Business Information Technology

On Blogging

I think blogging is an excellent way to communicate information quickly and easily.  It allows for a different style of interaction amongst groups of people.  Combined with news readers like Sage or Feedreader, blogging greatly simplifies knowledge sharing and problem solving.  But even with all the benefits of blogging, I have yet to fully catch on to the blogging movement; call me old-fashioned, but I still hold on to preferring traditional methods of reading print materials or talking in person. 

Prior to this class I viewed blogging as a waste of time, for I knew people who spent hours posting personal diaries and useless information.  However, I've learned through this course that blogging is here to stay and that it is being used for valuable purposes, whether it be for politics or in a corporate setting.  So I better hurry up break out of my traditional ways and get caught up with the times!

Many thanks to those who shared really valuable information in regards to the projects.  It has helped tremendously.  That is where the blog gets its highest value, in the sharing of knowledge.

Oversimplification

This is my oversimplified attempt at making sure I have a basic understanding of what we are learning in class.  Please let me know if I am wrong, so I am not misunderstanding it from the outset.

1) We inputed SQL statements in Oracle to create a working database. 

2) We created an XSQL file which generates queries into XML.

3) We created an XSL file which holds templates that will allow XML to be presented in a structured format on the web.

4) We take the XSL file, input it back into the XSQL page, which results in a transformed XSQL page that can be viewed online in the way we want it to be displayed.

Also, can anyone explain row sets?  Many thanks!

XML understanding

Thanks to Maulin for the link to the simple XML explanation site.

Points that stuck out to me:
+ XML is a markup specification language with which you can design ways of describing information (text or data), usually for storage, transmission, or processing by a program: it says nothing about what you should do with the data (although your choice of element names may hint at what they are for):

+ XML is not a programming language, so XML files don't `run' or `execute' . XML is a markup specification language and XML files are data: they just sit there until you run a program which displays them (like a browser) or does some work with them (like a converter which writes the data in another format, or a database which reads the data), or modifies them (like an editor).

+ Users from a database or computer science background should be aware that XML is not a database management system: it is a text markup system. While there are many similarities, some of the concepts of one are simply non-existent in the other: XML does not possess some database-like features in the same way that databases do not possess markup-like ones. It is a common error to believe that XML is a DBMS like Oracle or Access and therefore possesses the same facilities. It doesn't.

Microsoft Visio

I realize that there is program called Microsoft Visio that also draws ER diagrams. It also draws process flowcharts, business models, and any other business-related documents you can think of. I like to use it because the interface is very easy to use with a simple click-and-drag process. I'm not sure about Smart Draw, but I recommend using Microsoft Visio not only ER diagrams, but for your OM, Finance, Accounting, and Marketing diagrams as well. The only catch is that it is installed only up at North Campus computers - maybe we can make a pitch to have them install it in the business school.

FeedReader

So I finally got off my butt and downloaded a news aggregator. Many thanks to Big Blog in the Sky for the info on Feedreader, I see what I have been missing out on all this time. Apologies for my lack of blog posts, but with class getting tougher, I will have plenty to blog about in the future. I have a question on Feedreader however - is 10 the maximum number of posts per blog site that it can show? So the past blog posts that I missed I guess I need to go individually to their blog sites...

4NF

I am starting to understand the logic behind 4th Normal Form. However, I feel that in a corporate database that has thousands of attributes, segmenting out into 4th Normal Form would be a feat. I like the ERP models that we are doing now, because the top-down approach makes more sense to me than the bottom-up approach.

Normalization

Although we studied normalization in CIS 301, I vaguely understood the topic of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Normal Forms. The readings in the coursepack are really helpful in understanding how it works, and how 1NF, 2NF, and 3NF differs from each other. I am excited for the group projects in putting our learning into actual use.