PostgreSQL

While doing research on PostgreSQL, I have found a lot of articles about comparing postgreSQL to other database server technologies. PostgreSQL is made for a large company, for large volumes, and with a lot more features.

Features: PostgreSQL is able to do subqueries, stored procedures, and have other views. These features could be vital to the more experienced database designer. If you are running a small business these features are not that important.

Speed: Speed is a question on everyone's mind today. If you are not able to download files fast enough, get up to date information, or have purchases in the system in an instant, the program is useless. When starting with Postgre SQL it my seem slow. But the stability of the software is able to keep up with large volumes of customers, employees, and management.

I hope this is abel to help you understand more about Postgre SQL.

 

http://www.odesk.com/blog/2009/06/postgresql-vs-mysql/

http://www.databasejournal.com/features/mysql/article.php/3288951/PostgreSQL-vs-MySQL-Which-is-better.htm

Technology and Business

We all know one of the best ways to make money is to spend money. If you are a business owner, you see the Iphone, internet, and office tools as a way to make money. These tools can be useful but also costly. With my research online I have found a lot of different answer for each situation. One person put all IT related expenses on a website and gave the pros and cons.

He first discusses monitors. You wouldn't think that monitors would even come up as something to MAKE money would we? A lot of companies now are buying the 17" to 19" flat panel monitors. They are saving money in the long run. They use less heat and power, they save desk space, and just the weight of old CRT monitors could hurt strain somebody's back. He also said you could spend up to $300 per flat panel monitor. If you were a business owner how would you make that decision?

These are real world experiences that come almost every day now to businesses. These are decisions that Systems Analysis has to make on a daily basis. They could help with software choice, or hire someone to program one, to hardware, to even hiring a professional on that certain area.

I want to become a systems analysis. Where I work, I am able to help my boss on certain situations on finding a solution on cutting costs and making money. I will use this knowledge in the future.

http://askville.amazon.com/employer-spend-computers-computer-related-services-employee-year/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=8381463

Data Flow Diagram

Data flow. One of the most sought out systems in the world now. There is so much information at stake that people need a plan of attack to make their orders go right.

Microsoft has come up with a program just for planning out situations. It is called visio. This program helps companies come up with business flow charts, data flow, and even brainstorming charts. These are all helpful tools to use.

In our system design book on page 184 (Systems Analysis and Design, Shelly, pg.184) we had to make a data flow chart for a shipping company. It was like coming up with a system for Amazon. It was interesting to know how the actually data is able to flow from the website to your front door.

One of the situations analysis are put in are to come up with systems to design a data flow charts. It could be from anything from fast food to banks.

Businesses use data now to come up with ways to make the business better. Soon every buesiness will need data flow from the internet to a walk customer. The data will always continue to flow.

What is wrong pg 118

Last Thursday, I was asked to do a presentation in front of the class about what is on page 118 of the Custom program for CIS. It is a WHAT IS WRONG problem out of the book. The situation that was giving me was when a lower skilled employee made a spreadsheet of projected sales for the near future and he tells me just to print it and present. Obviously, there was something wrong with it. I checked it and it was all wrong.

This is a real world experience. When I heard that Ernest Hemingway, one of the greatest writers, made a lot of mistakes when he would write. I made it a point to have myself and someone else check it for me.

Last semester, I was taking an English class and the teacher was strict on mistakes. The first paper I turned in was a D. I was determined not to have that happen again. On the second paper, I proofread myself, I found a lot of mistakes that I didn't even know were there. Then I had my wife proofread it. She found a lot more.

Another example just today. I went to have one of my tires replaced. The advertisement behind them read," Is your A/C running Godd." Obviously no one read that.

This is a great example of proofing what you present. How would it of been if I had just presented what the intern had given me. I would of been the laughing stock of the whole company.

Remember, proofread what you write in word, in excel, in power point, and in any other report type situation.

http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Writing-Style-of-Hemingway&id=70613

The Business Case

In class, for my presentation of chapter 2 (analyzing business cases) in systems designs and analyst, I started out by coming with an idea for a business that we could discuss in this presentation. It turned out to be a great success, to the point where we actually wanted to open this company. The idea was to open up an IT company that would specialize making IT systems for privately owned gyms.
We started out with a SWOT for our business. A SWOT is tool to determine your weaknesses, strengths, opportunities, and threats to our company or system. Some of the strengths would be an untapped market, better controls for their gyms, new technology, and a prepaid idea where someone could pay for 5 to 10 visits instead for a whole month or year. Weaknesses not enough money at first, programmers not experienced enough. Threats would be bigger gyms would want to sell their technology to these gyms. Opportunities would be untapped market and developing new technology and selling that also.
We went to the mission statement for our company. It is “Bring technology to Health.” We will help out these small businesses with good technology that would help control money flow, the customers, and put out a great competition.
This is actually not a bad idea to start. If you have the right people, this could take off. Some other technologies that we came up with is an application on their iphone to track your workout or another app that would tell you how many visits you have left. Another would be to rig the machines to a server and you scan a card that would tell you which machines you used and how long. If you have a personal trainer this would help him or her out a lot.
Stephen Lee

The IF Function

The IF function in excel is for testing data in certain cells in a spreadsheet. This data can be used to tell you if data is true or false. How you use the IF function is simple. First you type an = symbol then you type IF. For example, =IF(. This tells the excel sheet that you are about to do an IF function. Then in the parenthesis select a cell in the spread sheet, for example, B3. Then you tell it if it is greater than with this symbol > or less than < or equal to = then you type in a quotations if it is true or false. =if(b3>0,”love”,”not love”). If b3 is is greater than 0 it will say love in the cell, if it is not it will say not love. This function can be copied for a group of cells.
This Function can be implanted in businesses all over the world. This world can give you a logical test to say if you should sell if b3 is less than this or you should buy vice versa. Try and use this function in business situations and see what it can do for you.

Excel Problem with Worksheet

In excel there is an HLookup function that helps companies to narrow their search for data. This is a great tool to have if you have thousands of different cells of data. Instead of trying to look through all of the cells. You can put in a function to find what you are looking for in a couple of steps.

Today, the exercise that we got was to look at the formula and figure out what the problem is in the formula. In the formula =HLOOKUP($C$3,'Historical Data'!$B$2:$F$9,3,FALSE). I thought it was the first set of cells that it was getting wrong. The last number where the 3 is that is what row to look at on the sheet. But, it was on the other sheet, That was saying what row to look at on the other sheet. That was wrong. The last number should be 4. The rows on the other sheet start different. 2 is actually 3, 3 is actually 4. I didn't know this. That is the solution that I overlooked. The solution is this =HLOOKUP($C$3,'Historical Data'!$B$2:$F$9,4,FALSE)

 

The other problem in the worksheet is that the Vlookup didn't have a range lookup. This tells the solution what you are looking for if it is true or false. I simply put false at the end of the statement and it was right. =VLOOKUP($C$9,'Stock Data'!$A$2:$C$7,3,FALSE)

Learning Model - Teach One Another

The learning Model is a tool that helps students learn and remember what has been taught. In the scriptures, D&C 109:7 it reads;
And as all have not faith, seek ye diligently and teach one another words of wisdom; yea, seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom, seek learning even by study and also by faith.
We, at this school, use this scripture to teach one another what we have learned. Teaching one another is one of the best ways of learning. That means you are able to repeat what the teacher has taught, or what you have read. This has helped me through my academic career because sometimes, I don’t fully understand what the instructors have taught and having a student that understood it helps me with all that I didn’t understand.
This is one of the best ways of learning in the IT field. Teaching one another is just what it will be like in the workplace. If you don’t understand something you can ask someone for their help and vise versa. I have heard many examples of people asking their co-workers for a little help and it saved the company a lot of time.

System Process

The other day I had a problem with my system. Before I tell you what happened, I recently installed AVG 8.0 and advanced system care onto my computer plus games and other applications. Anyways, I was playing a game I noticed that it would chop and run slow for about 5 seconds than run normal. I thought it was weird and it has never happened before. As a piece of advice, when your computer system is running slow you want to check the task manager. You can simply open this up by hitting ctrl+alt+delete all at the same time to open the task manager. So I opened it up and opened up the processes tab. This shows all of your processes. I noticed my system process was running a little bit over 64,000 kb of memory.

So my first hypothesis is to turn off the system process. I right clicked on it and click end process. I said it wouldn't. So it right clicked it again and clicked "end process tree." My computer didn't work and it basically shut down. So I was wrong and I will never try to shut down the system process ever again.

So I did some research to see what the problem was. I typed into my system process taken a lot of memory. Someone had the same problem I was having. That person posted a comment about AVG 8.0. He said that AVG uses the system process to protect your computer.

I put it to the test. The first thing I did was delete AVG 8.0.

1. All you do is go to control panel and went to remove programs, then uninstalled AVG 8.0
   
2. Checked my system process in the task manager
   
3. Downloaded AVG 7.5 from the AVG website or www.filehippo.com
   
4. Installed AVG 7.5
   
5. My computer ran better!
   

www.AVG.com

 

A cool Game

You should go here and try it out. Play some!

Hey there is a hidden movie on XP!

This is just for fun! This isn't really the best movie, it is only in symbols. So you go to

start>run

Then in the run you type TELNET

a command prompt will come up

Then type o as in the letter O

Then type towel.blinkenlights.nl

then juss sit back and waste good ole company time watchin symbols reinact star wars

Why back up more files?

According to Carbonite.com 43% of people lose their data. There are a lot of different reasons to lose data maybe by dropping your laptop, your laptop was stolen, viruses, accidentally erasing hard drives, power surge in the house, and there are many other reasons. The benefits of backing up your data to a third party sources are, you have your data somewhere else, you save your company from bankruptcy, and if an someone hacks in or steals your computer no one else will see your personal information.

Having your data stored on a third party is a really good idea. You could easily have an external hard drive that you use to backup your files every month. Backing up your files to an online service is a great idea also, because they will be able to manage all of your data at any time or place.

Companies used to put data on zip drives, CD's, or another hard drive. The main problem with that, are people losing the disks themselves. Another problem is that if the disk drives fail you will not be able to access those any more. Using a third party is a great idea because you will be able to have all of your data available at all times.

A lot of companies who do not save their data properly and is lost will file for bankruptcy that year. All of that data will have a lot of accounting information, customer information, and other information that would be devastating to a company to lose. If you lose all of your customer's data you will not be able to bill people what they owe. The company will not be able to receive money from other companies that owe you.

You could argue that if you outsource your data to a third party data center, is that someone could hack into the data center. Another reason is that if that data center was destroyed by fire, flood, or other kind of disaster you could lose everything. These online backup services double encrypt your files so that people can't open up your files to steal information. They also partition your data to another physical place in the country so that if one place is destroyed your data will be in another place. Your data is safe with them.

To sum up that the argument that it is expensive to use a backup service is ridicules. If the servers fail, get destroyed, or hacked into. That is an expensive process to find and recover your files. If you have to bill people and you don't have their information, you will lose their trust and they will go to a different company. It is important to consider this service.

Title:
If losing data is getting your backup... why not try online data backup?
Authors:
Molloy,Cian
Source:
Accountancy Ireland, 2008, 40, 4, 52-55, Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland

Geographical Information Systems

When the smart trucks hit the road in Georgia they have a lot of technology on them. A lot of people think that people who work in the power industry is a simple job that anyone can do. These trucks are as smart as you are. This article that I read to get information about GIS is very sophicated. People were able to find every pole and transformer in the whole state and surrounding states. They even programmed directions to every transformer in the states. One of men said," I have even driven on a pig trail to find a down transformer." This information has even saved lives. When hurricane Katrina blew through Louisiana. These workers went down to help rebuild the transformer there.

The GIS has helped all sorts of people. The Aussies use this system to locate and find locusts. This has helped saved millions of acres of farmland. The system in Australia is able to loate migration patterns in the locusts and able to see how much they are growing in size. This system is a blessing there.

Australian Plague Locust Commission, Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Foresty Australia, GOP Box 858 Canberra ACT 2601, Australia

1. Anderson, Joan L., Jolly, Laura D. and Fairhurst, Ann E. Customer relationship management in retailing: A content analysis of retail trade journals 20073. Anthes, Gary. Big Things From Little b 20082. Evans, Dan, Kaplan, Jeremy. PC Magazine's Essential Upgrade Guide 20084. Wolf, Gene. Smart Trucks Hit the Road 2008

Dr Watson32 debugger

Dr Watson is a debugger program that finds unhandled errors. It is really good when it comes to fixing System32 and other system files. But when it comes to movie, pictures, and other media it crashes or locks up your computer. I recently had this problem.
I have a folder with movies in it. On the thumbail it shows the beginging of the movie ( not in animation ) but when i would open the folder my computer would lock up. I tried taking the movies out of the folder. i tried a lot of different things. I finally found a solution.

GO to my computer
click on veiw and it will bring down a drop down list
then click the "LIST" make it a list because thumbnails shows the actual file
then go to tools at the top then click on folder options
then go to the view tab
then ther will be a button there that says "APPLY TO ALL FOLDERS" click that and it should apply that to all folder.
The debugger shouldnt pop up anymore.

Windows Deployment Services

The service that I would like to share with you, that will save your company a lot of money is Windows Deployment services. This is a great service comes with Windows Server 2008. You are able to install through your server manager.     

This service provides a company the best way to plan, build, and test how things will work. This helps companies also to have a quick way to install programs on all of the computers which will save company a lot of money and sooner open date. If the situation calls to install windows XP on 5,000 computers, it will take forever to go one by one to all of the computers to install XP all of them. If you have one server setup with Windows deployment services it will save the company a huge investment. How this works is that you make an image file for XP and you are able to send it to all of computers through the network.

If the company buys server 2008, why buy any other imaging programs? Windows server 2008 comes with windows deployment services. This is a great service because it will do everything those others do well. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb891797.aspx

The only downfall would be that you have to make sure all of the computers come with PXE. PXE is Preboot execution environment. You don't have to worry about this though because computer made since 1998 have this service installed on it. You can find out more from this site http://www.pxe.ca/

 

Windows Deployment Services

    We all know that it would be extremely costly and extremely annoying if there are 10,000 computers that need Windows and you need to install windows on all of them. Server 2003 and 2008 came out with a new way to install to all of the computers from one computer. It is call WINDOWS DEPLOYMENT SERVICES. If the situation you have 10 computers that need Windows on them. If all of them are hooked up to the server will be able to find them. You will be able to use the deployment services to install any program to the computers. (if the computers come with PXE).

    This is a wonderful tool that 2008 comes with. It saves companies a lot of time and money to user this service.