Dell's e-system: Programming of web-servers

Performing research on the type of web-server platforms and programming languages used by Dell has proven to be a difficult task, with little recent information available.

In his report Sall notes, "The Dell.com was relaunched November 7th in 80 countries with 22 different languages. The site uses Active Server Pages, Microsoft's IIS, Commerce Server, and webMethods' b2b Integration server. Cookies are stored with precise information about the customers' purchased products so that they can be automatically directed to the pages most relevant to them."

Browsing of the Dell Australia website, I note that many of the top-level webpages included the .aspx extension. This indicates, that in Australia at least, Dell has moved to using ASP.NET rather than ASP. Usage of ASP.NET allows the Dell website to become a fully-fledged programmed non-trivial web-application that can for example include: tight coupling to databases, ability to generate or parse XML documents, dynamic content and so on. Programming of ASP.NET applications can be achived through either VB.NET or C#, both of which are object oriented languages. Program code is either placed in line with the web page or in a 'code-behind' file.

A white-paper (propaganda?) by Microsoft[2] would seem to confirm my findings, indicating at the least a partial move by Dell to a Microsoft .NET (and hence ASP.NET) based system. Furthermore according to the article, by using Microsoft .NET XML webservices technology for prototyping Dell validated the usage of .NET XML webservices within the organization.

References
[1] Ken Sall, Dell.com: XML Case Study and Web Catalogue, http://wdvl.internet.com/Authoring/Languages/XML/Conferences/XML99/dell.html
[2] Microsoft, Dell commites to a .NET connected web services architecture, http://download.microsoft.com/documents/customerevidence/6634_Dell_DotNET.doc

Dell's e-system: XML

The Dell websites are extremely large and complex. In order to reduce this complexity, duplication and maintenance effort Dell employed the use of XML. The following summary [1] is a brief report on a presentation given by John Winfrey of Dell Computer who spoke of "Data Transport and Management Using XML", which focused on the US Dell Web sites:

"Dell.com is a huge site to maintain, having 20,000 pages in its Services section alone. However, the site is key to Dell's success since it nets Dell $35 million per day in online sales, which now represents 43% of all sales (their goal is 50%). The problem that XML was selected to solve is one of duplication of content across major sections of the Web site, such as Home and Office. Much of the product information is very similar for certain configurations but may have slightly different options. Prices change on the average of three times a week at Dell, so it was tedious to make the necessary page changes using an HTML-only approach. Moreover, Dell's redesign needed to take into account what they call customer-ization, the ultimate in customization because it includes the exact product owned by the customer as well as locale factors (such as language). Winfrey spoke of ePub, the term Dell uses for the set of tools, Web server, plus application for the management and delivery of content. "

References
[1] Dell.com: XML Case Study and Web Catalogue, http://wdvl.internet.com/Authoring/Languages/XML/Conferences/XML99/dell.html