Reference no: EM132884951

COMP6390 Electronic Commerce - University of Kent

SECTION A

Answer the ONE question in this section.

1. (a) In 2003 Nicholas Carr wrote a provocative article for Harvard Business Review (HBR) titled "IT Doesn't Matter," in which he stated:

"IT is best seen as the latest in a series of broadly adopted technologies that have reshaped industry over the past two centuries - from the steam engine and the railroad to the telegraph and the telephone to the electric generator and the internal combustion engine. For a brief period, as they were being built into the infrastructure of commerce, all these technologies opened opportunities for forward-looking companies to gain real advantages. But as their availability increased and their cost decreased - as they became ubiquitous - they became commodity inputs. From a strategic standpoint, they became invisible; they no longer mattered."

Comment on this passage in the light of your understanding of the particular time at which it was written in and of the evolution of IT in the last ten years.

(b) Ten years later, in 2013, an article on HBR by Robert Plant titled "IT Doesn't Matter (to CEOs)" challenged this view, saying:

"It's true, in a sense, that enterprise computing is like a utility. Data flows through every company like water, gas, and electricity. But there's a difference. Computing's functionality undergoes constant, dramatic increases, and as it does so, it opens huge new opportunities and leaves the company vulnerable in unexpected ways. While technology can't give you a permanent competitive advantage, timely deployment of new IT products, processes, and systems can enable you to build a strong competitive position.

Corporations' technology strategies will remain ineffective until leaders acknowledge that, now as always, IT does matter."

In light of your experience and the material taught in the module explain your view on this debate, explaining your view and providing justification for your arguments.

SECTION B

Answer the ONE question in this section.

2. (a) Use an example in e-Commerce to demonstrate the four "ACID" properties of transactions.

(b) Give an example where concurrency in database access can lead to incorrect application behaviour.

(c) Write the URL encode using the get method for a Google search for "URL encoding post method"?

(d) Amazon filed for the patent "anticipatory shipping" in 2012, and it was awarded in the following year. The patent summary describes a method for shipping a package of one or more items "to the destination geographical area without completely specifying the delivery address at time of shipment," with the final destination defined en route. How could Amazon possibly predict what you want?

Attachment:- Electronic Commerce.rar