connected to the Internet, especially intranets, and can block some virus attacks -- as long as those viruses are coming from the Internet. A firewall can separate two or more parts of a local network to control data exchange between departments. Components of firewalls include filters or screens, each of which controls transmission of certain classes of traffic. Firewalls provide the first line of defense for protecting private information, but comprehensive security systems combine firewalls with encryption and other complementary services, such as content filtering and intrusion detection.

Firewalls control access from a less trusted network to a more trusted network. Traditional implementations of firewall services include:

• Screening routers, (the Protocol Firewall)
• Application gateways (The Domain Firewall)

A pair of Firewall Nodes provides increasing levels of protection at the expense of increasing computing resource requirements. The Protocol Firewall is typically implemented as an IP Router.

See Also

• Domain Firewall Node

Additional Resources

• (in English) ESS

This is a system that can be used by applications to send out e-mail messages to users on the Internet. It is one-way only, meaning that it will not receive e-mails from the Internet.

In a system environment where the Web tier employs multiple different vendor application servers, a separate security server must be used to implement Single Sign-On . The external security server provides an authentication proxy that intercepts requests to map or transform user credentials into the appropriate credential format for that specific application server.

The Load Balancer (or Network Dispatcher) provides horizontal scalability by dispatching http connections among several, identically configured Web Servers.

The Load Balancer component distributes interactive traffic across a number of hosts using dynamically updated rules for load balancing, while providing a single system image to the client system. It is used to achieve scalability through use of multiple servers, and high availability through being able to dynamically vary the algorithms by which a host is selected if one host fails or becomes overloaded.

The Load Balancer may be required to concurrently provide local or remote load balancing function for:

• Web server requests
• Mail servers
• Firewall / authentication hosts (i.e. not just IP address filtering)

The Load Balancer uses TCP/IP addressing standards to provide a single IP address for users to access. IP aliasing allows the ND to forward a message to a host and have it appear as if it had come direct from the client. The host therefore replies directly to the client.

The Load Balancer selects a host to process each incoming message on the basis of user-defined rules and dynamically updated information about the status of each eligible host. It uses agents to maintain awareness of the health and loading of each eligible back-end host within a defined cluster, and forwards each incoming request to one of these hosts on the basis of either existing persistent connections or the displaceable capacity (loading) of the target host application or server.

The main benefits of using a Load Balancer are

• Enhanced service scalability, as servers can be replicated to accommodate increasing workload
• Enhanced service availability, as traffic can be routed to alternative servers if one server fails
• Enhanced manageability, as an individual server can be taken out of service for maintenance without interrupting the service to users.

Additional Resources

• (in English) ESS

PKI is a system for verifying the authenticity of each party involved in an Internet transaction, protecting against fraud or sabotage, and for nonrepudiation purposes to help consumers and retailers protect themselves against denial of transactions. Trusted third-party organizations called certificate authorities issue digital certificates -- attachments to electronic messages -- that specify key components of the user's identity. During an Internet transaction, signed, encrypted messages are automatically routed to the certificate authority, where the certificates are verified before the transaction can proceed. PKI can be embedded in software applications, or offered as a service or a product. e-business leaders agree that PKIs are critical for transaction security and integrity, and the software industry is moving to adopt open standards for their use.

The DNS Node assists in determining the physical network address associated with the symbolic address (URL) of the requested information. The Domain Name Server Node provides the technology platform to provide host to IP address mapping, that is, to allow for the translation of names (referred to as URLs) into IP addresses and vice versa.

Additional Resources

• (in English) ESS

The user node is most frequently a personal computing device (PC) supporting a commercial browser, for example, Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer. The browser is expected to support SSL and some level of DHTML. Increasingly, designers need to also consider that this node might be a pervasive computing device, such as a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA).