Task 2.1

Write a blog entry about your experience. What tools did you use? Was it a difficult task? What parts of the task were difficult and what were easy Was it a realistic task? What was realistic about it, what wasn't? (value 1 point)

Today we were provided the grocery database's access file. The original schema was not normalised and quite inefficient in design. I used Microsoft Access to create new relationships and tables to bring the overall database to third normal form. Unfortunately because it had been approximately a year or more since I'd played around with normalisation I found it quite difficult to start!

All in all I found it relatively difficult, mainly because I had to remind myself about how to achieve each step within normalising a database. It was a generally realistic task, I could see how a company running in the real world might be completely oblivious to the fact that their database is not running as efficiently as possible..

Task 1.3

On the Moodle web page for this week you will find a link to chapter 2 of Donald Norman's bookThe Invisible Computer called "Growing Up: Moving from Technology-Centered to Human-Centered Products". Write a short blog entry summarizing the main points Norman make in this essay:

• Computers, regardless of the learning curve or expense will always be used if the benefits are great; as in if it can perform a difficult task with efficiency.
  
  
• The life cycle of a product can vary depending on it's appeal to the consumer. features of a technology that may be attractive when the product is first released doesn't always stay the selling point of such technology as time passes.
  
  
• As the needs of the consumer evolves we see the features of technology changes in-sync with these perceived "needs"/desires.
  
  
• As technological advances move out of the public eye, and become part of everyday life we in time start to take such technologies for granted. Norman makes a good point by mentioning "pencils, paper, stoves and pins" being at one point in time a technological feat, where now such things are part of our everyday lives.
  
  
• Norman talks of people being classified into five categories:

1. innovators - the earliest adopters who drive the technology.
   
   
2. early adopters - those who were willing to take a gamble on the new technology as they felt the benefits exceeded the costs.
   
   
3. early majority - at the beginning of the technology's popularity boom.
   
   
4. late majority - the late majority usuall want convenience, low cost and a good user experience. By this time the technology at hand has had many "bugs" or flaws removed and now relies largely on the overall user experience rather than the benefits the technology provides.
   
   
5. laggards - the latest or last people to accept the technology into their lives. Usually such purchases are caused by a simplification of technology on a user experience level along with a lower cost in comparison to the earlier adapters.

Task 1.1

Write a blog entry about your experience. Did it work? What problems did you have? What do you know about MySQL, ODBC, Excel and Access and what have you learned about those technologies? (value 1 point, individual 1 point).

The videos made the process very easy. Props to POD for creating such succinct and easy to follow how-to guides. I did get it to work, although with a little difficulty (the server address on the moodle instructions had a space in it, took me a while to figure that one out!!).

I know/think that MySQL is a database framework (is that right?) or atleast what Databases are created on (and is different to Oracle SQL in syntax but not conceptually). ODBC from what I understand is the middle man between the actual database and 3rd party applications (such as Excel and Access). ODBC allows such applications to access the tables of the database through the ODBC.