DATA WAREHOUSE

The word data warehouse was first developed in the early 1990s. It was used to refer to an integrated collection of information that could help companies and organizations make better decisions.

To be effective, a data warehouse had to be integrated, subject oriented, nonvolatile, and time variant.

Being subject oriented means that the data will provide information about a specific subject rather than the information about the functions of a company. Because a data warehouse is subject oriented, it will allow you to analyze information that is connected to a specific subject.

Being integrated means that the data that is collected within the data warehouse can come from different sources, but can be combined into one unit that is relevant and logical.

Having a time-variant means that all the information within the data warehouse can be found with a given period of time.

It is important that the information contained within a data warehouse is stable. While data can be added, it should never be deleted. This property is referred to as being non-volatile.

It is important for data to be cleaned before it can be placed in the warehouse. The data cleansing process is usually done during the data acquisition phase. Any data that is placed in a warehouse before being clean will pose a danger to the system, and it cannot be used. The reason for this is because the data may not be correct if it is not cleaned, and a company may make incorrect decisions based on it. This could lead to a number of problems.

ENTERPRISE RESOURCE PLANNING (ERP)

Enterprise Resource Planning or ERP is an industry term for integrated, multimodule application software packages that are designed to serve and support multiple business functions. An ERP system can include software for manufacturing, order entry, accounts receivable and payable, general ledger, purchasing, warehousing, transportation and human resources. Evolving out of the manufacturing industry, ERP implies the use of packaged software rather than proprietary software written by or for one customer. ERP modules may be able to interface with an organization's own software with varying degrees of effort, and, depending on the software, ERP modules may be alterable via the vendor's proprietary tools as well as proprietary or standard programming languages.

Why is it Necessary? By becoming the integrated information solution across the entire organization, ERP systems allow companies to better understand their business. With ERP software, companies can standardize business processes and more easily enact best practices. By creating more efficient processes, companies can concentrate their efforts on serving their customers and maximizing profit.

Market Leaders The top five ERP vendors, SAP, Oracle Corporation, Peoplesoft, Inc. (now Oracle Corp.), JD Edwards & Company, and Baan International, account for 64 percent of total ERP market revenue. These vendors continue to play a major role in shaping the landscape of new target markets, with expanded product functionality, and higher penetration rates.

The Future of ERP

Industry analysts expect that every major manufacturing company will buy the software, which ranges in cost -- with maintenance and training -- from hundreds of thousands of dollars for a small company to millions for a large company. AMR Research of Boston says consolidation among the major players will continue and intensify. ERP vendors are expected to put more effort into e-commerce, CRM and SCM initiatives, with leaders redirecting between 50% and 75% of their R&D budget to these projects. SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT (SCM)

Supply chain management is a term used to describe the overall process of planning, implementing, and controlling what goes on at the supply chain in order to satisfy customers needs in a quick, efficient manner. As carried out in practice, supply chain management can involve everything from overlooking the exchange and storage of raw materials, taking inventory of all work that is in process, as well as the movement of goods from their point of origin to the point where they will be consumed.

In other words, supply chain management is the process of overlooking and making the necessary arrangements for the sourcing, procurement, conversion, logistics and management of the supply chain. Those working in supply chain management must also collaborate and coordinate the movement of goods with channel partners. These might include anyone from customers to suppliers, from third party providers of specialized services to intermediaries in the supply chain. Essentially, the field of supply chain management overlooks all fields of supply and demand management within particular companies, while also working across different companies.

Supply chain management is in many ways an extension of the field known as logistics. Although some argue that the two fields are dissimilar, they are actually

alike in quite a number of ways. There are also supply chain management software products available on the market.

Major Issues in Supply Chain Management Those working in the field of supply chain management have to acquaint themselves with the following issues, which their SCM addresses. y The first is the issue of distribution. Supply chain management must keep account of the suppliers names and addresses, their facilities, centers of distributions, as well as their warehouses and customers. The entire distribution network configuration must be understood.

Once the distribution logistics are sorted out, there must be a planned strategy of distribution. There are many things to be decided when it comes to how this strategy will operate whether it will be centralized, decentralized, whether shipping will be direct or not, etc.

Thirdly, supply chain management deals with the flow of information. Systems must be integrated in to the supply chain that will ensure important info is stored this might include inventory data, transportation info, forecasts, or demand signals.

Finally, supply chain management deals with the management of inventory. Raw materials, finished goods, and work in process is all taken in to account in both quantitative and qualitative terms, and the location of the inventory is also taken in to account.

Timely and accurate supply chain data aids companies in shipping off or manufacturing only the amount of the product as there is a market for. This is called just in time manufacturing. This allows firms to cut down on their inventory storage, and thus save money

LAN: Local Area Network

y y y y y y y y y

Typically connects computer in a single building or campus. Developed in 1970s. Medium: optical fibers, coaxial cables, twisted pair, wireless. Low latency (except in high traffic periods). High speed networks (0.2 to 100 Mbps). Speeds adequate for most distributed systems Problems : Multi media based applications Typically bus or ring topology Ethernet, Token Ring

WAN: Wide Area Network

y y y y

Developed in 1960s. Generally covers large distances (states, countries, continents). Medium: communication circuits connected by routers. Routers forwards packets from one to another following a route from the sender to the receiver. Store-and-Forward

y y y y y y

Hosts are typically connected (or close to) the routers. Typical latencies: 100ms - 500ms. Problems with delays if using satellites. Typical speed: 20 - 2000 Kbps. Not (yet) suitable for distributed computing. New standards are changing the landscape.

IT
ADVANTAGES

1. Communication The foremost target of internet has always been the communication. Now we can communicate in a fraction of second with a person who is sitting in the other part of the world. Today for better communication, we can avail the facilities of e-mail; we can chat for hours with our loved ones. There are plenty messenger services in offering. With help of such services, it has become very easy to establish a kind of global friendship where you can share your thoughts, can explore other cultures of different ethnicity.

2. Information

Information is probably the biggest advantage internet is offering. The Internet is a virtual treasure trove of information. Any kind of information on any topic under the sun is available on the Internet. The search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing are at your service on the Internet. There is a huge amount of information available on the internet for just about every subject known to man, ranging from government law and services, trade fairs and conferences, market information, new ideas and technical support, the list is end less.

Students and children are among the top users who surf the Internet for research. Today, it is almost required that students should use the Internet for research for the purpose of gathering resources. Teachers have started giving assignments that require research on the Internet.

3. Entertainment

Downloading games, visiting chat rooms or just surfing the Web are some of the uses people have discovered. There are numerous games that may be

downloaded from the Internet for free. The industry of online gaming has tasted dramatic and phenomenal attention by game lovers. Chat rooms are popular because users can meet new and interesting people. In fact, the Internet has been successfully used by people to find life long partners. When people surf the Web, there are numerous things that can be found. Music, hobbies, news and more can be found and shared on the Internet.

4. Services Many services are now provided on the internet such as online banking, job seeking, purchasing tickets for your favorite movies, guidance services on array of topics engulfing the every aspect of life, and hotel reservations. Often these services are not available off-line and can cost you more.

5. E-Commerce

Ecommerce is the concept used for any type of commercial maneuvering, or business deals that involves the transfer of information across the globe via Internet. It has become a phenomenon associated with any kind of shopping, almost anything. You name it and Ecommerce with its giant tentacles engulfing every single product and service will make you available at your door steps. It has got a real amazing and wide range of products from household needs, technology to entertainment.

DISADVANTAGES

1. Theft of Personal information

If you use the Internet, you may be facing grave danger as your personal

information such as name, address, credit card number etc. can be accessed by culprits.

2. Spamming Spamming refers to sending unwanted e-mails in bulk, which provide no purpose and needlessly obstruct the entire system. Such illegal activities can be very frustrating for you, and so instead of just ignoring it, you should make an effort to try and stop these activities so that using the Internet can become that much safer. A major chunk of all emails constitute spam today.

3. Virus threat

Virus is nothing but a program which disrupts the normal functioning of your computer systems. Computers attached to internet are more prone to virus attacks and they can end up into crashing your whole hard disk, causing you considerable headache. E.g.: Love Bug virus

4. Pornography This is perhaps the biggest threat related to childrens healthy mental life. It is a very serious issue concerning the Internet. There are thousands of pornographic sites on the Internet that can be easily found and can be a detrimental factor to letting children use the Internet.

COMPONENTS OF INTERNET

1. Web Browser

A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web i.e. Internet. IT is a software application used to locate and display Web pages. A user can access internet

through a browser, where he enters a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) into the address bar to go to the desired website. A URL is a unique string of characters that identify the destination. E.g. http://www.google.co.in Some popular web browsers include Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, and Google Chrome.

2. Web Server

It is a computer that delivers (serves up) Web pages. Any computer can be turned into a Web server by installing server software and connecting the machine to the Internet. The term web server can mean one of two things: 1. A computer program that is responsible for accepting HTTP requests from clients (user agents such as web browsers), and serving them HTTP responses along with optional data contents, which usually are web pages such as HTML documents and linked objects (images, etc.). 2. A computer that runs a computer program as described above.

3. DNS Server

The Domain Name System (DNS) is a standard technology for managing the names of Web sites and other Internet domains. DNS technology allows you to type names into your Web browser like www.google.com and your computer to automatically find that address on the Internet.

A DNS server is any computer registered to join the Domain Name System. A DNS server runs special-purpose networking software, features a public IP

address, and contains a database of network names and addresses for other Internet hosts.

4. FTP: File Transfer Protocol FTP is the protocol for exchanging files over the Internet. FTP is most commonly used to download a file from a server using the Internet or to upload a file to a server.

It is a standard network protocol used to exchange and manipulate files over an Internet Protocol computer network, such as the Internet. FTP is built on clientserver architecture and utilizes separate control and data connections between the client and server applications.

Email

Email is the most used application on the Internet. Emails allow users to communicate with each other almost instantly. Daily millions of emails are sent from one part of the globe to the other. One can send / receive email using desktop, laptop, palmtop or mobile phones.

Each email account has a unique address. A general format for an email address is: Your-name@some-computer-name ..where 'your-name' is your username you use to log at the email server. This is followed by a '@' sign and the name of the computer (or the domain name, if you like) on which your email service resides. An example would be: faculty_it@pimsr.com

An email message consists of a header and a body. The email header has the following information:
y y y

Recipient email address Senders email address Email address of the people to whom a carbon copy (Cc) and blind carbon copy (Bcc) is been sent.

The subject line

The main email message resides in the email body. Emails can be sent by typing the recipients' email address in the 'Send to' field. Any additional recipients can be specified using the Cc or the Bcc.

Search Engine:

It is a program that searches documents for specified keywords and returns a list of the documents where the keywords were found. Although search engine is really a general class of programs, the term is often used to specifically describe systems like Google, Yahoo and Bing that enable users to search for documents on the World Wide Web. Thus a search engine is a computer program that retrieves documents or files or data from a database or from a computer network (especially from the internet).

The term Google has become synonymous with search engines. Phrases like Google it indicate that a person should go to the internet to find information, but Google is not the only search engine out there worth using.

A good rule of thumb to adopt when searching for information on any one of the various search engines on the web is to learn how to change up your search string or phrases.

As search engines have evolved, so have the ways that people use them. These days, businesses can use search engines for marketing purposes. By researching the phrases that people are searching for the most as related to their product or service, they can incorporate them into content and bring in valuable internet traffic.