Databse Overview

This is it. This is pretty much an assessment draft.

Hope this goes down well.

What is a computerised Database?

A Database is a structured collection of information that can then be put into/onto a piece of data gathering and storage software. Databases are very useful in the business world and can benefit a company’s organisation and mass-data storage.

What can a database do?

A database can be used for a lot of things but mainly it is used for easily storing data and then accessing it by querying it. As I have stated before, a database can be very useful for a business with a lot of clients.

What types of data are there in a database?

In a database you will obviously have data or information. This is otherwise known as raw data.

You will have Text data, which is data consisting of letters and numbers I.E: a postcode, an address e.t.c. Text data has a field size (the default is normally 50). What “50” means, is the amount of characters that are allowed to be in that one field. You will find that you will have to reduce this size in order to free up memory. I.E: a postcode’s recommended field size (spaces included) is 8. A telephone number can vary depending on weather or not you use spaces between numbers or not. If you’re unsure about how many characters to use, then go over the initially estimated amount very slightly. A field size difference of 1 can determine fully used memory or not in some cases.

Autonumber data is possibly the most valuable and important piece of information (besides the actual data itself). Autonumbers are unique to every piece of data in your database. Only 1 piece of data will have the Autonumber of 1, 2 and so on and so forth. When you have created the Autonumber section of your database, there is no need to fill it in. It will do this by itself. If you look in an Autonumber’s field size, it will display “Long Integer” meaning it can be as long as it needs to be.

Yes/No (otherwise known as Boolean) is a standard tick box field. This will normally consist of yes or no answers. I.E: does this house have a garage? If it does, the box will be ticked. This type of data is very straightforward with a not so very straightforward name.

Number; this again displays as “Long Integer.” This type of data is used for something that requires a number or two and nothing else. I.E: how many bedrooms does this house have? If the house has 3 bedrooms then “3” is required in the field. Number, again, is very straightforward.

Currency; this is very straightforward indeed. It’s all to do with money, the price of something. Currency is probably the easiest to understand.

Date/Time; this is not used very often. An example of when this might be used is when the police are recording a crime in their database.

OLE Object: this is to do with images and other things of that nature.

Hyperlink: A hyperlink is a piece of text that will take you to a web page. If you have used hyperlinks in word documents or anything of that kind, then hyperlinks are very straightforward.

I heard of these things called keys. What are they all about?

This is not your average standard key, which opens a lock. The keys, in terms of databases, are data types, which stand out above all others. I.E: a primary key is a selected field in a database that will uniquely serve that row in particular.

A foreign key is quite similar. A foreign key will have same name as your primary key in your second table (every business database will have more than one table). I.E: If you are making an estate agency database. You will have (in a standard database) a houses table saved as: tbl_houses and one saved as tbl_clients. In your clients table, your primary key will be an Autonumber row called “Client Number.” In your houses table, you will have a foreign key called “Client Number.” You will of course have to relate these two tables together.

What are table relationships?

This is not like your boyfriend/girlfriend-old-married-couple type relationship. This is more like a family, brother and sister relationship. The reason why client number is a foreign key in a houses table is because (thinking about it logically) one client can own many houses and many houses can be owned by one client. If you relate a two tables together then that is very beneficial because if you change something in one table and this data is also in the other table, then it will change it for you. You are promised to never miss any out. Meaning you can stay on top of your business easier and you don’t have to worry about changing two tables all the time. Self-management is a gift. Not a skill.

What is a query?

A query is a question that you ask to the database. This will only work if you have related all your tables together.

What is a form?

A form is a compilation of all the things you have done in this database. It will consist of queries that will quite literally query your tables that you have made and related. It will run macros to do so. It will only require macros if you make a query in a form.

So what are macros?

This is not the shop. Macros are scripts and/or commands which you can either write yourself or use a wizard to do so. Macros are the little messengers that tell the entire database that the form told them that they have to find I.E: all the detached houses that are on your database. Operators can be used.

But what are operators?

Operators are words that can determine if a house has to be: I.E: a detached with two bathrooms AND a garage or a detached with two bathrooms OR a garage. Operators can determine what house you get. (Some changes are more noticeable than others).

There are only two operators. AND, and OR.

I can’t remember all of this!

Don’t worry. There’s no substitute for practice and experience and should you forget then do not panic. This file will ALWAYS be here in my November archive.

That’s all for now. Must dash.

Thank you for your patience.

The Muffin.

Hello Everyone.

Well here we are in a new month and nothing much has changed. The Christmas season is getting more and more of a feverish reality and I do not want to keep blogging without giving you all a special Christmas treat for the end of 2009.

Thank you.

The Muffin



3.8: The Language of Business and sentence structures.
There are various ways of speaking English. One way is the language of business. This is the most professional and probably the hardest way of speaking English.

When writing a memo or a letter to a dissatisfied customer (should you have any) then it is imperative that you perform different types of sentence structure and form. These are known as the simple, compound and complex sentences.

A simple sentence is the most common and the easiest sentence in the English language and any other language you may choose to study in your lives. An example of a simple sentence is something like the following below:

“I wrote this example”

In English there is a way of writing sentences known as the SVO method. This works like the following:

Subject: The person or thing carrying out the action.
Verb: The action being carried out.
Object: The person or thing having the Verb carried out towards them.

So in the sentence above I am the subject because I am writing the example. Me writing is the verb and the example is the object because I am writing it. Or in other words I am carrying out a verb towards the object.

Compound Sentences
Compound sentences are two simple sentences put together with a connective in between the two sentences. I.E:

“I wrote this example and I don’t like it.”

Notice this time I used a connective. Connectives are words such as: And, Or, However, any word that basically makes two sentences into one.
I am the subject again. The Example is the object and the verb is me writing. “And I don’t like it” is an informative clause but you don’t have to worry about that just yet.

Complex sentences are a lot easier than most think. It’s just a case of weather or not you know how to write them out and if you can think logically.

This example, as bad as it is, is the only example I can think of.

The way a complex sentence works is if you can take out the middle clause and it doesn’t make sense on it’s own, then you have a complex sentence because:

This example is the only example I can think of

I removed the middle clause and the informative sentence still makes sense because it is now a simple sentence.

As bad as it is

This does not make sense on its own.


Thank You for reading my terrible blogs.

The Muffin

the start of 3.1

we were doing unit 5 and now we're doing 3.1. I am confused.

anyway time for communication unit.


Hello everyone.

Unit 3.1 is a nice easy break from network and database theory. Even so, I’m struggling to keep up with everything. I’ve yet to start a Duke Of Edinburgh award and I’ve got coursework for all of my subjects and I’ve got two different types of maths exams, three different types of English and coursework for all that on top of all this. Not forgetting work experience and other out-of-school activities!

Anyway, the diploma is the subject at hand now. I must now produce information on communication.

Thank You.

The Muffin


3.1 A: Communication
There are different types of communication. Some are more obvious than others. Some are first hand and others are second but they all, near enough, do the same thing. The different types are as follows:
• Face to face
• Telephone
• Video
• E-mail
• Blogs
• Media

Media is a category within itself. The different types of media are as follows:
• Magazines
• Newspapers
• Texts
• Books

All the types of media above all have their time and their place when they are needed the most. For example: Face to face is best used when you want to talk to somebody when they are standing right next to you. It would not work when you are trying to talk to somebody face to face when they are in another country or very far away in general. Face to face is good because this shows, especially in business, that you are capable of being confident enough to confront the desired person you wish to talk to and talk to them. However, you cannot write the things that you say down. At least not in your average situation in the office you can’t.

Telephone is a good source of communication when you are in one office and the target person you wish to talk to is in another office generally far away. This is about it. It doesn’t really work when you are in the office next to them. Not only will you make an idiot of yourself you are also wasting money and time trying to just connect so you can call them and waste more money and more time and make even more of an idiot of yourself.

Video communication is basically face to face except you can ship the video file over great distances using your network or internet. It is a very good way of face to face communication because you can play the video clip as many times as you want. It is efficient. However, it is not efficient when you want to say a one word answer or statement. You also make an idiot of yourself by sitting on a folding chair or your very uncomfortable office chair and talking directly into a camera with a horrible little optical lens.

E-mails are becoming the biggest and for some reason the best form of communication. This is not a very good type of communication simply because if you E-mail somebody you are failing to demonstrate any real skill of communication within your work group. This is not helpful as your employer or boss will not think much of you if you cannot talk to people up-front and personally.

Blogs are very efficient and useful. Reason being: if you’re a devious foreign to my blogs and have not seen any of my other ones (please do) then you will not be aware that my blogs are very, very long and there’s a lot to read. With blogs you can upload mass amounts of information to the internet. The only thing it comes down to after that is weather the information helps. Please answer the poll.

Newspapers just make things up

Magazines distort the news.

Texts aren’t in English and they are usually off the subject.

Books never help in any situation.

Thank You

The Muffin

I am going backwards...

I seem to be going backwards... Have I lost my mind!

I am now doing unit 3.3……. am I going backwards?

They go in order from when I posted them.

Thank You

The Muffin


3.3: Effective Communication and the purpose of it.

I have been instructed to study five websites of the following.
A Retailer
A Manufacturer
A Leisure or Sports website
A Local Government
A Charity

So I will start chronologically.

The Retail website I have decided to study is GAK (Guitar Amp Keyboard). This shop is based in Brighton and it does do some very, very cheap items. It’s not tat so to speak, in fact they’re proper brand-name instruments and instrument accessories which are very high quality if you buy from the shop itself. Buying online is still the same price. All they’re doing is knocking about five pounds off and put five pounds on delivery price. This isn’t a pain considering the main good part of the website is they will compare and beat prices! Unfortunately, not online prices so you have about a 50% chance of actually getting a beaten price. It’s unreliable in-a-nutshell. Much like their delivery service which leads me on to comment on their down-sides, believe me there are a few of them.

Their shop, while it is big, is extremely overcrowded. I had to wait thirty minutes just to ask about trying out a pedal and even then there was a wait time just to get on.
Second was that while the website was very useful and fairly easy to use in buying things, the quality of the box looked like the lowest quality cardboard in the world. You couldn’t get cheaper stuff if you tried.
It arrived five working days late. I ordered it on a Thursday meaning the lateness was appalling.
Trying to park somewhere near the shop when you’re physically going there is dreadful. It’s a bit like trying to get into Fort Knox. You just can’t find it.
If you do manage to actually get someone to help you inside the shop then expect to walk about a lot. The people behind the counter are always sending you to go to someone else in a different department.
While the physical side of the shop is still quite bad, the products themselves are quite good.
The website is easy to use, but the stuff comes late and while you’re ringing them up and saying that your product hasn’t come yet, they say “I’m so sorry I had no idea.”

The next website I’m going to review is the Ibanez Guitar Company. This company is a very, very good company. They give you all the information you need to know about the guitar or bass you need to look at. They give you a very good in-depth spec. of your guitar or bass. They will also give you endorsed retailers near you using a very clever and well designed and thought out database. The only thing I would point out is that the website is a little bit difficult to navigate around. It’s not that hard once you’ve gotten used to it. Overall I can honestly say: “This guitar company is excellent” I’ve never experienced better customer service both online and on the phone! Excellent! Well Done Ibanez!

LA Fitness is my next website I’m reviewing. Looking at the website I can see the cheesy: everyone on the front page is smiling like working is some kind of fun. When we all know, it’s not. This website is hard to navigate around in the sense that it will say: About Us: when you would normally expect then to say some cheesy story about the creator and then their main customer service number. What you actually get on the website is far different. You get this on the front page:
Latest News (this four lines long)
Lifestyle Tip. This one makes me laugh all the time. It says the following:
“We are now working longer hours than any other country in Europe. A survey by the Department of Trade and Industry's (DTI) Work-Life Balance Campaign and Management Today magazine paints a poor picture of working conditions in the United Kingdom.”
How is that a lifestyle tip?
There’s a page that says “Corporate” This means nothing to my age group.

That’s all I have run out of time. I never have enough of it.

Thank you

The Muffin

Two pictures in one day? what ever next?

This is a terrible example of a bus network. I like Bus networks. Although they may be difficult to handle they work as a standard file-based network with no hubs! No hubs is a good thing.

I must go. Sir has called us all to the front.

Thank you

The Muffin

Hello People! This is a picture of a ring network I have put together with my fantastic group of people.

This is known as a ring network. Reason is: It's shaped like a ring.

Ring networks work quite well according to some people however I think that they do next to nothing to help you. While it's still a network it doesnt exactly help with effeciency seeing as the whole network works like a hub! Hubs are bad but this thing exists in it's own little world. Much like politicians.

For information on hubs see my 5.X blogs in my september archive.

I think I have another one to upload. I'm not sure.

Thank You.

The Muffin

It's Finally 5.9! does this mean no more unit 5?

I Think this is the last of Unit 5. However I'm not so sure

Hello People

Another Blog and this time it’s on Security and Back-up.

Brief introduction I know but I’m running out of things to say and I’m afraid I might crack a joke!

Thank you

The Muffin


5.9 A: How can physical security be implemented?
Physical Security is a big issue just as much as computer and network security, but if water or fire gets into or onto a computer then the company will have to buy a new computer, put all the past information on it and it will take a very long time, most of it will waste the three most important things:
Time
Money
Movement

However you can prevent this by using what we call it in the trade: Physical security. In Tennis there’s a theory called centre court meaning if you return serve on the right side of the court, moving back to the middle will give you an advantage and theoretically use less power and make you win the game. Try to use the same theory in an office by using some key things to prevent floods, which we will start off with:
Drains in the middle of rooms underneath doors
Drainage systems

That’s about it but you can spread it all over the office and building and use it over and over again. You will find that this is the most common used form of flood-prevention.

In a fire situation however, things are slightly different. You could use things such as:
Air-Con
Sprinklers
Fire Extinguishers
A security phone by all flammable points
Don’t leave ANY and I repeat in block caps, ANY of your computers by a radiator or highly flammable object.




5.9 B: How can these be breached?
It’s scary to think that I am writing a list of ways that can potentially make a company collapse but it is vital to be aware of these things.
Floods
Sparks by water taps
Accident in the kitchen if your companies building has one
Faulty Pipes
Hardware faults
Software crashes
Theft
Collapsed Building from earthquakes e.t.c

5.9 C: Anti-Virus and Firewall
These two can work together very easily, you can actually make your Firewall pick things up and send it to the Anti-Virus so that you can be 100% safe from your computer.

Disadvantage: The Anti-Virus might not detect the virus that is being sent through, this can happen.

Thank you for reading today and I hope I answered some questions.

Thanks

The Muffin