Author Question: Electronic commerce software must summarize sales and shipments. In about 100 words, explain how ... (Read 22 times)

lb_gilbert · **on:** Jul 7, 2018

Electronic commerce software must summarize sales and shipments. In about 100 words, explain how software for a small online store might accomplish this task and contrast it with how software for a large enterprise might do so.

Question 2

Write a paragraph or two in which you explain how online businesses can address the issues that arise from the stateless nature of HTTP messaging.

FergA · **Reply #1 on:** Jul 7, 2018

Answer to Question 1

Although a basic online stores electronic commerce software can generate reports that summarize sales and inventory shipped, most midsize and larger companies use an accounting software package to record sales and inventory movements. To integrate effectively with accounting software, the electronic commerce software must communicate with that accounting software, which typically runs on other computers in the sellers network. When an item is sold online, the electronic commerce software must communicate that fact to both the sales and inventory management modules in the accounting software.

Answer to Question 2

Answer: HTTP messaging, which is the foundation of the Web, is a stateless system (it does not retain information from one transmission or session to another), thus shopping cart software must store information about specific shoppers and their purchases. One way that shopping cart software does this is to create cookies. When a customer returns to the shopping site that issued a particular cookie, the shopping cart software reads the cookie from the customers computer and uses the information stored there to retrieve the customers shopping information from the sellers server computer.
Some shoppers configure their Web browser software to refuse cookies; therefore, many sites use another method to preserve shopping cart information from one browser session to another. Some shopping cart software packages do this by assigning each shopper a temporary identifying number.
This number is added to the end of the URL that appears in the browsers address bar and persists as the shopper navigates from one Web site to another. When the customer returns, the URL still includes the identifying number, which the Web server uses to reinstate the customers shopping cart information. When the shopper closes the browser, the temporary number is discarded and is no longer available, even if the customer later reopens the browser and returns to the same Web site. Thus, this approach works only as long as the shopper continues to keep the browser software open.