Electronic commerce for software

Abstract

Since software is electronic itself, the features of electronic commerce to be highlighted in case software is its domain can be discussed comparing with other tangible kinds of merchandise. Several spectra of e-commerce are firstly investigated in terms of largely two types of software and its distribution, i.e., shrink-wrapped package software and custom software developed by contract. E-commerce for software is basically service- or process- oriented, in which a brokering service for software packages or components is particular. The architectures of the business-to-business software e-commerce, or the Software CALS, are discussed next. Business, logical, and physical architectures are investigated in terms of their structure and components, services, and data models. Middleware engineering for the UI, communication, and data servers will be one of the most important agenda for the deployment of software e-commerce.