Chapter 6. Delivery Techniques

This chapter covers the concepts of how to deliver digital objects to a customer. It focuses primarily on e-commerce and covers digital rights management and all the copyright issues one has to typically deal with when delivering an image. It includes post metadata processing and embedding, dealing with multiple image types, workflow processing of images and designing a set of flexible business rules for dealing with the changing nature of the market.

Securing an image

Before any attempt is made to sell a digital object, the first question that a business will raise concerns about is managing the security of the delivery of all the digital objects. A singular issue such as security might not seem too daunting to deal with, but in a number of cases, the attempts to address it are so challenging that many e-commerce projects have not made it past the design stage. This is because an adequate security framework cannot be established.

Protection from theft

When dealing with digital objects, theft takes on a whole new meaning. A shop theft generally focuses around the undetected, removal of a physical object from the store. This is usually an identifiable cost to the business. Using a variety of security methods (including cameras, security guards, electronic tags, cabling, and mirrors) items in the store can be secured from theft.

In the digital world, the concept that is based around theft or stealing has a number of different interpretations...

Electronic commerce

The e-commerce store is a digital frontend, web-based shop, focused around the selling and delivery of digital objects. As the business requirement can overlap so tightly between digital and physical objects, both are defined and described in this section.

The e-commerce system can be hosted anywhere in the world. It can allow anyone to browse and buy items, or it can enforce the need to create an account with the shop to perform transactions.

The interface should be HTML based or use a web service layer to integrate with it. For mobile devices, such as an iPad or Smartphone, then a specialized application is required. In these cases the shop should be looking at providing a HTML storefront first followed by Smartphone applications.

It's important that the shopfront is integrated. It should offer the one interface to buy any items and mix different item types in the one purchase. A customer should (if the business sells it) be able to buy a digital photo and download it...

Summary

With this rise in the usage of digital objects, the business requirements for an e-commerce system has grown dramatically. A business needs to be adaptable and change quickly when the market changes. To achieve this, a business needs a system that utilizes dynamically adjustable rule sets, each performing different business requirements.

Image purchasing, pricing, and control of the order process are best handled and centered around metadata and roles. This focuses the whole process around the data and gets away from rigid structures which might be hard to adjust when the need arises.

An e-commerce system should work equally well on the Internet via a HTML browser as well as on portable devices using applications and web services, such as the iPad, iPhone and other smart-phone devices.

In Chapter 7, Techniques for Creating a Multimedia Database, focus now moves to how to configure an Oracle database to manage and store multimedia.

Exercises

1. Define a pricing model for a subscription based service, offering unlimited access to digital movies, with varying pricing for different countries in the world.

2. For an auction, determine some of the business actions that can be implemented to stop or discourage the behavior of bidding in the last 60 seconds.

3. Define some methods for delivery of digital images that improve on the speed of the digital object being delivered.

4. Group images. Describe a business model for how multiple digital objects can be purchased and grouped together for a print (for example, combine five photos onto the one framed print).

5. For a mixed or multi-type purchase, define what other types can be effectively purchased besides these ones: Digital photos, audio, video, documents as well as physical items, such as merchandise and tickets for venues and subscriptions for services. For these new types how easily do they fit into the e-commerce model?