Confusion
Tends to happen when the material speeds past in a blinding blur. With confusion, I tend not to have fun things to say about the lecture. Given that I am now taking notes for two, I am so much more focused on getting down a coherent presentation on paper, and will tend to shuffle the immediate comprehension out the window. This is what happened for me in Thursday's lecture. In retrospect, some of the things do look interesting and I could written wittier things, but by this point I'm more eager to get through this block of material to the test, and move on to something different.
Case 1's concept of data sharing, in particular, was quite fun to learn. I didn't know what Amazon and eBay did, with their customer ratings system, was considered sharing their company's data with the public. I suppose this kind of thing is so ingrained in my understanding of consumerism, and the whole current societal structure, that it didn't seem like any new concept to me for Amazon and eBay ratings to be open to the public view. When I decide to make some kind of big purchase, and even sometimes for small purchases, I will always turn first to google, and type in something along the lines of "product X reviews". In this way, I want to be sure that I am spending my money on a quality product, without having to leave my home to go to a store and handle the product myself. As far as others contributing entrepreneurial ideas though, I don't understand what that means. Unless there was another aspect of data sharing besides making customer reviews public?
One question-why are flat files considered "flat" files? From what I understand of the lecture, what makes the files confusing is that each department keeps a different format of record from the others, or a slight variation of format. A marketing department may keep first and last name together, whole address, whereas a billing department may separate first and last name, then address(as mentioned in class). Wouldn't this practice be adding dimensions(albeit confusing ones) to the filing? So it seems like the name "flat" file is somewhat of an oxymoron.
Later on with the discussion of key fields and accessing records, I was a bit miffed about being named as the example! Bad memories of unwanted attention in business law, where the professor though I was smart and would rather frequently make references to my intellect. A bit off topic but, its not that I necessarily think I'm an idiot, but I'm not that fond of being put in the center of attention. Professor Tuggle, I'd prefer no more references to me please? If that's not too weird of a request...
Back on the subject of key fields, the entire idea is pretty cool. I'd be interested in learning more about how the mysterious "transformation algorithm" that allows key fields to be instant locators, works. Again, I probably could and should have been an engineer.
Last thing, the definitions of the different database structures were cool to listen to. The pictures certainly helped though!
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You can READ other customer reviews, but you don't actually have files with those reviews on them that you can use, e.g., combine with reviews appearing on other websites.
ReplyDeleteFlat files is a just a name that IT people use.
I'll try to remember to not single you out, but you're such an appealing target!