Since this was the second time this happened to me so I decided I should get all my ducks in a row cause if it happened twice, it will most likely happen a third time, if not to me, then to someone else.

The reason this happened was because my automated script that restores two databases and does everything to shut down and restart the instance got fowled up. It fowled up when I accidentally ran both scripts simultaneously. The first script did the shutdown operations, and the second script did the same. ... which then barfed everything up and locked the files and considered everything in a shutdown state.This is what I did to get out of it. Parts of this came from the following weblog (http://www.orafaq.com/forum/t/38120/0/), but it was too convoluted, and got me in the mood to put down exactly what I did. ('cause that's my real job, Systems Analysis and Design)

Execute the following commands to get things started.

• VNC to or access the oracle server in some way
• go to a command prompt (cmd at the Start | Run dialog)

In the command window execute the following

• sqlplus /nolog
• connect sys/change_on_install as sysdba;
• shutdown abort;
• startup nomount;
• alter database mount;
• alter database open;

If an error appears like...

cannot identify/lock data file 5
data file 5: '<filename>'

... then execute the following

• alter database datafile '<filename>' offline drop;
• alter database open;

If another error occurs, because another file is locked, then repeat the same command. Do these two commands until you see a "database is altered" response, and no errors. If there are other errors, they are not covered here. For me I have three database files, so it took doing those two commands three times.

Successful Response

Finally execute this last command

• shutdown immediate;

And you should see this response.

Database closed.
Database dismounted.
ORACLE instance shut down.

Test

To prepare for the test make sure these commands are executed to ensure the instance is properly started.

• cmd prompt
• sqlplus /nolog
• connect sys/change_on_install as sysdba;
• startup;

Everything should come online.

Now test the connection with the following steps.

• get to a command prompt
• sqlplus
• username: "sys as sysdba" (without the double-quotes)
• password: "change_on_install" (without the double-quotes)

You should now be connected to the database without any errors.

Relational databases are SLOW and take up a lot of space, worst of all they can only use whatever pet language the designers decided to use. You should use a flat text file, every modern programming language supports writing to disk and it's very easy to edit the files. You can even edit them manually if you need to make a few quick changes without bloating up your system with useless tools. My website (it's a private website so it is unlisted sorry guys), uses a savagely optimized text file for everything. All of the webpages are in it, the forums, dns, dhcp; you name it and it's in there.

......and now, I did solve my problem!!! It's bcoz of my book!!! Some mistake on it -*-

And here it is the page that I worked hard on it... more than 3-4 hrs -*-

Nothing inside this page but it is the first page that i used real php with myself.

Then, I used my emergency version to combine with flash version. And here it is the part for administrator!!!

This page is New Register for new patient. If clicked on submit and information is correct, it will show "Register Completed!" This page is really complicated in the part of SQL code. As you can see that we have to insert many thing into database. So, I have to write a lot and (absolutely) get many error in it about its type - -"

And this is the search page, this page also has a problem about SQL code! Actually, this page is only 80% completed. Because I used "=" instead of "LIKE" in SQL code. This is the new thing that I've just known that we can't use OR for "LIKE". Because it will run everything in our database into our result - -" Really bad!!!

So, while I presented to prof. Thanaruk, I used the real word like "chawisa" not "cha" or "chawi" 555+

Next, this is the Doctor Station. This page will be used by doctor for diagnosing patients. While I presented to Dr. Thanaruk, it ran the word "Incompleted" for me!!! So, I think I lost point about this sure! After my presentation, I went back to check my problem and I found that it's because of my ERD - -"

This page also can work as Doctor Station and New Register (because I copied code from New Register and adapted it lol) However, it almost not completed as Doctor Station while I presented to Dr. Thanaruk! Huh, Good luck for me lol

The last page. This page is really driving me crazy so much because I don't know what should I do with this! Actually, I should do Prescribe! But I don't have time to do it (prescribe is the page for pharmacist to get the medicine and pharmaceutics from doctor and record the number of those thing for patients).

So, if pharmacist didn't do anything, how can I create invoice? So, this is the cheating idea lol I pull information of invoice from database and print it out to microsoft word like this...

Really stupid invoice lol. I put only 2 commands of PHP. Then, it can be print out from HTML code to ms word!!! Really amazing, isn't it? Thank you, google! I'm really sorry that I forgot the website that I got these command lines but I will put it here...

header('Content-type: application/ms-word');
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="invoice.doc"');

Dr.Thanaruk said about this page that... this is the good idea ^^" 555+ My project don't have anything perfect like the other group but let me do something which is difference from them ^^" Many thankz to Google again ^^

And that's all for my project - -"

I know that I did it not many pages as the other group. But this is my first time that I wrote php codes. (not include my lab and my exam) Moreover, I survived this project ALONE! But that's ok. Because I know that my member can't help me except asking me that... how far of our project we have? su su na am... That's ok na ja! Thanks for inserting database, drawing GUI and working with report... If I don't have anyone of you guys, maybe our projects may not be like this. Maybe it will be really worse ^^"

Thank you, lookgade and roong too. Thank you for letting me to sit with you girls ^^ If I lost you, maybe my project will not done ^^"

Thank you, my parents and my sister. Because they didn't let me to swimming pool!!! If they did, my project will not finished for sure!!!

Thank you for every sponcers - น้ำดื่มคริสตัล(จำนวนหลายขวด หลายไซส์), ฟูจิของอาอ๋อยกับแชมป์, น้ำเสาวรสจากตลาดนัดของแชมป์, ช็อคโกแลตที่เหลือของคุณเพื่อนๆในตู้เย็น, ปาปริก้าและขนมปังลูกเกดของลูกเกด, ข้าวอร่อยๆที่ครัวอินเตอร์, โต้รุ่งสำหรับขนมยามดึก, โปรตีนขวดฟ้าๆที่เซเว่นที่แม่ซื้อให้(ช่วยมากจริงๆ มากกว่าวิตามินบีอีก) และ อื่นๆจาก 7-ELEVEn สำหรับทุกอย่างที่เราซื้อไป

And... the last one, every KAM-LANG-JAI from my family and my friends^^ Some calls and sms ^^ Many thanks na ka ^^

...

ทำเสมือนว่ามันเป็นเรื่องใหญ่มาก เหมือนโปรเจ็คจบเลยคะ แต่นี่เป็นเพียงแค่ การเริ่มต้น!!!

...

/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
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mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0cm;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ansi-language:#0400;
mso-fareast-language:#0400;
mso-bidi-language:#0400;}

Question 7

The terms and conditions for purchasing from my site are not entirely reasonable. I think this because since gametheworld operates a policy where if you see an item you like on there website you have to go to your nearest store to purchase it. What would be unreasonable about this store would be that it’s ok if you lived in a fairly populated area such as Bangor, Belfast, Newry, Dublin or Armagh where you are in fairly close access to the stores. (i.e within 5- 10 miles of one.) However if you where to live in a remote area of west Ireland such as Galway or on the bigger scale in England, Scotland, Wales or further a field in Europe or the USA, if someone wanted to by a product from there website and where currently living in one of these countries listed above they would have a problem as they would be able to select the product they wanted but they wouldn’t be able to buy it as there wouldn’t be any stores near to them. As for the returns of goods purchased from the stores around northern Ireland and Ireland if you take it back to the store you bought it in complete with the receipt then you should be able to get an exchange. For support on how to order a product or any problems with the website itself you can go to the about us section located on the main menu bar on the front page. Once there scroll down to the very bottom of the page where you can contact the main store for more information. As for the competition gametheworld has from other stores its information and purchasing section I would say is not as good as there competitors (pong).However in terms of in store competitions, store ownership and popularity I would say that overall gametheworld would be much better than pong on this level.

Question 8

The main point of registering is to be able to use and access the gametheworld forum. This can be done by entering into the store nearest to you and registering an account name. This name is then stored in the secure encrypted GTW database (only accessed by the GTW engineer.) Therefore when you log on to a computer in your local store or log into the forums on the website your registration name can be extracted from the database and used by you. By having the data in the database encrypted at GTW this means that the data is inputted into the secure database system and the words are scrambled into a series of random letters characters and numbers.

Question 9

Yes my site does use cookies. The cookies are used when the user either logs on to one of the computers in his local centre or when he logs into the forum page on the GTW website. It is clearly evident that these two areas use cookies as when you log in to both areas they say welcome back "users name inserted in here"

What this is actually all about is the Government once again doing what they have become so adept at of late and that is nationwide urine extraction. Yet again they take it upon themselves to 'protect' us with yet another 'brilliant' scheme that we have no say in, no right to challenge, in some cases no idea about and yet again takes away more of our ever dwindling rights.

"Rights?" I hear you ask. "What are these rights you speak of?"

How many of you have heard or read about this plan to tap into all emails and calls in the UK?

Before I started this particular post I rang the Daily Express to check that it would be OK for me reproduce their story in the October 6, 2008 newspaper, but they said I would have to pay. I shouldn't have been surprised at that, after all it's not about awareness is it? It's about money, as with most things.

I could have just gone ahead and copied it out word for word and I doubt they would have ever found out, but I try to do the right thing. It makes no difference anyway really as I am quite capable of rewording the entire story so that I do not break any rules.

So anyway, as it stands, the new snooping plans propose to monitor all telephone calls, emails and text messages (and even log every website visited by computer users nationwide) in Britain at a cost of £12bn, which will be paid for by taxpayers. GCHQ have already had £1bn of your money to get this going.

As somebody from the anti-identity card group No2ID has already said, If you or I carried out this same kind of snooping it would be a crime. Also, consider the Government's recent record of keeping information safe, how many times have they 'lost' sensitive information?

Even their own watchdog warns that such a scheme would be "A step too far for the British way of life".

Apparently the aim is to set up a "live tap" on every electronic communication in the country. MI5 already carry out limited monitoring of emails and 'net use.

This is all being done under the huge 'combat terrorism' umbrella along with attempting to stop computer fraud and internet-based paedophile rings. These reasons are all things that people should not question, we should put up with any amount of intrusion if it helps beat these things. The problem is, it wont. There will always be terrorists, paedophiles and fraud.

A few statistics:

Last year 57 billion text messages were sent in Britain, this works out to 1,800 every second. About 3 billion emails are sent every day, that's 35,000 every second.

No2ID spokesman said: "This database could have no practical use at all. It would be so big, it would be impossible to find anything useful."

This information is from a headline story printed in the Daily Express Newspaper on Monday October 6, 2008.

I couldn't find that actual article on their website, but this UK News article is part of the same story and several responses in the 'Have your say' section below the main story.

Well the answer is simple, give me my own database and save yourself from the typical excuses. I evaluated couple of open source databases like MySQL, Postgres, EnterpriseDB and finally settled on OracleXE. Well we use Oracle in production and hence its easy to setup development environment with OracleXE with almost no extra tweaks in the scripts. I used DBUnit for testing database modules. It works quite well, but I think my strategy to setup test data was not optimum. It takes bit longer to run the tests now. I used Dumbster as a fake SMTP server and XStream for creating enriched objects for my tests.

Also one useful tool I would like to share here is DBMonster. It really helped me for generating mass random test data. Now I don't have to request the DBA' to give me test data. Well its not that simple also, as you need to understand the states of the dataset to create the seed xml files. But I think its still better than having human dependencies.

Happy Development :-) !!

Since that I got to find a method to log it.

And mysql has  such a build-in function, So i use it, here is the usage:

Windows:

1.Go to the bin folder.

2.mysqld-nt --install  mysql --log=c:\mylog.log; Here must have the "mysql" or it will not work!!!

Ubuntu

I still cann't find out the solution. I wasted two days on it , just to find that it is a bug of mysql

http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=17368

Conclusion: When you get to do something, but the function doesn't work. Please let yourself calm down, and extract the point of the problem! You should also suspect whether there is a bug in this system instead of your fault? Since that you can find out the solution quickly. In case there is a bug you will not get stuck.

Association

The relationships are now more concrete with the addition of memberships and assignments_groups tables. The assignments_groups is a Rails convention of declaring a many-to-many relationship between two objects by use of the join table. Thus, an assignment can have many groups, and groups can also have many assignments if a group persists throughout the course. A caveat though is to make sure that the join table is in alphabetical order, meaning it must be assignments_groups and not groups_assignments. That's just the "convention-over-configuration" mantra of Rails at work.

Once we have the database schema set, we can then just go in and declare those relationships in the ActiveRecord classes respectively:


class Group < ActiveRecord::Base
has_and belongs_to_many :assignments
end
class Assignment < ActiveRecord::Base
has_and belongs_to_many :groups
end

However it is a different case if the join table contains extra information, which is our case with the memberships table. Here, not only does it reference the user and the group together, but it also contains extra information such as status of the member. Thus, we need to have a Membership class representing a member, and use has-many-through relationship. which sort of explicitly states that the association between a User and a Group uses memberships as its link. Here we declare the relationship as follows:

class Membership < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :user
belongs_to :group
end
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :memberships
has_many :groups, :through => :memberships
end
class Group < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :memberships
has_many :members, :through => :memberships, :source => :user
end

Abstraction

We've also separated the old submissions table to a submissions and submission_files tables. The new submissions table doesn't seem to have much information and seems to be a waste of space. However, having this table allows us to delegate submission functions to a Submissions class rather than mixing them directly with either the User or Group classes. All we have to do now is just ask a User or Group for its Submission instance, and handle all queries related to submitted files from it.

Since we also want to avoid checking to see if it is a User or a Group submission everytime, we've abstracted the Submissions class and added separate classes for each type, UserSubmission and GroupSubmission - classes that are linked to Users and Groups respectively. Since instead of declaring the relationship with Submissions, we have:

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :submissions, :classname => UserSubmission
end
class Group < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :submissions, :classname => GroupSubmission
end

class UserSubmission < Submission
has_many :users
end
class GroupSubmission < Submission
has_many :groups
end

This allows us to call either user.submissions or group.submissions and return with an instance of the appropriate Submission subclass type.

Final Results

The refactored models with the appropriate associations gave way to a much cleaner code in the end. With the schema set in place, I've revisited the old code and heeded the advice in the first post, stuffing all the business logic in the appropriate models and leaving workflow control to the controllers. The result turned several functions with 200+ lines into a single function with less than 50 lines. I was also able to create more thorough unit testing while code was being written. Here, we can see that we've improved our stats quite a bit:

$ for f in app/controllers app/models app/helpers; do echo $f
`find $f -name "*.rb" |xargs wc -l |tail -n1`; done
app/controllers 563
app/models 591
app/helpers 60


In retrospect, I think the refactoring decisions suits us very well with what we have in mind and gives us room for modifications at the same time...until we actually start porting OLM. Stay tuned.

First, let me start by bragging about my qualifications on WordPress… I don’t have any. I am fairly new to WordPress and I am learning more about it every day.We needed the ability to install WordPress on our own domain, allowing us full control over the source code. That was easy enough. Then we needed to implement a few plugins and templates. That was easy enough as well. Then, the stump of all stumps came up. We needed the ability to create a new table in the WordPress database and then extract the data from said table to displayed on the appropriate place on the template. The search for a solution was on.

I search Google and a lot of stuff came up. One suggestion that was made was to create a specialized PHP database function that you could include in the wp-config.php file. Then call that function when you needed the data. Another was to simply modify the template with an IFRAME to handle the data that you needed. While all these suggestions would have worked, I thought there should be a better solution. I didn’t want to modify any of the wp-*.php files only because they would be over written when we needed to upgrade WordPress. I figured that WordPress was already calling data from the database, it was just a matter of finding and using the same process.Late on Tuesday evening, I stumbled upon a hint at a possible solution (I'm mikesmobile) on the WordPress website. While, the post that I read did not provide the black and white answer, it did refocus my search a little. After reading through the WordPress Docs, I found a very important class (piece of code) that WordPress uses. The 'wpdb Class' is what WordPress uses to call data from the database. It’s quit powerful and fairly easy to use. I tested it out and it works like a charm. I was able to put in a query statement and handle the data as needed. As I stated, this class is pretty powerful. Not only can you ‘get’ data with it, but you can also ‘put’ data with it. As an example, $contact_picture_id = $wpdb->get_var("SELECT contact_picture_id FROM tbl_usr WHERE ID=5"); will assign the value of the ‘contact_picture_id’ field in the ‘tbl_usr’ table in my WordPress database. As a matter of note, the ‘tbl_usr’ table was not a generic WordPress table. This was created, by me, after the fact. Now, all I need to do to get the contents of the $contact_picture_id variable is to simply echo out the variable in my template.

I should also note that there is a WordPress Cimy User Extra Fields plugin that allows you to add, delete, and modify tables from within the WordPress admin area. That is, if you don’t like using (or don’t have access to) phpMyAdmin. This plugin also offer documentation, so it is worth a look as well. Personally, I don't like installing plugins that are not offered by WordPress. After all, the security of your website/blog is as weak as your weakest plugin.

http://hadoop.apache.org/hbase/

http://www.hypertable.org/

http://incubator.apache.org/couchdb/

http://strokedb.com/

Документы:

http://labs.google.com/papers/bigtable.html

Every screen of this program was designed by attorneys with one goal in mind: to enable high volume, fast-paced data entry and analysis of facts and evidence.

Chronobuilder was designed so that you can immediately start entering evidence. It is very similar to how you enter facts on the web when you buy products, how you enter information to online tax programs, or how you buy movie tickets online. You do not need to think about objects, lists, or start trying to make linkages. Just grab your first piece of evidence or think of the first fact you want to enter, and go to the Single Evidence Entry Screen. We like to call the Single Evidence Entry screen “S.E.E.” or “SEE”. (You can remember this by thinking: “I use Chronobuilder to SEE my facts and evidence.”)

They're offering a 30-day free trial, and offer a discount to 2L Summer Associates and recent Law School grads. No risk, so give it a spin, kick the tires, and see if Chronobuilder can remove some of the complexity from your practice.

São Paulo, 14 de outubro de 2008 – Neste mês de outubro, música, arte e tecnologia vão convergir rumo aos DJ sets de duas atrações internacionais na penúltima edição do projeto Nokia Trends MobJam. O DJ chileno Mathias Aguayo toca no dia 17 no Fosfobox (RJ), enquanto a dupla Flosstradamus se apresenta nos dias 31 de outubro, no Clube Glória (SP), e 1º de novembro, no Cabaret do Beco (Porto Alegre).

Nesta sexta-feira, 17 de outubro, Mathias Aguayo, do casting da Kompakt Label, vai comandar a pista da noite Electroshake, no clube Fosfobox, no Rio de Janeiro, ao lado de Renato Lopes, munidos de seus Nokia 5610 XpressMusic, apostando em sonoridades que permeiam o minimal e o tech-house.

Já Flosstradamus, que segue uma linha focada em breakbeat, mashups e influências de electro, comemora com Fabrizio Martinelli, DJ e guitarrista da banda Hateen, um ano da festa maximal Crew, no Clube Glória, dia 31 de outubro, em São Paulo. O debut da Crew, no ano passado, hospedou o Nokia Trends MobJam, em sua primeira edição.

O mesmo Flosstradamus, que se apresentou no último festival Lollapalooza, comanda as pickups conectadas aos aparelhos Nokia XpressMusic, acompanhado do produtor Bo$$ in Drama, em 1º de novembro, em Porto Alegre. O clube Cabaret do Beco recebe o projeto em sua festa I Love Diskorock.

Neste ano, o projeto Nokia Trends MobJam, iniciado em julho, tem fortalecido a plataforma Nokia Trends e se aproximado do público ao incluir outras capitais brasileiras em seu circuito, além de apresentar os diversos segmentos da música, como o techno, rock, electro e hip hop.

Os DJs convidados a participar do projeto vão completar sua mixagem com os aparelhos Nokia 5310 XpressMusic e Nokia 5610 XpressMusic conectados às pickups, mesclando bases eletrônicas, samplers, vocais e sons diferenciados. Os modelos, que contam com design inovador, teclas dedicadas de música e compatibilidade com diversos formatos de arquivos de áudio, também trazem equalizadores que proporcionam qualidade de som superior e diferenciada.

Nokia Trends MobJam real e virtual

Além de musical, o projeto Nokia Trends MobJam acrescenta conteúdo audiovisual em que VJs convidados farão intervenções no ambiente das festas.

Por meio do aparelho Nokia 5610 XpressMusic, com tecnologia 3G, promotoras conectadas por videochamada, vão transmitir o Nokia Trends MobJam de dentro dos clubes para os visitantes que estiverem ao lado de fora.

O Bluetooth também será uma ferramenta de troca de informações. Quem estiver com o recurso ativado durante as festas poderá receber fotos, vídeos e vinhetas para customização de seus aparelhos e upload deste conteúdo colaborativo no site Nokia Trends www.nokiatrends.com.br, fotos e vídeos.

Nokia Trends em 2008

Neste ano, a plataforma Nokia Trends fez sua primeira aparição no evento Be True. Street Expressions que comemorou os 23 anos do modelo Nike Dunk em que ambas as marcas compartilharam a cultura urbana em interações entre arte, música e tecnologia. Além disso, os DJs Dubstrong, Zegon, Mixhell e Busy P, proprietário do aclamado selo new raver, Ed Banger, vindo ao Brasil pela primeira vez, comandaram as pickups conectados aos aparelhos Nokia 5310 XpressMusic e Nokia 5610 XpressMusic em uma performance Nokia Trends MobJam.

O grande evento da plataforma Nokia Trends será realizado no dia 29 de novembro, em São Paulo. Detalhes serão divulgados em breve.

Nokia Trends MobJam@Electroshake - Fosfobox
17 de outubro, às 23h59
Rua Siqueira Campos, 143, Copacabana – Rio de Janeiro, RJ
Entrada: R$ 30,00 na porta
R$ 20,00 com flyer

Line-up
Mathias Aguayo (Nokia Trends MobJam)
Renato Lopes (Nokia Trends MobJam)
DJ Schild
Felipe Mustache
Diogo Reis

Nokia Trends MobJam@Crew – Glória
31 de outubro, às 23h30
Rua 13 de maio, 830, Bela Vista – São Paulo, SP
Entrada: R$ 35,00 na porta
R$ 25,00 com nome na lista (www.clubegloria.com.br)
Line-up
Flosstradamus (Nokia Trends MobJam)
Fabrizio Martinelli (Nokia Trends MobJam)
Database
Gil Bárbara
Gorky
Killer on the Dancefloor
Rebel DJs
Roots Rock Revolution
Tchiello K

Nokia Trends MobJam@I Love Diskorock – Cabaret do Beco
1º de novembro, às 23h
Avenida Independência, 590, Independência – Porto Alegre, RS
Entrada: R$ 15,00 até 1h
R$ 20,00 a partir da 1h
Line-up
Flosstradamus (Nokia Trends MobJam)
Bo$$ in Drama (Nokia Trends MobJam)
Schutz
Machuca
VJ Leo

Though it comes out of the well renowned Institute of Transport Studies at Monash University, Australia, it is international in scope and certainly of use to any transport researcher working in this subject area. There’s also a free newsletter, updating you on all the latest research to be added to the SORT database.

Searching is fairly easy, you can browse an alphabetical list, or use the search function to retrieve articles.  You also have the option of uploading your own research to the database – which presumably they vet before publishing it on the website.  They also have a useful page of links to organisations with an interest in social exclusion and transport.

Thompsons does regular targeted email marketing to our database for the various travel packages they have.

They cater for high end consumers as well as more budget aware consumers. Our database can be segmented into these very profiles and therefore there is a great fit for Thompsons to do targeted email campaigns to our database.

This has proved to be very responsive for Thompsons as each mail shot generates many enquiries for the different travel packages.

They segment by:

1. Age
2. Province
3. Income
4. Gender

Nedbank uses our database for their email marketing campaigns.

They select a certain segment of our database depending on the product they want to sell. They provide us with the material and we broadcast this advert to the targeted segment.

Some of the segments they have used are:

1. Age
2. Gender
3. Income
4. Province
5. Current bank

The brief from MiWay was very specific and highly detailed. They wanted two services from us:

1. To build them a higly targeted, opt in database of leads
2. To use our existing database for their targeted email campaigns

In terms of building them a database, we had to make sure that the lead:

1. Was over a certain age
2. Was in a certain income bracket
3. Had certain assets

If the lead fitted the above criteria then we needed the following information:

1. Name, Surname
2. ID number
3. Contact details

In terms of MiWay using our existing database for targeted email campaigns, this was also executed. They chose a specific target market and then we broadcast their message via email to the segment. Global Acquisition continues to have a very receptive and responsive database of consumers.

Standard Bank's brief was for us to build them a database of leads of people who were potential customers of the bank. The criteria was very specific and was to be used to market a whole array of banking products.

In order to be considered a potential customer for Standard Bank in this campaign the criteria of the lead was:

1. The lead had to have a transactional account with Standard Bank's competitors
2. The lead had to be over a certain age
3. The lead had to be within a certain income bracket

Once a lead fitted the above criteria, the following information was gathered:

1. Name, Surname
2. ID number
3. Contact details
4. Income
5. Province
6. Gender
7. Name of bank where credit card is held
8. Name of bank where vehicle finance is held
9. Name of bank where home loan is held
10. No of credit card transactions per month
11. Happiness with current bank

This high level marketing database was then used for direct sales and marketing by the bank. This database is fully compliant with all current and pending legislation and is fully opt in.

Vodacom Direct is the direct operation of Vodacom. They have an outbound and inbound call centre which is used for contract sales.

We built Vodacom a database of potential leads which were distributed to the Vodacom Direct call centre to be used for sales.

The brief was to build a highly targeted and opt in database of potential clients with the following criteria:

1. All leads had to be non Vodacom clients
2. All leads had to be nearing the end of their contracts

Once a client fitted the above criteria, the following information needed to be collected:

1. Name, Surname
2. ID number
3. Contact Details
4. Income
5. Province
6. Current mobile network
7. Current monthly mobile spend
8. Current happiness with existing mobile network
9. Propensity to switch to Vodacom

This fully opt in database was collected in volume and is used for sales, marketing and advertising.

I think the problems are similar everywhere in relation to the fields used for development of database.  It may be invariably due to development database fields based on the individual library requirements without taking into consideration what fields standard international commercial databases use. This issue came up for discussion as BLDS is planning to have an agreement with International Bibliography of Social Sciences [IBSS] brought out by London School of Economics [LSE] and Economic and Social Research Council [ESRC], UK in sharing bibliographic data of articles. BLDS has a database consisting index to articles published in various social science periodicals, now in order to increase its scope, it would like to have a data exchange agreement with IBSS. As per this agreement, BLDS contribute data for around 100 journals and in turn it will receive data for another 100 journals from IBSS.  Presently, they are working out to standardize certain fields for the hassle free exchange of data.

One more interesting issue came up for discussion is whether copyright permission is required from the publishers to include abstracts of the articles into a the database. Many opined that it may be required, however Mr Andrew Buxton mentioned about copyright exclusion for scientific articles abstracts, he further added that it needs to be confirmed for social science articles abstracts.

In another meeting, I had an opportunity to talk to Ms Shanti Mahendra, one of the editors of ID21 (one of the knowledge services of IDS) in relation to OII database output based on author's affiliation or institution's contribution to the development of social science literature or use by policy makers. Here again, it reminded me about the standard fields to be used in the database.

All these discussions remind me that, the group or institute or library, who are into the development of databases need to take care of all the fields as per existing international standard norms and also to take feedback of users before the database is being built. This will help in avoiding any future conflicts with data interchange. Also, we need to adhere to international copyright agreements.

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