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.

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Prototyping Rapid Application Development Methodolgy

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Phased Development

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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.