Exercise 15: M-commerce :Innovation and Mobile devices

1.What is meant by a location based service? Explain using the Web applications found on a late model mobile device.

Location Based Services are the services providing informations and entertainment within mobile devices via mobile network.These utilize the grographical positioning ability of these mobile devices.One of the example would be requesting the nearest business or service, such as an ATM or restaurant using this service.This will first locate the position of the device and then replies will various alternatives.
The location is determined by the radio signals delay of the closest cell-phone tower.The other method is integrating a GPS chip inside the device.Since GPS doesn't work quite good indoors,
other methods like NLSB(Near location based service) which make the use of wi-fi , bluethoot and infrared to match the devices with the nearby services.

The Google map service integrated in Apple's iPhone is one of LBS which provides directions to be followed to reach a certain location with ease.

2. Describe the purpose of the Open Mobile Alliance Initiative?

The Open Mobile Alliance Initiative (OMA) is a ruling body which develops open standards for the mobile phone industry.The basic idea of formulating common standards is to develop the entire mobile industry by removing barriers to interoperability, provide seamless and easy to use mobile experience to it's users and create a market environment that encourages competition through innovation and differentiation.

3.What are the main components of a mobile Web services framework?

The European Space Agency (2008) states that the components of a mobile web services framework are:

Mobile Server
The Mobile Server is a mobile remote computer, linked to the Internet via an Inmarsat Regional Broadband Global Area Network (RBGAN) User Terminal (UT).

Gatekeeper
The Gatekeeper is placed on the terrestrial Internet, and acts as the sole gateway to the Mobile Server.

RBGAN UT / Thuraya Satellite / RBGAN SAS
The physical connection between the remote web server and the Gatekeeper is established using a Satellite Access Station, a Telecommunications Satellite and a satellite modem.

GPS / Data Acquisition system / Web cam
The Mobile Server is connected to a set of peripherals, such as a GPS device, a web cam and/or a Data Acquisition system.

Application server / Client PC
The Gatekeeper handles requests from clients over the Internet.

4. Visit an airline Web site and search for information on WAP or SMS or 3G mobile application access to booking airline services. The same services exist in banking. How do both industries compare?

http://mobile.virginblue.com.au
This is a mobile application service provide by Virgin Blue airlines of Australia.It has the features where a user can book tickets.manager their booking,find Virgin Blue lounges,etc.
Users can also select seats for few destinations.It has also recently integrated electronic boarding pass which contains a bar-code.Flyers can check - in via this bar-code not requiring and paper boarding pass.

http://mobile.netbank.com.au
This is a mobile service provided by Commonwealth Bank of Australia.The user can log on to their netbank account and manage it.It also has features like ATM locator and Branch locator.

Both applications are very simple and easy to use but have very less functionality compared with that of the web.The other feature they have is of strong security as both deals with finance and personal identity.

Resources:
Location-Based Sevice.Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Retreived on May 24, 2010 from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Location-based_service

Open Mobile AllianceWikipedia. 2010.Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Retreived on May 24, 2010 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Mobile_Alliance.

Mobile Web Services Framework (2008).European Space Agency 2008, ESA Telecommunication.Retrieved on May 24,2010 from
http://telecom.esa.int/telecom/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=12852

Exercise 13: Shopping cart specifications

Develop the class diagram for the following shopping cart specifications:

A shoppingCart object is associated with only one creditCard and customer and to items in itemToBuy object. Persistent customer information such as name, billing address, delivery address, e-mail address and credit rating is stored in the customer object. The credit card object is associated with a frequentShopper discount object, if the credit rating for the customer is good. The customer can make or cancel orders as well as add and delete items to the shopping cart product. The credit card object contains the secure method for checking that the charge is authentic.

The Class diagram is show as below:

Exercise 12: Modelling with UML or MVC?

Examine the Use Case in Figure 4 and explain the MVC architecture of the online bookstore (the model the view and controllers) needed to Lookup Books and Add to Shopping Cart.

Model :
Lookup Books
Add to shopping Cart
View :
Book Search Page
Display Search Result Page
Display Book Detail Page
Display Shopping Cart List Page
Controller :
Book Search Controller
Shopping Cart Controller

The user enters the book ID or Name in the Book Search Page. The Book Search Controller searches for the book of provided ID or Name and displays the matched results in display result Page. It displays the book details if user chooses any displayed books. Book detail page consist of link to add the book to the shopping cart. If the user clicks the link, then the shopping cart controller receives action to add the selected book to the shopping cart list. User can go to display shopping cart list page to see what list of items has been added to the shopping cart including the price of respective item and total costs as well.

Exercise 11: TP monitors and transaction protocols

1. Give a description in your own words of the ACID properties of a transaction.

When a transaction processing systems starts a transaction, it should be reliable and consistent. There should not be any inaccuracy in the system, so that people can buy and sell or do any financial transaction via internet. Hence, ACID property guarantees the reliability of the system. ACID stands for the acronym of Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation and Durability.

Atomicity - This property ensures that the system is atomic. It means that, the state of the system can either be in begining state or can only be in a finished state. If there is any failure in the system while the process is being done, then it guarantees the system will return to its previous state. It is also called as Roll Back action.

Consistency - This property makes sure that the states of all system is in consistent state. If after the transaction has been made and the System A is consistent but the System b is not in consistent state then it rolls back the transaction to the first state where the system were in consistent state. Hence, it makes the system reliable.

Isolation - This property makes sure that other transaction can see or access the data that has been modified during a transaction yet to be complete. It makes other transaction unaware of the other concurrently executing transaction, except the one that needs the same resources which is being modified by the unfinished transaction.

Durability - This property guarantees the state of the system once the system has completed the transaction without any inconsistency. It means that after the transaction is complete, even if the system crashes or the hard disk crashes, the final state of the system can still be recalled. Hence, it makes the system permanent without any flaws.

Reference :

ACID. Wikipedia. 2010.Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Retreived at May 19, 2010 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACID

ACID Properties (Wrox Press, 1998). Retreived at May 19, 2010 from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa480356.aspx


2. Describe a TP monitor environment. How can a TP monitor stop an operating system being overwhelmed?

TP monitor is a Transaction Processing Monitor is a program that manages the transfer of data between multiple local an remote terminals and the application programs that serve them. It provides integrity by ensuring that transactions do not get lost or damaged.

It may be placed in a separate machine and used to balance the load between clients and various application servers and database servers. There is no much load of work to be done by the operating systems, hence it stops OS from being overwhelmed.

Reference:

TP Monitor (2003). Retrieved at May 19, 2010 from
http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/TP+monitor

Exercise 10: Concurrency and Threading demonstration in Python

1. Find definitions for eight terms and concepts used in threaded programming:

-Thread Synchronisation :

It is a method for preventing deadlock to occur when two or more threads trying to aquire the same resources at the same time by making the thread wait in the line while other thread is accessing the resources or making any change to it, preventing any collision between the them.

-Locks

A lock is a synchronization mechanism for enforcing limits on access to a resource in an environment where there are many threads of execution. Locks are one way of enforcing concurrency control policies.

-DeadLock

A Deadlock is a state in a computer system where two or more process are waiting for each other to finish thier task so that they can use the resource other process is using, but no one does finish the task. Therefore niether of the task can be completed and the resources are occupied as well.

-Semaphores

A semaphore is a protected variable or abstract data type that constiture a classic method of controlling access by several processes to a common resource in a parallel programming environment.

-Mutex (Mututal Exclusion)

It is an algorithm used in concurrent programming to avoid the simultaneous use of a common resource, such as a global variable, by pieces of computer code called critical sections.

-Thread

A thread results from a fork of a computer program into two or more concurrently running tasks. Multiple threads can exists within the same process and share resources such as memory, while different processes do not share these resources.

-Event

It is an action that is usually initiated outside the scope of a program and that is handled by a piece of code inside the program. Events are handled synchronous with the program flow. Main source of events are user who presses a key in the keyboard and hardware devices such as a timer.

-Waitable timer

A waitable time object is a synchronization object whose state is to signaled when the specified due time arrives. Manual-reset and synchronization are two types of waitable timer.

A simple demonstration of the threading module in Python (threaddemo.py) that uses both a lock and semaphore to control concurrency is by Ted Herman at the University of Iowa. The code and sample output below are worth a look. Report your findings.

threaddemo.py

# Create a bunch of threads, let each do some work, wait until all are done

import random

import threading

import time

# This takes about n/3 seconds to run (about n/3 clumps of tasks, times

# about 1 second per clump).

numtasks = 10

# no more than 3 of the 10 can run at once

# create a semaphore bounded up to 3

sema = threading.BoundedSemaphore(value=3)

# create a Read Lock

mutex = threading.RLock()

# running is a global variable to keep track

# of how many threads are running

running = 0

# the TestThread class is a subclass of threading.Thread,

# so it should supply the standard methods: run, ...

class TestThread(threading.Thread):

def run(self):

# tell python we access the global variable

global running

# introduce a random delay between 0 and 2

delay = random.random() * 2

print 'task', self.getName(), 'will run for', delay, 'sec'

# first, wait on the semaphore (limited to three threads)

sema.acquire()

# but only one of these three at a time should update

# the running variable

mutex.acquire()

running = running + 1

print running, 'tasks are running'

# release lock so another can update "running"

mutex.release()

# now sleep for a while (yawn....zzzzzzz)

time.sleep(delay)

# after wakeup, say we are done

print 'task', self.getName(), 'done'

# time to decrement "running"

mutex.acquire()

running = running - 1

print self.getName(), 'is finished.', running, 'tasks are running'

mutex.release()

# and finally, exit the group of three tasks

sema.release()

# main program: build and start all the threads

threads = []

# done in a function just for convenience

def starttasks():

for i in range(numtasks):

# show off Python's formatting feature

# by building a name for each thread

t = TestThread(name=""%i)

# add new name to list

threads.append(t)

# start thread

t.start()

starttasks()

print 'waiting for all tasks to complete'

# next statement waits for all threads to finish

for t in threads: t.join()

print 'all tasks done'

Here is the output window when you run the threaddemo.py script:

PythonWin 2.3.2 (#49, Nov 13 2003, 10:34:54) [MSC v.1200 32 bit (Intel)] on win32. Portions Copyright 1994-2001 Mark Hammond (mhammond@skippinet.com.au) - see

'Help/About PythonWin' for further copyright information.

>>> task will run for 0.120358615571 sec

1 tasks are running

task will run for 0.763990116379 sec

2 tasks are running

task will run for 0.207353153515 sec

3 tasks are running

task will run for 1.55806365714 sec

task will run for 0.776083733579 sec

task will run for 0.336440216469 sec

task will run for 1.55779500185 sec

task will run for 1.96896800957 sec

task will run for 1.57596561512 sec

task will run for 0.634052702735 sec

waiting for all tasks to complete

task done

is finished. 2 tasks are running

3 tasks are running

task done

is finished. 2 tasks are running

3 tasks are running

task done

is finished. 2 tasks are running

3 tasks are running

task done

is finished. 2 tasks are running

3 tasks are running

task done

is finished. 2 tasks are running

3 tasks are running

task done

is finished. 2 tasks are running

3 tasks are running

task done

is finished. 2 tasks are running

3 tasks are running

task done

is finished. 2 tasks are running

task done

is finished. 1 tasks are running

task done

is finished. 0 tasks are running

all tasks done

Here are the findings:

Here is my finding in A simple demonstration of the threading module:

Thread ID is only limited 10 ie form 0 to 9.

Variable delay that is used to control the processing time of thread (2 secs)

Variable sema is a threading semaphore and it is predefined running maximum 3 threads each time (sema = threading.BoundedSemaphore(value=3)).

Variable mutex is used to create the read lock for the thread (mutex = threading.RLock()).

Method acquire(), reads a wait flag(optional).This can be use to avoid blocking if the lock is held by someone else.

Variable running is used to count the total number of running threads.

when TestThread() gets executed, console will print out a thread ID and the expected running time. Then sema.acquire() checks the thread number whether is over 3 or not, if false, mutex creates a read lock for the waiting thread, and adds 1 to running.

When one of the 3 threads get fully executed , mutex releases the read lock of for that very thread and subtracts running by one.Then prints out that the task had been completed. No the one of the threading will be lock to be executed. These process continues for 10 circles or cycles.

Reference:

What is Thread Synchronisation?, Retreived at May 8, 2010 from http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_Thread_Synchronization

Lock (Computer Science). Wikipedia. 2010.Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Retreived at May 8, 2010 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lock_(computer_science)

DeadLock. Wikipedia. 2010.Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Retreived at May 8, 2010 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadlock

Semaphores. Wikipedia. 2010.Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Retreived at May 8, 2010 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaphores

Mututal Exclusion. Wikipedia. 2010.Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Retreived at May 8, 2010 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutex

Thread (Computer Science). Wikipedia. 2010.Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Retreived at May 8, 2010 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thread_(computer_science)

Event (Computing). Wikipedia. 2010.Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Retreived at May 8, 2010 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_(computing)

Waitable Timer Objects- MSDN. Retreived at May 8, 2010 from

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms687012(VS.85).aspx

Exercise 9: Electronic payments and security I

1. Find out about SET and the use of RSA 128-bit encryption for e-commerce.

SET which stands for Secure Electronic Transaction jointly developed by Microsoft, Mastercard, VISA international and others, is an open protocol for securing credit card transaction over insecure networks like protecting the privacy and ensuring the authenticity. Its working mechanism is encoding the message to be transferred and decoding the received message which is also known as cryptography. SET protocol relies on two different encryption mechanism and authentication mechanism. SET uses 56 bits session keys which are transmitted asymmetrically and the remainder transaction uses symmetric encryption in the form of Data Encryption Standard (DES).
RSA was previously described by Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman which was named after the initials of their surname. It is an algorithm for public key cryptography used for both signing and encryption. RSA derives its security from factoring large integers that are the product of two large primes of roughly equal size. The RSA algorithm contains three basic steps which are key generation, encryption and decryption.


Reference:
RSA. Wikipedia. 2010.Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Retreived on May 3, 2010 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA

Secure Electronic Transaction. Wikipedia. 2010.Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Retreived on May 2, 2010 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Electronic_Transaction

Secure Electronic Transaction: An Overview. Retrieved on May 3, 2010 from
http://www.davidreilly.com/topics/electronic_commerce/essays/secure_electronic_transactions.html

SSH: The Secure Shell. Retrieved on May 3, 2010 from http://docstore.mik.ua/orelly/networking_2ndEd/ssh/ch03_09.htm


2. What can you find out about network and host-based intrusion detection systems?


Network Based Intrusion Detection System(IDS) is the system that detects and reads all the incoming packects and finds the suspicious patterns known as signatures or rules. The IDS's attack recognition module uses four to recognize signature: 1. pattern, expression or byte code matching, 2. Frequency or threshold crossing, 3. Correlation of lesser events 4. Statistical anomaly detection. If an attack has been detected then the IDS continues with option such as administrator notification, connection termination or session recording for collecting evidence.


A Host-Based Intrusion Detection System monitors the threat present in the computer itself rather than analysing the network packets. It detects which program uses what resources and any possible threat present in the computer. Host-Based IDS uses an object database of the system objects which it should monitor. It records all of the events in logs like whether the attack was successfull or not making Host-Based IDS more accurate. It detects the threats that even the Network-Based IDS missed and also donot require additional hardware to implement it.


Reference:
Network Intrusion Detection System. Wikipedia. 2010.Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Retreived on May 3, 2010 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_intrusion_detection_system

Network vs Host-Based Intrusion Detection. Retrieved on May 3, 2010 from http://documents.iss.net/whitepapers/nvh_ids.pdf

Host-Based Intrusion Detection System. Wikipedia. 2010.Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Retreived on May 3, 2010 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Host-based_intrusion_detection_system


3. What is 'Phishing'?

Phising is an act of sending a false email to users claiming to be an legitimate enterprise or authorized person in an attempt to acquire user's private and sensitive information such as passwords or credit card details. This emails directs people to website which asks the user to enter or update private information and ends up stealing the information to damage the users well-being. The other techniques of phishing are such as Link manupulation, Filter evasion, Website forgery, Phone phishing etc. The most effective anti-phishing technique can be making public aware about the level of phising atempts being made and how to recognize it. People should be a little extra precautious while browsing sensitive material over the Internet.


Reference :
Phishing. Wikipedia. 2010.Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Retreived on May 4, 2010 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing

What is Phishing?. Retrieved on May 4, 2010 from http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/P/phishing.html

4. What is SET and how does it compare to SSL as a platform for secure electronic transaction? Is SET in common use?

Secure Electronic Transaction(SET) is system that ensures the security of financial transaction via the internet. During a financial transaction, purchaser, merchants and purchaser's bank are verified and the transaction is conducted after the user has recieved a digital certificate (digital wallet). This process makes the transaction secure and confidential.

Secure Socket Layer(SSL) on the other is a standard that encrypts the data between Web Server and a Web Browser. It helps improve the communication in the Internet. SSL is built in over the all of the major browsers and webservers which turns on the SSL capabilities by simply installing the digital certificate.

SET and SSL are both similar in a way that they both uses public key encryption but SET is more secure and ensures safe internet transaction then SSL because the process in SET double checks all the transaction at least three times but SET is more complex and costly in relation to SSL which could be called its drawback.

Therefore, SET is less common is use than SSL because of its high cost as well as its Network effect caused by a need to install client software.

Reference:
Secure Electronic Transaction. Wikipedia. 2010.Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Retreived on May 4, 2010 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Electronic_Transaction

SSL versus SET, Clough G. (n.d), retrieved on May 5, 2010 from http://www.savagerun.com/SSLSET.htm

What is secure electronic transaction?, retrieved on May 5, 2010 from http://searchfinancialsecurity.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid185_gci214194,00.html

5. What are cookies and how are they used to improve security?Can the use of cookies be a security risk?

Cookies is a small text file stored by the browser which stores bits of information like Unique ID tag in an encrypted format for the purpose of privacy. There are two types of cookies stored in the computer system, which are temporary cookies also known as session which remains on the computer's memory only till the browser is open and another cookies which is permanent cookie stored in the computer's drive and will be recreated even if it is deleted when the website is opened again.

A cookie can be used for the purpose of authenticating the user and tracking the session for the shopping cart purpose. Hence it can enhance security of the user.

However, there has also been a security concerns while using cookies. Cookies Hijacking is the most common among those risk, where unauthorized party hijacks all the sensitive information from the cookies such as usernames from the network causing damage to the user. Such an act can be manipulated by packet sniffing. Another security risks could be Cookies Poisoning, the act of changing the values of the cookies by an attacker and Cookies Theft, the act of directing the cookies to an arbitary server using different means from the 'cookies header'.

Reference:
HTTP cookie. Wikipedia. 2010.Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Retreived on May 5, 2010 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_cookie

What are Computer Cookies?, Kayne R. (2010), Retrieved on May 5, 2010 from http://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-computer-cookies.htm

6. What makes a firewall a good security investment? Accessing the Internet, find two or three firewall vendors. Do they provide hardware, software or both?

Firewall is a barrier in computer system built to stop unauthorized access to the system, based on a certain set of rules. Firewalls are specially used to prevent unwanted network from internet

and extranet into the system. Its main function is to monitor the network that is seeking access and then give permit or denies the network based on the set of rules. Hence, firewalls can also provide good security from unauthorized network access.

The firewall vendors that we found on internet were

- Zone Alarm PRO firewall 2010: it provides firewall and anti-spy protection software only.

- Prisma Firewall : provides firewall software only.

- WatchGuard FireBox X6500e : the vendor provides both hardware and software for the firewall

Reference:

Firewall (computing). Wikipedia. 2010.Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Retreived on May 7, 2010 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firewall_(computing)

Best Firewall Software - Editors choice. Retreived on May 7, 2010 from

http://www.all-internet-security.com/top_10_firewall_software.html

7. What measures should e-commerce provide to create trust among their potential customers? What measures can be verified by the customer?

To create trust among the potential customers on the e-commerce, they can use certain level of encryption while the file is being transferred. Antivirus and firewall can also used in the server side to prevent damage from unknown viruses and attacks.

Cusomer can be educated about the dangers and threat present in the internet while doing financial transaction and measures to prevent themselves like making passwords that are difficult to trace and unpredicatable, Not leaving their computers for others to use and use of antivirus software for deeper protection.

Reference:

Internet Security. Retreived on May 7, 2010 from

http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/small/Inc-Mail/Internet-Security.html

8. Get the latest PGP information from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy.

The use of digital certificates and passports are just two examples of many tools for validating legitimate users and avoiding consequences such as identity theft. What others exist?

The latest information on PGP was on April 29 2010, that Symantec Corp will be aquiring PGP for 300 million with the intent of integrating it into its Enterprise Security Group.

Other examples for avoiding identity theft other than digital certificate and passports are Ephemeral Key, Federated identity, Secure Socket Layer (SSL), Biometric Verification etc.

Reference:

Identity and Access Management, Milgate R. (2010), Retreived on May 8, 2010 from

http://identityaccessman.blogspot.com/2006/08/identity-dictionary.html

Pretty Good Privacy. Wikipedia. 2010.Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Retreived on May 7, 2010 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy

Exercise : 8 XML Introduction

Create an XML document for an online catalogue of cars where each car has the child elements of make, model, year, colour, engine, number_of_doors, transmission_type and accessories. The engine has child elements called number_of_cylinders and fuel_system.

The XML document is built as below:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding='ISO-8859-1'?>

<catalogue >

<make></make >

<model ></model >

<year ></year >

<colour ></colour>

<engine >

<number_of_cylinders ></number_of_cylinders >

<fuel_system > </fuel_system >

</engine >

<number_of_doors ></number_of_doors >

<transmission_type > </transmission_type >

<accessories ></accessories >

</catalogue >

Exercise : 7 Application server platforms in e-commerce

1. Why is the perception getting stronger that integration will become a critical factor in coming days?

E-commerce systems are online systems which is used to transfer goods, services and transfer money in a secure environment. There are many such online systems like ebay, Amazon which gives us the service of buying and selling any products in a convinient way. Due to this facility it has become in universally and is in high demand.

Therefore in this scenario where there are heaps of such systems, integration becomes a vital factor for its success. The factors which could make integration of the systems a critical factors in coming generation can be:

a. Reduction of costs.

b. Integrity of transactions

c. Security of transactions

d. Accurate decision due to availability of information.

e. Management has greater control.

Reference :

Huuhtanen, J 2004. Critical Success Factors in Integration of E-Commerce and Financial Information Systems. Retrieved on April 10, 2010 from http://www.pafis.shh.fi/graduates/juhhuu01.pdf.

Ecommerce System : Tailored to Australia Business environment. Retrieved on April 10, 2010 from http://www.webdynamic.com.au/ecommerce-system.html.

2. What is the relationship of AJAX to JQuery (jquery.com) and the lightweight Web 2.0 javascript framework called MooTools (mootools.net) within the enterprise software architecture?

AJAX(Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) is a pure javascript application framework which works on client-side to create an interactive web application. AJAX has made possible exchanging of data with server without the neccessity of reloading the current pagem making the webpage dynamic and interactive.

"JQuery is collection of Javascript Library that simplifies traversing HTM document, event handling, animating and Ajax interaction for Rapid Web Development by making it easier and faster. (jQuery.com)''. It was developed to change the way javascript was written. jQuery library is usually a single JavaScript file, containing all its common DOM, event, effects, and Ajax functions. Therefore it makes calling ajax functions possible just by calling $.ajax and associated methods.

"MooTools a modular object-oriented JavaScript Web application framework designed to create powerful, flexible and cross browser code with its cohrents and well documented API (mootools.net)". This framework built in manipulation of CSS, DOM elements, native JavaScript objects, Ajax requests, DOM effects and more. MooTools makes use of Ajax easier by providing classes with methods such as onRequest, onSuccess, onComplete etc.

Hence both frameworks make use of Ajax a lot easier and simpler to use.

Reference :

Ajax. The colabarative Application Platform. Retreived on April 10, 2010 from http://ajax.org

jQuery. jQuery: The Write Less, Do More, JavaScript Library. Retreived on April 11, 2010

from http://jquery.com/

jQuery. Wikipedia. 2010.Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Retreived on April 11, 2010 from

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jquery

MooTools. MooTools a compact javascript framework. Retrieved on April 11, 2010 from

http://mootools.org

MooTools. Wikipedia. 2010. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Retrieved on April 11, 2010 from

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MooTools

3. What are the similarities between the object-oriented development using model-view-controller (MVC) in Ruby on Rails 2.0 and Action Script 2.0 (Flash animations)?

Ruby is an object oriented scripting language that combines syntax inspired by Perl, SmallTalk,Eiffel and Lisp. And Action Script 2.0 is a scripting based language used for developing web application and software in Adobe Flash Player platform.

The similarities between these language are both have open classes. i.e. it lets you add methods or property to an existing class. So you can add method or property to that class outside the class definition whenever you want which is also often called as monkey-patching. This functionality can be a major drawback if it is performed carelessly.

Reference :

ActionScript. Wikipedia. 2010.Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Retreived on April 11, 2010 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActionScript

AS2 OOP: Class Structure, 2009. Retrieved on April 11, 2010 from http://www.kirupa.com/developer/oop2/AS2OOPClassStructure7.htm

Ruby (programming language). Wikipedia. 2010. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Retrieved on April 11, 2010 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_(programming_language)

4. What does it mean to develop RESTful practices into our web applications?

Representational State Transfer (REST) is not a new technology or framework but it simply is a architectural style which specifies certain set of architecture constraints.The main idea of this style is to use a uniform interface for all services, which means that each Web site provides the same service. REST has been applied for describing desired Web Architecture, to identify existing problems and to compare alternative solutions. The Goals of RESTful practice includes:

a. Scalability of the component interaction.

b. Generality of interfaces.

c. Independent deployment of components.

d. Intermediary component to reduce latency, enforce securit and encapsulate legacy systems.

Reference :

Wilde, E. 2004. Representational State Transfer, Retrieved on April 11, 2010 from http://dret.net/lectures/web-spring09/rest

Representational State Transfer. Wikipedia. 2010.Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Retreived on April 11, 2010

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_State_Transfer

Nene, D. 2009. Representational State Transfer Explained. Retrieved on April 12, 2010 from http://www.slideshare.net/dnene/rest-representational-state-transfer-explained