XML101 Frontiers of Electronic Commerce reviewed by Charlie Morris Frontiers of Electronic Commerce is a big book, and it covers a lot of ground. Its 850 pages include information on credit card systems, EDI, electronic cash systems, security, multimedia, and even the history and structure of the Internet. This book may be of interest not only to Web developers, but to any business people who need to bone up on electronic commerce, particularly those in the finance or retail fields. The authors are both professors, and Frontiers of Electronic Commerce is basically a textbook, with each chapter outlined in a neat hierarchy and summarized at the end.
Flow charts round out the scene.
The first 4 chapters comprise a pretty detailed description of the World's existing network infrastructure. There's an assesment of the current business situation among phone companies, ISPs and the rest. A chapter on Network Security and Firewalls follows. Firewalls, challenge-response systems, and various encryption methods are discussed, as are the US Government's regulations regarding the export of software using certain cryptographic protocols. Next is a brief description of the World Wide Web and its architecture.