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| PrecisionPros.com > Ecommerce for Free > Table of Contents > Preface | ||||||||
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ECOMMERCE FOR FREE TABLE OF CONTENTS > PREFACE 
Welcome to the exciting world of Ecommerce development!Unless you've just been returned from a decade long alien abduction or have been stranded on a deserted island since 1993 you've most likely heard of the World Wide Web. Chances are you're one of the millions of people who have purchased products on-line through one of the many Ecommerce web sites on the Internet. Since you're reading this book you're also probably serious about developing Ecommerce sites or at least managing their development. The purpose of this book is to show you how to take freely available software components, known as Open Source software, and build fully functional Ecommerce web sites in a very short period of time. Once you master these concepts you will be able to apply them to a wide variety of web site development, not just Ecommerce solutions. In fact the majority of the information in this book is appropriate to the development of any interactive site where you must allow dynamic access to data via the web. Weather your plan is to put up a community calendar for your church, publish a FAQ database on you companies intranet or sell products on a commercial web site this book will provide the necessary information to get the job done! If you're like thousands of business and technical professionals standing at the edge of the vast Ecommerce presibice you find yourself faced with numerous decisions about which software components you should use to build your web sites. The available choices are staggering as more and more main stream software companies offer proprietary products aimed at seperating you from large amounts of your available cash. It doesn't have to be this way. In fact, you can build high quality, fully functioning Ecommerce web sites with little or no out of pocket expenses. If you're already developing Ecommerce web sites without the benefit of Open Source tools this book will add new weapons to your development arsenal. These new tools and techniques will allow you to attack a wider variety of markets as you line up potential business in the future. If you're an experience web site developer, looking to branch out into Ecommerce development this book will enhance your skills set by illustrating a total Ecommerce solution. The examples utilize some of the most common practicies employed in Ecommerce development today. By the time you are finished with this book you will be able to design Ecommerce web sites from start to finish with little or no money invested in proprietary software development tools. If you've never worked with the web before and are looking to branch out into a new field this book will provide all the information necessar to get you started developing Ecommerce web sites in the new millenium. The freely available software components we just mentioned fall under the category of Open Source software and represent some of best solutions available to software developers in today's market. Open Source Software For those of you who remember some of the less than impressive share ware programs that were floating around in the early days of personal computing, you may have a tainted view of free software. You may have repressed nightmares about catestrophic failures that only appeared two hours before some critical deadline or recurreing annoyances that made productivity nearly impossible. You palms may begin to sweat when you remember the feeling of absolute despair you experienced as you searched desperately for support only to find that no one would take ownership of your problems. If you've been keeping up with the Open Source explosion, your fears have long since been laid to rest. No longer are we limited to products riddled with bugs, written by novice programmers with little background or understanding of software development. We now have software professionals acting as part of national and international consortiums devoting their time and energy to produce free software that in most cases rivals the quality and functionality of proprietary off the shelf software and in many cases surpasses it. This book make use of some of the most impressive examples of Open Source software available in the market today. These include:
b. The Apache Web Server c. The Perl Scripting Language d. The Tcl Scripting Language e. The MySQL Database f. PHP Why use Open Source Tools There are numerous reasons to consider developing with Open Source software. Of course the obvious reason is that it's free! A less obvious reason is that in many cases the open source tools available are the better than the alternatives. That's right, we said better! If you're like most rationale people your probably having a hard time justifying how free software could possibly be the best choice for you business. In order to understand why Open Source software is becomming such a major competitivie force in the computing industry it's necessary to analyze the history of the open source movement and gain some insight into the underlying physcology. Why Learn Ecommerce Development Even if we've managed to convince you of the benefits of Open Source Software you may still be asking yourself why you should learn Ecommerce development. Good question! Obviously the first reason is you plan to develop Ecommerce web sites or be directly involved in their development. What do we mean by directly involved? It means you fit into one of the following three categories.
2. The manager of software developers building Ecommerce sites. 3. A Business owner withing to use Ecommerce technology to increase revenue. First off, if you're are already a professional programmer who has not been involved with web development, it should not be difficult to justify the expense. Understanding web development is almost as important to your survival as breathing! It's almost a necessity these days to be well versed in the use of the World Wide Web. For many scientists, researchers, and engineers it's a day-to-day part of our lives. For business managers involved in Ecommerce solutions this technology enables you to do things never before possible. Even if your not involved directly in Ecommerce you can use the fundamental concepts presented in this book to create highly effective Intranet sites. It is becoming quite common for most companies these days to have one or more public Web sites on the Internet, as well as a host of internal Web sites that are available only to employees on a local intranet. Public Web sites portray a desired image of the company to the outside world; private Web sites allow for internal communication on a level that was just not possible prior to the invention of the World Wide Web. As the need for both public and private Web sites increases, so does the need for qualified developers who can create and maintain them. Many people can write simple HTML files, but the number of people who can develop fully functional interactive web sites that provide access to a companies legacy databases are few and far between. The code that provides the dynamic content in most Web sites today is known as Common Gateway Interface programming or CGI which is just a programming specification that defines the standard way for a Web server to communicate with a special program known as a gateway program. Gateway programs are just typically just called CGI programs. The reason that these CGI programs are necessary is because web servers are not designed to access databases, control hardware, or a host of other tasks that are available on most common Web sites today. They must rely on these external CGI programs to do this work for them. As an example, when you connect to your favorite sports site on the Internet and request information about your favorite football team, the Web server passes the request over to a CGI program that interrogates an on-line database. This CGI program will retrieve the information you requested from the database, dynamically build an HTML page containing the results, and return it to your Web browser. In this manner the CGI program acts as a gateway to external resources. These external resources are most often relational databases but could be a camera mounted on the freeway providing pictures of the current traffic situation. A common misconception about CGI programs is that they must be written in Perl. Although Perl is perhaps the most common language for writing CGI programs, at least today, any number of other languages can be used. A CGI program is, after all, just a program and as such can be written in C, C++, Visual Basic, Tcl, Perl, or a host of other languages. Of all these languages, the authors use Tcl and Perl most frequently. CGI programs by nature spend a lot of time manipulating text-based HTML documents and files and the rich set of string manipulation commands in these scripting langauges make them ideally suited for this type of work. Of course, it's hard to argue with market share and Perl is by far the most popular language for CGI development today which is the reason for it's use in many of the CGI examples in this book. Who Should Read This Book This book is aimed at technical professionals interested in developing Ecommerce web sites, managers who must manage their develoment or anyone that is seriously interested in how e-commerce web sites work. If you're an experinced developer but have never ventured into web development this book contains all the informatin necessary to understand how interactive e-commerce web sites work in including in depth tutorials of ecommerce web site architecture, CGI programming concpets, database essentials and numerous code exmaples in several different languages. If you're already experienced in web development but have never ventured into the world of Ecommerce you will find the transition to be almost effortless. If you are new to web development you will find this book contains everything you need to start building Ecommerce web sites in a very short period of time. Managers responsible for the development of e-commerce web sites will also find tremendous value in this book. In addition to the coding examples that have been aimed at the developer the book also provides a bounty of descriptions about how e-commerce sites work. The chapters are typically organized in such a fashion that the theory is presented frist followed by specific coding examples. If your not a programmer you can still derive great benefit by reading the first portion of each chapter which will give you a full understanding of the inner workings of an e-commerce web site. The authors of this book have more than forty years of programming experience between them and have witnessed many changes in technology over the years. With all our experience we are still amazed by the tremendous explosion of the World Wide Web and the effect that it has had on society and our day to day lives. Perhaps the most incredible aspect of this erruption of web based technology is that there appears to be no end in site. What You Should Know to Read This Book This book assumes some familiarity with the world wide web and programming concepts in general. Although previous programming experience is definately a plus it is not strictly necessary. The book has been laid out in such a manner that the material progresses in a steady fashion from simple theory to the complete coding examples necessary to build the web site. The following technologies are presented in this book so familiarity with one or more of them will make your comprehension of the specific examples easier:
b. Database Concepts c. SQL d. CGI programming e. The Perl Programming Language The majority of the programming examples including the sample e-commerce web site itself utilize the Perl scripting language so familiarity with Perl is recommended but again not required. It is quite possible to sit down with this book and a Perl reference manual and come out the other side as a proficient e-commerce web site designer. It all depends on your particular level of tenasity. Back to "E-Commerce for Free" Page Frequently Asked Questions |
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