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E-Commerce FAQs | E-Commerce Courses
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E-Commerce Frequently Asked Questions

An Electronic Commerce Definition:

"the ennoblement of a business vision supported by advanced information technology to improve efficiency and effectiveness within the trading process"

Did it help? If didn't, keep reading...

Q. Making preparations for a New Year's party, I bought a case of champagne on-line. Is it E-Commerce or what?

A. Yes, it's a part of the economy of the 21st century when Enterprises will conduct E-Commerce in the context of the E-Economy. E-Enterprises are defined as organizations that have developed the capability to exchange value electronically, including goods, services, information and money. E-Enterprises must then align this technological capability with re-engineered processes, re-skilled workforce, and new strategies to conduct the business of the enterprise in a very different and much improved manner, which is called E-Commerce.

E-Commerce must then be conducted in the context of a radically new global economic framework that is called the E-Economy, which is as different from the industrial (brick and mortar) economy as the industrial economy was from the agrarian economy.

A little bit of statistics...

Industry analyst IDC estimates that by 2002, the number of devices used to access the Worldwide Web will exceed 515 million. Nielsen Media Research and CommerceNet data indicates that 20 million people now buy products and services through the Web. In the U.S., 53 percent of the businesses with Web sites report sales activity, according to Direct magazine.

Industry analyst Forrester Research reports that businesses sold $43 billion worth of goods to each other over the Web in 1998. Forrester projects that by 2003, Web-based business-to-business sales will reach $1.3 trillion, or 9.4 percent of all business-to-business sales.

The total number of Internet users reached approximately 100 million by the end of 1998 and is projected to reach 320 million by 2002. Web buyers are expected to represent 40 percent of all users in 2002, up from 26 percent in 1997, generating $400 billion in annual revenue.

One might wonder what this information overflow really means? In today's world, electronic commerce usually is conducting everyday business over the Internet or Corporate Intranet. Banks allow you to pay your bills over the Internet, investment banks monitor stock exchange data through intranet, and private companies sell their products over the Internet. Electronic Commerce has grown to be much more than just the actual buying and selling. It has opened up the exchange of information and the trading of information as a commodity itself. By using the low-cost public Internet instead of expensive private networks, these new forms of electronic commerce have become much more accessible. With that increased accessibility has come increased interest and new ways for business to be conducted.

Q. Why do I want to learn electronic commerce? Why is it better than sitting on the beach?

A. In article titled "E-Commerce to Generate $1.25 Trillion in Savings By 2002" by Michele Masterson, research shows that worldwide, companies will spend billions of dollars on the internet/intranet development. For us it means that thousands of new E-commerce technology jobs are being created. Currently, many firms experience a severe shortage of E-commerce developers; therefore these companies pay premium compensation for such "hot" skills. Sitting on the beach is also "hot", but generates significantly lower income.

Q. What does it take to learn E-Commerce? How many years will it take me to get over the " E- "?

A. Well, if you want to learn this task in a relatively short period of time, taking Aquarius ACT E-Commerce course will be the best way. Internet development is not very complex, but requires a certain complex of skills (pun intended). It involves understanding of basic concepts like networking, database design, software engineering, programming and system administration. E-Commerce course will provide you with basic overview of all these concepts and go a step beyond to make you a competitive programmer with a new set of highly demanded technical skills and business knowledge.

Q. Who can learn Electronic Commerce and Internet? What if I am older than 15?

A. Anyone can, with the basic knowledge of computers. You do not need to be a programmer to get enrolled into this course. The offered course is divided into specialized modules. If you are a programmer, but do not have any programming experience with object and event driven languages, you will be provided with a detailed overview of these crucial concepts. If you do not have any programming experience, you will have to start with the "Introduction to Web Programming" module. This module will provide you with the skills needed to write simple programs and will introduce major concepts of VB Script and Java Script.

Q. What specific skills do I get from this program?

A. This is a fair question that you should have on your mind by this time. This course provides you with a thorough introduction to designing and publishing full-feature Web pages on the Internet or on a corporate Intranet, including implementation of dynamic content using VB Script/Java Script and related tools and enabling company's E-Business. Staring at the beginner level, this course progresses to advance topics, using hands-on exercises throughout each week to demonstrate key concepts. This course is comprised of the information in the following modules :

Introduction to Web Programming

Programming with Objects

Web Application Development Using Microsoft Visual InterDev 6

Electronic Commerce and Beyond

In addition, there is Java/CORBA programming training which is a separate stand-alone track in the program E-Commerce career development.

Those skills are the most demanded in the information technology job market. The best way to find it out is to search on one of those phrases using an Internet search engine. That engine will be choked up by thousands of links. (It also means that there are a lot of opportunities to apply these skills to improve Internet applications!).
And now some Internet terminology in relation to what you can learn in this course:

Q. What is the World Wide Web?

A. WWW which sometimes stands for World Wide Wait is an application that operates over networks using TCP/IP protocols. The Web architecture is based on a client/server model and uses a Web Browser (client-based software) to retrieve information from a Web Server which may be located on your own local network or half way around the world on the Internet.

Today’s Web browsers support the display of multimedia within the retrieved documents including text, graphics, sound, video and hyperlinks in which items on the document are linked to other Web resources.

Q. What is HTML?

A. Hypertext Markup Language was created to define structure and appearance of documents and document families so that they might be delivered quickly and easily to a user over a network and to a Web browser.

Q. What is Active Server Pages ?

A. Active Server Pages (ASP) is the latest server-based technology from Microsoft used to create interactive HTML pages for a World Wide Web site or corporate intranet. It is just part of an all-encompassing concept called the Active Platform which has been developed along with Microsoft Windows NT Server, and Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS). ASP serves as a middle layer between relational databases (back end) and graphic user interfaces (front end Web pages among them).

Q. What is Java Script and why do we need it?

A. Java Script is used to develop Web front-end interfaces. It is a lightweight interpreted programming language with object-oriented capabilities. The general-purpose core of the language has been embedded in Netscape Navigator and other web browsers and used for web programming with the addition of objects that represent the web browser window and its contents. The client-side Java Script enables dynamically created HTML content.

Q. What is a Role of Visual Basic and COM objects?

A. By using Visual Basic environment programmers were able to create COM objects. You can think of objects as a library of code that can be used on the web server. Com objects are used to retrieve data from database and to implement business logic. This is the latest methodology used by Microsoft to develop their applications and operating systems.

Q. What is Microsoft Visual InterDev 6?

A. The Web development system that provides all the tools for creating dynamic Internet and Intranet Web applications. This tool includes HTML syntax scanner, Java Script and VB Script development environment and database development features.

Q. My case of champagne is already empty, and I'm all excited about that VisualJavaHTMLScriptInterASPDev stuff. How can I sign up for the class?

A. Oh, just click on...what? No, not "Cliquot," we don't sell champagne on-line. Our cyberspace address is www.systegration.com. Or you could call us at 847-375-8777. And we still have that state-of-the-art "brick and mortar" training facility acquired in the 20th century in Glenview. We'll be glad to see you there!

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