Task 2.1

This in fact was - and maybe is since it is not complete yet - a very cumbersome task. I had very difficult time normalising the database since I forgot most of the things about normalisation. Honestly I really didn't understand why we have to do this huge task in SDI, this would be more suitable for the database subject, however there were good points about why different database structure is needed for different purpose in organisations which I think is a realistic situation in regards to answering if the task was realistic or not.

As mentioned in the studio, different database structure suits different purpose e.g. for BI purpose or transactional database and they vary in terms of performance or ease of use so re-structuring database seems necessary in order to change the database to suit the purpose.

whether it's done in the way we did or not i.e. manually by hand or by some tools is the answer which I like to know as feedback, however it doesn't seem wise to do it manually unless there is no tool to perform the action.

1.3 Growing Up: Moving from Technology-Centered to Human-Centered Products

In the early years of computers or better to say computer systems, factors which users appreciate and determined value of system differed significantly. That time the only important aspect of system was to be proven sufficiently great regardless of cost & clumsiness.

Changing & improving capabilities of technology has made significant impact on people's expectation from systems. At the beginning, people used to buy technology for the sake of technology, they had single device for every single function, these people are known as early adopters. At that stage the only important factors were quantitative factors and other factors such as ease of use, productivity, usability etc were always neglected.

When technology becomes mature, we take it for granted. We no longer seek same factors in evaluating their values. for example in early ages of computing, the most important thing was to ensure that computers are working and are reliable, now a days no longer people seek these characteristic since they all work reliably most of the times, now it's important to have same product with same features & performance for less price.

As the computers become more mature, some aspects are taken for granted such as performance, functionality and reliability which were the subject of interest of early adopters who had high technological skills but new computer users are paying more attention to cost, ease of use, physical attractiveness and prestige. So as technology becomes mature it moves to background i.e. technological aspect of product loses importance and on the other hand things such as emotion becomes more important to developers to make the system a real consumer-product. When first a technology is introduced, only people who are high-tech will buy and use product who only care about technological aspect but when the product reaches to a point where it satisfies performance and technological aspect new consumer enter the market and use the technology who take the previously mentioned criteria for granted and with different expectations.

One big problem here is that satisfying these two kinds of consumers requires completely different approach – paradoxical approach!

If a product wants to be successful, the company needs to focus on three aspects;

• Technology: to meet performance, functionality and other technological aspect of product. It's the technology that makes things happen - without proper technology non of these things can happen. The Xerox Star & Apple Lisa are two example that didn't have proper technology although they met some other criteria.
  

• User experience: to meet and satisfy user and their expectation of the system. There might be some conflicts with marketing; marketing tend to focus on customer but UE tend to focus on users of the system.
  

• Marketing: to remain in the market with reasonable price. Marketing needs to understand who are customers, what are their expectations, why they buy the product and how much they are willing to pay. One thing that companies need to distinguish is the difference between customer(a person who pays and buys the system but not necessarily uses it) and user (people who touch the system and use the system). People buy product based on perception but the reality so it's very critical to place the product in the right place in the market
  

1.2 Memo to Anne & Elizabeth

Dear Anne,

Following our coffee meeting regarding to establishing a online retail shop, here is a brief outline you should approach.

First of all, regarding the domain name; I should say obviously an easy-to-remember domain name will help a lot since people can remember it easier. It will facilitate advertising however what distinguishes you in the dynamic world of the Internet where other shops are just a click away are good price, quality of service, short response time and website's usability and ease of use.

Since you are just stating the business - which is very small in size - it's not smart idea to have dedicated IT staff to develop an eCommerce system and maintain it. While developing systems internally have some advantages like meeting specific needs and high customisation, it is so expensive and takes lots of time which is not advisable for a small retail shop at this size.

At this stage, you as a retail shop have very generic needs which can be met by available eCommerce software packages, not to mention that these software packages can be customised to some degree based on the nature of the business you're doing (haircare industry in this case) to meet some of your specific needs and has templates and pre-designed features that can be added as you need them.

Considering your current circumstances - a new small business without any IT staff and with limited budget - the main advantage of this approach for you is its short implementation time, and having experts implementing the system, lower development cost and having maintenance available staff available to you.

Kind regards,

Siavash

1.1 About ODBC & SQL

it's desired to have one single database in organisations, but there exist more than one applications - in fact there are multiple applications in organisations which access the database and draw data when they need it.

Applications in order to access the database need a connection, this connection of course can be established in many ways. ODBC aims to provide a standard way using SQL to connect different applications such as MS Access, MS Excel, dynamic web pages or other applications such as data mining tools (e.g. WizRule). So if applications want to get data which doesn't exist on their HDD, first they need connect to the relevant database, ODBS provide this connection; once this connection is established any application can access to the database without establishing the connection again. So the connection is only established once but depending on the setting of the system authentication is required.

As said ODBC access database by SQL which is a DBMS language for programing and structuring language.

According to Wikipedia ODBC includes two parts:
1. the driver manager which works as an interpreter between database & applications.
2. the database driver which includes details of the database itself.

fist written on: July 14, 2008

FIT2027 - SDI

This is not a post for assessment, I just wanted to say that I started blogging for my new subject FIT2027 - Systems Design & Implementation. I didn't create a new blog, I use my old systems analysis & design blog for the same purpose...

Week 11

Skipped week 10...

so many assignment still so many more to go...

this week User Interface Design...

it's forms, buttons & all the relevant input and output user needs to interact with to be able to complete the desired task. The inputs & outputs can be identified by context diagram, or other DFD diagrams in other levels. If the OO approach is being used in analysis trigger in the event table might be the source to identify the required input/output.

One of the characteristics of a well-designed user interface is not necessarily providing too mush information but enough & well-organized. user should be able to navigate through pages & find necessary information easily.

nobody can tell whether the interface is well-designed but the user. there some factors out of control of human which should be considered when designing the interface. these factors are called human factors.

form can be designed in windows or browser; but having browser form has the advantage of sharing one form for internal staff as well as consumer and suppliers

Week 9

Traditional design,

Design phase can be in two ways; traditional & OO the design you choose is in close collaboration with the analysis but doesn't mean if you have done OO analysis you can't move to traditional design. yet some parts don't match...

Traditional approach focuses on top-down approach decomposition of function to be performed by given program. what the user see when interacts with system is user interface, behind that interface thousands of programing code exists.

Consider system analysis & design book, it has many chapter & each chapter talks about one topic, on the other hand to understand some chapters you have to read previous chapters... this is exactly what happens in traditional design, the application software (the book) is divided into many modules (like chapters) and each module should perform one specific function which is referred to as cohesion, the more the function is specific & identifiable the more module is cohesive (highly cohesive). modules are connected to each other but what we are looking for is not strong relationship between modules. modules which are not heavily connected to each other are called loosely coupled. modules with high cohesiveness & less coupling are desired since codes are easy to find & locate and changing one module doesn't lead to chaos.

The models we use to represent traditional approach can be divided into 3 type: flowchart, structure chart & pseudo code.