Electronic Commerce Database Applications

Portal

• Corporate -- Intranet or Web-based, DB-centered information sharing service (UCI Catalyst)
• Customer -- Personalized or (Mass) Customized Web pages/sites (MyDell, MyYahoo)
• Consumer -- Generic information, news, communications, and search services (AOL, Yahoo)
• Commerce -- Business-to-Business transactions (e.g., OfficeDepot)
• Vortal -- a vertical, industry-oriented market portal or information service (CommerceNet, RosettaNet)
• Community -- Information sharing way station and repository
• Game play (www.maxis.com plus >>100 more sites for The Sims)
• Software development (e.g., Apache.org, sourceforge.net)
• Standards (cf. IETF documents)
• Scientific Research

Index or Search Engine

• You enter a "search string" like a name or product identifier, then back-end database is search to retrieve exact or closest (proximal) matches
• Database index automatically generated using Web site "spiders" or "crawlers"
• Yahoo, Altavista.com, google.com, etc.

Auction site

• Electronic "want ads" service that maintains a database of items for sale, auction type, seller and bidder properties, and history of ask-bid postings/updates.
• Ebay -- regular or "dutch" auctions
• Priceline.com -- a "reverse" auction site

Business intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR)

• Data fusion,
• Exploratory query and analysis,
• Reporting and decision support (e.g., investment management services)

Direct Sales

• Search, Retrieval and Purchase transactions (Amazon, CDNow, Buy.com)

Electronic Catalogs and Syndicated Virtual Catalogs

• ECatalog sales:
• Retail, wholesale, supply/demand aggregation;
• Virtual or meta-catalog services (Catalog "generated" on demand via internal database query)

Procurement and/or Acquisition

• Procurements are typically large transaction volume, "small cost" purchases for "material, repairs, and operations" (MRO)
• Estimated to be 90% of all B2B transactions, but only 10% of dollar value
• Increasingly done over the Web
• Acquisition are small transaction volume, "high cost" purchases
• Estimated to be 10% of B2B transaction, but 90% of dollar volume
• Primarily done via Fax, surface mail, or EDI (Electronic Data Interchange), rather than using the Web.

Application Service Provider (ASP)

• Domain-specific "point solutions"
• Virtual application servers or EBusiness servers like Bigstep.com

Order Management

• Placement, Fulfillment, Tracking, Status, Cancellation, Commitment, Audit, Non-Repudiation, Archiving
• Ordering stock transactions (buy, sell, put, hold, short, etc.)
• Ordering products for purchase (e.g., buying a book from Amazon.com)

Configuration Management

• New product development
• Product families
• Multi-version products
• Software or information system architecture

Customer Relationship Management

• Personalization
• Status Reporting
• Progress Notification/Messaging

Help Desks and Service Centers

• Store customer email/voice inquiries in database, content analyze, route via triggers and stored procedures to designated responders, send status and courier (FedEx, UPS) tracking number/URL in message.
• e.g., Fogdog.com

Contact and Sales Management

• PDA-based (e.g., using your Palm Pilot) to maintain sales lead coordinates, order status, etc.
• Tracking the status of sales activities across a field sales force via sales automation system.

Distribution and Logistics Management

• Used in conjunction with Order Management
• Tracking the movement of material or products from producers to customers along the supply chain or distribution and delivery chain
• Think FedEx, UPS, and other freight forwarders.