Design is an art form in which the designer selects from a myriad of
alternatives to bring an "optimum" choice to a user. In many complex of
"optimum" is difficult to define. Indeed, the users systems the notion
themselves will not agree, so the "best" system is simply the one in
which the designer and the user have a congruent viewpoint. Compounding
the design problem are tradeoffs that span a variety of technologies and
user requirements. The electronic business system is a classically
complex system whose tradeoff criteria and user views are constantly
changing with rapidly developing underlying technology. Professor
Milutinovic has chosen this area for his capstone contribution to the
computer systems design. This book completes his trilogy on design issue
in computer systems. His first work, "Surviving the Design of a 200 MHz
RISC Microprocessor" (1997) focused on the tradeoffs and design issues
within a processor. His second work, "Surviving the Design of
Microprocessor and Multiprocessor Systems" (2000) considers the design
issues involved with assembling a number of processors into a coherent
system. Finally, this book generalizes the system design problem to
electronic commerce on the Internet, a global system of immense
consequence.