AN E-COMMERCE APPLICATION IN CHINA

Yong Xu

School of e-Business, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, 510006, P. R. China

Chin E. Lin

School of e-Business, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, 510006, P. R. China

Keywords: Stock exchange, e-commerce system, short message service, pub

lic switched telephone network.

Abstract: This paper proposes a new stock-jobbing system named Stock-Master system which based on the SMS(Short

Message System) of PSTN. For the real-time Stock Exchange, this system expands the system and the

protocol of PSTN(Public Switched Telephone Network) SMS. It adds the trade module of CTSI(Chinese

Terminal Service Interface) server, operation trade gateway and professional CP(

Content Provider) system.

This system adopts the terminal ID（Identification）identification, encrypted 3DES, and the exclusive

connection serial number. All these techniques are used to ensure the security of the stock exchange. This

paper describes the frame, the physical topology structure, the function and the security design of this

system, and analyses its advantages and disadvantages in detailed.

1 INTRODUCTION

In recent years, many stockjobbers in China have

offered many stock-jobbing tools to promote stock

exchange convenience and elevate the operation

efficiency. Those tools are mostly developed based

on communication system for takeover bid using

telephone, network and PDA to assist the customer

in improving on takeover bid for easier and more

convenience operation.

Telephonic takeover bid system is a real time

syste

m with facility approved by most of stock

investors. However, investors have to stay in a long

time waiting to get a long-winded prompting

message to access. Such a system is a lower

efficiency.

The network takeover bid system and PDA

takeover

bid system are not easily and widely

accepted by investors due to their costs, network

bandwidth and availability, investor’s location and

capability in despite of its display text.

Aiming at such circumstance of stock market,

nce 2001, a new Stock-jobbing System based on

SMS of PSTN had been widely applied in China.

Terminals of the stock exchange system are not only

a telephone, but can also be treated as stock-jobbing

text display terminals for customers. All

stock-jobbing menu and instant information can be

displayed on terminal screen. Alternatively, the

terminals can also provide the investors or

customers to receive and send short stock message

and takeover bid message. The investors can

subscribe the message to master stock market trends.

The Stock-Master system also could push the

message subscribed by investor to his (her)

Stock-Master terminal from Internet or other media.

The new service offers a feasible concept to

adopt SMS in

PSTN to create a new way and easier

method to assist stock-jobbing for many stock

investors and customers.

2 SYSTEM FRAME

Stock-Master’s protocol is based on short message

industry standard by the Ministry of Information

Industry of China and Enterprise Standard of China

Telecom, referring to the international SMS

standard of ETSI (Europe Telecommunications

Standard Institute). For the system development,

the access program in the proposed Stock-Master

system is expanded form these reference protocols

177

Xu Y. and E. Lin C. (2006).

AN E-COMMERCE APPLICATION IN CHINA.

In Proceedings of the International Conference on e-Business, pages 177-181

 SciTePress

Figure 1: PSTN SMS system structure for case study.

and standards on real time demand of stock takeover

bid.

The propose system can support the standards or

protocols, such as CTSI (industry standard of

Ministry of Information Industry), EC protocol of

CTSI (Enterprise Standard of China Telecom),

SMPP(short message point to point), SMGP(short

message gateway protocol), RADIUS(Remote

Authentication Dial In User Service) and some other

national or industrial standards about PSTN in

China.

PSTN SMS system is constitutive of ten modules

as shown in Figure 1. They are FSK (Frequency

Shift Keying) Server, CTSI server, AAA

(Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting)

server, SMC (short message center) server, SMGW

(Short message gateway) server, terminal, database

server, maintenance node and service development

node. Physical configuration of the Stock-Master

system is different from the PSTN SMS. It should

add a business module of CTSI Server and a

professional service gateway module that could be

independent from or a member of the SMS gateway

and professional CP subsystem. The CP subsystem

is an EC service provider, such as stockjobber and

bank.

In Figure 1, the interface and protocol of the

Stock-Master system consist of two major

contributions of the significance. An expanded

SMPP between CTSI server and service gateway,

and an expanded SMGP between service gateway

and professional CP subsystem are added into the

original system to improve the overall operation.

Just because of these two improvements, the system

is able to adopt the real-time trade system for

stockjobbers, and to change the storage and

transmitting functions of SMS. The two

improvements is the most contribution for the

real-time Stock Exchange, and it is also the soul of

Stock-Master system.

To make the K curve showed in the terminal of

Stock-Master real-time, the system expands the

CTSI protocol, which increases a transmitting order

for the operation data. The operation data are

defined.

Table 1: The define of operation data filed.

Field A=Order code: B1

Field B=Length: the real data length

Field C=Sign: 0(invariable)

Field D=Parts number: 0xFE represents the

transmission of operation data. This part does not

exist actually, and the data processing depends on

the special operation type.

Field E=The format of data parameter

Table 2: The format of data parameter data filed.

Field A1=Operation type: represents different

operations.

Field B1=Operation subtype: represents the

different types of data in the operation

Field C1=Data length: the length of the operation

data

Field D1=Operation data: formats of the

operation data differs according to different

operations.

The definition of the operation types (Field A1)

of Stock-Master in the corresponding information

downloading order:

Stock-Master operation type (Field A1) is

defined as 0x01

Operation subtypes (Field B1) are:

Length

( Byte)

1 1 1 1 Variable

length

Content A B C D E

Length

(Byte)

1 1 1 ≤240

Content A1 B1 C1 D1

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Table 3: The filed define of Curve K paragraph data.

A2 B2 C2 D2 E2

F21（5B） F22（5B）

F2n（5B）

G21(4B) G22(4B) G23(4B) … G2n(4B)

Table 4: Fields define of dealing count.

0x01—stock name 0x02—stock code

L(1B) B3

C3（5B） D3（5B）

0x03—stock title 0x04—K curve paragraph

E31(1B) E32(1B) … E3n(1B)

0x06—dealing count

L: length of the dealing count data

0x07——average curve、trend paragraph

Field B3=type of deal count (1B): binary, 0=the

deal count on curve K, 1=the deal count on trend

curve

0x08——real-time trend paragraph

Curse K paragraph data(Field D1=0x04):

definition of the data format is as follows in table3

Field C3=the highest point in the area of

coordinates: symbolizes the highest value in the area

of coordinates. It takes up 5 bits of ASCII. Usually

the unit is 100 stocks, and it has no radix point.

The significations of each field in table3 are:

Field A2=length: the total amount of bytes

expects this one.

Field B2=the type of curve K (1B): binary value

1=5minutes, 2=15minutes, 3=30minutes, 4=day,

5=week, 6=month;

Field D3= the lowest point in the area of

coordinates: the representation is ibid.

Field E31~E3n=deal number: b7=0 represents

broken line, b7=1 represents real line, the last 7

bytes represents the height h

Field C2=start the date of curve K (3B): the first

byte represents the year (0-99), the second byte

represents the month (1-12), while the third

represents the data (1-31). The decimal number 100

is the module of year. The three bytes are all binary

code.)

In general, to compose a curve K paragraph,

the orders should be transmitted to the terminal

orderly via CTSI server. The terminal identifies the

orders according to the protocols above, and draws

the whole curve K in the screen.

Field D2=end the date of curve K (3B): the first

byte represents the year (0-99), the second byte

represents the month (1-12), while the third

represents the data (1-31). The decimal number 100

is the module of year. The three bytes are all binary

code.

For other curves: real-time stock quotations

paragraph can be expanded similarly, so all kinds of

stock curves can be displayed on the terminal. The

following two paragraphs in figure2 are the curve K

paragraph and the real-time trend paragraph.

Field E2=the dot number on the coordinate: it

represents the dot number on the y-axis, and usually

the neighborhood size is equal. So the dots on the

coordinate are not too much. When the high four

bytes is 0000, curve K represents the stock, while

1000 represents it is exponential.

Field F21~F2n =coordinate value: 5 bytes,

denoted by ASCII. The radix point also takes up one

byte. The decimal format is like that “xx .xx”or

“xxx .x”, and the exponential format is like “x.xEx”

and so on.

Figure 2: Curve K and Real-time Trend Paragraph.

3 SECURITY MEASURE

Field G21~G2n=curve K. curve K is denoted by

4 bytes. Each curve has fixed width (4 points), the

highest bit of ha is b7. When b7 is 0, it represents the

curve is a broken line; while 1 represents the real

line.

There are many kinds of encrypt arithmetic.

Considering the terminal’s operational ability of

CPU, this system uses the 8bits or the 16bits CPU,

and adopts the 3DES for the encryption of data.

During the tests, we find that it only takes 350 ms to

encrypt the stock account and the password when

using the 8 bits CPU.

The fields of the dealing count curve (Field

Operation subtype is 0x04) are defined as:

3DES has a 112 -bit-long encrypt key which is

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used to encrypt the 64-bit-long data. The arithmetic

of 3DES has a high speed, and it overcomes the

disadvantages of DES whose encrypt key is only 56

bits long.

The CTSI server will inquire the terminal ID

numbers to decide whether it is Stock-Master

terminal, or whether it contains the encryption

function. If positive, the server generates a 16 bite

unique serial number to establish the connection.

The Stock-Master terminal ID which includes the

information of stock-jobbers that such information

is unique in the process. Each stockjobber has his

own information which is different from the others.

The Stock-Master terminal can keep the

information from expose to the others at the same

time.

4 SYSTEM ANALYSES

While the specialized CP system of the

stockjobbers is connected, the CTSI server can

directly perform better access than the preliminary

one. For security concerns to the accounts, the

cryptograms of the stock investors and the key data

of operation are encrypted by the proposed

Stock-Master system through ID recognition,

encryption and others. This kind of system has

better security quality. It solves the security

problems, and accomplishes the requirement to

meet the national standards.

The technique of graphic display is embedded

into the proposed Stock-Master terminals for stock

information inquiry through the real time curve line

displayed. This system has more direct and

convenient functions than the telephonic takeover

bid system by applies the FSK modulation and

expanding its protocol from the traditional fixed

network telephone calls. The result enables to

display the stock curve in real time.

The swift key operation promotes the

stock-investors to catch up with time. The utilization

of swift key is recognized as a main contribution of

the proposed system by the stockjobbers after

practical tests.

The proposed Stock-Master system is combined

with the stock-jobbers and the information providers

together in different kinds of business through the

business gateway, telecom gateway, and operator

service departments. The plat of the proposed

Stock-Master system achieves function capability

and conveys its business service to the information

terminals.

The proposed Stock-Master terminal adds visible

display on the conventional telephone, which can

refresh the stockjobbers and provide convenient

operation. The proposed system offers an easier and

convenient solution. The convenience of application

is an important factor in promotion. The

conventional telephonic takeover bid system can be

transformed into the proposed Stock-Master system

easily.

From the above analyses, the advantages of the

proposed Stock-Master system can support potential

improvement in stock exchange.

5 CONCLUSION

The proposed Stock-Master system provides a new

stock-jobbing e-commerce system. It utilizes the

feature that the stock investors are also the

customers of telecom operators, and takes

advantage of the stockjobber and the telecom

operators. The proposed system has many

advantages of easy operation, high security and real

time performance. The proposed system takes the

convenience of operation into account, and enables

the stock investors to trade in and off at a lower

cost. It is a simple aspect of stock-jobbing EC

system, and suitable for promotion in stockjobbers

as a tool in stock exchange using telecom.

From our preliminary tests and analyses, the

proposed Stock-Master system is a feasible and

rational design to improve the stock exchange by

adopting advanced technology as to create

convenient system in practice. The proposed

system is potential for easy promotion into wide

application in stock exchange e-commerce system.

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