Hybrid Approach of Client-Server Model and Mobile Agent Technology to Drive an E-Commerce Application

Transcription

1 Hybrid Approach of Client-Server Model and Mobile Agent Technology to Drive an E-Commerce Application Ajab Maheshwari PG Scholar, IT Dept, IET-DAVV, Indore (M.P.), India. Dr. Pratosh Bansal Associate Professor, IT Dept, IET-DAVV, Indore (M.P.), India. Abstract-The concept of e-commerce has emerged as a revolution to execute business activities over internet. This architecture of e-commerce is developed on the foundation of client server model. As a result, reduced cost of production and unrestricted physical boundaries are the major benefits offered by e-commerce over traditional commerce. Though these benefits have attracted great number of users but still there are some drawbacks that have restricted to completely transfer traditional model to e-commerce model. One of the drawbacks is the large bandwidth requirement for an e- commerce application, deployed using client server model. Second is efficient information retrieval and autonomy in application are hard to achieve in client server model. To overcome these drawbacks Mobile Agent Technology has been proposed. Though mobile agent technology over comes the limitations of client server model but simultaneously use of mobile agent technology enhances the security requirement of an e- commerce application. In this paper a hybrid approach of client server model and mobile agent technology to develop an e-commerce application is proposed, to overcome the limitations of both the models. Keywords- Mobile Agents, E-Commerce, Client-Server, Bandwidth. I. INTRODUCTION Internet has evolved as a revolution in field of communication. It was developed to provide resource sharing and communication between two machines situated at remote locations. But today internet is not at all restricted to these functionalities; in fact it had lead to the development of a new way to conduct business activities over internet. In this new form of conducting business, the buying and selling of goods and services is done over the foundation of internet. This way of performing business is termed as e- commerce. E-commerce has enhanced the opportunities for both the sellers as well as the buyers. Today sellers are not at all restricted to physical boundaries to sell their product in fact they can easily reach the narrow market segments of the world. Even for the buyers there are wide range of options available to buy the product which best meets their requirement [1]. All these benefits offered by e- commerce have resulted in the expansion of internet to a great extent. Actually the concept of e-commerce exits in reality only because of client server model. The structure of an e-commerce application completely relies on client server model for its successful deployment. In client server model, client is a program which makes request for services and server is a program which offers this services. Users or buyers make use of this client program to request for a product or service where as sellers or buyers offer there product or services through server program. It is this interaction between client and server which transforms the concept of e-commerce to reality. The interaction between client and server is done through message passing over the network [2]. This communication between client and server demands large bandwidth requirement. But the increasing popularity of e- commerce created new challenges in terms of bandwidth requirement and network management. As a solution to above mentioned problem, Mobile Agent (MA) technology is a common approach used these days. As quoted by Mohammed Badrul Hasan and P.W.Chandana Prasad MA are software entities that can migrate across network i.e. has mobility, to perform desired task of user on his behalf hence called an agent [3]. The user programs the agent with his instructions and the agent performs the task accordingly. For example, in real life situation, mobile agent can be mapped to property broker agent who searches for commercial or residential area on 733

2 behalf of their client to satisfy client s requirement. Mobile agent operates local to the data and this is major reason for low bandwidth requirement. The other benefits offered by mobile agent technology include reduction in network load, continued execution even when disconnected from network, reliability and asynchronous communication [4]. In spite of the above mentioned benefits offered by mobile agent technology, the issue which hinders its implementation in e-commerce domain is security. The use of mobile agent technology has encountered new type of attacks which enhances the security requirement of an application. The section two of this paper explains the working of client server model. It also describes the limitations or problems encountered in this paradigm with respect to e-commerce domain. Section three explains the working of mobile agent technology and how it overcomes the limitations of client server model. It also briefly explains the issues which hinders its implementation in e-commerce. Section four explains about our proposed hybrid approach to meet all the requirements. Finally section five concludes the findings. II. CLIENT SERVER MODEL The concept of distributed computing is most successfully implemented using client server model. In client server model there are two fixed entities; one is regarded as server and the other one as client. The entity which offers the services is termed as server and the one which makes the request for these services is called client. The transaction or communication between client and server is done through message passing. If a client requires a set of services then it makes a request to the server, the server accepts the request, process it and reply the client with the response [2]. Following figure demonstrates the working of client server model [Fig 1]. Fig 1. Working of Client server model [2] Study of client server model by research community concluded that, one of the major drawbacks of client server is that the roles of client and server are fixed and this makes client fully dependent on server i.e. if a server does not provide a particular services then client has to find the other server which provides the required services. To identify the server which offers the required services, client has to make makes request to all the servers but the positive response is obtain only from the server which provides the required services. All other requested server replies with negative response. This is clearly an inefficient use of network bandwidth [5]. This completely scenario can be visualized through following diagram [Fig 2]: 734

3 Fig 2. Bandwidth usage scenario Further, the uses of portable devices are increasing which depends on wireless network to access the internet. In wireless availability of bandwidth is critical issue and we cannot afford wastage of it. The other drawback of client server model is synchronous communication between client and server. If suppose client fails or server fails or suppose there is a network failure then the whole communication is to be restarted. The other limitations of client server model include lack of autonomy, inefficient information retrieval and lack of adaptability to dynamic situation. III. MOBILE AGENT TECHNOLOGY Literature study shows that most of the work has been done which compares client server model with mobile agent technology. The result of these comparisons concluded that in most of the scenarios mobile agent technology is found to be more efficient as compared to client server model in distribution information retrieval [6][7].Mobile agent technology is an alternate approach to client server model and is expected to be best suited in design and implementation of distributed application [8].Mobile agents are the software programs that have wheels to move in the network and operate autonomously. User defines the MA with its requirement or task to be performed and the MA executes accordingly. While doing so MA moves in the network from node to node and executes at the node where it finds the required resources. If during execution it requires additional resources which are not available at the node then it saves it state and moves to other node. Following figure demonstrate the working of mobile agent technology. 735

4 Fig 3. Working of Mobile Agent Technology [4] MA always executes local to the data and this is major reason for its low bandwidth requirement. This also results in reduction of network load. Further mobile agent technology follows asynchronous communication so even if the user machine crashes or there is failure in the network MA can continue its execution on remote host. Mobile agent technology is best suited to automate the repetitive and time consuming activities. They are also expected to efficiently retrieve information in distributed environment [9]. Irrespective of the benefits offered by mobile agent technology, it has not found its real life application in e-commerce domain. One of the major reasons is the security requirement associated with the mobile agent technology as well as e-commerce domain. As money is directly or in directly involve in an e- commerce application so security plays in its successful deployment. Further, the use of mobile agent technology results in new type of attacks which include host to host attack, host to MA attack, MA to host attack and MA to MA attack [10][11]. To deploy e-commerce application using mobile agent technology all the security requirements are to be fulfilled and this enhances the design complexity of application. IV. HYBRID APPROACH Security plays a key role in success or failure of an e- commerce application, but security is not the only issue which completely governs an e-commerce application. But apart from security, the success and failure of an e-commerce application depends on a broad range of other issues which include trust, reputation, payment mechanism, advertising, organizing of information, ease of user interaction etc. Now, the above mentioned issues do not equally participate in success or failure of e-commerce application. For example, if an e-commerce application is designed to implement the online services offered by a bank then trust and payment mechanism are the factors which will govern its success or failure. Also, if an e-commerce application is designed for online shopping then comparison based shopping is the feature which will attract users towards it. Further, if an e-commerce application is designed for reservation of trains, buses, flights etc then redundancy is the factor which decides its successful deployment. This shows that the goal and functioning varies from application to application in e-commerce domain. 736

5 The idea proposed here is to develop mobile agent only for some activities of e-commerce and not to drive the complete application. This will reduce the complexity of design as well as the number of parameters to be handled. Alternatively this can be viewed as a system developed by a hybrid approach of client-server model and mobile agent technology. This can be explained by an example, suppose we are developing an online shopping application. Today whenever a user wants to buy a product he/she is required to visit the different sites to gather the information about the product and analyze the information to find the product which best meets the user requirement. Followed by it the user again visits the sites to find the dealer which offers best deal on the product and finally purchase the product. This complete process of shopping is too much time consuming and complex. So we can use mobile agent technology to automate this activity of buying process while the rest activities can be implemented using client server model. This can be explained with the help of following diagram: Fig 4. Working of Hybrid Approach In the above figure user interacts with the local server using client server model. It submits the requirement for a product through request and response. At local server a MA is defined on basis of the criteria entered by user. This MA then travels to different sites to find the product which best meets the user s requirements. At last the MA returns to our local server from where the result is forwarded to the user through client server model. The rest of transaction is carried out using client server model. In this way hybrid approach explores the advantages as well as overcome the limitations of both the technologies. This hybrid model may vary from application to application and from activity to activity for which the mobile agent is to be designed. V. CONCLUSION The increasing use of internet created new challenges in terms of bandwidth requirement and network management. Further with the growth in technology there is demand for autonomy and efficient information retrieval in domain of e-commerce. Though these parameters can be achieved by mobile agent technology but it had not found its suitable real life application in e-commerce. The major obstacle is the security requirement associated with the use of mobile agent as well as with e-commerce domain. So a hybrid approach of client server model and mobile agent technology to drive an e-commerce application is proposed. This hybrid approach will be helpful to enhance the potential and productivity of an e- commerce application. 737

6 VI. REFERENCES [1] A. Sengupta, C. Mazumdar, and M. S. Barik, e- Commerce security - a life cycle approach, in Sadhana Journal, vol. 30, number 2-3, pp , on Problems of Global Security, Moscow, Russia, November, 1998, pp [13] Dejan Milojicic, Mobile agent applications, IEEE Concurrency, July September [2] E COMMERCE, a book by CH.DEEPTHI, Assistant Professor, Sree Chaithanya College of Engineering, Karimnagar. [3] Mohammed Badrul Hasan and P.W. Chandana Prasad, A Review of Security Implications and possible solutions for Mobile,Conference on Innovative Technologies in Intelligent Systems and Industrial Applications (CITISIA 2009),2009. [4] Abdelkader Outtagarts, Mobile Agent-based Applications : a Survey, International Journal of Computer Science and Network Security, VOL.9 No.11, November [5] Syed Adnan, John Datuin, Pavana Yalamanchili, A thesis on A Survey of Mobile Agent Systems, University of California [6] Yousry El-Gamal, Khalid El-Gazzar, and Magdy Saeb, A Comparative Performance Evaluation Model of Mobile Agent Versus Remote Method Invocation for Information Retrieval, World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology, [7] Rahul Jha, A Thesis on Mobile agents for e- commerce, at IIT Bombay. [8] Vu Anh Pham and Ahmed Karmouch, Mobile Software Agents: An Overview, IEEE Communications Magazine July [9] Stefan Pleisch, A report on State of the Art of Mobile Agent Computing Security, Fault Tolerance, and Transaction Support, IBM Research, Zurich Research Laboratory, 8803 Ruschlikon, Switzerland [10] Michael S. Greenberg and Jennifer C. Byingfon, Mobile Agents and Security, IEEE Communications Magazine, July [11] Wayne Jansen, Tom Karygiannis, Mobile Agent Security, NIST Special Publication [12] Christoph Busch, Volker Roth and Ralph Meister, Perspectives on Electronic Commerce with Mobile Agents, Proc. XI Amaldi Conference 738