SugarDaddy

Blog on Blogging

Blogging for me has been a mixture of two worlds. In one sense, I found that many weeks blogging was indeed a fruitful experience that was worth putting some time into. These times were generally the weeks where I was trying to tackle some issue that I lacked a solid understanding of. The weblog creates a convenience store of office hours, ie it is open 24 hours a day with convenient, timely responses to questions. Ultimately the effectiveness of this service relies on the professor's commitment to constant monitoring of the blog space (much like the convenience store worker who sells you middle of the night items). I thought Bud did a great job responding to blog posts, or at least responding to blog-questions in class. So in this sense the weblog was invaluable at facilitating class questions and information between teacher and student.

The second world of thought I have was that several times throughout the semester I found myself blogging just because it is a required component of the class. At times this seemed to be a constant task instead of a value added experience. This is probably just a personal view, but nonetheless something I found myself thinking repeatedly. I have a suggestion for future blogging classes: Have an optional weekly topic that students are free to explore if they so wish. This would give students something to focus a blog on during those times where a blog topic doesn't necessarily pop into mind. Students would still be free to post other items if they so pleased, but a little guidance for us blog-newbies is always appreciated.
Overall I do feel like blogs were a valuable component of the course, and I would really like to see this type of thing expanded to non-tech-oriented courses. A functional weblog would have been an invaluable item in many of my courses last year.

Happy holidays everyone
Neil

Course views

I just wanted to comment on the value of this course.

I have always wondered about the web applications of databases. This course seems like it could be invaluable to businesses who would like to have accurate, up-to-date information about their database (and hence their business).

Clearly all businesses would like to have this type of information on tap, but it seems like this could be particularly valuable for a small business. Smaller businesses need to be more flexible and swift than their larger competitors. Having some type of web-accessible database could allow employees of such a business to have access to information about their business virtually wherever they can connect to the internet. Not only could the SQL-XSQL-XML-XSLT process enable information sharing, it is also relatively easy to implement.

If I was starting a business today, I would love to have this type of system working for me.

Ch 5 Comments

First of all I'd like to wish everyone a happy Turkey Day, get fat and watch football people, it's a beautiful thing...

My second comment is about Ch 5 on XPaths. I found that this chapter really pulled together Ch 3 & 4 for me. It actually answered my previous post (I guess I should have just read the next chapter).... Here is my understanding of the material.

Templates and match patterns basically go out and retrieve whatever nodes are specified in their axis::nodetest[predicate] match pattern. These nodes sort of get put into some magical computer barrel, where the instructions (apply-templates, value-of, copy....etc....) can come in and pick from the barrel what it chooses.

This process seems to be fairly analogous to the SQL GROUP BY and HAVING statements that we used previously in the course. GROUP BY would go out and put things into groups, and then the HAVING statement would filter those groups. It may be a weak analogy but it's just sort of how I'm thinking about it.....

Just a couple of other quick observations....
The parent axis abbreviation .. is the same as the old DOS .. used after cd to go to the parent directory

The old match = "house_statistics" example from our xsql labs meant that house_statistics was actually a location step with no axis or predicate, only a node test known as house_statistics

Now I KNOW WHY THAT WORKED!!!

XSLT Ch. 4 Thoughts and Questions

I've been going through Chapter 4 and I have a specific question regarding Select vs. Apply-Templates.

Templates basically define the interaction between XML and XSLT. XSLT uses templates and their instructions to pull specific information out of an XML document.

Match Patterns vs. Apply-Templates Select: Match patterns define a list of nodes that you want to be included in the result document (AKA result tree). I'm still a little shady on this, I guess I'm wondering what exactly an XPath means.... I guess this question gets to the heart of my confusion: What is the difference between specifying a "match" pattern and specifying the "select" option in an "apply-template" instruction? It seems like both of them go through XML and pull out the specified values....

Namespaces and URL Significance

I have a question regarding namespaces in XSLT. The book defines a namespace as an XSLT entity that is used to distinguish one set of element names from another set.

My interpretation of this is that if one XML user defines an element named "SharkBowl", the namespace insures that if another user names an element "SharkBowl", the two will not be confused with each other.

The way in which the namespace accomplishes this however, is what I'm having trouble with. What is the specific significance of a URI?? The book defines a URI as the method in which resources on the Web are named, the most common of which is URLs..... so we give XSLT an address of sorts as a namespace. What is at this address though? What sort of magical black box does there need to be at the URI in order to insure that "SharkBowl"s don't get confused??

XSQL Troubles

I need help..... I've been trying to work through the 2nd class on XSQL, and I am running into a wall that I just can't figure out.

The slides state that you should be able to write:

"xsql query1.no_style.xsql | more"

into the prompt while you are under the XSQL1 directory and it should yield the 89 records where age=32, in tagged XSQL format.

I am getting a plethora of error messages:

XSQL-007: Cannot acquire a database connection to process page.
ORA-00604: error occurred at recursive SQL level 1
ORA-04031: unable to allocate 20668 bytes of shared memory ("large pool","unknown object","Alloc environm","Failover SCH")
ORA-06512: at "LBACSYS.LBAC_CACHE", line 517
ORA-06512: at "LBACSYS.LBAC_EVENTS", line 82
ORA-06512: at line 2

I have gone back and made sure that cis320 is the connection name, and that uniqname and password are correct in the config file. Anyone have any clue why I'm getting this error? Help would be appreciated.

EXAM Studying

Hey everybody, anyone interested in a group study effort? It has always been my experience that the more people that are involved in a group, the more learning each person experiences.... I am proposing a study session after Bud's office hours in Kresge. I will be there either way, if anyone is interested feel free to show up.

Welcome to BIT320: Databases and Information | MySmartChannels

Welcome to BIT320: Databases and Information | MySmartChannels

I was thinking about what Professor Gibson was drawing on the board today in class, and something occurred to me about the reliability of the LINUX4-LINUX2 relationship. Isn't it true that having users go through LINUX4 before they get to the ORACLE software on LINUX2 reduces the reliability of the database? IE if LINUX4 fails, there is no way to access the ORACLE server LINUX2. This would cause the normal user to believe that there is a problem with the ORACLE server, when in fact the only problem is that the messenger server has gone down... It seems like this situation relaxes the computational load on the ORACLE machine at the price of introducing some extra variability into the process. Am I interpreting this situation correctly?

Mozilla vs. IE

The RSS Weblog | MySmartChannels

Are there any specific advantages to using Mozilla vs. using IE as your web browser (hatred of Microsoft does not count)? When I have used Mozilla I can't say I've been all that impressed/convinced that it is a better explorer. What say you all? Mozilla or IE?? Any advantages that are specific to weblogging would be particularly useful....for those of you who may not have ever tried it out I have provided a link to their web site.
Mozilla's Web Site

Partial Dependency

SugarDaddy | MySmartChannels

Keeping in line with my string of class questions... here is my newest query. What exactly is meant by a partial dependency? I guess I have a few questions about how exactly you get from 1NF to 2NF. I understand the 8 step process for 1NF.... can anyone clarify 2NF?