alexadler blog

BIT320 course feedback

For your updates, I have already finished all exams yesterday and I am right now in New York, sitting in front of a computer in a public online site.

Regarding the BIT320 course in general, I think it is really a good course in terms of two aspects. Academically, I have really learned a lot about database management system and how all XML, XSL stylesheet and XSLT function and link together. These techniques will be very useful in my future career especially when the business frequently process volumes of data. Functionally, the class tends to be information sharing and value adding in nature in the sense that everyone tried to use blogging as a means of communication. I found the Blog theory particularly useful because it is very convenient to use and comments can be easily viewed.

I will definitely recommend this course to other students in the business school and if you haven't done so, please fill in the survey as well, it would be really helpful for them to evaluate the course.

Survey:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=10950767022

Presentation

After the presentation on Thursday, I think that the class is really doing a great job in terms of the fact that everyone has tried to use what they have learned in BIT320 and applied them to their website and database management. I am really amazed by the presentation of other groups. I am also astonished by the functionality and user-friendliness of their websites. The most impressive one, in my opinion, should be the one about the high school database. They have virtually created another wolverineaccess system!!! In the past, I thought that this kind of sophisticated system can only be created by some other experts. However, their presentation has totally changed my mind.

Clearly, our group work is not that advanced, but anyways, we have given our best shot and made our very effort to improve our website. So... GOOD JOB BLOGDOG TEAM!!!

Group member

Apparently, the project did create some kind of confusion and frustration among our team member. Especially after the presentation when some other groups did a really great job, some of our group members started to get worried about our own websites and database and they thought that this class is going to lower their overall grade. Conflicts started to emerge, however, after a series of explanation, patience and comfort by other team members, the incident was resolved.

Actually, I am just feeling the same but didn't voice it out. I did worry about our grades. Even if we gave our best already, when compared with others' work, we are clearly a little bit behind. Would the outcome of our grade really be greatly affected by our incompentency of doing a better job....?

Project

Yesterday, after some group discussion and meeting with our professor, we made a big progress in terms of understanding how our second project is going to look like. We have also taken a large step forward and completed the first part of our work. In XSQL 5 and 6, the class tried to teach us something more indepth and  complicated to make the outlook of our tables more appealing on the web and also to add more functionality into our website and become more user-friendly. This Project is really valuable to me because it encouraged me to think in the users' perspective. For this project in particular, I really can't help controlling my excitment when I can foresee that the people in the company that we serve can actually input their data via the web, which is a much more easier way for them, without touching the more complex oracle stuff. I really can't wait to see how our result can benefit them.

Today's class

Today, we have talked about how to use webpages to add information to an existing database  through the creation of html form and xsql pages. After struggling for nearly a whole class, finally I managed to create one extra record in the customer table and successfully display it using the oracle. However, while I was very busy trying to figure out how to do the assignment, I was kind of confused with the underlying concept of the procedures that I was going over in class. So basically we need three parts to finish this assignment, namely an html document, xsql page and also the SQL of creating and adding values to tables. While I recognised all elements required, I do not quite get the idea of how these three things relate to each other to enable addition of data through the use of the Web. Do we need to know how to write and link the three elements together?

Dummies Book Chapter 1

For those advanced users of the XML and XSLT, this post maybe a little bit naive to them and this is kind of late to talk about stuff in chapter 1 of the book. However, for me it is a really good recap for me after going through chapters 5 and 6. When I was reading chapter 5, I started to get confused about how all the elements (XML document, XSL, XSLT, XSLT stylesheet and XPath) relate to each other. At first I thought that it would be workable for me to just look at the lecture notes to understand all background ideas about XML, but it turns out to be unsuccessful (maybe I was not paying enough attention in class :P). Therefore, for those of you who are still in the middle of nowhere and confuse about what we are actually do, redo chapter 1 is probably a good choice.

After reading Chapter 3

After reading Chapter 3 of the Dummies book, I got a much clear understanding of what stylesheet is all about. It did a very good job in relating the stylesheet, as the container of all other XSLT codes, with document, a container of all other paragraphs. It also made use of the ancester-parent-siblings-child model to explain how the XSLT processor reads and transforms our XML language into the output that we will see in webpages.

However, I still got a little confusion regarding the name (space) section. When we try to use a URL as a namespace identifier, are we trying to uniquely identify the definition of the elements that we are using? Do we actually need to create that URL before using it as the namespace identifier? Actually what are we trying to do with the namespace, does the XSLT processor actually go to the webpage and look for the definition of the elements? And finally, are there any unique namespace identifiers other than URL?

Since recently I have been attending interviews off-campus, I am kind of behind in class, and I have missed Tuesday's class. Are there any ways that I can catch up the materials covered in that class (aka XML vs HTML)? Also, the professor has introduced a new command in today's class, namely oraxsl, and I have missed the explanation of this command. Can someone explain the purpose this command?

The second thing I want to know is how far should I go through the XSLT for Dummies book for project purpose? Because it seems to be that the book contains a lot of information. Are they all necessary for this class?

Typepad

Typepad has recently improved its website, particularly in the posting section. Now, we can actually do more formatting of our text using typepad. This change does improve the functionality and flexibility of typepad; adding pictures and photos into our posts will also make them more appealing. However, by adding  more and more features into typepad, people may over-utilize the functions and cast a shadow on the actual function of weblogs. In my opinion, we want our post to be short and concise by writing clear passages, and add value to our blogs by creating links to other websites. Including too much details into the post is just the same as creating another web page. Maybe I am too critical, but here is what I think.

We also got a new tab called "Edit HTML", since we are now learning XML, do we have any chance in using this function in Typepad to do our project? If yes, is there someone who can fugure out how to use it and what is the advantage of using this new function?

XML

At first, XML is kind of scary to me because it contains a lot of symbols in the XML documents; but after reading the "Learning XML by O'Reilly", I have got a better understanding towards the basic concepts of XML documents. However, one thing I am not sure about is the tags in XML. As I recalled, I think we haven't talked about this topic in class; we have just talked about the root element but not the document prolog. If time is permitting in clas, I really look forward to some clarification about the prolog, especially the purposes of different tags.
Regarding the second group project, are we going to use the XML techniques extensively?