Connoisseur

Learning Question

As I was paying attention in class, I was curious as to how Bud was able to learn all of this very specific information. The material we have been introduced to is overwhelming in its complexity and volume and yet Bud has tried to make it as simple as possible for us so that we can get a basic understanding of the subject. I am sure there is far more he can show us. So, for material as dynamic and technical as this, does one learn through taking classes like this, work training, or just keeping abreast through personal research and reading?

SQL Queries in Access

I was trying to run SQL queries on an access database but our normal notation does not work.

An error occurs when I tried the following query:

SELECT VState, VCity, Count(VCity) AS Count
FROM Event
WHERE Status = 'Complete' OR 'Survey'
GROUP BY VCity

Access gives me an error:
"You tried to exeucte a query that does not include the specified expresion 'VState' as part of an aggregate function"

When I finally found a way to fix that, Access didn't carry out the WHERE clause correctly unless I clearly repeated Status = 'Survey'. So the query ran successfully after the following query was written.

SELECT VState, VCity, Count(VCity) AS Count
FROM Event
WHERE Status = 'Complete' OR Status = 'Survey'
GROUP BY VCity, VState

Why does VState have to be grouped? What if I want to just see VState but not group it in anyway? Is there any way that VState could be "part of an aggregate function" other than putting it before a GROUP BY clause?

Also is it specific only in Access where the OR function requres that you specify the attribute again? Or is there something wrong with my notation so that Access doesn't recognize it.

Business Opportunity?

Are there businesses out there that can create a blogosphere for a community audience (such as for a department in a University or any other such large organization) so that they can reap the same benefits we do? Also such a blogosphere could also improve ranking for a company, does that have any implifications for an entrepreneur to take advantage of - creating and coding for company websites so that it increases the value to a regular audience as well as prospects who are searching for their type of information on the web?

Gecko Tribe Reading

In reviewing the instructions for the Gecko tribe reading, I just wanted to make sure that I understood the purpose correctly.

By downloading and using (CaRP) we can put on a webpage a newsfeed that would post relevant, updated information from other websites or even our own so that relevance and freshness (important Google considerations) are kept high.

However, what happens when the subject that you want to be relevant for (or focusing on - such as the keywords "fly fishing" in the article) does not have any available RSS feeds. On that related note, are there any resources that show how to create a website that gives out RSS feeds so that other people can link to it. I hope that I have been clear on what my questions are, but if not, feel free to let me know.

Additional codes

I remember that BUD once told us how to view all the created tables in our sql account, but I do not remember the command. The command I did write was not the right one - so does anyone remember which entry is needed to retrieve that information?

Also, during our project, we did not know how to alter the name of the actual table as well as altering the names of attributes (columns) after the table has been successfully created.

Careers

For those of you who were not able to attend on Thursday, I just wanted to comment on the guest speaker we had who came to visit and talk about how her CIS knowledge proved surprisingly helpful for her career at AMEX.

Despite majoring in CIS as a BBA, she really did not intend to use any of her database knowledge in her career. However, because of the problems of accurately tracking information on the direct sale of their credit cards - she was able to save AMEX from dropping the approach altogether (face-to-face interaction in grocery stores etc. was often the dominant means for acquisition in other countries). She was able to go to Australia and work with designers (writing ER diagrams in her hotel room) so that they could implement a database system that could accurately track the direct-selling approach. This allowed the channel to be managed more effectively. At the completion of the project, the database she designed was AMEX's most simple and cost-efficient database to date.

It was really cool to see how important database design is for an organization and how there are huge implications and potential opportunities for having this knowledge on hand. I'm sure we'll have the opportunity to apply what we're learning sometime soon in the future (we better, since at this pace our current knowledge will become obsolete quite soon)

ER Diagram

When reviewing the ER exercise models for our project, I was confused about when cardinalities and relationships had to be indicated between different entities - especially associative entities. It seems that relationships are described at the designer's discretion and is therefore an necessary portion of database design. The descriptions (ie talks with, is a, etc.) therefore only clarify relationships existing between entities.

For cardinalities, it is inconsistent whether or not they are outlined or not. In ER exercise #2 only some cardinalities are completely outlined (ie customer and sales person) while the others have only one pair of cardinalities if any at all. What is the significane, if any, of these missing cardinalities.

A member of my group said that this left the relationship ambiguous but does this have any implimication as to the nature of their relationship and their effect on the actual database structure?

Google Adwords

I immediately tried using google adwords. The keywords I put in were working right after I signed up. However, after checking over the weekend the keywords were no longer working. Is there anyone else who has used the system and experienced similar problems?

Google Design

I thorougly enjoyed last week's presentation, especially the first presentation. The way his company took advantage of the marketing concepts of "interrupt, engage, educate, and offer" was both interesting and new.

Of the opportunities presented at this presentation, the main question that rose to my mind was the specifics of how google determines high value websites. I have heard of meta tags, links inside the website, etc. as important factors in which it considers but I have not seen a consolidated resource which explains it. I understand that it is quite complex but anything that might be helpful in designing a high content website that would be picked up by google would be very helpful.

Derived Data?

In normalization, does anyone know why derived data is not allowed? Is it merely because the data would be inefficient to store because it can be calculated using a query?

In my purposes, I use an access database to interface directly with word in order to populate fields and generate customized templates. Derived data would be useful to have in that case so that I can easily interface the information seamlessly and not have to run a separate query. Using it in this manner, would derived data still be a bad idea for a database?