A System for Teaching MIS and MBA Students to Deploy a Scalable Database-driven Web Architecture for B2C E-Commerce

The growing need for real-time information and interactive online feedback has shifted the thrust of web development from static websites to dynamic database-driven web applications. 'E-Commerce capable' or 'transaction-capable' websites are naturally database-driven due to the simple fact that transaction-related information (customer and order information) needs to be captured or entered into a database. Although database-driven web applications are seen as solutions for automating online transaction processing, optimizing business processing, and improving online customer relations management, Internet statistics reveal that a substantial majority of websites on the Internet are not E-Commerce capable or transactioncapable, and nor are they dynamically scalable in terms of content. To understand how technology is an extension of corporate strategy in the 21 st century, it is vital that MIS and MBA students have a certain level of knowledge about how e-commerce systems actually automate web transactions, help optimize business processes, and how web application systems are designed to handle content, data, or information. This paper discusses how a systems blueprint has been developed over time for educating students to build and deploy a database driven e-commerce website. The system has been successfully used for both MIS and MBA students over a period of 4 years. It has been successful in the sense that students who did not have any background in database and web programming were still able to deploy and design a working system in one semester by themselves.