E-Commerce

Q3.Do research to learn more about the use of WAP and other specifications being developed to support m-commerce. Briefly describe the specifications you uncover. Who is behind the development of these standards? Which standards seem to be gaining the broadest acceptance? Prepare a one-to two-page report for you instructor.

Answer:

 

What is WAP?

Wireless Application Protocol or WAP is an open international standard for applications that use wireless communication. Its principal application is to enable access to the internet from a mobile phone or PDA. A WAP browser is designed to provide all of the basic services of a computer based web browser but simplified to operate within the restrictions of a mobile phone. WAP is now the protocol used for the majority of the world’s mobile internet sites, known as WAP sites.

 

What is m-commerce?

Short for mobile e-commerce, m-commerce is the term used to describe the growing trend of using networks that interface with wireless devices, such as laptops, handheld computers or mobile phones to initiate or complete online electronic commerce transactions. May also be senn written as M-commerce or mcommerce.

The influence of wireless technology is seen everywhere these days. Whether it is sending text messages, making wireless telephone calls, accessing remote information, or connecting to the Internet, wireless technology is having a major impact on people’s lives all across the globe. Early on the framers of wireless technology realized that defining a common set of wireless protocols would help put wireless technology development on the fast track, and help prevent the proprietary bottlenecks often faced in other areas of development. Thus WAP came into existence.

WAP is a standardized technology for cross-platform, distributed computing, very similar to the Internet’s combination of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), except that it includes one vital feature: optimization for low-display capability, low-memory, and low-bandwidth devices, such as personal digital assistants (PDAs), wireless phones, and pagers.

The major accomplishment of WAP is that it has managed to the major extent to overcome the drawbacks of handheld devices – small screens, low memory and low bandwidth.

WAP allows wireless devices to view specifically designed pages from the Internet, using only plain text and very simple black-and-white pictures. The WAP programming code at the Web site has to be explicitly designed and written for the micro-browser used in that specific model of WAP device. The pages themselves have to be small, because data speed on mobile phones is limited. Also, the WAP-enabled devices have screens of different shapes and sizes, so the same page can look very different depending on the actual device we are using, quite independently of the version of the micro-browser being used in the phone itself.

There are a number of interesting benefits for WAP-enabled mobile system users. They are:

§ It is portable and easy to use,

§ One can access to a wide variety of services on a competitive market,

§ WAP services can be personalized and get fast, convenient, and efficient access to services,

§ WAP devices are coming in different forms, such as pagers, handheld PCs, phones and PDAs

Here comes a number of exciting services that WAP brings to mobile users. Actually most of the online services that we have today can be of interest to the wireless community also. The respective fields are Banking, Finance, Shopping, Ticketing, Entertainment, Weather and Advanced phonebook management.

WAP also opens new possibilities for service and content providers. There are numerous Web and WAP sites that are providing WAP applications.

WAP forum was formed for the purpose of creating standards for various tools and software for developing WAP sites. Having found that HTML is not fit for WAP development due to several inherent reasons, WAP forum created a new markup language called Wireless Markup Language (WML), an offshoot of eXensible Markup Language (XML). WML is bound to overcome many of the issues facing mobile devices.

Recently, the WAP forum released WAP 2.0, which successfully accomplish several objectives that are not found in the earlier releases. WAP 2.0 provides support for protocols such as TCP and HTTP. WAP 2.0 permits applications and services to operate over all existing and foreseeable air interface technologies and their bearers. WAP 2.0 facilitates a rich application environment which enables delivery of information and interactive services to digital mobile phones, pagers, PDAs and other wireless devices. It minimize the use of device processing power and optimize network resources in order to minimize costs and maximize performance. Finally, it incorporates flexibility, enabling a variety of user interface (UI) designs for manufacturers to differentiate themselves according to device form factor and target market requirements.

In the previous versions of WAP, a WAP proxy, often referred to as a WAP gateway, was required to handle the protocol interworking between the client and the origin server. The WAP proxy communicated with the client using the WAP protocols that are based largely on Internet communication protocols, and it communicated with the origin server using the standard Internet protocols. WAP 2.0 does not require a WAP proxy, since the communication between the client and the origin server can be conducted using HTTP/1.1. However, deploying a WAP proxy can optimize the communications process and may offer mobile service enhancements, such as location, privacy, and presence-based services.

In addition to the application environment and the increases in capability of the micro-browser, WAP 2.0 also supports other features to improve the user experience. These features expand the capabilities of the wireless devices and improve the ability to deliver useful applications and services.

1. WAP Push – This service allows content to be sent or pushed to devices by server-based applications via a Push Proxy

2. User Agent Profile (UAProf) – This service provides a mechanism for describing the capabilities of clients and the preferences of users to an application server

3. Wireless Telephony Application (WTA) – This service provides tools that provide for a range of advanced telephony applications to be operated from within the application environment that traditionally supports data functionality.

4. External Functionality Interface (EFI) – This service specifies the interface between WAE and components or entities with embedded applications that execute outside of the defined WAE capabilities. This is analogous to providing a plug-in module, which extends or enhances the capabilities of browsers or other applications.

5. Persistent Storage Interface – This capability specifies a standard set of storages services that are coupled with a well-defined interface for organizing, accessing, storing and retrieving data on the wireless device or other connected memory device.

6. Data Synchronization – To ensure a common solution framework, WAP 2.0 has adopted the SyncML language as its choice for the data synchronization solution.

7. Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) – This service provides features and functionality that permits delivery of varied types of content.

8. Provisioning – This service provides a standard approach to providing WAP clients with information needed to operate on the wireless networks.

9. Pictogram – This service permits the use of tiny images that can be used to quickly convey concepts that permit efficient communication.

There are a number of WAP editors and emulators for WAP development. Apart from these, there exists a few software developer kits (SDKs) and integrated development environments (IDEs) such as Nokia WAP Toolkit and Phone.com SDK for creating WML files and testing them. Also there is a software tool called as Pic2wbmp that can convert images from PhotoShop (PSD files) into WBMP (Wireless bitmap image)

 

Who is behind the development of these standards?

The telecommunication and the software developer companies.

Which standard seems to be gaining the broadest acceptance?

The standard which gaining the broadest acceptance is the WAP for mobile phone, and most of it using the Java application