RE: E-commerce Architecture

[Chris Bipes <rpg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

That is how our e-commerce transaction processing works.  We can have
several occurrences of the transactions servers running.  The tricky part is
the communication to the third party web server.  I would go with a sockets
connection to get the transaction to your data queues.  This requires two
socket / data queue servers.  One waits for data on the socket connections
and the other waits for data on the queue connections.  The socket program
reads the data and dump to the appropriate data queue.  The data queue
program waits at a data queue for the responses from the transaction
servers, then send the data via a socket connection to the socket server,
which routes it back to the appropriate socket connection.

The hardest part is keeping track of multiple transaction in process.  We
use a header which includes the socket server job number, destination tcp/ip
address and the socket descriptor.  This must follow the transaction thru
all the transaction server unchanged.

Contact me off line if you need more help.

Christopher K. Bipes     mailto:ChrisB@Cross-Check.com
Sr. Programmer/Analyst   mailto:Chris_Bipes@Yahoo.com
CrossCheck, Inc.         http://www.cross-check.com
6119 State Farm Drive    Phone: 707 586-0551 x 1102
Rohnert Park CA  94928 Fax: 707 586-1884

*Note to Recruiters
Neither I, nor anyone that I know of, is interested in any new and/or
exciting positions. Please do not contact me.


-----Original Message-----
From: Reger, Bill [mailto:breger@levitz.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 26, 2000 6:19 AM
To: 'Midrange-L'
Subject: E-commerce Architecture


Our plans for e-commerce are to outsource the development and hosting of our
web site to a third-party firm.  This will allow our inhouse staff to
concentrate on handling the interface data going to and from the web site,
and to develop and run the  backend transaction processing on our AS/400's.

My feeling about the transaction processing is that we must make sure that
they perform well and that we should try to save every possible second,
otherwise the customer will move on to another web site.  I am considering
processing the interface data with data queues and using "never-ending" RPG
IV (ILE) procedures to both modularize the processes and optimize the work.
We are also looking to use a "canned" product such as MQSeries to handle the
interface data.

Any feedback (positive and negative!) about this approach would be
appreciated, since I feel that we must architect our e-commerce application
correctly.  Any other approaches that might be better would be appreciated
also.

Thanks,  Bill
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