Introduction to Visual Studio 2010

Nice tutorial on how to create a simple form box using VS2010 C# here. It helped me create my first c# program.

I'm on Holiday at the moment....

but have a look at my new website schilbach.co.uk

Entity Relationship Revision...

Here's a decent basic revision tutorial for ER.

Get Ahead

And Another

Rapid Development Tools On The Move

Below is a piece about access to RDT's on the move, specifically iPhone compatibility. This is something I hadn't thought about when comparing the relative merits of Dabble DB, Zoho Creator and MS Access.

Which web-based databases have native client support for the iPhone by Jane Mccarty

This could really extend the range, functionality and remit of your Application. For instance it would allow users' to input data in the field allowing real-time update of your data. It could also be used to display information for the customer such as real-time quotes or data presentation.

The benefit of having these on small mobile platform would include lower hardware costs and quick deployment, especially over a bespoke hardware/software solution such as traditional data collection PDA's.

Another Article Evaluating More Generally MS Office v's Opensource and Cloud Options...

...but talks about the sort of things you should be considering when you are making application decisions:


Kiss Microsoft Office Goodbye: Three Alternatives to Office 2010 by Bill Snyder

Tool Evaluation

We’ve been asked to evaluate Zoho Creator, DabbleDb and Ms Access with respect to the following:

• Data model implementation
• Code generation
• Interface development
• Deployment

	Zoho Creator	DB Dabble	MS Access
Data Model			Strong Entity Relationship Management features
Code Generation	Deluge Scripting ‘WYSIWYG’	Very limited scripting available	Not available
Interface Development	Easy to create web based entry forms	Excellent  graphical outputs for Data   Easy to create web based entry forms	Easy to create forms and tables.
Deployment *based on 50 Users’	Based online. Anyone with an internet connection can access the application. Data stored online. Client may have privacy/security concerns. Low cost additional licenses’  - around £2 per User* Inability to share administration for a database without giving access to entire Zoho account	Based online. Anyone with an internet connection can access the application. Low cost additional licenses’  - around £6 per User* Data stored online. Client may have privacy/security concerns.	Can be used on any machine with MS Access on it. No Internet connection required. Large support network for both end user and developers. Data  is stored securely or locally within a company or clients’ network.

Other Points to Consider:

Long-term availability – Is the application going to available long-term.

An Example of this would be Cogheads. This was a ‘WYSIWYG’ database driven application service which started up in 2003, it was then bought by SAP in February 2009 and closed to the public in April 2009. SAP are currently using the technology internally.

Corporate Approval – In my work experience I have found that sometimes large companies can be hesitant about using online application for internal solutions and prefer the perceived security of longer established ‘off the shelf solutions’, e.g. MS Access.

This may be starting to change as large companies start to embrace the trend towards ‘cloud-computing’ and ‘thin-client’ technology. Smaller companies and clients would be more comfortable with cloud based IT services and would appreciate the minimal start-up costs and quick development times involved. 

Handy blog for this weeks task...

WebAppsAtWork by Jane McCarty

Building Table Relationships in MS Access 2007

Here

MS Access

I've been working to create forms following the tutorials. MS access seems really powerful as a database tool, and while it doesn't have the drag and drop usability of Zoho, but it is more flexible and customisable.

Below is a screen-grab of what I've been doing. Again I've customised the colours and inserted the logo from my blog to show how you could use it for corporate or small business purposes.

Access Introduction...

I haven't used MS Access for a a few years. I'm using this class to run through the Tutorial using Access 2007.

Initialy this tutorial helps me to create the data tables.

More to come...

Link with Branding.

Here's a Link that shows the below map, but this time with branding.

I've used the same branding as my RDT blog, this would be really useful if you were presenting data to a client, you could include your company branding to give a really professional impression.

Dabble Export

Map representation of sample sales data by region

Initial thoughts on Dabble DB

Dabble seems to concentrate on data manipulation and data presentation. Very Powerful and you can quickly manipulate data in ways that would take me ages in MS Excel. Also the ability to quickly share this information; in either specific views, part or whole data is very impressive...

Intial thoughts are that I would look to use ZOHO to collect Data via forms and then export it to Dabble to use the data to discover trends, opportunities and present the data to various audiences...

...more too follow...

Blogger & Zoho Creator Tutorials, Tips & Tricks

Here

And here's the email notification that I set-up to let me know when someone submits a form...

First attempt at Deluge Scripting...

Contact Details App - Created in Zoho

Zoho Creator - Rapid Development Tool..

I'm been messing about with Zoho Creator to produce an app that allows me to input information about how much private study time I'm doing for each subject. It's a bit rough at the moment as it's a work in progress and I don't know enough about the 'back-end' yet. I'm hoping to build up a database of info that I can use and manupulate later in the year...

Here's the Link...

The Idea is that I'll be able to ensure that I'm not neglecting any subjects, aswell as giving me a better understanding of Zoho

It's pretty intuitive with plenty of drag and drop options. I'd like to embed it into a website and create a database from the results eventually.

Useful Link:

First Things First: Prioritizing Requirements

More Info on Rapid Application Development....

External Link: Overview of RAD

Throw-away Protyping Rapid Application Development Methodolgy.

Click to Enlarge

Prototyping Rapid Application Development Methodolgy

Click to Enlarge

Phased Development

Click to Enlarge

Rapid Application Development

RAD was a reaction to the 1980's Structured Design approach. Structured Design was very rigid in its approach, required much documentation and instilled that the whole system design be planned and designed at the beginning of the project. This made it difficult to re-evaluate previous decisions.

RAD was designed to respond to these challenges and deliver a quicker, more flexible solution to client demands.

There are three main types of RAD:

1. Phased Development
   
2. Prototyping
   
3. Throw-away Prototyping.
   

 

More on these to follow...

The 5 Steps of Normalisation

The 5 Steps of Normalisation

1. List the 'unnormalised' data and identify repeating groups by placing them in ()
   
2. Choose a key for the main group. This is the Unique Identifier.
   
3. Extract the repeating group and give that a key.
   
4. Identify and extract Partial Key Dependencies
   

Identify and Extract Non-Key Dependencies.

Data Modelling

Data-Modelling
– A data model is concerned with the question 'What data does the system need to store and what is the best way to store it?'

Data modelling uses two techniques to achieve this:

• Entity- Relationship Modelling (ERM)
  
• Normalisation
  

ERM Modelling is a top- down approach:

Normalisation is a bottom-up approach:

An Entity is any data object. This can be an object or a person. An Entity is any object that a system needs to store data about. Eg. Customer, Product

An Attribute is the data item or elements that make up the Entity.

The Occurrence of any Entity describes the Entity eg. Customer Name. The Entity can represent a number of Occurrences.

Primary Keys are unique identifiers. If a system is to work than we must be able to uniquely identify every Occurrence of an Entity.

Enterprise Rule is a rule the business imposes onto the system.

Relationships link the above.

4 Principles of Database Developing:

1. Identification of Entities
   
2. Construction of a process independent model of the stored data requirements
   
3. Construction of a robust data model
   
4. Construction of a logical model of the data
   

1. Identification of Entities
   

• Identify
  
• List Attributes
  
• Put Data in Logical Order
  
• Eliminate Redundancies
  
• Investigate and Record Relationships
  

Exercise:

The Library System: Worked Example

A library keeps records of loans, books and members. It stores member's names, addresses, status (junior or senior), loan limit (number of books a member may borrow) and date of birth; members are given individual member numbers when they join the library. The library also stores information about its books: title, authors, publisher, publication date, ISBN and purchase price. As some books are very popular, the library often buys several copies of the same book. All loans are for three weeks. The library needs to be able to record, edit and delete member details; record, edit and delete book details; record loans and returns; and reserve books. Overdue notices are to be sent when books are overdue. It also wants its library system to automatically update member status. The system must also record the current price of a book.

The following enterprise rules can be applied to the library data.

• Individual copies of books are identified by library ID number; when recording loans, the library needs to be able to identify which copy of the book has been borrowed. The book itself, i.e. a specific title/author combination, is identified by its ISBN.
  
• Members are identified by member number
  
• Member status determines how many books a member may borrow – the 'loan limit'. To keep the example simple, we are ignoring issues relating to fines for overdue books.
  

Entities

• Book
  
• Member
  
• Loan
  
• Reservation
  
• Copy
  
• Author
  

  
  

  Member Name
  

Address

ID Number

Date of Birth

Loan Limit

Book ISBN

Price – Purchase

Price – Current

Publication Date

Reservation

Stormy times for cloud computing? - Times Online

Stormy times for cloud computing? - Times Online

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Rapid Development Tools

Hello, my name is Harry Schilbach

I've just started on the Business Systems Design course at Teesside University.