The History of HTML, Essay Example

In the first wave of e-commerce businesses witnessed new start-ups creating diverse business models and pioneering into new markets. This created a race between the brick and mortar and the new internet .com businesses trying to dominate market presence in the new virtual economy. The wave of optimism, however, did not last long and “companies have been left to ponder the battle for market share and ultimately for survival” (Blackie, 2010).

The Second wave of e-commerce has seen an expansion in the sophistication of technology and use of communications “The second wave of e-Business delivers an entirely new customer experience by leveraging and bringing together the new high-performance Internet and customer touch points of web, phone, fax, and email, as well as face-to-face communication” (Dart, 2010).  The major difference between the first and second waves was the sophistication of the internet and communications technology. There has been a shift in the dynamics too as in the second wave we are moving away from transaction based business to more of customer relationship management “To be successful in the second wave of eBusiness, companies will need to empower their employees, and empower their customers” (Dart, 2010).

The sophisticated development of the internet has revolutionised the way that business is now conducted.  “The internet has become part of the central nervous system of the global economy” (Science and Engineering, 2010).  We are now able to penetrate new markets, reduce costs and define new ways of doing business in a multi-tasking environment. These concepts would have been inconceivable a decade ago.  The advent of M-Commerce has seen this technology accelerate to the use of mobile hand held devices connecting through an array of wireless networks connected to powerful and sophisticated servers.

HTML

HTML stands for Hyper Text Mark Up language. It defines the structures and layouts of web documents by the use of tags and other attributes.  Web pages contain many tags that are used in order to format the information that is contained on the page.  This also uses hyperlinks or ‘jumps’ that enable web developers to navigate to other web pages at the single click of the mouse. “Tim Berners-Lee was the primary author of html, assisted by his colleagues at CERN, an international scientific organization based in Geneva, Switzerland.” (Bellis, 2010).  Tim is credited as being one of the original founders of the world-wide web and is a Director of the World Wide Web Consortium.

Online Privacy Statements

Online Privacy Statement from the Microsoft Corporation “Microsoft is committed to protecting your privacy. Please read the Microsoft Online Privacy Statement below and also any supplemental information listed to the right for additional details about particular Microsoft sites and services that you may use.” (Microsoft Corporation , 2010).

The Microsoft Privacy statements fall under the following headings:

• Collection of personal information
• Use of personal information
• Sharing of personal information
• Accessing personal Information
• Communication preferences
• Display advertising (opt out)
• Security of personal information
• Collection and use of children’s personal information
• Use of Cookies
• Use of Web beacons
• Control of unsolicited mail
• Enforcement of Privacy Statement

As you would expect from a Company the stature of Microsoft, this is a very comprehensive list. It protects the rights of Children and defines how the information might be disposed of in the case of the Company becoming insolvent. [http://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/fullnotice.mspx].

Web Server and Hardware

Two tier architecture is very simple – it has a client and a server, whereas a 3 tier application typically has a web server, an application server, and a database server in three distinct physical machines.  The essential difference is in the middle tier that deals with the business logic. In 3 tier architecture “each server (tier 2 and 3) performs a specialised task (a service). “ A server can therefore use services from other servers in order to provide its own service. As a result, 3-tier architecture is potentially an n-tiered architecture.” (Kioskea, 2010)

A 3 tier architecture is much better for an e-commerce site because of the separation of duties by the servers. In the diagram above it can be seen that the Application Server is dealing with inbound requests and sending out replies. The main repository of information is being contained on a database server and deals with all of the file handling.  The SQL server allows the data to be interrogated for answering queries or compiling management reports.

Middleware is a programming term that looks at the mediation of two programs, often a new and an existing program. A common use is that of an application program that permits one database to access another database.

Works Cited

Bellis, M. (2010). The History of HTML. Retrieved 11 3, 2010, from About.com: http://inventors.about.com/od/computersoftware/a/html.htm

Blackie, R. M. (2010). Virgin Lifecycle… Manchester UK : University of Salford.

Dart, C. (2010). eBusiness – The Second Wave. Retrieved 11 3, 2010, from The Manager.org: http://www.themanager.org/resources/eBusiness.htm

Kioskea. (2010). Networking – 3-Tier Client/Server Architecture. Retrieved 11 3, 2010, from Kioskea: http://en.kioskea.net/contents/cs/cs3tier.php3

Microsoft Corporation . (2010, 8). Microsoft Online Privacy Statement. Retrieved 11 3, 2010, from Microsoft Corporation : http://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/fullnotice.mspx

Science and Engineering. (2010). E-commerce. Retrieved 11 3, 2010, from Science and Engineering: http://www.science-engineering.net/ecommerce_science.htm