Extra Credit: My Avatar Experience

Creating my avatar was a lot easier than I had originally anticipated.  For some reason I had the preconceived idea that making an avatar would be a complex process with a lot of hassle and cost involved, but in reality, the entire process took very little time and effort on my part.  I used Face Your Manga (http://faceyourmanga.com/home_faceyourmanga_eng.html) as my online creation tool.  This website lets you make very simple avatars with limited customization options.  Though I was thrilled at how easy it was to follow the steps in the website, I was a little disappointed in not having a wider variety of options to choose from in order to tailor my avatar for my personal preferences.  Face Your Manga allows you to choose from a small list of features such as eye shape, clothes, background, and facial features, but the alternatives for customization are limited and simplistic.  However, since I am a beginner at the whole “avatar” business, I am thankful for the chance to experiment with Face Your Manga’s simple model before moving on to more detailed and complex avatar creation tools.  Overall, I had a lot of fun creating my avatar, and I’ll admit that I also had fun creating avatars for my five siblings for their future enjoyment. 

Database Project

For my last ISM 3004 projects, I had the chance to learn about Microsoft Excel and multimedia presentations.  In each of those projects I learned a lot and had fun in the learning.  This past week I completed another project that taught me about Microsoft Access 2007.  I’ll admit that my past experience with Access was not extensive, so the Access Database Project was out of my realm of familiarity.  However, after watching the class lectures and completing the project, I have a much better understanding and appreciation for all that Access offers.  In this project, the instructors gave us an Excel document full of data for the members of a gym that we then learned to manipulate and format in various ways using Access.  I learned that Microsoft Access is a relational database with many useful features and formatting capabilities.  I learned how to manipulate data using tables, queries, forms, and reports.  For each manipulation tool, I learned to modify my data, preserve the integrity of my data through data types, and format my data in ways that enhance the ease of analysis.  This project also taught me about the various ways to link data and reduce the duplication of data.  By the end of the project, Microsoft Access was not the big scary program that it had seemed before.

If there was one thing I would have done to increase the functionality of the database project, it would have been to separate the data into more than one table to decrease the duplicity of some of the data.  During the project, we were instructed to keep all the data in one table.  Looking back, I remember a warning message from the importing wizard that showed some data that had been replicated in the table.  It could possibly increase the usefulness of the data if I had separated and grouped some of the data into different categorize.  For instance, the personal information related to the gym members could have been stored in one table while the data relating to the members’ association with the gym itself (join date, left date, and membership type) could have been stored in a separate table.  In Access, we have the ability to break the data down into one topic per table, which can increase efficiency and ease of use.

Tutorial 3: Understanding Data Models

There come many times in a student’s life when he/she fails to understand a class topic and must use extra time and resources to fully comprehend the class material.  Such a time came for me last week when my computer class covered data models and database management systems (DBMSs).  For some reason, I had a hard time grasping the concept of data models.  As a result, I decided to focus this blog post on describing and comparing data models in the hopes of bettering my own understanding of this topic and hopefully yours as well.  We will begin by briefly describing data models and DBMSs, and we will end by looking at the three most common data models: relational, object-oriented, and multidimensional.

According to TechTerms.com, a database management system is a software system basically used for obtaining, organizing, and allowing users the opportunity to edit data.  A database can hold a massive amount of data in manageable formatting and categories.  A data model, on the other hand, works as the foundation for a DBMS.  Data models are the parameters that encompass how users see the data in a database.  For example, while one data model may allow users to view the data in a simple two-dimensional file, another model may show the data as organized from multiple dimensions for the user.  It is important to note that data models do not actually organize the data on the database disk, but instead, the model determines how the data appears to the user.

Now that we have covered DBMSs and data models, let’s move on to today’s three most popular data models.  The first model we will cover is the relational data model.  This model presents the data to users using tables, rows, and columns.  Figure 1 illustrates how a relational data model displays data in the Microsoft Access 2007 application.  The red box outlines the table within this particular document while the yellow box indicates the column and the blue box indicates the row.



Image of a Microsoft Access table created by me on 3/24/11



In this way, the relational database that powers Microsoft Access displays data for the users to read and modify as needed.  The relational data model also allows for queries and primary keys, and in Microsoft Acces, you can also use the database to create forms and reports.  Another feature of a relational database is the concept of relationships.  Within a relational database you can connect the data in one table with data in another table by applying a relationship to the tables.  As long as the tables you wish to relate have common columns, you can use the relational database to link your data as the simply Access model below illustrates. 



Image of Microsoft Access relationship summary created by me on 3/24/11



Any discussion about the relational data model would not be complete without also mentioning that this model is based on the Structured Query Language (SQL).  According to Prabhudev Konana Ph.D., SQL is a common standard language for defining and controlling databases around the world.  SQL has many different goals such as defining the different components of the database (tables, queries, etc…) and managing the different tables within the database. 

Now let us move on to the object-oriented database.  With this model, the data is not organized into tables, but instead, the data appears in objects.  Each object consists of the data and the related activities and processes behind the data.  As stated in the ISM 3004 textbook, some of the advantages to using an object-oriented database are as follows (Shelly and Vermaat, 2010):

·         More storage for different kinds of data

·         Faster access time

·         Object reusability

·         Better capabilities with unstructured data such as photos and audio

Though object-oriented databases have several advantages over relational databases, the object database is still used as a complement versus a replacement to relational databases (ODBMS.org).  Several cases have contributed to the object database’s complementary position such as the high costs associated with changing database types and the creation of object-relational mappers (ORMs), which are a combination of the object and relational databases.  Thus, for now at least, relational databases are still more commonly used in the business world over object databases.

Two common ways in which object-oriented databases are used today include computer-aided design (CAD) and websites.  In such instances where more data types are used and unstructured data is prevalent, object-oriented databases are a more efficient tool to work with.  The CAD drawing in Figure 3 was likely created using an object-oriented database, and many web users use this data model to power their websites. 



This screen capture of a CAD drawing was taken by me from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Schneckengetriebe.png and is a file from the Wikimedia Commons, which is a freely licensed media file repository.



The final database we will cover today is called the multidimensional database.  In this database, the data can be stored in tables that exceed two dimensions.  This means that the user can gather and modify more data much faster and more efficiently than if the user used a relational database.  One of the key uses for multidimensional databases is in data warehousing.  Data warehousing provides an excellent location for storing a large amount of data and giving users the chance to work with the data in various ways.  Sometimes the data in the database is located in different places.  This distributed database gives more value to data warehousing because multidimensional databases and data warehousing can consolidate the separated data easier than any other data model we’ve discussed so far.  Using the example from the ISM 3004 textbook, I constructed Figure 4 as a very simply illustration of what data warehousing does with the help of multidimensional databases.  The data from the different dimensions goes into the data warehouse and is viewed and used by the different users on the other end.  In this way, multidimensional databases provide a great tool to businesses everywhere. 



Image created by me on 3/22/11



For this tutorial, we covered some of the fundamentals of database management systems and data models.  We looked into the relational, object-oriented, and multidimensional models and checked out a few examples of these databases.  Overall, it is very clear that the different data models fill an important position in helping businesses and personal users organize and edit their data.

Acknowledgements:

Techterms - http://www.techterms.com/definition/dbms

Shelly and Vermaat. (2010). Discovering Computers 2010: Living in a Digital World. Cengage    

     Learning. pages 533-536.

Prabhudev Konana Ph.D. - http://misbridge.mccombs.utexas.edu/knowledge/  

     classes/mis373.1/pdf/ddl.pdf

ODBMS.org - http://www.odbms.org/Introduction/whenODBMS.aspx

Figure 1 & 2 – Screen captures of Microsoft Access 2007 (self-created)

Figure 3 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Schneckengetriebe.png