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E-com lexicon

Want to get familiar with oft-used terms in e-commerce? Read on...

APPLICATION Programming Interface (API) is a set of standard routines used for making standard functions available to custom-designed programs.

ASCII: American Standard Code for Information Interchange refers to the `standard' alphanumeric character set.

Browser: Usually refers to a World Wide Web client program. Browsers are capable of requesting data from Web servers and processing data received in response to these requests.

CGI: Common Gateway Interface is a specification for creating programs that accept information acquired through World Wide Web pages and pass it on to other programs, or take information from other programs and make it accessible through World Wide Web p ages.

CIX: Commercial Internet Exchange is an industry organisation for Internet service providers.

Client: A computer or system that makes requests for some kind of network service from another computer or system acting as a server.

Cryptography: The study of mathematical processes useful for keeping data secret by encryption, guaranteeing its provenance, or guaranteeing that its content has been unchanged.

Datagram: The basic of network transmissions under TCP/IP. A basic unit of network transmission in connectionless services.

DES: Data Encryption Standard is a private key encryption standard approved by the US Government for the encryption of data when implemented in hardware. Uses 56-bit encryption and is generally accepted as sufficiently secure when correctly implemented.

Digital signature: The result of the application of a cryptographic process to the digital document being signed. The signer uses his or her private key (of a public/private key pair) to come up with the signature, which is a sequence of characters. The document can be verified as coming from the signer by using the signer's public key to verify the document.

DNS: Domain Name System is a distributed database system implemented across the Internet for the purpose of linking Internet host names (used by people) with Internet Protocol addresses (used by computers).

EBCDIC: Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code is the data representation standard used by IBM mainframe computers. Most other systems use ASCII representations.

Encapsulation: The use of headers to `surround' network data for the purpose of handling its proper routing across a network or internetwork. The result is a network transmission unit directed to some destination host, with some unspecified content that will not be accessed until it arrives at its destination.

Ethernet: A baseband networking medium, initially developed in the 1970s by Robert Metcalfe.

Gateway: A special-purpose computer for internetwork connectivity. Often refers to a router or a system mediating between protocols, as with e-mail gateways that accept e-mail from the Internet and translate it to the appropriate e-mail protocol on the i nternal LAN.

Gopher: A character-based Internet information publishing application, developed at the University of Minnesota.

Handshake: The process of negotiating a connection between two hosts. The initiating host waits for acknowledgment from the destination host, which in turn waits for acknowledgment of its own response.

Home page: The opening document of a World Wide Web site. It may also refer to the Web document that an individual user's Web browser points to on start-up.

Host: Any device connected to a network that can send or receive requests for network services.

HTML: Hyper Text Markup Language is a language for creating World Wide Web documents, based on the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). Markup languages create plain-text files using tags to set off functional sections of the document, which are interpreted appropriately for display by the document-viewing software.

Internet: The network of networks connecting tens of millions of users around the world.

Interoperability: The ability of disparate computer systems to send and receive requests for network services across disparate networks, seamlessly and transparently to the end user.

IP: Internet Protocol is a protocol defining the interaction between hosts communicating across an internetwork.

IP address: A numerical address assigned to a computer connected to an internetwork that uniquely identifies it on that internetwork.

IPX: Internetwork Packet eXchange is an internetwork protocol used by Novell NetWare and other LAN operating systems.

ISDN: Integrated Services Digital Network is a type of telephone service providing high-speed (128 Kbps and up) and digital services (multiple phone lines on a single link, conferencing, and many others).

Key: A quantity of data used in cryptographic procedures to encrypt, decrypt, or authenticate other data.

LAN: Local Area Network is a network connected computers in the same general area, on a single network cable (or a set of cables that emulate a single wire).

MIME: Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions is a specification for the linking and transfer of non-text files with Internet e-mail and other IP applications (including Usenet news).

Network: Any system of interconnected systems. In particular, the system defined by computers connected to the same communications medium in such a way that each can communicate with the other connected computers.

NFS: Network File System is a TCP/IP network protocol developed by Sun MicroSystems Inc., for sharing resources between connected workstations. Originally implemented mostly on UNIX systems, NFS implementations are now available for most platforms.

Node: A device connected to a network; more specifically refers to the network interface itself, so a multi-homed host may represent multiple nodes.

Packet: A unit of network transmission; may specifically refer to the unit of data transmitted across a packet-switched network (such as the Internet).

PPP: Point to Point Protocol is a protocol defining the connection of a single host to another host over a bi-directional link (such as a telephone line), and connection to network resources.

Private key: Of the two keys used for public key cryptography, the one that must be kept secret, so the owner of the key can decrypt messages encrypted with the public key.

Protocol: A set of rules defining the behaviors of interacting systems, particularly when applied to rules for exchanging of information between networked systems.

Public key: Of the two keys used for public key cryptography, the one that can be made public, so that senders can encrypt messages.

Public key cryptography: The cryptographic system in which encryption is done with one key and decryption is done with another.

Router: A multi-homed host (connected to at least two networks) that is able to forward network traffic from one connected network to another.

Secret key: A key that must be kept secret. The term is sometimes used to refer to the private key in asymmetric cryptography (public key cryptography), but more properly refers to a shared secret between parties who use the same key to encrypt and decry pt messages.

Server: Any computer connected to a network that offers services to other connected systems on the network.

SLIP: Serial Line Internet Protocol. A method of connecting a single computer to the Internet through a telephone link, SLIP is generally considered less desirable than PPP for this purpose.

SMTP: Simple Mail Transfer Protocol is the set of rules defining the transmission of electronic mail between users.

SNMP: Simple Network Management Protocol is a protocol which defines functions used to monitor and manage network resources across internetwork.

SSL: Secure Sockets Layer is a protocol first developed by Netscape and subsequently provided to the rest of the Internet community to add encryption and authentication at the network layer just below the application level.

STT: Secure Transaction Technology is a protocol specification, released by Microsoft and Visa International late in September 1995, intended to define the interchange of credit card payment information across public and private networks.

TCP: Transmission Control Protocol is a protocol defining the way applications communicate with each other across the Internet. TCP is a reliable protocol, meaning that all transmissions between applications must be acknowledged by the recipient.

TCP/IP: Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol. The description of any network using the Internet protocols, named for the two dominant protocols used on the Internet.

UDP: User Datagram Protocol is a protocol defining a connectionless, unreliable, transport-layer service between applications on the Internet.

URL: Uniform Resource Locator is a protocol for defining the exact location of a World Wide Web resource, and for identifying the method of access, the host on which it resides, and the path and filename of the resource.

(To be concluded)

(Source: `E-Commerce Made Easy', Inndsoft Systekh Ltd, Chennai.)