eBay - eCommerce Platform
A case study in Scalability

by

Mohammad Usman Ahmed mohammad.ahmed@mail.mcgill.ca Table of Contents:
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The Application and its overall architecture
Component Model and its interactions
Technological aspects of the eBay Architecture
Strengths and relative weaknesses of the Architecture
Component Model and variations
Key Quality Attributes favoured by the eBay Architecture
Evolution of the Application and its Architecture
Conclusion

The Application and its overall architecture
EBay is a highly successful eCommerce platform. The larger category of eBay includes
19 different platforms (e.g. skype, payPal, rent) but we'll be focusing on the search and trade platform. The other sister platforms became part of eBay due to recent acquisitions and in some cases result in architectural mismatch which would be an interesting topic for a separate case study, therefore this case study focuses on the original platform's architecture and its evolution in recent years.
EBay is an eCommerce system where a user can browse to the website eBay .com and search for anything they want to buy, in auction or right away from the buyer, or to post some item for sale which other users can search for as prospective buyers. The users then arrange for payments online (using eBay's payPal system which is a separate system designed solely for that purpose and recently integrated onto the eBay platform) and receive the item by mail.
Like most internet-enabled business systems, eBay is constructed using distributed object technology. It requires scalability, high performance, high availability, and security. It needs to be able to handle large volumes of requests generated by the internet community and must be able to respond to these requests in a timely fashion.
In addition to the end-user application,