http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Design/Information-Design/Databases A listing of the most recently indexed works about Design and Information Design and Databases in the field of technical communication. en-us Copyright (c) 2005-08 by the EServer. All rights reserved. tclib-editorial@eserver.org (TC Library Editorial Board) webmaster@eserver.org (Geoffrey Sauer) http://tc.eserver.org/images/newlogo.gif http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Design/Information-Design/Databases http://tc.eserver.org/35706.html http://tc.eserver.org/35706.html For a database administrator, DBM (database management) tools make tasks related to maintaining relational databases efficient and fast. Prior to the popularity of these tools, most DBA’s had to use the command line to create, edit, and delete databases. In this article, we present to you the top five most popular/most voted for database management tools. http://tc.eserver.org/35048.html http://tc.eserver.org/35048.html Rather than exporting a whole document out of Acrobat, I'll focus on a table within a PDF page. Suppose you'd like to have this table's data in a spreadsheet so you can manipulate it. There's no need to retype the data into Excel. All you need to do is use Acrobat's Selection tool to highlight the content you wish to export. http://tc.eserver.org/34240.html http://tc.eserver.org/34240.html Design principles for XML schemas that eliminate redundancies and avoid update anomalies have been studied recently. Several normal forms, generalizing those for relational databases, have been proposed. All of them, however, are based on the assumption of a native XML storage, while in practice most of XML data is stored in relational databases. In this paper we study XML design and normalization for relational storage of XML documents. To be able to relate and compare XML and relational designs, we use an information-theoretic framework that measures information content in relations and documents, with higher values corresponding to lower levels of redundancy. We show that most common relational storage schemes preserve the notion of being well-designed (i.e., anomalies- and redundancy-free). Thus, existing XML normal forms guarantee well-designed relational storages as well. We further show that if this perfect option is not achievable, then a slight restriction on XML constraints guarantees a “second-best” relational design, according to possible values of the information-theoretic measure. We finally consider an edge-based relational representation of XML documents, and show that while it has similar information-theoretic properties with other relational representations, it can behave significantly worse in terms of enforcing integrity constraints. http://tc.eserver.org/34194.html http://tc.eserver.org/34194.html With the growing use of dynamic web content generated from relational databases, traditional caching solutions for throughput and latency improvements are ineffective. We describe a middleware layer called Ganesh that reduces the volume of data transmitted without semantic interpretation of queries or results. It achieves this reduction through the use of cryptographic hashing to detect similarities with previous results. These benefits do not require any compromise of the strict consistency semantics provided by the back-end database. Further, Ganesh does not require modifications to applications, web servers, or database servers, and works with closed-source applications and databases. Using two benchmarks representative of dynamic web sites, measurements of our prototype show that it can increase end-to-end throughput by as much as twofold for non-data intensive applications and by as much as tenfold for data intensive ones. http://tc.eserver.org/34151.html http://tc.eserver.org/34151.html With many database vendor products in the market and data intensive applications using them, it is often required to port the application to use the data or, migrate the data so that the application can use it. Migration of data is therefore one of the realities of the IT Industry. Some of the author's previous articles on migration can be found at the link. http://tc.eserver.org/34152.html http://tc.eserver.org/34152.html The process of programmatically creating the SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) tabular report is described. You will be creating a very simple report using the provided code. The approach is to introduce the programming by creating the three parts of a report: connection, dataset, and layout. Excerpt from the book, "Learning SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services.' http://tc.eserver.org/34154.html http://tc.eserver.org/34154.html Describes the use of Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services to transfer a table from MS Access 2003 to Postgres on EnterpriseDB. Some of the problems are discussed. http://tc.eserver.org/33828.html http://tc.eserver.org/33828.html Based on a broad survey of native XML database companies, this presentation describes how native XML databases are being used in the real world, including descriptions of why native XML databases succeeded and relational and other technologies failed. http://tc.eserver.org/33838.html http://tc.eserver.org/33838.html There has been much debate over two quite different approaches to implementing XML services. The "web services" approach leverages a rather large and not yet stabilized stack of formats and protocols built on top of SOAP that promise secure, reliable operations; the "REST" or "Plain old XML over HTTP" approach keeps the basic formats and operations quite simple, but puts the burden for any security or end-to-end reliability on the application developer rather than the computing infrastructure. This presentation considers a third approach which complements many of the ideas in both WS and REST but uses an XML-capable DBMS as the messaging hub or service broker. This makes it feasible to support asynchronous, loosely coupled communications between service requesters and providers. http://tc.eserver.org/33792.html http://tc.eserver.org/33792.html Most people in the XML community are aware of the term, "Native XML Database." Fewer are aware of the design details and implementation trade-offs made in construction of a native XML database. This paper focuses on issues surrounding storage in a native XML database. The format of stored XML, as well as the granularity of stored documents, has a large effect on database design and scalability, as well as how a system may be used by an application. Indexing of stored information is another topic that is at the core of XML database performance. http://tc.eserver.org/33782.html http://tc.eserver.org/33782.html Relational database systems (and the related standards body ANSI/INCITS H2) are busy adding XML support. One of the main components of such XML extensions will be support for the upcoming XML query language XQuery. The presentation will outline how XQuery and XML conceptually fit into a relational database environment. It will cover the organization of the XML in the database, how to type it using W3C XML Schema, how to query it both in conjunction with SQL and using top-level XQuery. It will present the concepts, talk about new developments in the ISO/ANSI SQL/XML standards and present some demos of XQuery in the upcoming Microsoft® SQL Server 2005. http://tc.eserver.org/33786.html http://tc.eserver.org/33786.html XML has dramatically changed the way we exchange and store data, and a new crop of standards promises to change the way we query data. On today's Internet, most data is queried and stored using relational databases, exchanged as XML, and displayed as HTML. For those who need to use XML and databases together, the last five years have been chaotic, creative, interesting, and often frustrating. Every major database vendor has added XML support, but each vendor takes a very different approach, and sometimes changes that approach dramatically from one version to the next. Today, the vendors seem to be lining up behind XQuery and the SQL/XML mappings - is this just the latest wave of marketing hype, or has the industry now found its way? http://tc.eserver.org/33380.html http://tc.eserver.org/33380.html Tom Johnson has an interview the site's creator, Geoff Sauer, who explains some of the details behind the site. I found the discussion of their taxonomy particularly interesting, as it's a problem I've struggled with in my own site. http://tc.eserver.org/32967.html http://tc.eserver.org/32967.html If you ask an application developer what the most important task is in developing new or enhanced applications for institutional data and processes, almost every time they will tell you it is the initial analysis of client requirements. Before purchasing any software, before storing a single byte of data in a database, analysis of the client's requirements is paramount to developing the appropriate solution. http://tc.eserver.org/32597.html http://tc.eserver.org/32597.html The addition of new values to a list is a common and necessary requirement. Schema designers often seek to build into the architecture a means to permit additional values that were unknown at design time. How can schema designers create an enumerated value list that is extensible and easy to implement? Discover several approaches used to achieve this goal. http://tc.eserver.org/32295.html http://tc.eserver.org/32295.html With the overall purpose of improving the information literacy skills of librarianship and information science students, an academic portal specifically centred on abstracts and abstracting resources is proposed. We take the existing literature, together with our knowledge and experience of abstract/abstracting topics and web-based technologies to conceive the research design. The research mainly consists of the selection, assessment and web-display of the most relevant abstracts on knowledge management, information representation, natural language processing, abstract/abstracting, modelling the scientific document, information retrieval and information evaluation. The resulting Cyberabstracts portal presents its products consistently and includes reference, abstract, keywords, assessment and access to the full document. Improvement opportunities for this unique subject-based gateway, representing much more than a mere subject catalogue, are uncovered as the starting point on a planned route towards excellence. http://tc.eserver.org/32309.html http://tc.eserver.org/32309.html All too often organizations have a fragmented approach to Information Management Documents/data is duplicated in many places and users are expected to enter the same information many times. Developing an Information Management Strategy is the foundation stone that should be in place before considering cost justifying or implementing Electronic Document and Records Management System (EDRMS). http://tc.eserver.org/32323.html http://tc.eserver.org/32323.html As a measure of information shared between two fuzzy pattern vectors, the fuzzy information proximity measure (FIPM) plays an important part in fuzzy pattern recognition, fuzzy clustering analysis and fuzzy approximate reasoning. In this paper, two novel FIPMs are set up. Firstly, an axiom theory about the FIPM is given, and different expressions of the FIPM are discussed. A new FIPM is then proposed based on the axiom theory of the FIPM and the concept of fuzzy subsethood function. Two concepts based on the idea of Shannon information entropy, fuzzy joint entropy (FJE) and fuzzy conditional entropy (FCE), are proposed and the basic properties of FJE and FCE are given and proved. Finally, classical similarity measures such as dissimilarity measure (DM) and similarity measure (SM) are studied, and two new measures, fuzzy absolute information measure (FAIM) and fuzzy relative information measure (FRIM), are set up, which can be used as measures of the proximity between fuzzy sets A and B. http://tc.eserver.org/31816.html http://tc.eserver.org/31816.html In this article I will cover the basics of migrating an application from an Access or SQL Server database to MySQL. We'll start with various reasons why you should (or should not) migrate your existing Access or SQL Server database to MySQL, then cover the planning stages of an application migration. Next we will look at the tools and methods for migrating your actual data from Access/MSSQL to MySQL, followed by some general guidelines for modifying your client application from a Microsoft database to MySQL. Finally, we'll look at some considerations to make when deploying your new MySQL database and application. http://tc.eserver.org/30825.html http://tc.eserver.org/30825.html This tutorial shows how SQL Server 2005 can be migrated to SQL Server 2008 quite easily by manually detaching the database from SQL Server 2005 and attaching it to SQL Server 2008. This is a much easier process than the 'Copy Database Wizard' which has two procedures one of which is the same as the manual process but carried out under the guidance of a wizard and the other which does not require the stopping of the Source server. http://tc.eserver.org/30115.html http://tc.eserver.org/30115.html FileMaker 9 opens up ODBC data in a revolutionary way, via the new feature External SQL Data Source. You can work with external data in your FileMaker Pro solutions as if it is FileMaker Pro data. http://tc.eserver.org/30114.html http://tc.eserver.org/30114.html XML will change the way you develop and integrate your databases. http://tc.eserver.org/29929.html http://tc.eserver.org/29929.html Business needs often necessitate data migration from a smaller, less secure database to a higher end, faster database server with a more reliable availability. A typical scenario is the migration of data from a desktop sized database such as MS Access or Fox Pro to any other higher end database servers such as MS SQL Server, Oracle, DB2 or SQL Anywhere Server. Oracle SQL Developer 1.2 with this latest version is sometimes called the Migration version as it supports migrating data from three vendors (MySQL, SQL Server and MS Access) to an Oracle database. In fact, it has been designed to migrate from more than one version of MS Access. This feature was not available in the version 1.1 of this tool. http://tc.eserver.org/29628.html http://tc.eserver.org/29628.html Many technical communicators manage large collections of graphic files and must keep track of which graphics are used in which deliverables. An effective tool for managing a collection of graphic files is a relational database management system (RDMS) such as Microsoft Access. Before the database can be built in Access, it is necessary to 1) create detailed functional requirements and 2) build a high-level conceptual model from which the database relations (tables) can be derived. A spreadsheet program can be used to build the conceptual model and generate the relations. Normalization checks should be performed on the relations before the database is implemented in Access. http://tc.eserver.org/29447.html http://tc.eserver.org/29447.html This article by Jayaram Krishnswamy shows how you can install the Oracle SQL Developer 1.2 and connect to an MS Access database. This article will cover the steps right from downloading and installing the Oracle SQL Developer, to connecting to a MS Access database, and using the SQL interface along with a few sample queries. http://tc.eserver.org/29299.html http://tc.eserver.org/29299.html This article by Jayaram Krishnswamy shows how you can develop a VB.NET 2.0 application using the integration features provided by the SQL Anywhere database. The SQL Anywhere tools are directly accessible without going out of the Visual Studio 2.O IDE. The article describes a window application with two examples developed with this easy to use integration interface. http://tc.eserver.org/28877.html http://tc.eserver.org/28877.html Apart from implementing the right technology, libraries need a clear understanding of changing user requirements, the capabilities and limitations of emerging technologies, and the changing nature of scholarly communication. http://tc.eserver.org/28660.html http://tc.eserver.org/28660.html As a human society, we're quite possibly looking at the largest surge of recorded information that has ever taken place, and at this point, we have only the most rudimentary tools for managing all this information--in part because we cannot predict what standards will be in place in 10, 50, or 100 years. http://tc.eserver.org/28526.html http://tc.eserver.org/28526.html A decision support database that is maintained separately from the organization's operational database. Support information processing by providing a solid platform of consolidated, historical data for analysis. http://tc.eserver.org/28522.html http://tc.eserver.org/28522.html A step-by-step must read article on SQL 2005 Reporting Services which creates a report and hosts it on an intranet server. http://tc.eserver.org/28508.html http://tc.eserver.org/28508.html Are you storing data about your constituents in three, five, even ten different databases? If so, you're not alone ' but it's costing you in time, lost revenue and decreased impact. Paul Hagen describes how to get all your data into one place with an integrated CRM strategy. http://tc.eserver.org/28382.html http://tc.eserver.org/28382.html MobiLink is a technology that can help multiple databases synchronized, a key requirement for mobile access to data. The article shows you how to create a model that can be deployed to access data on a SLQ 2005 Server remotely with a SQL Anyhwhere database. A forth coming article descibes the deployment details. http://tc.eserver.org/27944.html http://tc.eserver.org/27944.html This hands-on tutorial should help you in understanding the interface available for querying MS SQL Server 2005 databases. Some of the major features will be discussed as related to their use rather than going into a lot of details. Querying the database is one of the most basic activities that is routinely and frequently performed. http://tc.eserver.org/27748.html http://tc.eserver.org/27748.html If you're a Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) developer, you'll want to preview the SQLXML technology, currently in development. Check out procedures to create an XML document, store an XML document in a relational database, retrieve an XML document from a database, and navigate an XML document with the SQLXML Java data type. http://tc.eserver.org/27660.html http://tc.eserver.org/27660.html XQuery speeds up the process of finding information contained in an XML document, which is very handy when dealing with long XML documents. This article, the first of two parts, will teach you how to write XQuery expressions. http://tc.eserver.org/27661.html http://tc.eserver.org/27661.html XQuery speeds up the process of finding information contained in an XML document -- which is very handy when dealing with long XML documents. This article, the second of two parts, will teach you how to write XQuery expressions. http://tc.eserver.org/27633.html http://tc.eserver.org/27633.html This is the first article in a series which guides you in designing XML Schemas right from the basics without any hurdles. http://tc.eserver.org/27632.html http://tc.eserver.org/27632.html This is the first article in a series concentrating on implementing relations for designing robust XML schema definitions. http://tc.eserver.org/27631.html http://tc.eserver.org/27631.html This article is the second in a series that shows you how to implement relations for designing robust XML schema definitions. http://tc.eserver.org/27614.html http://tc.eserver.org/27614.html When it comes to providing reliable, flexible and efficient object persistence for software systems, today's designers and architects are faced with many choices. From the technological perspective, the choice is usually between pure Object-Oriented, Object-Relational hybrids, pure Relational and custom solutions based on open or proprietary file formats (eg. XML, OLE structured storage). From the vendor aspect Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, POET and others offer similar but often-incompatible solutions. This article is about only one of those choices, that is the layering of an object-oriented class model on top of a purely relational database. This is not to imply this is the only, best or simplest solution, but pragmatically it is one of the most common, and one that has the potential for the most misuse. http://tc.eserver.org/27286.html http://tc.eserver.org/27286.html Many steps are involved in the process of turning an initial concept for a database into a finished product that meets the needs of its user community. In this paper, we describe those steps in the context of a four-phase process with particular emphasis on the quality-related issues that need to be addressed in each phase to ensure that the final product is a high quality database. The basic requirements for a successful database quality process are presented with specific examples drawn from experience gained in the Standard Reference Data Program at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. http://tc.eserver.org/27059.html http://tc.eserver.org/27059.html Some types of searching operations stand apart from others in that they represent a different way of thinking about searching. Perhaps you're displaying a result set one page at a time. Half of that problem is to identify (search for) the entire set of records that you want to display. The other half of that problem is to repeatedly search for the next page to display as a user cycles through the records on a display. Your first thought may not be to think of pagination as a searching problem, but it can be thought of that way, and it can be solved that way; that is the type of searching solution this chapter is all about. http://tc.eserver.org/27057.html http://tc.eserver.org/27057.html A function is a special type of command word in the SQL99 command set. In effect, functions are one-word commands that return a single value. The value of a function can be determined by input parameters, as with a function that averages a list of database values. But many functions do not use any type of input parameter. http://tc.eserver.org/27058.html http://tc.eserver.org/27058.html Even if the vast number of end users leads to high calculation loads outside the database, you can generally throw hardware at the application load (the load outside the database, that is), hanging as many application servers as necessary off the single central database. http://tc.eserver.org/27036.html http://tc.eserver.org/27036.html If you are a Microsoft Access user, you'll be happy to know that you can export Access 2003 data as XML. http://tc.eserver.org/26794.html http://tc.eserver.org/26794.html It's likely that few professionals worry more about how their services are perceived than librarians. Lawyers may have more reason for concern, but many of them laugh all the way to the bank. We have little if not our reputation. So the new report published by OCLC, '€œPerceptions of Libraries and Information Resources,' deserves notice. Do libraries still matter? On what level? Will library use likely increase or decrease?--generated heartwarming comments but also much to cause concern. http://tc.eserver.org/26226.html http://tc.eserver.org/26226.html What is a knowledge base? What are the components necessary to build one? http://tc.eserver.org/25906.html http://tc.eserver.org/25906.html Can you trust the leading open-source database engines, PostgreSQL and MySQL, to deliver the performance and features that the Oracles, SQL Servers, and DB2s of the world do? Not just yet, but they could offer enough to meet your needs. Find out how they stack up against each other, as well as against the commercial alternatives. http://tc.eserver.org/25623.html http://tc.eserver.org/25623.html The notion of an integrated project database (IPDB) has existed for decades. Over that time many projects have been undertaken to develop the technologies and frameworks required to implement an IPDB. Also over that time, there has been promotion of the benefits and impacts that IPDB systems will have on the industry. As there are still no industrially stable IPDB systems in existence, the industry's perception of what they are and what they can do has diverged from many of the original presentations. It is also clear that researchers and de-velopers involved in IPDB development have many different ideas about what constitutes an IPDB and what is, or is not, possible to create. This paper aims to describe misconceptions which are growing up around IPDB systems, and presents the authors' view of reality (informed by the opinions of the UK network of experts in ob-jects and integration (URL-1 1999) which was run by the DETR). http://tc.eserver.org/25373.html http://tc.eserver.org/25373.html Till now there was no efficient way to embed the access to the MySQL database into a VB application. http://tc.eserver.org/25372.html http://tc.eserver.org/25372.html A large percentage of MySQL users are using MySQL on a web server hosted by an ISP. Most hosting providers block port 3306 (the MySQL server port) at the firewall, preventing outside access to MySQL. This is an important security practice and you should be very concerned if your ISP does not block port 3306. In this article I will demonstrate how to connect the MySQL GUI tools, including MySQL Administrator and MySQL Query Browser, to a remote server using SSH port forwarding. This article will be written with the assumption that the reader is using Microsoft Windows, but the principles presented will be applicable to Linux users. http://tc.eserver.org/25374.html http://tc.eserver.org/25374.html This article discusses writing software that helps the user effectively work with large amounts of data. The approach that I will describe is called filtering. http://tc.eserver.org/25351.html http://tc.eserver.org/25351.html Most users at one time or another have dealt with hierarchical data in a SQL database and no doubt learned that the management of hierarchical data is not what a relational database is intended for. The tables of a relational database are not hierarchical (like XML), but are simply a flat list. Hierarchical data has a parent-child relationship that is not naturally represented in a relational database table. http://tc.eserver.org/24997.html http://tc.eserver.org/24997.html Once you've built several MySQL databases, you'll learn some shortcuts to database design. Why stop there? Take this trick a step further and put together a generic database with a set of empty, standard tables. With a well-designed MySQL template, you can quickly assemble the basics of any database as needed. A template also allows you to focus on the more interesting aspects of a database project. http://tc.eserver.org/24996.html http://tc.eserver.org/24996.html When users ask for advice about their database applications, one of the first things I try to help them with is the normalization of their table structure. Normalization is the process of removing redundant data from your tables in order to improve storage efficiency, data integrity and scalability. This improvement is balanced against an increase in complexity and potential performance losses from the joining of the normalized tables at query-time. http://tc.eserver.org/23809.html http://tc.eserver.org/23809.html MySQL is old news ...or is it? In this fast-paced expose, Blane looks at where MySQL is now, and what's planned in Versions 4.1 and 5 - including the exciting developments of MySQL Cluster and Stored Procedures! http://tc.eserver.org/22750.html http://tc.eserver.org/22750.html Topic Maps provide a very flexible and robust way to add arbitrary data to a relational databases at runtime. Moreover, Topic Maps come with a predefined exchange mechanism (the XML Topic Maps (XTM) interchange syntax) to allow data to be exported to XML. http://tc.eserver.org/22678.html http://tc.eserver.org/22678.html This detailed, inclusive database tutorial is designed for beginners and those ready to dive in. Easy-to-understand definitions, real-world anecdotes, and concrete examples set this site apart from the others. http://tc.eserver.org/22589.html http://tc.eserver.org/22589.html Buzz about the value and implications of XML has reached an all-time high, with lofty claims of its potential to transform business and society, doing everything from simple document formatting to curing the common cold. I don't recommend you empty your medicine cabinet just yet. However, do take seriously the developments surrounding XML and its associated technologies. While XML might not merit all the hyperbole, it remains useful. Knowing how to apply this simple meta-language can help you create solutions that will give you a strong competitive advantage. http://tc.eserver.org/22406.html http://tc.eserver.org/22406.html Whether you want to build your own forum, publish the messages from a mailing list on your Website, or write your own CMS: there will be a moment that you'll want to store hierarchical data in a database. And, unless you're using a XML-like database, tables aren't hierarchical; they're just a flat list. You'll have to find a way to translate the hierarchy in a flat file. http://tc.eserver.org/22404.html http://tc.eserver.org/22404.html As MySQL developers, we are often required to keep two databases in complete sync with one another. http://tc.eserver.org/22330.html http://tc.eserver.org/22330.html Released in January 1998, MySQL is an open source relational database management system (RDBMS). It's based around the Structured Query Language (SQL), and is best for managing the content of the database as opposed to transactions, as MySQL does not support COMMIT or ROLLBACK. One of the biggest drawbacks of MySQL is it's lack of support for referential integrity, no stored procedures, no triggers, and no sub-queries. MySQL is free, and may be downloaded from download section at MySQL. http://tc.eserver.org/18827.html http://tc.eserver.org/18827.html The phrase database design means the set of steps, techniques, guidelines, and tools for translating a logical data model into a database specification. The database design consists of a structural representation, but may also include an integrity representation for rules enforcement. The structural representation is usually a database design diagram, from which you generate database-specific definitions. The integrity representation can take many forms from database specifications that define rule enforcements in the dbms layer, program specifications that define rule enforcements in object methods or other implementation, as well as specifications that define rule enforcement in a rules layer. Think of relational database design as a process for transforming the Logical Data Model into a relational database where the database design preserves the high quality properties of the Logical Data Model described in the book.