E0 239 : Electronic Commerce Y. Narahari Electronic Enterprises Laboratory Department of Computer Science and Automation Indian Institute of Science Bangalore - 560 012 INDIA

Course Contents:

Fundamental Concepts (1 Session)

Introduction to E-Commerce. Building Blocks of E-Commerce.
This session will introduce the different components (conceptual, mathematical, and software) of electronic commerce.

• V. Rajaraman: Building Blocks of Electronic Commerce, Sadhana (Special Issue on Electronic Commerce and Electronic Business), Volume 30, Parts 2 and 3, April/June 2005 Download

Part A: Software Architecture for E-Commerce

This part of the course focuses on best practices in software analysis, architecture, and design, with specific emphasis on e-commerce.

The following books are recommended.

• G. Booch, J. Rumbaugh, and I. Jacobson, I. The Unified Modeling Language User Guide. Addison-Wesley, 1999
• E. Gamma, R. Helm, R. Johnson, and J. Vlissides. Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software. Addison-Wesley, 1995
• F. Buschmann et al. Pattern Oriented Software Architecture, Volume 1: A System of Patterns. John Wiley and Sons, 1996.
• Jim Conallen. Building Web Applications with UML. Addison-Wesley, 2000

Specific Topics:

• Software Process: Rational Unified Process  Lecture Notes
• Object Oriented Modeling  Lecture Notes
• UML (Unified Modeling Language)  Lecture Notes   Viewgraphs
• Case Study of an Auction House   Download
• E-Commerce Architectural Patterns (Chapter on web application architectures from Jim Conallen's book)
• Design Patterns: Creational, Structural, and Behavioral Patterns   Lecture Notes   Viewgraphs

VIPANI is a generic Electronic Business Exchange, which offers a wide variety of business models and enables buying agents and selling agents to meet, choose/set up a business model, and transact business and do commerce in a secure way. Release 1 emphasizes use of OOAD, UML, Architectural Patterns, and Design Patterns to create a robust and scalable architecture and design model for VIPANI.

Deadline for Submission: February 20, 2005

Part B:Electronic Commerce Optimization Algorithms (Approx. 8 Sessions)

The focus in this part will be on algorithms and mechanisms which can be used to achieve efficiency and optimality of electronic commerce transactions.

• Classical Auctions and Revenue Equivalence Theorem
  • Lecture Notes Download   Dr Debasis Mishra's View Graphs
  • Jayant Kalagnanam and David C. Parkes. Auctions, Bidding and Exchange Design. Chapter 5, in Handbook of Quantitative Supply Chain Analysis: Modeling in the E-Business Era, David Simchi-Levi, S. David Wu, and Max Shen (eds.), Kluwer, 2004 Download
• Volume Discount Auctions
  • Combinatorial and Quantity Discount Procurement Auctions Benefit Mars Incorporated and its Suppliers Download
• Combinatorial Auctions
  • Y. Narahari and Pankaj Dayama. Combinatorial Auctions for Electronic Business. Sadhana (Special Issue on Electronic Commerce and Electronic Business), Volume 30, Parts 2 and 3, April/June 2005, pp. 179-212 Download   Dr Debasis Mishra's View Graphs
• Double Auctions and Market Algorithms
  • Everything you wanted to know about Double Auctions but were afraid to ask Download
  • Multi-Attribute Resource Intermediary Download
• Dynamic Pricing Algorithms
  • Y. Narahari, C.V.L. Raju, K. Ravikumar, and Sourabh Shah. Dynamic Pricing Models for Electronic Business. Sadhana (Special Issue on Electronic Commerce and Electronic Business), Volume 30, Parts 2 and 3, April/June 2005, pp. 231-255 Download
• Sponsored Search Auctions (Ad auctions)
  • A. Mehta, A. Saberi, and V. Vazirani. Adwprds and generalized online matching. In Symposium on the Foundations of Computer Science, 2005 Download
  • B. Edelman, M. Ostrovsky, and M. Schwarz. Internet Advertising and the Generalized Second Price Auction: Selling Billions of Dollars Worth of Keywords. Mimeo, September 2005. Download

This release will involve implementation of VIPANI as a three tier architecture with Java technologies. At least two algorithms for E-commerce optimization will have to implemented. The first could be a standard mechanism such as a generalized Vickrey auction. The second would be a state-of-the-art algorithm from current literature. Suggestions for these are provided here. For solving the optimization problems, and are recommended.

Deadline for Submission: March 15, 2005

Part C: Security and Payment Technologies (Approx. 8 Sessions)

In this part, security and electronic payment issues in e-commerce are addressed. Cryptographic foundations for security and payment constitute the key topic discussed here. The main reference here is

Alfred J. Menezes, Paul C. van Oorschot and Scott A. Vanstone Handbook of Applied Cryptography, CRC Press, Fifth Printing, 2001.

• Symmetric Key Cryptography
• Public Key Cryptography
• Digital Signatures
• Secure Electronic Transactions (SET) Protocol
• Network Security Issues
• Electronic Payment Systems

The objective of Release 3 is to "secure" transactions in VIPANI and implement simple "electronic payments." The security and payment model used is as in the SET protocol. Recommended toolkits include: CRYPTLIB, CRYPTOPP, CRYPTOOL.ORG, CRYPTC. Invoking appropriate APIs from the Java security package is another alternative. Deadline for Submission: April 10, 2005

Deadline for Submission: April 10, 2005

Part D: Game Theory and Mechanism Design (Approx. 6 Sessions)

In this part of the course, the focus is on understanding the science of designing auctions and other e-commerce mechanisms using game theory and mechanism design theory. The lecture notes for this part can be downloaded here. For more details, see the course webpage for Game Theory . The website http://www.gametheory.net provides a rich source of information onalmost every aspect of game theory.

• Introduction to Game Theory
• Extensive Form Games,
• Normal Form Games
• Dominant Strategies
• Nash Equilibrium
• Problem Set 3
• Bayesian Games

Important Links