Olsen, K.A.: ¬The Internet, the Web, and eBusiness : formalizing applications for the real world (2005)
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- Classification
- 004.678 22
- DDC
- 004.678 22
- Footnote
- Each chapter provides suggestions for exercises and discussions, which makes the book useful as a textbook. The suggestions in the exercise and discussion section at the end of each chapter are simply delightful to read and provide a basis for some lively discussion and fun exercises by students. These exercises appear to be well thought out and are intended to highlight the content of the chapter. The notes at the end of chapters provide valuable data that help the reader to understand a topic or a reference to an entity that the reader may not know. Chapter 1 on "formalism," chapter 2 on "symbolic data," chapter 3 on "constraints on technology," and chapter 4 on "cultural constraints" are extremely well presented and every reader needs to read these chapters because they lay the foundation for most of the chapters that follow. The analogies, examples, and points of view presented make for some really interesting reading and lively debate and discussion. These chapters comprise Part 1 of the book and not only provide a foundation for the rest of the book but could be used alone as the basis of a social science course on computing, networking, and the Web. Chapters 5 and 6 on Internet protocols and the development of Web protocols may be more detailed and filled with more acronyms than the average person wants to deal with but content is presented with analogies and examples that make it easier to digest. Chapter 7 will capture most readers attention because it discusses how e-mail works and many of the issues with e-mail, which a majority of people in developed countries have dealt with. Chapter 8 is also one that most people will be interested in reading because it shows how Internet browsers work and the many issues such as security associated with these software entities. Chapter 9 discusses the what, why, and how of the World Wide Web, which is a lead-in to chapter 10 on "Searching the Web" and chapter 11 on "Organizing the Web-Portals," which are two chapters that even technically oriented people should read since it provides information that most people outside of information and library science are not likely to know.
Chapter 12 on "Web Presence" is a useful discussion of what it means to have a Web site that is indexed by a spider from a major Web search engine. Chapter 13 on "Mobile Computing" is very well done and gives the reader a solid basis of what is involved with mobile computing without overwhelming them with technical details. Chapter 14 discusses the difference between pull technologies and push technologies using the Web that is understandable to almost anyone who has ever used the Web. Chapters 15, 16, and 17 are for the technically stout at heart; they cover "Dynamic Web Pages," " Embedded Scripts," and "Peer-to-Peer Computing." These three chapters will tend to dampen the spirits of anyone who does not come from a technical background. Chapter 18 on "Symbolic Services-Information Providers" and chapter 19 on "OnLine Symbolic Services-Case Studies" are ideal for class discussion and students assignments as is chapter 20, "Online Retail Shopping-Physical Items." Chapter 21 presents a number of case studies on the "Technical Constraints" discussed in chapter 3 and chapter 22 presents case studies on the "Cultural Constraints" discussed in chapter 4. These case studies are not only presented in an interesting manner they focus on situations that most Web users have encountered but never really given much thought to. Chapter 24 "A Better Model?" discusses a combined "formalized/unformalized" model that might make Web applications such as banking and booking travel work better than the current models. This chapter will cause readers to think about the role of formalization and the unformalized processes that are involved in any application. Chapters 24, 25, 26, and 27 which discuss the role of "Data Exchange," "Formalized Data Exchange," "Electronic Data Interchange-EDI," and "XML" in business-to-business applications on the Web may stress the limits of the nontechnically oriented reader even though it is presented in a very understandable manner. Chapters 28, 29, 30, and 31 discuss Web services, the automated value chain, electronic market places, and outsourcing, which are of high interest to business students, businessmen, and designers of Web applications and can be skimmed by others who want to understand ebusiness but are not interested in the details. In Part 5, the chapters 32, 33, and 34 on "Interfacing with the Web of the Future," "A Disruptive Technology," "Virtual Businesses," and "Semantic Web," were, for me, who teaches courses in IT and develops ebusiness applications the most interesting chapters in the book because they provided some useful insights about what is likely to happen in the future. The summary in part 6 of the book is quite well done and I wish I had read it before I started reading the other parts of the book.
The book is quite large with over 400 pages and covers a myriad of topics, which is probably more than any one course could cover but an instructor could pick and choose those chapters most appropriate to the course content. The book could be used for multiple courses by selecting the relevant topics. I enjoyed the first person, rather down to earth, writing style and the number of examples and analogies that the author presented. I believe most people could relate to the examples and situations presented by the author. As a teacher in Information Technology, the discussion questions at the end of the chapters and the case studies are a valuable resource as are the end of chapter notes. I highly recommend this book for an introductory course that combines computing, networking, the Web, and ebusiness for Business and Social Science students as well as an introductory course for students in Information Science, Library Science, and Computer Science. Likewise, I believe IT managers and Web page designers could benefit from selected chapters in the book."