My Journey Through Masters

I just started classes and I feel so estatic about it. I have made a separate blog to form my own set of notes about concepts, methods, techniques, etc. Mostly done to motivate me to constantly read and post my questions and thoughts. Don’t expect all entries to make sense.

Macro Commands

In excel I guess it would be like a set of instructions that will be executed and is usually used to program repeated activities. So I thought hey I got to learn this Macro thing for Excel so I don’t keep typing the same old things over and over again thus now I will probably share with you what I learnt from Ted French at: http://spreadsheets.about.com/od/advancedexcel/ss/excel_macro.htm

The following is based from what I learnt on that particular website. Take note there are print screens from the website. You know what they say, a picture paints a thousand words so go check it out to have a better comprehension of where to find the buttons.

Macro for Excel 2003 uses the VBA editor and the macro recorder. As for the macro recorder, it can be found when you do following:
(Tools>Macros>Record New Macro)

You get this pop up box where you can fill in details so you have the “Macro name:” and then you have a drop down list for “Store macro in” and then a “Description:” box. Take note there are 3 choices one can choose for “Store macro in”.

1) New Workbook -> only accessible in the new excel file.
2) This Workbook -> only accessible in this file.
3) Personal Macro Workbook -> creates hidden file that stores the macros and accessible to ALL excel files.

So apparently as you click “Ok” it starts recording all the clicks and selections that you do and to stop you click on the blue filled square that pops up in a small window or you do the following:
(Tools>Macros>Stop Recording)

To run the saved macro that you just did you do the following:
(Tools>Macros>Macro)
Then select the one you want and click “Run”.

When Documentation Becomes a 200 Page Screen Shot

I hate writing a manual especially to an application program that I designed yet the programming prototype looks like nothing I had imagined it to be. The worse thing is because I was so desperate to get it to work I totally compromised my ideas into getting at least something workable but nothing close to my ideas. Mind you ASP.NET for these past 3 weeks has still got me lost at the introduction. Okay maybe I learned a few flashy things in Visual Studio 2005 but anybody could learn it by following Microsoft’s step by step guide… or you could have been like me and read a few paragraphs and tried to skip a few other paragraphs to the end to get the same output product. Even through I have made compromises of how my application flows, I still ended up with a 200 page report that I printed, binded and handed in having 75% of the report being screen shots of installation and documentation of how the program works. One can’t assume that the user will understand even though the writer may have thought it was logical sense. My brain is fried… how does one unfry it?

Chapter 1 Summary

• Computers – vital components of every network.
• TCP/IP is the protocol of the Internet.
• ping command tests connectivity.
• Software is an interface for the user to access the hardware.
• People who work with networks need to know how to troubleshoot PCs.
• NIC – network interface card is a circuit board that provides network communication capabilities to and from a PC.
• Bits – binary digits. 8 bits = 1 byte
• binary – 0s and 1s
• hexadecimal – 16 symbols 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,A,B,C,D,E,F
• boolean logic – NOT, AND, OR
• IP addresses are 32 bit binary addresses used on the Internet.

Basic Masking Operations

• Masking operations provide a way to filter addresses.
• The addresses identify the devices on the network.
• Masking allows the addresses to be grouped or controlled by other network operations.

Subnetwork mask is used to see how IP address should be intrepreted. Identifies how many of bits are the computer’s network and hosts.

Network mask are the 1s from the left hand side of the mask (ie 11111111 . 11111111 . 00000000 . 00000000)
Items that are 0s identify the computer host on that network.

Going back to basics of looking at subnet masks of looking at it in binary to decimal format:

Ex1
11111111 . 00000000 . 00000000 . 00000000
255          .       0            .        0             .           0

First 8 bits – network address
Last 24 bits (8 x 3) – host address

Ex2
11111111 . 11111111 . 00000000 . 00000000
255          .       255    .          0         .         0

First 16 bits – network address
Last 16 bits - host address

So if you are converting IP address from decimal to binary format:

10 . 34 . 23 . 134
00001010 . 00100010 . 00010111 . 10000110

Database Normalization Problem

Hm… any ideas from random readers out there with this?

Data elements are the following:

EmployeeID, EmployeeName, Position (ie Manager / Sales Rep), Username, Password, Permissions, OrderID, OrderDate, OrderQty, OrderStatus, ProductID, Description, Category, StockLevel, UnitPrice, CustomerID, CustomerName, Address, Company

UNF

EMPLOYEE (EmployeeID, EmployeeName, Position, Username, Password, Permissions {OrderID, OrderDate, OrderQty, OrderStatus, ProductID, Description, Category, StockLevel, UnitPrice, CustomerID, CustomerName, Address, Company})

1NF

EMPLOYEE (EmployeeID, EmployeeName, Position, Username, Password, Permissions)

ORDER (EmployeeID, OrderID, ProductID, OrderDate, OrderQty, OrderStatus, Description, Category, StockLevel, UnitPrice, CustomerID, CustomerName, Address, Company)

Then I don’t know if I am on the right track. Times like this I wonder why I feel like the answer is so close yet so far. 

Chapter 1 Administration

Tasks of network administrator:

1. Install and maintain operating system
2. Administer Active Directory
3. Administer file and print resources
4. Administer Internet resources
5. Administer the network infrastructure
6. Monitor and troubleshoot Windows Server 2003
7. Administer Routing and Remote Access Services

1) Tasks Needed to be Done For Installing and Maintaining of the Operating System:

• Install client workstation operating systems
• Install and configure the server environment
• Trouble shoort and resolve installation problems
• Maintenance – install and manage service packs and hot fixes

2) Administer Active Directory

• Create user objects (and modify)
• Create computer objects (and modify)
• Create group objects (and modify)
• Manage Active Directory container
• Manage object permissions
• Create and troubleshoot Group Policy objects

 Group policy is a windows server 2003 feature. Enables the user to create policies that affect domain users and computers.

3) Administer File and Print Resources

• Troubleshooting user access to files and printers
• Planning and maintaining the most efficient and secure way for users to work with file and print resources

4) Administer Internet Resources

• Do this because of Business to Business, Business to Consumer online commerce opportunities
• Configuration “master list options” must be within the Windows Server 2003 IIS (this includes giving secure access to internet-accessible resources and troubleshooting client connectivity problems).

5) Administer the Network Infrastructure

• Maintenance and troubleshooting of network services, protocols and hardware.

Domain Name System (DNS) service provides the name resolution and the network service location capabilities.

Windows Server 2003 uses TCP/IP protocol for network communications throughout the infrastructure and the Internet.

Hardware such as routers.

Servers – Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), WINS

6) Monitoring and Troubleshooting Windows Server 2003

• Monitor through maintenance (monitor server and system performance)
• Maintenance tools  – system monitor, event viewer
• Troubleshooting tools – recovery console, safe mode

 7) Administer

Managing Windows Server 2003 (Ch2 QnA)

Lecture 2

Name 3 directory server products
Directory server is a special purpose database for reading data.
It stores important data of the network; users, devices, settings, passwords, access logs, etc.

3 possible directory server products are:
1) DNS – domain name system
2) Active Directory and
3) Novell eDirectory
Others could be Sun ONE Directory or Domino Directory.

What is a DNS zone?
A domain is a logical structured organisation of objects (ie users, computers, groups and printers which is part of a network and they share a common directory database).
Domain is defined by an administrator and administered as a unit.

DNS – Domain Name System is used to look up IP addresses given the domain name. In another words it is a hierarchical name resolution system. It resolves 9host names and fully qualified domain names (FQDNs) into OP addresses and vice versa.
It is a client server system.
Information stored has 5 fields:
1) Domain name
2) Time to live (TTL) – seconds
3) Class
4) Type
5) Value
In a way it’s a method of maintaining domain naming structure and locating network resources.

DNS zone is having the DNS namespaces divided into zones where responsibility has been delegated and they do not overlap. Each of these zones has a primary name server and possibly a secondary name server.

What is an Active Directory tree?
Active Directory is a directory service that is included with Windows Server 2003. It provides one single point of administration, authentication and storage for user, group and computer objects.

An AD is made up of at least one domain (identified by DNS domain name and has a collection of computers which is on a network sharing a common directory database) which has at least has one domain controller (server that stores and manages AD data).

An AD tree is having a set of one or more domains with contiguous names (have a common root domain).

What is an Active Directory forest?
An active directory forest is a collection of related domains that are not in a contiguous namespace. They share a global catalog (index of all domains that are in the entire forest). They also share a single Active Directory schema.
The group: Enterprise Admins are the user group which manages objects in the entire forest.

What is the relationship between DNS domains and Active Directory domains?
They both have the same hierarchical structure. The relationship between them is that they are dependent of each other.
DNS zones can be stored in Active Directory. Active Directory uses DNS as its location service whereby domain controllers can be located.

Relational Model: Normalization

This is definately a walk in the past again for the topic of databases. Normalization is one of the most important topics for databases and is something that I always come back to (especially if you work in logistics stock inventory counting). A good website I am currently reading is: http://phlonx.com/resources/nf3/. Fred Coulson does a very good job in giving an example with point form explanation of how he went about in getting the first normal form all the way to the third normal form. Other sites are written by Mike Chapple http://databases.about.com/od/specificproducts/a/normalization.htm, or provided by the University of Texas http://www.utexas.edu/its-archive/windows/database/datamodeling/rm/rm7.html and of course wikipedia to the rescue at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_normalization.

Response.Write() for ASP.NET

Use Response.Write() to create dynamic web pages.
ASP.NET allows to turn static HTML tags into objects -> server controls. 2 sets of server controls:

1) HTML server controls
Standard HTML elements.

2) Web controls
Properties for style and formatting details. More events and have web controls featuring some user interface elements that has no direct HTML equivalent (ie validation controls).

HTML server controls
Provide 3 key features:
1) Generate own interface.
2) Retain their state – don’t have to make sure every control on that page is refreshed. Done automatically.
3) They fire events – it is event based and responds to events. If the given event doesn’t occur the event handler code won’t be executed.

When generating a new web form in VS. (Website > Add New Item), there is a page directive. A page directive gives ASP.NET basic information about how to compile the page. It indicates the language you are using for your code and it will connect to the event handlers. (Preferably use code behind approach).