Chapter 3
E-commerce
Architecture
One
of the main demanding application of WWW / Internet is E-commerce
and on the face of it a user/surfer is only exposed to its Front
End of Presentation Layer-the Web Browser. A simple 3-tier
architecture model has 3 layers namely:
1.Data
Layer
– This is the Back End which maintains the Database
2.Business Layer
– This defines the business logics and link data layer
with Front End to
push dynamic contents.
3.Presentation
Layer –
This is the Front End which is appealing to the customer and
the main component of this is the
web Browser.
Fig
3.1 : A Simple Three-Tier Development Model
For
the PainNet.com project we followed this model with SQL Data base
Server at the Back End and Internet Information Server at the Business
layer. Active Server Pages technology was used at the business layer
to push dynamic content to users and process basic business rules.
At Presentation layer users were given the freedom to use their own
browsers and the main task at design level was to ensure browser
compatibility and OS (Operating System) independent. The System was
developed in Microsoft Windows NT as the OS for business and data
layers and compatibility was ensured for Mac & Linux OS at
presentation layer.
The following Fig 3.2 illustrates the possible technologies, which
could be deployed at each layer.
Fig
3.2 : A Simple Three-Tier Development Model: Microsoft Architecture
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