Ebusiness technologies: foundations and practice
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| 3 Tutor-marked assignments (TMAs) | |
| End-of-course assessment | No residential school |
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Summary
Ebusiness is booming as organisations strive to gain efficiencies through improved workflows, resource management, just-in-time provisioning and business relationships. This course explores the driving forces behind such developments, introducing fundamental technologies and protocols upon which new systems and services can be built - including Service Oriented Architectures, web services, XML and associated security standards. Case studies illustrate the business strategies behind the deployment of web services and provide insights into future developments. You will explore professional and ethical issues surrounding ICT developments, use software tools to create schemes and web service models, deploy collaborating applications, and consolidate your learning in a final project.
Course content
Internet and web technologies are driving fundamental changes in the way that businesses interact. This course will introduce you to the rapidly changing technologies and approaches to implementation underpinning these changes. The course will help you develop skills to enable you to interpret, select and utilise a shifting set of protocols and standards from the emerging technologies, based on close examination of a small set of core standards and knowledge gained from studying prevailing protocols and development technologies. You will use several development and testing tools, including Eclipse, soapUI and Active Endpoints Designer* during the course.
The course is organised into four modules; Ebusiness, Basic Protocols, Web Services and Orchestration. Trust and security will be themes running through the course, alongside the social, political, technical and legal issues associated with new developments. Case studies draw together key features from each part, setting the scene for a substantive project where you will use your new skills to implement a web-services solution for a fictional company.
Block 1, Ebusiness, will set the scene for the course by exploring how the internet has changed the way organisations do business. What has changed in terms of their internal structures and processes and their relationships with customers and suppliers? Drawing on established models and frameworks, you’ll develop a portfolio of skills to help you to identify the challenges and assess the benefits of new technology, thereby bridging the gap between a set of business requirements and an appropriate technological solution.
Block 2, Basic protocols, introduces the essential protocols and standards (such as HTTP and XML), that underpin the current web-services business paradigm. Key to this is the family of XML standards for describing, processing, and manipulating data exchanges between disparate systems. Design tools will enable you to develop and validate document schemas and construct messages for exchange between services.
Block 3, Web services, examines the technical and business motivations behind the development of web services. A historic perspective provides a context for web services technologies such as SOAP and REST and their emergence from the evolution of existing standards, such as HTTP and XML. Through a combination of case study and practical work you will implement, test, deploy and use web services to gain insight into their operation, strengths and weaknesses.
Block 4, Orchestration: Real web services perform small discrete tasks. Implementing a business process therefore requires multiple web services, which have to be organised temporally and procedurally. In order to orchestrate individual services you’ll learn about the business process execution language (BPEL). You'll use design tools to construct, validate, and test BPEL scripts and to understand approaches to handling failure and exceptions which occur in processes.
After completing the four blocks you will undertake an individual project. This requires that you produce a considered assessment of Ebusiness for use by a fictional organisation and also apply the tools used during the course to provide sample technology demonstrations for the organisation.
The duration of this 30-point course is 30 weeks requiring around 10 study hours per week. These hours are only a guide and you may take more or less time according to your study pace.
* The Open University gratefully acknowledges Active Endpoints, Inc for the use of the ActiveBPEL designer tool.
Entry
This is a Level 3 course. Level 3 courses build on study skills and subject knowledge acquired from studies at Levels 1 and 2. They are intended only for students who have recent experience of higher education in a related subject, preferably with the OU. You need a familiarity with communication technology, and language and modelling techniques used by technologists, such as you would get from appropriate courses at Level 2 offered by the Technology Faculty, or their equivalent. Communication and information technologies (T215) would be particularly useful. Alternatively, an understanding of computer networks and network protocols (e.g. TCP/IP), and an awareness of security issues would provide appropriate relevant background knowledge.
You should be experienced in using a computer for working with documents, spreadsheets and accessing the World Wide Web. You also need good writing and basic mathematical skills so that you can produce a well-structured report and work with basic algebraic equations and carry out numerical calculations.
If you have any doubt about the suitability of the course, please contact our Student Registration & Enquiry Service.
Preparatory work
You should revise the material on communication technology in any Level 2 courses you have already taken (e.g. Block 2 in T209). T529, the ICT CD-ROM distributed with a number of ICT courses, is also a useful source of revision material.
Qualifications
T320 is a compulsory course in our
T320 is an optional course in our
- BA (Honours) Business Studies (B04)
- BSc (Honours) Information Technology and Computing (B13)
- BSc (Honours) Technology (B20)
- Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (B24)
- Diploma in Information Technology (D39)
It can also count towards most of our other degrees at bachelors level, where it can help to weight your degree towards a BSc. We advise you to refer to the relevant qualification descriptions for information on the circumstances in which this course can count towards these qualifications because from time to time the structure and requirements may change.
If you have a disability or additional requirement
The text for this course will be delivered electronically. This will probably be as Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files, rather than web pages. Some Adobe PDF components may not be available or fully accessible using a screen reader and musical notation and mathematical, scientific, and foreign language materials may be particularly difficult to read in this way. Written transcripts of any audio components will be available. Other alternative formats of the course materials may be available in the future. Our Services for disabled students website has the latest information about availability.
The course will also require you to use some sophisticated software tools, such as Eclipse. If you use special hardware or software you must, well before the course begins, find out whether it will work with the course software.
If you are a new student, or new to courses using a computer or the internet, you will need to inform us of your particular needs as soon as possible, as some of our support services may take several weeks to arrange. Details of how to do this and our range of support services are described in our booklet Meeting Your Needs which you can download or request from our Student Registration & Enquiry Service.
You can also find information about accessible course materials, financial support and the Disabled Students' Allowance, equipment and other services, on our Services for disabled students website. It also includes our contact details for advice and support both before you register and while you are studying.
Course materials
What's included
This course is delivered online, including access to software tools and multimedia activities. Two DVDs and the course website are used to deliver all the materials.
You will need
You will need an internet connection to access documents and work with a hosting service for testing web service designs. This may mean extra charges to your telephone bill unless you have a package that provides unlimited access to the internet. As the course is delivered online, you will be spending most of your studying time using online materials.
Computing requirements
This course includes online computer activities – you can access these using a web browser that can play Flash and Shockwave.
You will need internet access and a computer. If you have purchased a new computer since 2002 it should meet your course computing requirements. Check our Technical Requirements section if your computer is older than this or is otherwise unusual.
Teaching and assessment
Support from your tutor
You will be allocated to a tutor who will offer support through electronic communication and group tutorials. You will also have the opportunity to discuss your project individually with your tutor.
Contact our Student Registration & Enquiry Service if you want to know more about study with The Open University before you register.
Assessment
The assessment details for this course can be found in the facts box above.
You will be expected to submit your tutor-marked assignments (TMAs) online through the eTMA system unless there are some difficulties which prevent you from doing so. In these circumstances, you must negotiate with your tutor to get their agreement to submit your assignment on paper.
The end-of-course assessment is an individual project, which must also be submitted electronically. The project will account for approximately a third of your study time on this course. Each assessment component (TMA and project) consists of practical work and a written report, with the exception of the first TMA which is made up entirely of a written report.
Professional recognition
This course may help you to gain recognition from a professional body. Ask our Student Registration & Enquiry Service for Recognition leaflets 3.3 Professional Engineering Institutions and 3.7 Computing.
Students also studied
Students who studied this course also studied at some time:
Future availability
The details given here are for the course that starts in February 2010. We expect it to be available once each year.
How to register
To register a place on this course return to the top of the page and use the Click to register button. For more information and advice about registration see OU Study Explained.
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An undergraduate course in Computing and ICT and Engineering and Technology.
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