E-commerce Glossary - A

Access Provider

A company or corporation that provides Internet connectivity for a monthly or yearly fee.

ACH (automatic check handling)

Automatic check handling is a form of electronic payment. Funds or payments can be transferred electronically in two ways: by wire transfer or through an automated clearinghouse. Wire transfer is an online, real-time payment system designed to handle large-dollar, time-critical payments, mostly between large banks. ACH, in contrast, is designed to be an " electronic check." It is typically used to process high volumes of relatively small-dollar payments for settlement within one or two business days. ACH transactions are settled in a manner similar to the way checks are settled: The clearinghouse takes all ACH files received daily from its member banks, sorts them by the originating bank (the bank where the check was cashed or deposited) and the paying bank (the bank against which the check was drawn), totals the accounts, and credits or debits appropriate accounts accordingly.

Acquiring Bank

The bank that provides an e-commerce business with its credit card processing account. This bank sends credit card and purchase information from e-commerce transactions to a credit card association (such as Visa and MasterCard), which forwards it to the issuing bank.

Active X

This extends the intercompatibility of Windows programs to the Internet. An ActiveX component can be sent over the net with a web page and then works with other Windows programs on the local system. ActiveX also offers dynamic functionality such as share-price information.

Advertisment (Banner Ad)

A graphic or a banner on a web page when clicked on, takes the visitor to another site.

Ad Click Thrus

Number of times that a viewer clicks on a banner ad.

Address (URL)

Code by which the Internet identifies you. The format is username@hostname, where username is your username, login name, or account number, and hostname is the name of the computer or Internet provider you use. The hostname may be a few words strung together with periods.

Address Verification

Process used by a credit card processor or other party to verify that a customer's ordering address matches their records.

ADSL - (asymmetric digital subscriber line)

A communications protocol for connecting computers and other electronic devices to a network, such as the Internet. ADSL offers more bandwidth than current telephone modem connections. ADSL can operate over most existing telephone lines but is currently available in only a few areas and generally costs more.

Affiliate Programs

Programs (sometimes called associate or commission-based advertising programs) designed to drive targeted traffic to your site. They typically pay a commission based on purchases made by traffic sent from you, the referring site.

Agent

Client or robot programs, often able to act autonomously or intelligently.

Alias

An alternative name for an object, such as a variable, file, or device.

Alt

An image (img) attribute specifying that text can be displayed by a browser as an alternative to the image.

Anonymous FTP

A way to use the FTP program to log on to another computer to copy files when you don"t have an account on the other computer. When you log on, enter "anonymous" as the username and your "e-mail address" as the password. This gives you access to publicly available files.

API (application program interface)

The specific method prescribed by a computer operating system, or by another application program, by which an e-commerce programmer writing an application program can make requests of the operating system or another application. Unlike a GUI (graphical user interface), which is a direct user interface, the API interfaces with an operating system or a program.

Applet

A high-level program that can be included in an HTML page, most often an image. The program"s code is then executed by the browser. Note: Many older browsers cannot interpret Java applets and disregard them.

Application

Applications software (also called end-user programs) includes database programs, e-commerce software, word processors, and spreadsheets. Figuratively speaking, e-commerce applications software sits on top of systems software because it is unable to run without the operating system and system utilities.

Application Server

As opposed to a Web Server. Provides special applications to server a special interest or purpose.

ASP (Active Server Pages)

An HTML page that includes one or more scripts, or small embedded programs, that are processed on a Microsoft Web server (Internet Information Server) before the page is sent to the user. Typically, the script in the Web page (at the server level) uses input from a user's request to access data from a database and then builds or customizes the page before sending it to the requester.

Archie

A system that helps you find files located anywhere on the Internet. After Archie locates the file, you can use FTP to get it. Archie is both a program and a system of server computers that contain indexes of files.

Argument

Words or numbers you enter as part of an HTML tag to expand or modify how that tag operates.

ARPANET

The precursor to the Internet, ARPANET was a large wide-area network created in 1969 by the United States Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA).

ASCII

Acronym for AMERICAN STANDARD CODE FOR INFORMATION INTERCHANGE, a standard character set.

Audit

A process to verify conformance to organizational requirements to a defined objective.

Assembly

A low level programming language or machine language. Used to translate a set of instructions into machine readable instructions. Sometimes used in e-commerce.

Asynchronous Communication

Communication that occurs at different times, between two or more individuals, in contrast to Synchronous communication. For e.g. e-mails, some conferencing systems, bulletin boards.

ATM

ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) is a networking technology that provides a guaranteed quality of service. Standard Internet connections are based on Frame Relay technology. The throughput of Frame Relay links can be drastically reduced under certain circumstances, just as a garden hose becomes less effective when stepped on or kinked. However, ATM links are like metal pipes-they always provide the same amount of throughput, regardless of the pressure exerted on them. ValueWeb"s hosting facility has direct ATM connections to the major e-commerce Internet hubs on both the East and West coasts (MAE-East, and MAE-West).

Authentication

An e-commerce technique by which access to Internet or Intranet resources requires the user to identify him/herself by entering a username and password.

Authoring Software

Computer programs that aid in creating HTML documents by inserting the code for tags. Trellix Web and MS FrontPage are examples of authoring software.

Authorization

In multi-user computer systems, a system administrator defines for the system which users are allowed access to the system and their individual privileges of use (such as access to certain file directories, hours of access, amount of allocated storage space, and so forth). When users log in to a secured computer operating system or application program, the system or application identifies what resources the user can be given during this session. Authorization can mean both the preliminary establishment of permissions by a system administrator and the actual checking of the permission values that have been set up while a user is requesting access. On the Internet, authorizations are defined for "anonymous" users that are accessing a system via the Internet.

Auto Responder

Auto-responders allow you to automatically return a pre-set message whenever a selected mailboxe receives a message. It will also notify a selected mailbox of the receipt and response.

Automated Clearing House

An ACH transaction is an electronic fund transfer through the Federal Reserve Bank from a checking or savings account

AVS (address verification system)

In 1996, VISA/MasterCard headquarters introduced a new regulation requiring all e-commerce and off-line businesses who manually key in the majority of their credit card transactions to have a special fraud prevention feature on their credit card processing equipment. This feature is referred to as an address verification system (it checks to see that the billing address given by the customer matches the credit card). If you opt not to use AVS, VISA and MasterCard will not support your transactions and will charge you an additional 1.25% on those sales.