Day 11, or: Why am I getting massively behind in blogging...

Blah.

Nevermind. I believe I answered my own question of long ago as to why I was not an engineer, and was a business student. The technical stuff that we're continuously learning might have been flashy and cool when it was new, but now after slogging through a few weeks of the stuff, it is no longer cool. Or at least not cool everyday. Especially after it got a lot more technical and in depth, such as this chapter we're on about data management. Data management is such an abstract concept that only the really hardcore engineers/technical geeks will probably find it wholeheartedly interesting...Ergo I fall behind in blogging for lack of interesting wall texts! Weak excuse, yes I know. Then again, it kind of is true.

Overall, man am I glad that with the text this past Thursday, this chapter is over. Haven't checked the next chapter, but hopefully a change of pace at least is good.

The example that preceded Tuesday's lecture was kind of a different approach, and I appreciated how it broke up the somewhat now monotony of slogging through technical material. It also really did make me think, that technically speaking each time you fill out one of those 'name, address, phone number', etc things is technically a new record on your person. And that of course, in addition, when another department or area requests a copy of your 'other' records, technically that's also another record on your person, but with that different group. One would think that the 'average Joe(/Jane)' that we are all currently wouldn't really be overly RECORDED in that sense, but if put this way, even we are very monitored...I don't know whether to feel more important, or less at ease, with all of the monitoring. I'll settle for more important at the moment, to put a positive spin on things.

As for the main lecture, there was a portion I was somewhat confused on. What are the differences between distributed database and external database? I could have sworn that when the diagram came up, Professor Tuggle gave an example of Wikipedia as a distributed database, except when it came to discussing the categories in detail, it changed to Wikipedia being an example of an external database? Which is it?

I am also looking forward to learning about Access, as it seems to be an interesting program. Enjoyed the example page given about how to use Access. However, overall I was wondering what are the practical applications of the massive discussions on these database management systems/techniques, data cleansing, and such? It is well and good to know the theory behind how these work, but I would like more practical examples, perhaps of how, for example, Macys would use data gathered to help its business prosper. This section, and at large this whole chapter, seemed very theoretical on top of being technical, which detracted from my interest.

And lastly, the story about Axiom was quite funny. It was amusing to think that an established company(or was it new at the time?) would easily accept that person's word on needing data for national security.