Datasheet

Chapter 1  Internet Era: E-Commerce 39

Furthermore, there should be a conﬁgurable infrastructure level MLT to ensure

the health of the system as a whole. Infrastructure level monitoring systems

are much more ﬂexible than other monitoring systems and can be deployed

on top of other monitoring systems. Many of the infrastructure level monitor-

ing systems provide standards-based interfaces for interacting, querying, and

displaying information in standard formats.

At each of the levels mentioned, there are different stages of MLT: data col-

lection, data processing, data transmission, data storage, and data presentation. The

data collection stage involves collecting data through different sensors located

at different collection points. The gathered data can be static in nature (such

as network topology and machine conﬁguration) or dynamic (such as CPU

utilization, memory consumption, system load, and so on). The data process-

ing stage processes and ﬁlters the data based on different policies and criteria

from the data collected from the sensors. The data transmission stage involves

the transmission of collected and processed data to different interested entities

within the system. Transmission involves sending the data over a medium in a

format that is understood by other parties. There may be a need for storage of

gathered or processed data for future references, which in turn is carried out in

the data storage stage (Tracing). Finally, the data presentation stage presents the

data in a format that is understood by interested entities within the system.

Summary

We started this chapter by discussing the basics of commerce (although as

noted in the introduction, this wasn’t exactly a history chapter, was it?). We

then explained the payment systems and the technical mechanics of money

movement, and worked our way up to distributed computing and its most

scalable paradigm: cloud computing. In the last part, we explained important

characteristics of cloud computing and how to implement them correctly. In the

next chapter, you will learn more details about how to make the system scalable

(the important “-ilities”) and then continue to delve deeper into the realm of

security. Hang on tight; the fun is just about to start.

Notes

1. There’s also a third meaning for the term “commerce” per Merriam Webster,

but that meaning does not exactly bode well with the scope of this book.

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

3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_card

4. Forrester Report on Mobile Payment.

5. Orfali, R. et al., The Essential Client/Server Survival Guide. Wiley 1997. p13–14.

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