A book of Fundamental Computer handling and other Security System

The word ‘Computer’ has been derived from the Latin word ‘ Compute’ which means to count. In former time, computer was used to manipulate data like words and numbers. So, it was called as a ‘Computing machine’. Presently, a computer has become an electrically powered device through different evolutions of technology. According to the definition made by the Microsoft technologists- ” A Computer is an electrically powered device or set of devices which works under the control of a stored program automatically accepting and processing data with minimum human intervention to produce results. Hence, a computer is automatic, re-programmable and a data processor to store information’. That is to say, the following concepts may be accepted apropos the definition of computer.

& A computer is an electrically powered device.

& It works under the control of a stored program.

& It accepts data, analyzes data, preserves data and displays them in the form of result.

& It completes work related to accounts very speedily and correctly

& It works out complex mathematical problems

& It analyzes data and displays results by the representation of charts and graphs.

Brief History of Computer:

& Three thousand years ago before the birth of Christ, a machine named ‘Abacus’ was invented.

& With the help of this machine, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division were figured out.

& In seventh century, some machines were invented for calculation.

& In the 18th century, Jacquard invented weaving machine, which afforded some opportunities to compute.

& Babbage was the father of modern computer as he firstly introduced the use of memory and storage location in the computer.

& Despite no title for his wisdom of knowledge, he was appointed as a professor in ‘Newton’s chair’ of CambridgeUniversity for 11 years at the age of 36. He had never taught the students.

& In 1812 he invented ‘Differentiation Engine’

& With the help of this machine, he could easily compute in different calculations.

& Afterwards, he had chalked out to invent ‘Analytical Engine’. But for not having given the expenditure by the Government, he could not be able to make that machine. Indeed, the machine was of very large size and involved a huge amount of cost.

& After the death of Babbage, his close friend and the daughter of English poet Byron, Lady Ada Augusta invented such machine with some sort of programming language. For this reason, she had had the recognition of the world as the first ‘ Computer Programmer’ of the world. She was uncommon talent to create machine like computer.

& During 2nd world war in 1944, this machine was mismatched due to bombardment

& In 1946, under the supervision of Professor Howard Equine of HarvardUniversity, a machine called ‘Mark 1 ‘ was made. This machine was of complex combination of 3 million parts of electric equipment. This was looked like a dinosaur. In spite of that, this machine was the first computer of 1st generation (1944-1950).

& In 1946, ENAIC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator) was made. In it , 18000 electric lamps were used.

& This machine was made for exclusive demand of Army at that time.

& In 1948, the use of bulb was replaced by transistor. Transistor as used were very tiny electronic switches by which the work was done like the electric bulbs.

& The size of the transistor was very small and in 1958, integrated circuit was invented and as a result, the use of computer spread to a great extent.

& Afterwards, in 1971 a revolutionary change occurred when microprocessor was invented by the ‘Intel Company of USA.

& During this time, Bill Gates of Microsoft Company of USA and the use of computer spread home and abroad wrote Dos program.

Structure of a data processing system: Input ® Process ® Output

We send information and instructions with the help of Input device (e.g. Keyboard and Mouse) which are displayed in the Monitor and then reported to the CPU where the data are processed, controlled and stored in the respective memory location and then in the form of output we acquire result in the Printer.

Input:

Keyboard, mouse , floppy disk, hard disk, mike etc.

Processing Unit: CPU: CU, ALU, Memory.

Output device:

Printer.

Most important component is output

Different parts of a PC

Monitor:

The monitor displays input data and the computer puts out after processing. Data or information is in the form of word and pictures.

CPU:

It stands for Central Processing Unit

It consists of two major components inside (a) Processor or active unit, which does the computational or processing jobs on data and information.

Memory: both long term ( in the form what are called hard disk, floppy disk ) and short term memory ( for intermediate processing called Ram or Random Access memory and Read only memory or ROM i.e. Permanent Memory )

The CPU also contains other components like communication devices, speaker etc.; One such communication device called modem. Modems can be outside a CPU. They allow the computer to communicate with another computer via a telephone line.

Computer Software:

Computer Software is a set of instructions that controls the computer and its peripheral devices. The non-physical properties of a computer system is called Software.

Types of software:

There are three types of Software: a. Operating Software, e.g. DOS (Disk Operating System), Windows’ 95 b. Application Software, e.g. Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint etc., c. Programming Software e.g. C ^++,Java, Q-Basic, PASCAL, Oracle etc.,

Operating the Personal computer: ON/ Off

For On: Wall socket, Voltage Stabilizer, UPS, Monitor and CPU.

For off: Just the reverse but before switching off the Computer, you must apply Shut Down Process as follows: Click Start Button, Click Shut down, Click yes to confirm Shut down and then O.K. to display the message ” It is now safe to turn off your Computer ”

Classification of Computer:

Computer may be classified into two ways: a. According to Memory location and b. According to Technology. According to Memory size: Business Micro, e.g. PC (Personal Computer).We are commonly conversant with PC, Main frame Computer, Mini and Super Computer. According to Technology: Digital Computer, Analogue Computer and Hybrid Computer.

Microsoft Windows

This session introduces you in windows and gets you up and running quickly. It always shows you how to do the most common tasks, provides you with notes, and points you to some of the fun and exciting new features that come with windows.

If you want to explore Windows in more depth or learn about some of the more technical aspects of Windows, the first topic in the session, “Where to find information you need” points you to other sources of information.”

Õ Where to find information you need

Help is the primary source of information about windows. You can find common tasks in the contents and more in the Index, and search for text by using the Find Tab. To find Help, Click the Start button, and then click Help.

Õ Help on a specific item

If a window contains a question mark button, You can see a description of any item in the window. Just click the button and then click the item.

Õ A new look and feel

The look and feel of windows has been improved to make it easier and faster for you to get your work done.

Õ Start button and task bar,

¨ My Computer, Windows Explorer, Network Neighborhood, Long file name, The desktop, Properties, Folders, Shortcut Menus, Close, Minimize, and Maximize And What is this ?

Õ Start button and task-bar :

At the bottom of your screen is the task bar. It contains the start button, which you can use quickly – start a program or to find a file. It is also the fastest way to get help, when you open a program, document, or window, a button appears on the task bar. You can use this button to quickly switch between the windows you have opened.

Õ My Computer

You can use My Computer to quickly and easily see everything on your computer. Double Click the My Computer icon on the desktop to browse through your files and folders.

Õ Windows Explorer

In windows explorer, you can see both the hierarchy of folders on the computer and all the files and folders in each selected folders. This is especially useful for copying and moving files. You can open the folder and contains the file you can move or copy, and then drag it to the folder you want to put it in.

To find windows explorer, Click the start button, and then point to the programs.

Õ Network neighborhood

If you are using a net work, the network neighborhood icon appears in your desktop.

Double click it to browse through the computers in your work group and the computers on your entire network.

Õ Long filenames :

You can now give any name to a file; you are not limited to eight characters with a three-character extension. You can even use spaces. The file name may be extended up to 255 characters with space.

Õ The desktop

When you start windows, the large area you see is called the desktop. You can customise the desktop by adding shortcuts to your favorite programs, documents, and the printers, and by changing it look to fit your mood and personality.

To adjust settings such as desktop color and back-ground, use your right mouse button to click anywhere on the desktop, and click properties.

Õ Properties

When you want to view or change information about any item, such as a document, program, folder, disk drive, or printer, you can look at its properties.

Use the right mouse button to click the item , and then click properties on the menu.

For Ms Dos based programs, you no longer need to create and modify PIF files, you just modify the properties for the program.

Õ Folders :

Your documents and programs are stored in folders, which you can see in

My Computer. In previous versions of windows, folders were called directories.

Õ Shortcut menus :

You can use your right mouse button to click any item and see a shortcut menu. This menu contains common commands that you can use on the item you clicked. For example, by clicking a file with your right mouse button, you can choose to open, copy, or delete it.

Õ Close, Minimize, and Maximize buttons :

Every window has X ( close button ) in the upper right corner that you can click to close the window and quit the program.

The minimize and Maximize buttons also have a new look.

Õ What’s This?

In dialog boxes, you can easily get Help on an option or area by clicking in the upper-right corner of the window and then clicking the item you want Help on. A pop-up window appears containing an explanation of the item. Then what you want, write the problem, then click search, you will get the answer. This is very important for practical purpose.

Another way to get Help is to use your right mouse button to click an item, and then you can find the answer or the ways you can get to solve the problem.

Õ Organizing files and folders

In Windows Explorer, you can see both the hierarchy of folders on your computer and all the files and folders in each selected folder. This is especially useful for copying and moving files. You can open the folder that contains the file you want to move or copy, and then drag it to the folder you want to put it in. It provides a graphic way to organize our files and folders.

It is a management tool as it organizes and controls files and folders according to a correct location. Whenever you create a file in any application package like MS Word and MS Excel etc., the files needs to be arranged systematically according to a definite location. The location may be defined as: Assume you have created a file in MS Word named xx.doc. Your file may be: C:\Fima|Ribec\xx.doc (Here Firma and Ribec are sub and sub subfolders respectively. The Windows explorer allows you to access all your drives, folders and files in one window.

To find Windows Explorer :

v Click Start button, and then

v Point to Programs and

v click Windows Explorer

To create a new folder

Ø In My Computer or Windows Explorer, open the folder in which you want to create a new folder.

Ø On the File menu, point to New, and then click Folder. The new folder appears with a temporary name.

Ø Type a name for the new folder, and then press ENTER.

To open a file or folder

Ø Double-click the My Computer icon/ windows explorer

Ø Double-click the drive that contains the file.

The file may be opened according to a location as follows :

Ø Root folder i.e. c:\

Ø Sub-folder

Ø Sub-sub folder

For renaming files/folders

Select the file and then Click the New and then click the rename Command and type the name you want to rename and then O.K/Enter

For deleting files

Select the file and then Click the File Menu and then click the delete Command and Click yes or yes to all and then O.K/Enter Or in selecting mood of the file press right mouse button and you will find delete command.

Copying Procedure

From hard disk to floppy disk and

Floppy disk to hard disk

floppy disk to hard disk

From Windows Explorer : Click 3.5″ floppy , select the file and click edit menu and then copy command ; now select the folder ( in which the file you will paste it) , you click now on the edit menu and then paste.

From Ms Word Application

Open the file, then Go to the File Menu, select the save as command, you will find save as dialogue box and then select drive 3.5″ disk and then O.K/Enter.

Copying from hard disk to floppy disk

From Windows Explorer

Click root folder, then sub or sub-sub folder in which location the files are arranged and select the file, you will copy, click edit menu and select copy command and select the location and in edit menu select paste command.

From MS Word Application:

Open the file by using open Command from the File Menu

Then

Click File Menu

Click Save As Command

Click 3.5″ floppy and lastly Click Save

To format a disk

If the disk you want to format is a floppy disk, insert it into its drive. Otherwise, go to step 2.
Double-click the My Computer icon, and then click the icon for the disk you want to format. Be sure not to double-click the disk icon, because you can’t format a disk if it is open in My Computer or Windows

Notes :

& Formatting a disk removes all information from the disk.

& You cannot format a disk if there are files open on that disk.

& If the disk has been compressed, use DriveSpace,

& or other compression software, to format the disk.

To create a shortcut in a folder

& In My Computer or Windows Explorer, open the folder you want to create the shortcut in.

& On the File menu, point to New, and then click Shortcut.

& Follow the instructions on the screen.

To put a shortcut on the desktop

& Click the item, such as a file, program, folder, printer, or computer, that you want to create a shortcut to.

& On the File menu, click Create Shortcut.

& Drag the shortcut icon onto the desk top. You can use the shortcut as a fast way to open the item.

& To change any settings for the shortcut, such as what kind of window it starts in or what key combination is used to access it,

& use your right mouse button to click the shortcut, and then click Properties.

& To delete a shortcut, drag it to the Recycle Bin. The original item will still exist on the disk where it is stored.

& Back up and delete unneeded files

& Click here to start Backup.

& For information about using Backup, click the Help menu in Backup, and then click Help topics.

& When you are finished backing up unneeded files, double-click the My Computer icon.

& Locate the file or folder you backed up, and then click it.

& On the File menu, click Delete.

& Repeat steps 3 and 4 until you have deleted all the files or folders you backed up.

& Double-click the Recycle Bin icon. If there are files in the Recycle Bin, click the File menu, and then click Empty Recycle Bin.

& Do you want to free up more disk space?

Yes.

No. I want to see how much free disk space I have now.

Using Briefcase to keep documents up-to-date

If you want to work on files at home or on the road, you can use Briefcase to help keep the various copies of the files updated.

To use Briefcase,

you drag files from shared folders on your main computer to the Briefcase icon on your portable computer. When you are finished working on the files on the portable computer, reconnect to your main computer, and then click Update All in Briefcase to automatically replace the unmodified files on your main computer with the modified files in your Briefcase.

The files on your main computer are automatically revised; you do not need to move the files you worked on out of Briefcase or delete the existing copies.

Notes: When you are copying files from your main computer into Briefcase, the two computers must be connected, either over a network or by a cable.

Briefcase is installed only if you chose the Portable option during Windows set-up, or if you chose the Custom option and specified installing Briefcase. If you do not see a Briefcase icon on your desktop, click Related Topics to find out how to install it.

To synchronize files on connected computers

1. On your portable computer, copy files from shared folders on your main computer to Briefcase. (You can drag the files to the My Briefcase icon on your desktop.)

2. Work on your files on your portable or laptop computer. It can be disconnected from the main computer.

3. When you have finished working on the files, connect the two computers, and then double-click the My Briefcase icon.

4. On the Briefcase menu, click Update All. Or click the files you want to update, and then click Update Selection.

Notes:

When you are copying files from your main computer into Briefcase, the two computers must be connected, either over a network or by a cable.

The My Briefcase icon appears on the desktop if you chose the Portable set up option when you installed Windows 95. If you do not see a My Briefcase icon, click Related Topics below for information about installing Windows components.

Introduction to Ms Word and getting to work

In this session we will race through the basics of creating documents with word – setting up the screen so you have on it what you need, entering the text of your document, moving the insertion point and selecting items, and using the different views that word provides for working with your documents.

& Starting MS Word

& Setting up the word screen

& Entering the text, graphics and frames, Soft return and hard return

& Moving the Insertion point

& Selecting items

& Using Word’s different views

& Saving the document

& Page setup

& Writing date, time, page number and file number.

& For starting MS Word :

After opening the Computer, You will find : Start button on the task bar then you will Click on the Programs, you will then get the application to work.

From Programs, you will find a list of programs, then click MS Word , then you will go to MS Word application package to work.

After opening Word, you will find a default setting screen. In this screen, you will set zoom and then set the font style and font size. You can set with the help of Standard tool bar or for changing the size of the font you can press Ctrl +] (for increasing one font up) and Ctrl +[ ( for decreasing one font down ). If you find that there is no standard tool bar on the screen, then you will do the following:

& Click View menu

& Click toolbars

& Then click Standard Toolbar

Or in case of customizing any kind of toolbar, you can bring/ customize the toolbar from the view menu in this way. Suppose, if any item of the standard toolbar or formatting toolbar is missing from the screen, you can bring that item by following the rules.

& Setting up the Zoom :

¨ Click view menu

¨ Click zoom

¨ Click the percentage bar, what percentage of the screen you would like to make it ‘ visible’ i.e. you may want to use zoom to enlarge or shrink the display.

Before you start working in word, you may want to customize your screen. At a minimum, consider maximizing the word window by clicking the document Maximize button. Once you’ve maximized the word window or the document window, word will replace the application Maximize button with an application re-store button or the document maximize button ; click a restore button to restore the button to its pre-maximized size.

& Displaying and hiding the Rulers

To help you position your text optimally on the page, word offers a horizontal ruler in Normal view and both horizontal and vertical rulers in page lay out view and print preview. You can either display the ruler on-screen or keep it hidden but available. To toggle the display of the ruler on and off, choose View, Click Ruler. To pop-up the horizontal ruler momentarily, move the insertion point to the thin bar at the top of the current document window. Then ruler will appear automatically. And the ruler will disappear when you move the insertion point away. To pop-up the vertical ruler in Page Layout View or Print Preview, move the insertion point to the thin bar at the left edge of the current document window. The vertical ruler will appear automatically, and it will disappear when you move the insertion point away.

Note : You cannot display the ruler continuously in one line lay out view, but you can pop-it up when you need it.

& Working with Text, Graphics, and Text Boxes

As with most word-processing applications, the basic unit of Word is the paragraph. These aren’t paragraphs as people generally understand them: A paragraph in word consists of a paragraph mark (made by pressing Enter] and any text, (or graphic), between it and the previous paragraph mark ( or the beginning of the document ). In other words, a paragraph consists of anything [text, a graphic, a space or even nothing at all ] that appears between two paragraph marks, up to and including the second paragraph mark.

This seems a strange way to describe it, but a paragraph mark with nothing between it and the previous paragraph mark is considered a full paragraph. You can treat each paragraph as a unit formatting with styles for moving and copying.

& Entering text

To enter text in your document, simply position the insertion point where you want the text to appear and type it in. Word will automatically wrap text as it reaches the end of a line. Press Enter to start a new paragraph. If you want to move a new line without starting a new paragraph- for example, so there is no space between lines- press Shift+Enter to start a new line without the same paragraph. When you reach the end of a page, word will automatically break text onto the next page, if you , you can start a new page at any point by inserting a page break. To do so, press Ctrl+ Enter.

& Insert and Overtype Mode

Word offers two modes for adding text to your documents: Insert mode and Overtype mode. In insert mode (default mode ] , characters you type are inserted into the text to the left of the insertion point, pushing any characters to the right of the insertion point farther to the right. If you want to replace existing text in insert mode, select the text using either the mouse or the key board and type in the text you want to insert in its place. In insert mode, the OVR indicator on the status bar is dimmed. In overtype mode, any character you type replaces the character if any to the immediate right of the insertion point. When word is in Overtype mode, the OVR indicator on the status bar is active (darkened) . To toggle between Insert mode and overtype mode, double-click the OVR indicator on the status bar.

& Moving the insertion point :

In word, you move the insertion point using either the mouse or the keyboard.

Using the Mouse:

To position the insertion point using the mouse, simply move the mouse pointer to where you want it and click. Use the vertical scroll bar or the roller on the IntelliMouse to move up and down through your document as you drag the box in the scroll bar in a multi-page document, word will display a small box showing you which page you are on, use the horizontal scroll bar to move from side to side as necessary.

Click the next page and previous page buttons to move to the next page and previous page, respectively. Make sure these buttons are black, which indicates that word is browsing by page. If they are blue, that means word is browsing by a different item, such as sections or comments. To reset word to browse by page, click the object browser button between next and previous buttons.

Using Keyboard shortcuts

Word offers a number of keystrokes and key combinations to move the insertion point swiftly through the document. Besides left arrow on the keyboard to move left one character, right arrow to move right to one character, Top arrow move up one line, and down arrow to move down one line, you can use Page Up and Page Down Key , Ctrl + Home key is used to bring the insertion point to the beginning of the text and Ctrl+ End key is used to bring the insertion point to the end of the text.

The following keystrokes and combinations are used while working in Word Document.

Keystroke	Action
Ctrl + L	Left Alignment
Ctrl + R	Right Alignment
Ctrl + E	Center Alignment
Ctrl + J	Justified Alignment
Ctrl + right arrow	One word to the right
Ctrl + left arrow	One word to the left
Ctrl + top arrow	To the beginning of the current paragraph or ( if the insertion point is at the beginning of a paragraph ) to the beginning of the previous paragraph.
Ctrl + down arrow	To the beginning of the next paragraph
End	To the end of the current line.
Ctrl+End	To the end of the document
Home	To the start of the current line
Ctrl+Home	To the start of the document
PageUp	Up one screen’s worth of text
Pagedown	Down one screen’s worth of text
Ctrl+PageUp	To the first character on the current screen
Ctrl+PageDown	To the last character on the current screen
Alt + Shift +D	For date
Alt + Shift +T	For time
Ctrl +]	For increasing one font up
Ctrl + [	For decreasing one font down
Alt +Ctrl+I	Print preview
Alt +F4	To close the window
Ctrl+Enter	Page break
Shift + Enter	Beginning of the paragraph
Ctrl +N	For new document
Ctrl+O	For opening the document
Ctrl+C	For copying the document
Ctrl+V	For paste the document
Ctrl+X	For cutting the document
Ctrl+Shift +>	To increase twice up of the font
Ctrl+Shift+<	Just reverse of the above ( To decrease twice down of the font )
Ctrl+Shift+	Superscript
Ctrl +A	To select the document
Ctrl +Z	To undo action
Ctrl+P	Print
Ctrl+F	Find
Ctrl+H	Replace

For Creating file, the following are the rules :

Click File Menu, then New and then a new screen will appear, you will begin to type by using Key board within a definitive font size and font style and the document must be within the particular page setup where margins ( left, right, top, bottom) and paper orientation to be specified.

& For Saving the new file

Click the File Menu, and then Save , then you will find Save as Dialogue box, write a name restricted within 255 characters , then the folders.

( under root folder, a sub folder as a folder and then Sub-sub folder as another folder) and then O.K/Enter.

For any change of the text, you then simply go to the file Menu and then go to the Save Commands.

& Rules for Opening files

First you open the document in which name the document is in the Computer.

Click File Menu, then Open Command, and then select the document according to the folders and O.K/Enter

& Page Set Up

If you are going to print document, you need to see how it should appear on the page. Page set up offers you to change margins, the paper size, the layout of the paper, and even which

printer tray comes from.

Setting Margins

To set the margins for your document:

¨ Click the margin tab in the page set up dialog box.

¨ In the boxes for top, bottom, left and right margins, use the spinner arrow to enter the measurement you want for each margin, alternatively, type in a measurement

Setting Paper Size

Word lets you print on paper of various size, offering a Custom option to allow you to set a peculiar paper size of your own, in addition to the various standard paper and envelope sizes.

To change the size of the paper you are printing on:

¨ Click the paper size tab of Page Set Up dialog box.

¨ In the paper size drop down list box:

¨ Choose the size of the paper you will be working with (for example, letter 8½ X 11inch).

¨ If you can’t find the width and height of paper you want, use the width and height boxes to set the width and height

Setting Paper Orientation

To change the orientation of the page you are working on:

v Click the paper size tab of the page setup dialog box and ;

v Choose portrait or landscape in the orientation group box.

Word handles by letting you know to divide documents into Sections, each of which can have different characteristics

& Creating a Section

To create a section:

v Place the insertion point where you want the new section to start.

v Choose Insert-Break. Word will display the Break dialog box.

v Choose the type of section break to insert by clicking one of the option buttons in the section break area.

v Next page- Starts the section from the next page

v Continuos-Start the section from the same page

v Even page-Starts the section from the new even page

v Odd page-Starts the section from the new odd page

& Deleting a Section

To delete a section break, place the insertion point at the beginning of the section break and press the Delete Key

v Rules for writing file name/ page no/ date/ time

v Setting Up Of Headers and Footers

v Headers and Footers give you an easy way to repeat identifying information on each page of your document. For example, in a header, you might include the title of a document and the author, while in a footer you might include the file name, the date and the page number out of total number of pages in the document.

& Setting Headers and Footers

v To include a header in your document:

¨ Choose View-Header and Footer. Word will display the page in Page Layout View and will display the Header and Footer toolbar.

¨ Enter the text for the header in the header area at the top of the page. Use the buttons on the Header and Footer toolbar to speed your work.

& Animating Text

v If you create fancy screen presentation, you might want to take a look at Word’s animation feature, which can make your text shimmer, sparkle or blink.

v Place your insertion point where you want the animation to begin or select the text you want to animate.

¨ Choose Format Menu-Font.

¨ Select the Animation tab.

¨ Select the effect you want to use and click OK.

v
Notice that the preview box shows you the result of the selected animation.

& For Documents printing :

Click the File, then Select the Print Command, Print dialogue box will appear, then select the name of the printer where you will print, then

In the Page range :

All, for printing all pages
Current, for printing the current page only.
Page range, for printing the selected page only.
number of copies and then OK/Enter.

For setting up the horizontal and vertical toolbar, the following are the rules :

Click Tools Menu, then options and then view tab and then vertical and horizontal toolbar

Customize spelling and grammar checking

Spelling and grammar check can be done in two ways:

Short cut ways :

if the mistakes are few and the documents are short : Rules : Identify first the spelling and grammar mistake; red mark for spelling mistakes and green mark for grammar mistakes. Then in the middle of the mistake, bring the pointer and press right mouse button. You will find short cut menus, where the correct words are there. To rectify the errors and replace the correct word, you will simply press left mouse button. If you don’t change the incorrect word, you will ignore or in case of adding the word in the customized dictionary, you can press add in the short cut menu.

In the whole document Correcting Errors By ‘Tools Menu” :

In this procedure, you have to click tools menu, then grammar and spelling tab, then you will find a dialogue box where you can correct the word. You have to see the words whether they are wrong, if they are found wrong, you can press change options according to the suggested word placed in the bottom of the dialogue box. On the other hand, if you don’t want to change the word, you can simply press ignore options.

To improve the accuracy and speed of a spelling and grammar check, you can set spelling and grammar options and uses special dictionaries. For example, use a custom or supplemental dictionary to check words that the spelling checker doesn’t recognize, such as technical terms or text in other languages. Or, use an exclude dictionary to specify preferred spellings for words.

What do you want to do?

Select spelling options

& Change grammar-checking options

& Create and manage a custom or supplemental dictionary

& Specify a preferred spelling for a word

& Skip text during a spelling and grammar check

Select spelling options

1 On the Tools menu, click Options, and then click the Spelling & Grammar tab.

2 Select the options you want.

Change grammar-checking options

You can specify the set of grammar and writing style rules you want Word to use. For example, select a built-in style, such as Casual Communication or Technical Writing. Or, create your own grammar and writing style by customizing an existing style or creating a new style.

What do you want to do?

Ø Select a grammar and writing style

Ø Customize or create a grammar and writing style

Select a grammar and writing style

Ø On the Tools menu, click Options, and then click the Spelling & Grammar tab.

Ø In the Writing style box, click the style you want.

Note :

You can customize any of the built-in grammar and writing styles by choosing whether to apply specific rules. You can also create your own custom grammar and writing style. For more information, click .

Customize or create a grammar and writing style

Ø On the Tools menu, click Options, and then click the Spelling & Grammar tab.

Ø Click Settings.

Ø To customize an existing grammar and writing style, click a style in the Writing style box.

To create a new grammar and writing style, click Custom in the Writing style box.

Ø In the Grammar and style options box, select the check boxes next to the rules you want Word to use.

Ø Below Require, select the options you want.

Note

To restore the original rules of the selected grammar and writing style, click Reset All.

Customize or create a grammar and writing style

Ø On the Tools menu, click Options, and then click the Spelling & Grammar tab.

Ø Click Settings.

Ø To customize an existing grammar and writing style, click a style in the Writing style box.

To create a new grammar and writing style, click Custom in the Writing style box.

4 In the Grammar and style options box, select the check boxes next to the rules you want Word to use.

5 Below Require, select the options you want.

Note To restore the original rules of the selected grammar and writing style, click Reset All.

Customize or create a grammar and writing style

1 On the Tools menu, click Options, and then click the Spelling & Grammar tab.

2 Click Settings.

3 To customize an existing grammar and writing style, click a style in the Writing style box.

To create a new grammar and writing style, click Custom in the Writing style box.

4 In the Grammar and style options box, select the check boxes next to the rules you want Word to use.

5 Below Require, select the options you want.

Note To restore the original rules of the selected grammar and writing style, click Reset All.

Customize or create a grammar and writing style

1 On the Tools menu, click Options, and then click the Spelling & Grammar tab.

2 Click Settings.

3 To customize an existing grammar and writing style, click a style in the Writing style box.

To create a new grammar and writing style, click Custom in the Writing style box.

4 In the Grammar and style options box, select the check boxes next to the rules you want Word to use.

5 Below Require, select the options you want.

Note To restore the original rules of the selected grammar and writing style, click Reset All.

Create and manage a custom or supplemental dictionary

If you use specialized words that the spelling checker doesn’t recognize such as acronyms or proper names you can use one or more custom dictionaries to check their spelling. You can add the specialized words to the built-in custom dictionary or create your own dictionaries; the spelling checker won’t question the words again unless they’re misspelled.

You can also purchase supplemental dictionaries for example, dictionaries of other languages or medical and legal dictionaries.

What do you want to do?

v Create a new custom dictionary

v Add an existing custom dictionary

v Activate and use a custom dictionary

v Add words to a custom dictionary during a spelling check

v Add, delete, or edit words in a custom dictionary

v Remove a custom dictionary

v Use a supplemental dictionary

Create a new custom dictionary

v On the Tools menu, click Options, and then click the Spelling & Grammar tab.

v Click Dictionaries.

v Click New.

v In the File name box, type a name for the custom dictionary.

v Click Save.

Notes

& · Before you can use the custom dictionary to check spelling, you must activate it: In the Custom Dictionaries dialog boxes, make sure the check box beside the dictionary is selected.

& You can now add words to the custom dictionary while you check spelling; for more information, click

& You can also add, edit, or delete words directly in the custom dictionary file; for more information, click .

& Add an existing custom dictionary

The Custom Dictionaries dialog box lists the available custom dictionaries that are stored in your proofing tools folder (usually located in the C:\Program Files Common Files Microsoft Shared Proof or C:\Windows\Msapps\Proof folder). If you want to use a custom dictionary that’s stored in any other location, you must add it to the list of dictionaries in the Custom dictionaries box.

Ø On the Tools menu, click Options, and then click the Spelling & Grammar tab.

Ø Click Dictionaries.

Ø If the custom dictionary you want isn’t in the Custom dictionaries box, click Add.

Ø In the File name box, enter the name of the custom dictionary you want to add.

Note Before you can use the custom dictionary to check spelling, you must activate it: In the Custom dictionaries box, make sure the check box beside the dictionary is selected.

Add, delete, or edit words in a custom dictionary

v On the Tools menu, click Options, and then click the Spelling & Grammar tab.

v Click Dictionaries.

v Select the dictionary you want to edit. Make sure you do not clear its check box.

v Click Edit.

v Add, delete, or edit the words in the custom dictionary.

If you’re typing words, press ENTERS after each word to put it on a separate line.

v When you finish editing, save your changes by clicking Save .

v Close the dictionary file so that it will be available the next time you check spelling.

Note When you edit a custom dictionary, Word turns off automatic spelling and grammar checking. After you close the dictionary file, you can turn on automatic spelling and grammar checking again. For more information, click .

Specify a preferred spelling for a word

To specify a preferred spelling for a word (for example, “gray” instead of “gray”), add the unwanted version of the word to an exclude dictionary. The next time you check spelling, the spelling checker will question the word so you can change it to the version you want.

v Click New .

v Type the words that you want to put in the exclude dictionary. Press ENTER after each word.

v On the File menu, click Save As.

You must save the exclude dictionary in the same folder that contains the main dictionary (usually located in the C:\Program Files Common Files Microsoft Shared Proof or C:\Windows\Msapps\Proof folder).

v In the Save as type box, click Text Only.

v In the File name box, type a name for the exclude dictionary.

Make sure to give the exclude dictionary the same name as the main language dictionary it’s associated with, except use the file name extension. exc. For example, the English (United States) dictionary is called Mssp2_en.lex, so name the associated exclude dictionary Mssp2_en.exc.

v Click Save.

v Close the file so that it will be available the next time you check spelling.

Tip You can also use this procedure to find correctly spelled words that you want the spelling checker to question (for example, if you often type “widow” when you mean to type “window”). After you add “widow” to the exclude dictionary, the spelling checker will question it the next time you check spelling.

Skip text during a spelling and grammar check

To speed up a spelling and grammar check, you can prevent Word from checking specialized text for example, a list of product names or text in another language.

Ø Select the text that you don’t want to check.

Ø On the Tools menu, point to Language, and then click Set Language.

From this options, you can enrich your text by selecting alternatives, antonym and synonym of the words in the customized dictionary.

Set tab stops

What do you want to do?

v Set tab stops

v Clear or move tab stops

v Set tab stops with leader characters

Set tab stops

Select the paragraphs in which you want to set tab stops.
Click tab control unit box at the far left of the horizontal ruler until it changes to the type of tab you want.
Click on the horizontal ruler where you want to set a tab stop.

Set tab stops

Select the paragraphs in which you want to set tab stops.
Click at the far left of the horizontal ruler until it changes to the type of tab you want: Click on the horizontal ruler where you want to set a tab stop.

Note : If you want to set precise measurements for tabs, click Tabs on the Format menu.

Clear or move tab stops

Select the paragraphs in which you want to clear or move a tab stop.
To clear a tab stop, drag the tab marker off the horizontal ruler.

To move a tab stop, drag the tab marker to the right or left on the horizontal ruler.

Set tab stops with leader characters

Select the paragraphs in which you want to insert leader characters before a tab stop.
On the Format menu, click Tabs.
In the Tab stop position box, type the position for a new tab, or select an existing tab stop to which you want to add leader characters.
Under Alignment, select the alignment for text typed at the tab stop.
Under Leader, click the leader option you want, and then click Set.

Figure 0‑i

Page layout and Page design

Margins

The margin is the distance from the text to the paper’s edge. Word usually prints text and graphics inside the margins; headers, footers, and page numbers are printed in the margins. You can use the rulers in page layout view or print preview to set the margins in different sections of a document.

Page Numbers

You can specify where you want page numbers to start in a document, as well as their position and format. On the Insert menu, click Page Numbers. You can also insert page numbers by using the Header and Footer command on the View menu.

Add Headers and footers

If you want to repeat information at the top of each page, such as a document title or company logo, create a header. Create a footer to repeat information at the bottom of each page, such as the file name, author, page number, and the current date. On the View menu, click Header and Footer, and then enter text or a graphic in the header or footer area.

Mix lay out in a document

To vary the layout of a document, divide the document into sections, and format each section the way you want. Section formats include the number of columns, the size of margins, the format of page numbers, and the contents and position of headers and footers. To create a new section, click where you want the new section to begin, and then click Break on the Insert menu.

Add page breaks

Word automatically starts a new page when the current page is full. As you edit, Word continually adjusts the automatic page breaks. To begin a page at a particular spot, such as at the beginning of a chapter, click Break on the Insert menu, and then select the Page break check box. You can select, move, copy, or delete these manual page breaks as you would any other character.

Align text vertically

You can align text with the top or bottom of a page, center text, or distribute text equally between the top and bottom margins. This feature is useful for formatting single-page documents such as title pages. Click Page Set-up on the File menu, click the Layout tab, and then select the alignment you want.

About line spacing

Line spacing determines the amount of vertical space between lines of text. Word uses single line spacing by default. The line spacing you select will affect all lines of text in the selected paragraph or the paragraph that contains the insertion point. Single Line spacing for each line that accommodates the largest font in that line, plus a small amount of extra space. The amount of extra space varies depending on the font used. 1.5 Lines Line spacing for each line that is one-and-one-half times that of single line spacing. For example, if 10-point text is spaced at 1.5 lines, the line spacing is approximately 15 points. Double Line spacing for each line that is twice that of single line spacing. For example, in double-spaced lines of 10-point text, the line spacing is approximately 20 points.

At Least: Minimum line spacing that Word can adjust to accommodate larger font sizes or graphics that would not otherwise fit within the specified spacing. Exactly Fixed line spacing that Word does not adjust. This option makes all lines evenly spaced. Multiple Line spacing that is increased or decreased by a percentage that you specify. For example, setting line spacing to a multiple of 1.2 will increase the space by 20 percent, while setting line spacing to a multiple of 0.8 will decrease the space by 20 percent. Setting the line spacing at a multiple of 2 is equivalent to setting the line spacing at Double. In the At box, type or select the line spacing you want. The default is three lines. At the amount of line spacing you select. This option is available only if you select At Least, Exactly, or Multiple in the Line Spacing box.

Note If a line contains a large text character, graphic, or formula, Word increases the spacing for that line. To make all lines evenly spaced, click Exactly in the Line spacing box, and then select the line spacing in the At box that is large enough to fit the largest character or graphic in the line. If characters or graphics still appear cut off, select a larger number in the At box.

Create a table

Use tables to organize information and create interesting page layouts with side-by-side columns of text and graphics. The quickest way to create a simple table for example, one that has the same number of rows and columns is with the Insert Table

button.

With the new Draw Table feature, you can easily create a more complex table for example, one that contains cells of different heights or a varying number of columns per row similar to the way you use a pen to draw a table.

You can create a new blank table and fill in the empty cells, or you can convert existing paragraphs of text (separated by a character such as a tab) to a table. You can also create a table from an existing data source, such as a database or spreadsheet.

Create a simple table

Create a complex table

Convert existing text to a table

Insert data from a data source as a table

Create a simple table

6 Click where you want to create a table.

7 Click Insert Table .

8 Drag to select the number of rows and columns you want.

1 Click Table Menu

2 Click Insert Table

3 Select the No. of rows and columns

4 Then O.K.

Create a complex table

& Click where you want to create the table.

& If the Tables and Borders toolbar is not displayed, click Tables and Borders . The toolbar appears, and the pointer changes to a pen.

& If the Tables and Borders toolbar is displayed, click Draw Table

& . The pointer changes to a pen.

& To define the outer table boundaries, draw (drag) from one corner to the diagonal corner of the table. Then draw the column and row lines.

& To erase a line, click Eraser , and drag over the line.

& When you finish creating the table, click a cell, and start typing or insert a graphic.

Convert existing text to a table

Indicate where you want to divide text into columns and rows by inserting separators (characters you specify in step 4). For instance, insert tabs to divide columns, and insert paragraph marks to mark the ends of rows.
select the text you want to convert.
On the Table menu click Convert Text to Table.
Select the options you want.

Insert information from a database or other data source into an existing Word document

By using a query to filter, sort, and select specific fields, you can get exactly the information you want from the data source. To keep the data in your document up to date, you can create a link to the data source. Whenever the data is changed in the source file, Word can automatically update it in your document.

v In the Word document, click where you want to insert the data.

v Display the Database toolbar, and then click Insert Database.

v Click Get Data.

v If you want to use Word features to retrieve, sort, and filter the data: select a data source, click Open, and then continue on to step 5.

If you want to use Microsoft Query to retrieve, sort, and filter the data: click MS Query, construct your query, and then skip ahead to step 6. For more information, click .

Click Query Options, select the criteria you want, and then click OK.

To customize the Word table formatting, click Table AutoFormat, select the options you want, and then click OK.
Click Insert Data.
Under Insert Records, select the records to include in the Word table.
If you want to be able to update the data in the Word table when the source data changes,

select the Insert data as field check box.

Word inserts the data in the Word table as a DATABASE field, which is linked to the source data. To update the field, click in the table and press F9.

Using macros to automate tasks

If you perform a task repeatedly in Word, you can automate the task using a macro. A macro is a series of Word commands and instructions that you group together as a single command to accomplish a task automatically. Instead of manually performing a series of time-consuming, repetitive actions in Word, you can create and run a single macro ¾ in effect, a custom command ¾ that accomplishes the task for you.

Here are some typical uses for macros:

v · To speed up routine editing and formatting

v · To combine multiple commands

v · To make an option in a dialog box more accessible

v · To automate a complex series of tasks

Word offers two ways for you to create a macro: the macro recorder and Visual Basic Editor. The macro recorder can help you get started creating macros. Word records a macro as a series of Word commands in Visual Basic for Applications programming language. You can open a recorded macro in Visual Basic Editor to modify the instructions. You can also use Visual Basic Editor to create very flexible, powerful macros that include Visual Basic instructions that you cannot record. For more information about using Visual Basic in Word, see “Microsoft Word Visual Basic Reference” on the Help Contents tab. If “Microsoft Word Visual Basic Reference” does not appear on the Contents tab, the Visual Basic Help component was not installed with Word. For information about installing it, click .

After you’ve assigned a macro to a toolbar, a menu, or shortcut keys, running the macro is as simple as clicking the toolbar button or menu item or pressing the shortcut keys. You can also point to Macro on the Tools menu, click Macros, and then click the name of the macro you want to run.

You can store macros in templates or in documents. By default, Word stores macros in the Normal template so that they’re available for use with every Word document. However, if a macro stored in the Normal template is useful only for a particular type of document, you may want to copy the macro to the template attached to that document and then delete the macro from the Normal template. To copy, delete, or rename a macro, use the Organizer. On the Tools menu, point to Macro, click Macros, and then click Organizer.

Get Help for Visual Basic in Word

To do this procedure, you must have selected the Online Help for Visual Basic check box during Setup so that programming Help is installed. For information about how to install a program or component, click

On the Tools menu, point to Macro, and then click Visual Basic Editor.
If the Office Assistant is not showing, click Office Assistant .
If the Office Assistant balloon is not showing, click the Assistant.
In the Assistant, type the method, property, function, statement, or object you want help on, or type a query.
Click Search, and then click the topic you want.

To browse through a list of all the Visual Basic methods, properties, functions, and objects for a particular Office program in Visual Basic Editor, click Object Browser . In the list of libraries, click the library of the program you want. To get Help on an item, click the item, and then click the question mark button in the Object Browser dialog box.

To show Help for Visual Basic Editor, click Contents and Index on the Help menu.

Record a macro in Word

1 On the Tools menu, points to Macro, and then click Record New Macro.

2 In the Macro name box, type a name for the macro.

3 In the Store macro in box, click the template or document in which you want to store the macro.

4 In the Description box, type a description for the macro.

5 If you don’t want to assign the macro to a toolbar, a menu, or shortcut keys, click OK to begin recording the macro.

To assign the macro to a toolbar or menu, click Toolbars. In the Commands box, click the macro you are recording, and drag it to the toolbar or menu you want to assign it to. Click Close to begins recording the macro.

To assign the macro to shortcut keys, click Keyboard. In the Commands box, click the macro you are recording. In the Press new shortcut key box, type the key sequence. Clicks Close to begin recording the macro.

6 perform the actions you want to include in your macro.

The macro recorder cannot record mouse actions in a document window. You must use the keyboard when recording such actions as moving the insertion point or selecting, copying, or moving text. However, you can use the mouse to click commands and options when you’re recording a macro.

7 To stop recording your macro, click Stop Recording.

Note If you give a new macro the same name as an existing built-in macro in Word, the new macro actions will replace the existing actions. For example, the File menu command Close has a macro attached to it called File Close. If you record a new macro and name it File Close, it becomes attached to the Close command. When you choose the Close command, Word performs the new actions you recorded. To view a list of built-in macros in Word, point to Macro on the Tools menu, and then click Macros. Choose Word Commands from the Macros in drop-down list.

Mail Merge

Set up a main document for a mail merge

A mail-merge main document can be a new or existing document, a catalog, a membership directory, a parts list, or a WordPerfect primary file.

What do you want to do?

& Create a form letter

& Create a catalog, membership directory, parts list, or similar document

& Use a WordPerfect primary file as a mail-merge main document

Create a form letter

1 To use an existing letter as a form letter, open the letter.

To create a new letter, click New on the File menu, and then select a letter template.

On the Tools menu, click Mail Merge.
Click Create, click Form Letters, and then click Active Window.

The active document becomes the mail-merge main document.

Click Get Data.

To create a new list of names and addresses in Word, click Create Data Source, and then set up the data records.

To use an existing list of names and addresses in a Word document or in a worksheet, database, or other list, click Open Data Source.

To use addresses from an electronic address book, click Use Address Book.

After you designate the data source and Word displays a message, click Edit Main Document.
In the main document, type the text you want to appear in every form letter.
Click where you want to insert a name, address, or other information that changes in each letter. On the Mail Merge toolbar, click Insert Merge Field, and then click the field name that you want.

8 After you insert all of the merge fields and complete the main document, click Mail Merge Helper on the Mail Merge toolbar.
Click Merge.
In the Merge to box, click Printer.

To send the form letter only to selected addressees, click Query Options, and then specify criteria for selecting the data records.

11 Click Merge.

Note : You can view the resulting form letters before you print them or send them online. For more information, click. Create a catalog, membership directory, parts list, or similar document

If you select Catalog as the type of main document, all of the merged data is placed in one resulting merged document. Any standard text you add to the main document is repeated for each set of data.

Click New to create a new document.
On the Tools menu click Mail Merge.
Click Create, click Catalog, and then click Active Window.

The active document becomes the mail-merge main document.

4 Click Get Data.

To create a new list of names, addresses, or other data in Word, click Create Data Source, and then set up the data records.

How?

To use an existing list of data in a Word document or in a worksheet, database, or other list, click Open Data Source.

To use addresses from an electronic address book, click Use Address Book.

After you designate the data source and Word displays a message, click Edit Main Document.
In the main document, type any text you want to be repeated with each set of information merged from the data source.

Do not include text you want to be printed only once in the resulting catalog document, such as headers, footers, and table column headings.

Click where you want to insert a name, address, or other information. Then click Insert Merge Field on the Mail Merge toolbar, and click the field name that you want.

How?

After you complete the main document and insert all of the merge fields, click Mail Merge Helper on the Mail Merge toolbar.
Click Merge.
In the Merge to box, click New document.

To merge only selected records from the data source, click Query Options, and then specify criteria for selecting the data records.

How?

Click Merge.

In the resulting catalog document, add headers, footers, and any other text that you want. For example, if the merged data is formatted as a table, add column headings to the table after the data is merged.

To print the catalog document, click Print .

Use a WordPerfect primary file as a mail-merge main document

If you’ve set up primary and secondary files to create a form letter in WordPerfect, you can use these files to merge the documents and print the form letters in Word.

1 To open the WordPerfect primary file, click Open and find the file.
On the Tools menu, click Mail Merge.
Click Create, click Form Letters, and then click Active Document.
If Word did not locate the related secondary file, click Get Data, click Open Data Source, and then click the name of the secondary file.
5 In the Mail Merge Helper dialog box, click Merge.

Notes :

Word converts each {FIELD} field name merge programming command to a Word merge field with the same name. Word names numbered fields F1, F2, F3, and so on.
Word cannot convert all WordPerfect merge-programming commands in the primary file. However, you can use Word fields to perform many of the same functions. To print lists of addresses on mailing labels and envelopes, use the Mail Merge command on the Tools menu.

Working with Data in Tables

Sorting

Discussion

Have you ever created something such as an alphabetic list of employees and their phone extensions and then needed a list of phone- extension assignments sorted by extension number ? Most of us have small lists like these, and they always seem to be in the wrong order.

You could retype the old list or cut and paste, but the Table – Sort command or the Sort Ascending and Sort Descending buttons on the Tables and Borders toolbar might be a better solution.

Word can sort lines of tabular text, items you’ve entered in tables, or even paragraphs in a document The Sort command can be helpful when preparing data files for Word’s Print Merge feature, discussed in Chapter, mail Merge – Creating Custom Documents.

PROCEDURE

1. Select Table Menu

2. Click Sort

3. Dialogbox open

4. Select the desired options

5. Click OK

Sorting with the Table and Borders Toolbar

Discussion

The Tables and Borders toolbar contains some sorting buttons among other things.

To sort rows of text, select them and click on either the sort Ascendng or Sort Descending button.

To sort rows of text, select them and click on either the Sort Ascending or Sort Descending button .Word will sort based on the first letter (s) at the left of each line. Remarkably, if the first row (line) of text is bold or otherwise ‘looks” like lables, Word will not move it.

To sort items in a table with the Tables and Borders toolbar, follow these steps:

PROCEDURE

Save your work, just in case.
Place the insertion point in the column that you want to use as the “sort by” column.
Click on the Ascending or Descending sort button . Words sorts the entire table (all column), leaving labels untouched.

Sorting with the Sort Command

Words Table Sort command will attempt to sort selected text alphabetically, numerically, or chronologically at your request. Sorts can be up to three levels “deep”. The Sort Text command can be used in free-from text but is much more powerful when used with a table. To sort a table with this command, follow these steps:

PROCEDURE

Save your work, just in case.
Place the insertion point in the table you want to sort.
Choose Table menu
Click Sort
Word highlights (select) the entire table and displays the dialog box shown in Figure 9.23.
If you have labels at the top of your table, choose the My List Has Header Row options.
There will be up to three dropdown lists containing the column labels(if you have them )or column numbers (1,2, and 3).
1. Specify the sort order by choosing the desired column for each sort level.
2. Choose a sort order for each column.
3. Tell Word Whether the values in each column are text, numbers, or dates by choosing from the drop down Type lists.(Word will automatically assign each value a data type, but you may not agree with what it assigns.)
4. Click on OK, and Word will sort.

Adding. Subtracting Multiplying. and Dividing

Words Table Formula command will add, subtract, multiply, and divide numbers you’ve typed in your documents. It is perfect for creating simple financial reports or for proofreading columns of numbers. The feature has some peculiarities, however, so if you plan to use it extensively, review the examples in this chapter and create some your own before your next rush project.

PROCEDURE

Select the desired Cell
Click Table Menu
Click Formula
Write Formula in Dialogbox
Select Number Format
Choose other options if necessary
Click OK

Starting the Equation Editor

The Equation Editor is a separate program that runs under Word’s supervision. The program and related help file should be installed in your Commands folder. Choose Insert-Object, Select the Create New tab, and double-click on Microsoft Equation to start it.

You assemble equations by typing text and choosing templates and symbols from the palettes. The Equation Editor has a number of keyboard shortcuts, which are detailed in the program’s context-sensitive help screens. Create equations by choosing elements from drop-down lists.

PROCEDURE

Choose Insert Menu
Click Object
Select Microsoft Equation
Select other options in Dialogbox if desired
Click OK
Select the Equation Type in Equation Toolbar
Type the number or Character what you need

Mail Merge

Discussion

A common word processing task is to produce periodic mailings to go to a group of individuals. The document must be customized with individuals address information and usually other types of personal information, such as spouse’s name or the name of an item individual purchased.

To produce this types of form documents, you can use Mail Merge feature. Mail Merge requires three types of documents :

The personalized document or envelop or mailing label, known as the Main Document.
A list individuals and their addresses or other specific information called Data Source
The result of merging the main document with the data source produces a third document, called the Merge Document. The merged document can be merged to the screen or directly to a printer.

Data Sources and Main Documents

Data sources are organized collections of information- databases-that you can create easily as a Word table. That way you can use all the table techniques that you’ve already learned to add and delete rows and edit the table information. As you’ll see in this chapter, the Mail Merge Helper leads you step by step through the creation of a new data source if you don’t already have one.

Word can also use data from other application, such as Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Access. All data sources, no matter where they come from, contain records and fields. For instance, a data source of information about your employees would usually contain one record for each employ. Each record would contain multiple fields-one field for the employee’s first name, one for the middle initial, one for the last name, one for each part of the address, and so on. Main documents, as mentioned above, contain the text of your merge project (the body of a letter, for instance ), fields showing where to insert information from the data source, and optional instructions telling Word how to merge the information.

Using Mail Merge Helper

Word’s Mail Merge Helper guides you through the steps of merging documents. The process seems a little convoluted the first time, but it works well. Once you’ve tried it once or twice, you’ll be merging merrily with the best of them. In the following sections, I’ll discuss how to perform the different stages of a mail merge by using Mail Merge Helper, because this is the easiest way to merge.

To Start Mail Merge Helper, select Tools ä Mail Merge. Word displays the Mail Merge Helper dialog box,. Note the instructions in the box at the top telling you to click on the Create button to set up the mail merge .Watch these instructions as you to click on the Create button to set up the mail merge . Watch these instructions as you proceed with subsequent stages of the mail merge. If you’re ever confused about what to do next, consult this box.

The first step in the mail merge is to create your main document; the type of main document governs the subsequent choices you can make in the Mail Merge Helper. Because from letters, mailing labels, envelopes, and catalogs have different components, the Mail Merge Helper offers you different choices of data sources.

Procedure

Select Tools Menu
Click Mail Merge
Word displays the Mail Merge Helper dialog box
Then You can start

Starting Main Document

To start your main document, follow these steps:

Procedure

Click on the Create button to start creating your main document. A drop-down list offers you four choice- Form Letters, Mailing Labels, Envelopes, and Catalog:

Select the type of main document you want.(In the example, I’ve chosen From Letters.) Word display a dialog box in which you choose the active window or a new main document:

Select the window you want to use. If you’re starting from a new document, as in the example, or if the active window contains information for your main document, choose the Active Window button. If your active Window contains valuable information that has nothing to do with the mail merge, choose the new main Document button. If you choose the New Main Document button, Word opens a new document. The previously active document stays open -Word dose not save or close it.

Regardless of which button you choose, Word returns you to the Mail Merge Helper dialog box for the next stage of the mail merge, arranging the data source.

The information box at the top of the Mail Merge Helper dialog box tells you that the next step is to specify the data source. Let’s do it.

Specifying the Data Source

Next, you need to create or specify the data source and arrange the fields that you want to be available to your main document for the merge.

Procedure

Click on the Get Data button to display a list of options for your data source.
2. If you already have a data source that you want to use, select Open data source. If you want to create the data source, select Create Data Source. If you want to use your address Book, choose the Use Address book option.

If you chose Open data Source or use address book, skip ahead a section. If you chose Create Data Source, read the next section.

Creating a Data Source

The dialog box that appears when you choose Create Data Source a list of commonly used field name for the type of mail merge you’re performing. Figure 26.3 shows the Create Data source dialog box for form letters. You can use some or all of these suggested fields, and you can even add your own.

Procedure

Type the name in the Field Name box.
Click on the Add Field Name Button. The new Field name is added at the bottom of the list.
To move the new field name to a different position in the list, be sure that it’s high lighted in the field names in Header Row Box and click on the move arrow buttons.

Removing or Modifying a Field Name

You may not want to use all of Mail Merge Helper’s suggested fields. Why clutter up the data source table with fields that you do not plan on using? If all your clients are in the United States, for example, you can easily remove the Country field. You might also want to change a field name to make it more suitable for the types of main documents you will be creating. For example, you might want to change Address 2 to Suite Number. It’s easy to remove or modify a field name, follow these steps:

Procedure

In the Field Names in Header Row box, highlight the field name you want to remove by clicking on it with the mouse or by scrolling to it with the scroll bars or the down arrow. Then click on the Remove Field Name Button. The field name button is remove from the Field Names in Header row lists and appears in the Field Name Box.
To modify the field name, make your changes in the field name box and then click on the Add Field Name button.

Rearranging Field Names

To rearrange the field names in the field names in Header row box, highlight the field you want to move and click on the Move up and down arrows to move the highlighted field up or down.

Saving Your Data Source

When you’ve finished adding, removing, and arranging fields, click on OK to save your data source. Word display the save data Source dialog box . Enter a name for your data source file and select OK to save the file. Words saves the data source file under the name you specify .

Editing the Data Source

Word now checks your data source to see if it contains records .If it dosen’t, Word displays a dialog box informing you of this and inviting you to edit the data source or the main document, as shown bellow. Click on the Edit Data Source button to edit your data source, and then enter the records.

The steps are discussed in a following section.

Opening a Data Source

If you already created a data source for use with a different main document, you can open it for use with another -even for labels, envelopes, or a catalog. This way, for example, you can use one data source for letters and for addressing the envelopes. To open an exiting data source, select Open data Source from the Get Data drop-down list .The open Data Source dialog box works just like the file open dialog box : Select the document you want to use and click on OK. Word will open the document and return you to Mail Merge Helper.

Procedure

To add a new record, click on the Add New button.

To delete a record, click on the Delete button .

If you realize you’ve trashed a record (by entering in the wrong place or whatever ), click on the Restore button to return its entries to their previous state. This will not, however, restore a deleted record.

Inserting a Clip Art Image

Discussion

You can insert clip art into a document. Clip art images are a way to add interest to a Word document. For example, you might insert clip art in a company newsletter to illustrate a story.

You insert clip art using the Microsoft Clip Gallery 3.0 dialog box.

Available clip art is divided into several thematic categories such as Animals, Cartoons, People at Work, and Sports & Leisure. You can also choose to preview the clip art image to verify that the selection is what you had in mind. Keywords related to the selected clip art image appear in the lower left corner of the Microsoft Clip Gallery 3.0 dialog box.

Inserting a clip art image into a document

The first time you insert a clip art image, the Add New Clips dialog box opens. Select OK and Word automatically updates your files.

Procedures

Position the insertion point where you want the clip art image to appear.
Select the Insert menu.
Point to the Picture command.
Select the Clip Art command.
Select the Clip Art tab, if necessary.
Select the desired clip art category.
Select the desired clip art image.
Select Insert.

Sizing a Graphic

Discussion

A graphic image is inserted into a document in its original size. In Word, you can change the size of the image to meet your needs.

When you select an image, two things happen. First, the Picture toolbar appears. Next, Word places white selection handles at each corner and in the middle of each side. You can use the handles to size a graphic.

You must be in Print Preview, Page Layout, or Online Layout view to see a graphic.

The mouse pointer must be a double-headed arrow to size a graphic.

Procedures

Switch to Page Layout view.
Select the graphic you want to resize.
Position the mouse pointer over a handle.
Drag the handle to the desired size.
Release the mouse button.

Positioning a Graphic

Discussion

You can position a graphic in a document by dragging it to a new location. Positioning a graphic is a good way to place it in the best possible location to enhance the text.

The mouse pointer must be a four-headed arrow to move a graphic.

Procedures

Switch to Page Layout view.
Position the mouse pointer on the graphic.
Drag the graphic to the desired location.
Release the mouse button.

Changing Graphic Image Color

Discussion

Once a graphic has been inserted and positioned, you may want to change it from color to black and white. For example, if you will be printing a document containing a color graphic to a black and white printer, you may want to change the graphic to black and white.

You can return a graphic to color using the Automatic option from the Image Control button on the Picture toolbar.

Changing a graphic image’s color

The first time you select a graphic in Word, the Picture toolbar does not appear by default. You must click the right mouse button on the graphic and select the Show Picture Toolbar command to display the Picture toolbar. Thereafter, unless you close it, the Picture toolbar appears each time you click a graphic.

Procedures

Switch to Page Layout view.
Display the Picture toolbar.
Select the graphic for which you want to change the color.
Click the Image Control button .
Select the desired image color.

Adjusting Brightness/Contrast

Discussion

You can adjust a graphic’s color brightness and contrast to meet your needs. These changes are made on the Picture page of the Format Picture dialog box. For example, you can use the Brightness slider to darken or lighten a graphic or the Contrast slider to increase or decrease the contrast of a graphic. You can experiment with these sliders to get a graphic to appear the way you want.

You can quickly reset a graphic to its original brightness and contrast settings using the Reset button on the Picture page of the Format Picture dialog box.

The Format Picture dialog box

If you prefer to change the contrast or brightness in incremental steps, you can click the More Contrast, Less Contrast, More Brightness, and Less Brightness buttons on the Picture toolbar.

Procedures

Switch to Page Layout view.
Select the graphic for which you want to adjust the brightness and contrast.
Click the Format Picture button .
Drag the Brightness slider to the left to decrease or to the right to increase the brightness of the graphic.
Release the mouse button.
Drag the Contrast slider to the left to decrease or to the right to increase the contrast of the graphic.
Release the mouse button.
Select OK.

Wrapping Text around a Graphic

Discussion

You can make a graphic stand out on a page by wrapping text around it. Text wrapping options from which you can choose include Square and Through. These options are available from the Text Wrapping button on the Picture toolbar.

Wrapping text around a graphic

Procedures

Switch to Page Layout view.
Select the graphic around which you want to wrap the text.
Click the Text Wrapping button .
Select the desired text wrapping option.

Spelling Check

Discussion

In order to help you check your Word documents for errors in spelling and grammar, Word includes a Spelling and Grammar feature.

The Check spelling as you type feature in Word is an excellent tool for correcting typographical errors as you type. This feature examines the words in a document and compares them to the words found in the main dictionary. When a word is found that is not in Word’s main dictionary, a single, red, wavy line appears beneath the word. (Red, wavy lines also appear under words identified as not in Word’s dictionary when you open a document.)

You have two choices when Word identifies a word. If the word is not found in the dictionary or is spelled correctly in its context, you can ignore the underline and continue typing.

You can correct the misspelled word with one of the suggestions on the shortcut menu. If the correct spelling is not present, you can edit the error in the Spelling and Grammar dialog box or in the document itself.

You can also invoke the spelling checker and grammar checker after a document has been created.

You can enable or disable spelling and grammar options on the Spelling & Grammar page of the Options dialog box.

If you choose to check spelling after the entire document has been typed, you can hide the red, wavy underlines so that they do not distract you. You perform this task by selecting the Hide spelling errors in this document option on the Spelling & Grammar page of the Options dialog box.

The Custom Dictionary

Discussion

You can create a custom dictionary to contain any word that is not in the main dictionary.

You can create as many different dictionaries as you want to contain words dealing with specific subjects or topics.

You can activate up to ten custom dictionaries at a time. Word checks custom dictionaries after it checks the main dictionary.

If the custom dictionary has been activated all occurrences of the word in the remainder of the document and in any other document are considered correct.

Disabling Spelling Options

Discussion

You can disable this feature on the Spelling & Grammar page of the Options dialog box so that the red, wavy lines do not appear in the document window.

Other options on the Spelling & Grammar page allow you to hide spelling errors in a document, always suggest corrections, and only suggest corrections based on words in the main dictionary. You can also choose to have the spelling checker ignore words in uppercase, words with numbers, and/or Internet and file addresses.

The Options dialog box

Procedures

Select the Tools menu.

Select the Options command.

Select the Spelling & Grammar tab.

Select or deselect the desired options.

Select OK.

Starting the Spelling Checker

Discussion

You can invoke the spelling checker to spell check a document. The spell check proceeds from the insertion point downward unless otherwise specified.

You can invoke the spelling checker using the Spelling and Grammar button on the Standard toolbar.

You do not need to spell check the entire document; you can check a word, sentence, paragraph, or selected text within a document. When the spelling checker identifies a word that is not in a dictionary, it pauses and the Spelling and Grammar dialog box opens.

You can click the right mouse button on a word with a red, wavy line and select a word from the list at the top of the shortcut menu or select the Spelling command to open the Spelling and Grammar dialog box.

Other ways you can activate the spelling checker include selecting the Spelling and Grammar command from the Tools menu or pressing [F7]

Procedures

Click the Spelling and Grammar button .

Using the Change Options

Discussion

Possible correct spellings to a misspelled word are listed in the Suggestions list. The identified word can be changed to one of these listed suggestions.

You can use the Change button to modify only the current occurrence of the word.

You can also use the Change All button to change all occurrences of the identified word in the document.

The Change and Change All buttons insert the correct spellings only in the current document. If you spell check another document with the same word, Word will identify it again.

Procedures

Select the desired spelling for the identified word from the Suggestions list.

Select Change or Change All.

Correcting an Identified Word

Discussion

If the list of possible alternative spellings in the Suggestions list does not contain the correct spelling, you can type the correct spelling directly in the Spelling and Grammar dialog box.

You can choose to change just the current occurrence of the identified word or all occurrences of the word in the document.

Procedures

Select the identified word in the Not in Dictionary text box.

Type the correct spelling of the identified word.

Select Change or Change All as desired.

Using the Ignore Options

Discussion

Since the spelling checker identifies words not in the main dictionary, it questions many names, abbreviations, and technical terms.

When a word is spelled correctly, you can choose to disregard this occurrence of the identified word by selecting the Ignore button or all occurrences of the word by selecting the Ignore All button.

Procedures

Select Ignore or Ignore All, as desired.

Using the Undo Button

Discussion

You can use the Undo button in the Spelling and Grammar dialog box to reverse any changes you make during a spell check. The Undo button can reverse multiple spelling actions one at a time, working backward from the previous action.

You can also reverse any changes you make during a spell check by clicking in the document and either clicking the Undo button on the Standard toolbar or selecting the Undo command from the Edit menu.

Procedures

1. Select Undo.

Ending the Spell Check

Discussion

Word informs you when it has finished checking a document by opening a message box. You can select OK to close the message box and complete the spell check.

Procedures

1. Select OK.

Starting and Using Microsoft Excel and getting to work

Excel is a spreadsheet program – a program designed to work with numbers (as opposed to a word processor, such as word, which is designed to work with words of text data) we need to work with data and enter it in cells arrayed into horizontal rows and vertical columns on a worksheet, an arrangement some what reminiscent of an accountant’s ledger but far more flexible. Excel organizes worksheets by workbook, on the basis that we may need more than one worksheet for any given project. Each new workbook we open contains three worksheets by default, but we can add worksheet up to a maximum of 255 (We can also remove one or two worksheets from the original three if we need fewer). Each worksheet contains 65,536 rows and 256 columns. We can use Microsoft Excel for accounting statement based on mathematical calculation. That is to say, we can use it for preparing budget, monthly expense account, and Payroll report and for planning, controlling and managing the worksheet data for decision making purpose. We can also use Microsoft Excel for summarizing text data with the help of Pivot Table techniques.

In using Microsoft Excel, the following things are generally followed step by step.

¨ Moving about the worksheet

¨ Moving among worksheet

¨ Selecting worksheet data

¨ Adding a working sheet

¨ Deleting a Worksheet

¨ Renaming a Worksheet

Enter numbers, text, a date, or a time

¨ Click the cell where you want to enter data.

¨ Type the data and press ENTER or TAB.

¨ Use a slash or a hyphen to separate the parts of a date; for example, type 9/5/96 or Jun-96.

¨ To enter a time based on the 12-hour clock, type a space and then a or p after the time; for example, 9:00 p

Otherwise, Microsoft Excel enters the time as AM.

Note:

To fill in rows of data in a list, enter data in a cell in the first column, and then press TAB to move to the next cell. At the end of the row, press ENTER to move to the beginning of the next row. If the cell at the beginning of the next row doesn’t become active, click Options on the Tools menu, and then click the Edit tab. Under Settings, select the Move selection after Enter check box, and then click down in the Direction box.

¨ To enter today’s date, press CTRL+; (semicolon).

¨ To enter the current time, press CTRL+SHIFT+: (colon).

Enter a formula

For information about how formulas calculate values, the following are the rules.

1. Click the cell in which you want to enter the formula.

2. Type = (an equal sign).

If you click Edit Formula or Paste Function, Microsoft Excel inserts an equal sign for you.

3. Enter the formula.

4. Press ENTER.

Note:

You can enter the same formula into a range of cells by selecting the range first, typing the formula, and then pressing CTRL+ENTER.

You can also enter a formula into a range of cells by copying a formula from another cell. For more information about copying a formula, the following are the rules.

Enter the same data into several cells at once

1. Select the cells where you want to enter data.

The cells can be adjacent or nonadjacent.

2. Type the data and press CTRL+ENTER.

Enter or edit the same data on multiple worksheets

When you select a group of sheets, changes you make to a selection on the active sheet are reflected in the corresponding cells on all other selected sheets. Data on the other sheets may be replaced.

1. Select the worksheets where you want to enter data.

How?

2. Select the cell or cell ranges where you want to enter data.

3. Type or edit the data in the first selected cell.

Press ENTER or TAB.

Microsoft Excel automatically enters the data on all selected sheets.

Note: If you’ve already entered data on one worksheet, you can quickly copy the data to the corresponding cells on other sheets. Select the sheet that contains the data and the sheets to which you want to copy the data. Then select the cells that contain the data you want to copy. On the Edit menu, point to Fill, and then click Across Worksheets.

Select sheets in a workbook

If you select more than one sheet, Microsoft Excel repeats the changes you make to the active sheet on all other selected sheets. These changes may replace data on other sheets.

To select Do this

A single sheet Click the sheet tab.

Two or more adjacent

Sheets Click the tab for the first sheet, and then hold down SHIFT and click the tab for the last sheet.

Two or more

Nonadjacent sheets Click the tab for the first sheet, and then hold down CTRL and click the tabs for the other sheets.

All sheets in a workbook
Right-click a sheet tab, and then click Select All Sheets on the shortcut menu.

Quickly fill in repeated entries in a column

If the first few character you type in a cell match an existing entry in that column, Microsoft Excel fills in the remaining characters for you. Microsoft Excel completes only those entries that contain text or a combination of text and numbers; entries that contain only numbers, dates, or times are not completed.

To accept the proposed entry, Press ENTER.

The completed entry exactly matches the pattern of uppercase and lowercase letters of the existing entries.

v To replace the automatically entered characters, continue typing.

v To delete the automatically entered characters, press BACKSPACE.

You can also select from a list of entries already in the column. To display the list, press ALT+DOWN ARROW to display the list, or right-click the cell, and then click Pick from List on the shortcut menu.

About calculation in workbooks

Calculation is the process of computing formulas and then displaying the results as values in the cells that contain the formulas. By default, Microsoft Excel automatically calculates all open workbooks. However, you can control when calculation occurs.

Whenever possible, Microsoft Excel updates only those cells dependent on other cells that contain values that have changed. This type of calculation helps to avoid unnecessary calculations. Microsoft Excel also calculates workbooks each time they are opened or saved.

Microsoft Excel calculates the underlying, or stored, values in cells. The value you see on the screen depends on how you choose to format and display the stored value. For example, a cell that displays a date as “6/22/96” also contains a serial number that is the stored value for the date in the cell. You can change the display of the date to another format (for example, to “22-Jun-96”), but changing the display of a value on a worksheet does not change the stored value.

As calculation proceeds, you can choose commands or perform actions such as entering numbers or formulas. Microsoft Excel temporarily interrupts calculation to carry out the other commands or actions and then resumes calculation. The calculation process may take more time if the workbook contains a large number of formulas, if the worksheets contain data tables, or if the worksheets contain functions that automatically recalculate every time the workbook is recalculated.

Editing & formatting worksheet data

Editing the workbook

¨ Editing data in a workbook

¨ Working with ranges

¨ Formatting cells and worksheets

¨ Sorting data

¨ Entering Series

Viewing the worksheet

At this stage, I will try to discuss four features that Excel offers for viewing the spreadsheets; zooming the view, splitting a window, freezing panes of a window, and full screen view.

Zoom

As in word and PowerPoint, you can zoom the view in Excel by choosing a zoom percentage in the zoom control drop-down list on the Standard Toolbar. The drop-down list offers set zoom percentages from 25 to 200, but you can set a percentage of your choosing by typing in any value from 10 to 400 and pressing Enter. The selection choice on the Zoom control drop down list will zoom the view to the largest percentage that will display the currently selected cells in the Excel Window (up to a maximum 400 %). Alternatively, you can set a zoom percentage by choosing View >Zoom to display the zoom dialogues box, making a choice in the Magnification group box, and then click O.K.

Split

You can split the Excel Window so you can see nonadjacent parts of one worksheet at once, which makes it easier to compare data spread out over a number of rows or columns.

To split the window, select the cell above which and to the right of which you want to split the window, and then choose Window >Split. You can then scroll around each window using the scroll bars.

To adjust the split of the windows, move the mouse pointer over the horizontal or vertical split bar (or over the insertion of the two), click, and drag the split bars to where you want to them.

To UN- split a window, Choose window and then Remove split

Freezing Panes

You may also want to freeze the rows at the top of the screen and the columns on the left of the screen, so they do not move when you scroll. By doing this, you can keep row and column headings visible while you scroll to far-flung regions of your worksheets.

To freeze the panes select the cell to the left of which and above which you want to freeze the panes, and then choose window, freeze panes. Excel will display lines including the division. For example, if you freeze the panes with the definitive cells active, Excel will freeze the panes above row and above left of the column.

Copying and moving the data

For copying the data the following is the command:

Click Edit

Then select copy command

For pasting the document

Click Edit

Then paste command.

For cutting the document the same is the rule but the difference is that you will have to select the cut command from the Edit menu.

N.B. Before pasting the document, you will have to select the area i.e. insertion point to be placed there.

Keystrokes:

For copy : Ctrl+C

For paste : Ctrl+V

For cut : Ctrl+X

Find and Replace

You can find any document by selecting Find command from the Edit menu and you can replace it from the same menu. This command is helpful for updating the document you prepared. A list of texts may be replaced by using this command.

Shortcut keys:

Ctrl+F for finding the document and for replacing the document you can press by using the keystroke Ctrl+H

Fill command :

You can fill a list of items by selecting the cell from the edit menu. You can fill the text to the right, left, down, AutoFill and according to series in different forms like linear and growth types. This command is helpful for updating the document.

Keystrokes:

For fill the document you can select the keystrokes: Ctrl +D

Clear the documents

If you feel difficult to delete the text, if the text area is formatted by Pivot table or any graphic objects like object linking and embedding ( OLE) or any complicate arises; you can delete the formatted text by using Clear command. In clear command, you will find contents, format and all.

Contents: specifies the text as selected

Format: Removes all formatted text, graphics/charts and number.

All: removes all the contents in the text area

Formatting your data:

You can apply formatting to cells using either the formatting toolbar or the format cells dialog box. In this session, I’ll try to show the easiest ways to apply the most useful types of formatting your data.

As Excel is set up for number crunching, it provides you many different formats for use with different kinds of data. You can quickly apply number formatting using the currency style buttons on the formatting toolbar.

Font formatting

Excel supports a wide range of font formatting that you can use to beautify your worksheets or make the most important information stand out.

To apply font formatting quickly to the selected cells or (selected cells within a cell), use the font drop down list box, the font size drop down list box, and the bold, Italic and the underline buttons, shown here from the left to right. For more complex font formatting, choose, format cells to display the Format Cells dialog box, make your choice upon it and then click OK button.

Border formatting:

As well as font formatting, Excel provides you to enter text in the monitor or you to enter text in the monitor a full complement of borders that you can apply to the selected cells or range of cells by clicking the borders button on the formatting toolbar. You can then select from twelve borders style by clicking the drop down list button on the borders button and choosing the style of border you want; this style will stick until you change it, so once you have chosen the style, you can quickly apply it selected cells by clicking the borders button.

Sorting Data:

One of the great advantages of a spreadsheet is that you can manipulate your data easily. Excel offers simple sorting for swiftly arranging the contents of a column and complex sorting for arranging the contents of a table using several sort keys.

Simple Sorting

To sort data in a column or in selected cells quickly, click the sort ascending or sort-descending button on the standard tool bar. Sort ascending sorts the cells in the column alphabetically or from lowest to highest value; Sort descending sorts the cells into reverse alphabetically or from highest to lowest value. Selected cells are sorted by the first column; for example, if you sort the range A1: E5, the cells will be sorted by the data in column A than column B, C, D or E.

Sort a list

You can rearrange the rows or columns of a list based on the values in the list by sorting. When you sort, Microsoft Excel rearranges rows, columns, or individual cells by using the sort order that you specify. You can sort lists in ascending (1 to 9, A to Z) or descending (9 to 1, Z to A) order, and sort based on the contents of one or more columns.

Microsoft Excel sorts lists alphabetically by default. If you need to sort months and weekdays according to their calendar order instead of their alphabetic order, use a custom sort order. You can also rearrange lists in a specific order by creating custom sort orders. For example, if you have a list that contains the entry “Low,” “Medium,” or “High” in a column, you can create a sort order that arranges rows that contain “Low” first, rows that contain “Medium” next, and rows with “High” last.

What do you want to do?

¨ Sort rows in ascending order based on the contents of one column

¨ Sort rows in descending order based on the contents of one column

¨ Sort rows based on the contents of two or more columns

¨ Sort columns based on the contents of rows

¨ Sort months, weekdays, or custom lists

Sort rows in ascending order based on the contents of one column

If you previously sorted a list on the same worksheet, Microsoft Excel uses the same sorting options unless you change them.

¨ Click a cell in the column you would like to sort by.

¨ Click Sort Ascending.

Note In a PivotTable, Microsoft Excel uses the selected field to sort items in ascending alphabetic order. Numbers are sorted from lowest to highest value.

Sort rows in descending order based on the contents of one column

If you previously sorted a list on the same worksheet, Microsoft Excel uses the same sorting options unless you change them.

¨ Click a cell in the column you would like to sort by.

¨ Click Sort Descending.

Note: In a PivotTable, Microsoft Excel uses the selected field to sort items in descending alphabetic order. Numbers are sorted from highest to lowest value.

Complex Sorting

Sort rows based on the contents of two or more columns

For best results, the list you sort should have column labels.

¨ Click a cell in the list you want to sort.

¨ On the Data menu, click Sort.

¨ In the Sort by and Then by boxes, click the columns you want to sort.

If you need to sort by more than three columns, sort by the least important columns first. For example, if your list contains employee information and you need to organize it by Department, Title, Last Name, and First Name, sort the list twice. First, click First Name in the Sort by box and sort the list. Second, click Department in the Sort by box, click Title in the first Then by box, and click Last Name in the second Then by box, and sort the list.

¨ Select any other sort options you want, and then click OK.

¨ Repeat steps 2 through 4 if needed, using the next most important columns.

Notes: If the column you specify in the Sort by box has duplicate items, you can sort the values further by specifying another column in the first Then by box. If there are duplicate items in the second column, you can specify a third column to sort by in the second then by box. When you sort rows that are part of a worksheet outline, Microsoft Excel sorts the highest-level groups (level 1) so that the detail rows or columns stay together, even if the detail rows or columns are hidden.

Sort columns based on the contents of rows

¨ Click a cell in the list you want to sort.

¨ On the Data menu, click Sort.

¨ Click Options.

¨ Under Orientation, click Sort left to right, and then click OK.

¨ In the Sort by and Then by boxes, click the rows you want to sort.

Sort months, weekdays, or custom lists

¨ Select a cell or range in the list you want to sort.

¨ On the Data menu, click Sort.

¨ Click Options.

¨ Under First key sort order,

¨ Click the custom sort order you want, and then click OK.

¨ Click any other sorting options you want.

Notes: The custom sort order applies only to the column specified in the Sort by box. To sort multiple columns by using a custom sort order, sort by each column separately. For example, to sort by columns A and B, in that order, first sort by column B, and then specify the custom sort order by using the Sort Options dialog box. Next, sort the list by column A.

If you want to arrange a list in a specific order for example, organizational data you can sort it by using a custom list for the custom sort order.

Practice sheet

In an Organization, the basic pay of 5 categories of employees are as follows. The Organization decides to pay their house rent as per existing rules as given against each basic pay. How can you evaluate house rent payable to the above personnel? Write formula by using respective excels function.

Supervisor: Tk. 3000.00, house rent @ 45%

Engineer: Tk. 6000.00, house rent @ 50%

Manager: Tk. 7000.00, house rent @ 55%

Director: Tk. 12375, house rent: 3500.00 (fixed)

Secretary: Tk. 10000.00, house rent @ 60%

2. In Financial Management Academy, the participants are given Grade A, B, C, D, F on their performance of the tests. The rules of allowing grades are as follows:

Grade A, 80% Marks need to be obtained
Grade B, 60 % do
Grade C, 50% do
Grade D, 40% do
Grade F, below 40 % –

Using respective Excel functionS, write the formula. Ensure how many students have got respective grades.

Marks: 5

3. In an Examination, the candidates have obtained the following marks out of 1000 total marks. Write the formula for getting their divisions and identify the no. of getting divisions. Write the formula by using respective Excel Functions.

Name Marks obtained

Salaam 800

Rakib 740

Jabbar 564

Pat 459

Ariel 334

Ashram 256

Marks: 5

Creating and Using Charts with Microsoft Excel’97

You can display Microsoft Excel data graphically in a chart. Charts are linked to the worksheet data they are created from and are updated when you change the worksheet data.

You can create charts from cells or ranges that are not next to one another. You can also create a chart from a PivotTable.

What do you want to do?

¨ Create a chart

¨ Create a chart from nonadjacent selections

¨ Create a default chart in one step

¨ Create a chart from a PivotTable

Create a chart from nonadjacent selections

¨ Select the first group of cells that contain the data you want to include.

¨ While holding down CTRL, select any additional cell groups you want to include.

The nonadjacent selections must form a rectangle.

¨ Click Chart Wizard.

¨ Follow the instructions in the Chart Wizard.

v Create a chart from nonadjacent selections

¨ Select the first group of cells that contain the data you want to include.

¨ While holding down CTRL, select any additional cell groups you want to include.

The nonadjacent selections must form a rectangle.

¨ Click Chart Wizard.

¨ Follow the instructions in the Chart Wizard.

Create a default chart in one step

The default chart type for Microsoft Excel is a column chart, unless you have changed it. For information about changing chart types, click.

¨ To create a chart sheet that uses the default chart type, select the data you want to plot, and then press F11.

¨ To create an embedded chart that uses the default chart type, select the data you want to plot, and then click Default Chart. If the Default Chart button is not available, add it to a toolbar.

How?

Add a button to a toolbar

¨ Show the toolbar you want to add a button to.

¨ On the Tools menu, click Customise, and then click the Commands tab.

The following are the commands in this regard.

¨ In the Categories box, click the category for the command you want the button to perform.

¨ Drag the command you want from the Commands box to the displayed toolbar.

Create a default chart in one step

The default chart type for Microsoft Excel is a column chart, unless you have changed it. For information about changing chart types, click .

¨ To create a chart sheet that uses the default chart type, select the data you want to plot, and then press F11.

To create an embedded chart that uses the default chart type, select the data you want to plot, and then click Default Chart . If the Default Chart button is not available, add it to a toolbar.

How?

Create a chart from a PivotTable

¨ On the PivotTable menu of the PivotTable toolbar, point to Select, and then click Enable Selection so that the button is not pressed in.

¨ Remove any subtotals from the PivotTable.

¨ How?

¨ The following are the commands

¨ Select the data you want to chart in the main body of the PivotTable, including the column fields and row fields. Do not select grand totals or page fields. To include the first row and column of the PivotTable in the selection, start dragging from the lower-right corner of the data.

¨ Click Chart Wizard .

¨ Follow the instructions in the Chart Wizard.

Notes :

A chart created from a PivotTable changes when you hide items, show details, or rearrange fields in the source PivotTable. If your PivotTable has page fields, the chart changes when you display different pages. When you display each item in the list for the page field, Microsoft Excel updates the chart to display the current data.

¨ To save and print charts for all page fields in a PivotTable, click Show Pages on the PivotTable

¨ toolbar to display each page on a separate worksheet. You can then plot each page in an individual chart.

¨ If the underlying PivotTable is based on external data and you use Microsoft Query to add or delete fields from the external data, make sure that you also refresh the PivotTable; otherwise, Microsoft Excel does not update the chart. For information about changing a query for a PivotTable, click .

Practice sheet

Microsoft Company produces three products A, B and C respectively as follows. They sell the products on average quantity basis. Prepare a sales budget showing Total sales, Maximum sales, Minimum sales using respective Excel Functions. The company pays 25% VAT as per existing rules

Month	Product			Average	Rate	Amount	Percentage
Month	Quantity of Product A	Quantity of Product B	Quantity of Product C
January	22345	2547	2472		13
February	20342	2542	2473		24
March	22347	2542	2472		25
April	20342	2550	4472		42
May	22342	2552	2420		27
June	22350	2552	2422		22
July	22352	2553	6422		222
August	22352	2554	2423		20
September	22353	2555	2424		22
October	22359	2552	2425		22
November	22355	7557	2425		23
December	22352	2552	2422		24

About worksheet functions

Microsoft Excel contains many predefined, or built-in, formulas known as functions. Functions can be used to perform simple or complex calculations. The most common function in worksheets is the SUM function, which is used to add ranges of cells. Although you can create a formula to calculate the total value of a few cells that contain values, the SUM worksheet function calculates several ranges of cells.

About Formula Syntax

Formula Syntax is the structure or order of the elements in a formula. Formulas in Microsoft Excel follow a specific syntax that includes an equal sign (=) followed by the elements to be calculated (the operands) and the calculation operators. Each operand can be a value that does not change (a constant value), a cell or range reference, a label, a name, or a worksheet function. By default, Microsoft Excel calculates a formula from left to right, starting with the equal sign (=). You can control how changing the syntax of the formula performs calculation. For example, the following formula gives a result of 11 because Microsoft Excel calculates multiplication before addition: The formula multiplies 2 by 3 (resulting in 6) and then adds 5. =5+2*3 . In contrast, if you use parentheses to change the syntax, you can first add 5 and 2 together and then multiply that result by 3 for a result of 21. =(5+2)*3

About cell references

A formula can refer to a cell. If you want one cell to contain the same value as another cell, enter an equal sign followed by the reference to the cell. The cell that contains the formula is known as a dependent cell its value depends upon the value in another cell. Whenever the cell that the formula refers to changes, the cell that contains the formula also changes. The following formula multiplies the value in cell B15 by 5. The formula will recalculate whenever the value in cell B15 changes. =B15*5. Formulas can refer to cells or ranges of cells, or to names or labels that represent cells or ranges. Generally, the following four types cell references are essential for constructing a formula:

Cell reference	Example of cell reference
Relative cell reference	A1: A14
Absolute cell reference	$A$1 :$A$14
Mixed Cell reference	$A1 :A$14
Circular cell reference	Such reference which is present in defining the Cell range where your insertion point is placed to obtain/ find result.

The functions based on formula are used to calculate worksheet data:

=SUM ( Cell range )

=MAX ( Cell range )

=MIN ( Cell range )

=AVERAGE ( Cell range )

For Count if the formula is:

=COUNTIF (Category range, “Criteria”)

For SUMIF the formula is:

=SUMIF (Category range, “Criteria”, SUM range)

Practice sheet for simple spreadsheet

Practice sheet for IF Function:

The formula for IF Function is: =IF(B2>=750,”Star”,IF(B2>=600,

“First Division”, IF (B2>=450,”2nd Division”,IF(B2>=330,”3rd Division”,”Fail”))))

Practice sheet for Logical function IF

Name	Marks	Result
A	789
B	632
C	561
D	336
E	236
F	784
G	996
H	562

2. In an Organization, the basic pay of 5 categories of employees are as follows. The Organization decides to pay their house rent as per existing rules as given against each basic pay. How can you evaluate house rent payable to the above personnel? Write formula by using respective excels function.

Supervisor: Tk. 3000.00, house rent @ 45%

Engineer: Tk. 6000.00, house rent @ 50%

Manager: Tk. 7000.00, house rent @ 55%

Director: Tk. 12375, house rent: 3500.00 (fixed)

Secretary: Tk. 10000.00, house rent @ 60%

3. In Financial Management Academy, the participants are given Grade A, B, C, D, F on their performance of the tests. The rules of allowing grades are as follows:

Grade A, 80% Marks need to be obtained
Grade B, 60 % do
Grade C, 50% do
Grade D, 40% do
Grade F, below 40 %

Using respective Excel functions, write the formula. Ensure how many students have got respective grades.

4. In an Examination, the candidates have obtained the following marks out of 1000 total marks. Write the formula for getting their divisions and identify the no. of getting divisions. Write the formula by using respective Excel Functions.

Name Marks

Salaam 800

Rakib 740

Jabbar 564

Pat 459

Ariel 334

Practice sheet for SUMIF and COUNTIF Functions

Representative	Region	Month	Category	Units	Amount in Taka
John	East	January	Soda	234	120.00
Silver	West	February	Soda	240	234.00
Hekie	East	March	Soda	246	348.00
Milton	North	April	Soda	252	462.00
Ron	North	February	Tea	258	576.00
Polly	South	June	Tea	264	690.00
Lorengen	North	March	Tea	270	804.00
Polly	South	April	Tea	276	918.00
Lorengen	South	February	Tea	282	1032.00
Polly	South	October	Sugar	288	1146.00
Lorengen	West	November	Sugar	294	1260.00
Milton	West	December	Peach	300	1374.00
Lorengen	West	January	Soda	306	1488.00
Lorengen	West	February	Peach	312	1602.00
Milton	West	March	Peach	318	1716.00
Hekie	West	April	Soda	324	1830.00
Hekie	West	May	Peach	330	1944.00
Milton	West	June	Peach	336	2058.00
Lorengen	West	July	Soda	342	2172.00
Lorengen	West	August	Peach	348	2286.00
Lorengen	West	September	Soda	354	2400.00
Lorengen	West	October	Peach	360	2514.00
Lorengen	West	November	Soda	366	2628.00
Lorengen	West	December	Peach	372	2742.00
Lorengen	West	January	Soda	378	2856.00
Lorengen	West	February	Peach	384	2970.00

The formula for SUMIF : =SUMIF( CategoryRange, “Criteria”, SUMRange )

Formula for COUNTIF : = COUNTIF(CategoryRange, “Criteria”)

About formula syntax

Formula syntax is the structure or order of the elements in a formula. Formulas in Microsoft Excel follow a specific syntax that includes an equal sign (=) followed by the elements to be calculated (the operands) and the calculation operators. Each operand can be a value that does not change (a constant value), a cell or range reference, a label, a name, or a worksheet function.

By default, Microsoft Excel calculates a formula from left to right, starting with the equal sign (=). You can control how calculation is performed by changing the syntax of the formula. For example, the following formula gives a result of 11 because Microsoft Excel calculates multiplication before addition: The formula multiplies 2 by 3 (resulting in 6) and then adds 5.

=5+2*3

In contrast, if you use parentheses to change the syntax, you can first add 5 and 2 together and then multiply that result by 3 for a result of 21.

=(5+2)*3

For more information about the order in which Microsoft Excel uses operators in formulas, click

How formulas calculate values

A formula is an equation that analyzes data on a worksheet. Formulas perform operations such as addition, multiplication, and comparison on worksheet values; they can also combine values. Formulas can refer to other cells on the same worksheet, cells on other sheets in the same workbook, or cells on sheets in other workbooks. The following example adds the value of cell B4 and 25 and then divides the result by the sum of cells D5, E5, and F5. For examples of frequently used formulas in Microsoft Excel, click .

Formulas calculate values in a specific order that is known as the syntax. The syntax of the formula describes the process of the calculation. A formula in Microsoft Excel begins with an equal sign (=), followed by what the formula calculates. For example, the following formula subtracts 1 from 5. The result of the formula is then displayed in the cell.

=5-1

For more information about operators, click .

For more information about formula syntax, click .

About cell references

A formula can refer to a cell. If you want one cell to contain the same value as another cell, enter an equal sign followed by the reference to the cell. The cell that contains the formula is known as a dependent cell ¾ its value depends upon the value in another cell. Whenever the cell that the formula refers to changes, the cell that contains the formula also changes. The following formula multiplies the value in cell B15 by 5. The formula will recalculate whenever the value in cell B15 changes.

=B15*5

Formulas can refer to cells or ranges of cells, or to names or labels that represent cells or ranges. For guidelines about using cell and range references, click .

Generally, the following four types cell references are essential for constructing a formula :

Cell reference	Example of cell reference
Relative cell reference	A1: A14
Absolute cell reference	$A$1 :$A$14
Mixed Cell reference	$A1 :A$14
Circular cell reference	Such reference which is present in defining the Cell range where your insertion point is placed to obtain/ find result.

About worksheet functions

Microsoft Excel contains many predefined, or built-in, formulas known as functions. Functions can be used to perform simple or complex calculations. The most common function in worksheets is the SUM function, which is used to add ranges of cells. Although you can create a formula to calculate the total value of a few cells that contain values, the SUM worksheet function calculates several ranges of cells. For more information about using functions to calculate values, click .

For addition the function based on formula :

=SUM ( Cell range )

=MAX ( Cell range )

=MIN ( Cell range )

=AVG ( Cell range )

For Countif the formula is :

=COUNTIF( Category range,”Criteria”)

For SUMIF the formula is :

=SUMIF( Category range,”Criteria”,SUM range”)

About using functions to calculate values

Functions are predefined formulas that perform calculations by using specific values, called arguments, in a particular order, called the syntax. For example, the SUM function adds values or ranges of cells, and the PMT function calculates the loan payments based on an interest rate, the length of the loan, and the principal amount of the loan.

Arguments can be numbers, text, logical values such as TRUE or FALSE, arrays, error values such as #N/A, or cell references. The argument you designate must produce a valid value for that argument. Arguments can also be constants, formulas, or other functions. For more information about using a function as an argument for another function, also known as nesting functions, click .

The syntax of a function begins with the function name, followed by an opening parenthesis, the arguments for the function separated by commas, and a closing parenthesis. If the function starts a formula, type an equal sign (=) before the function name. As you create a formula that contains a function, the Formula Palette will assist you .For more information about using the Formula Palette, click . For more information about how to enter a formula that contains a function, click

About multiple functions within functions, or nesting

Functions can be used as arguments for other functions. When a function is used as an argument, or nested, it must return the same type of value that the argument uses. If a nested function does not return the correct type of value, Microsoft Excel will display a #VALUE! error value. For example, the following formula uses a nested AVERAGE function and compares it with the value 50. The comparison must return TRUE or FALSE because this is the required type of value for the first argument in an IF function.

A formula can contain up to seven levels of nested functions. When Function B is used as an argument in Function A, Function B is a second-level function. If Function B contains Function C as an argument, Function C would be a third-level function.

You can use the Formula Palette to nest functions as arguments. For example, you can insert Function B as an argument of Function A by clicking the drop-down arrow in the formula bar. If you want to continue entering arguments for Function A, click the name of Function A in the formula bar.

About using the Formula Palette to enter and Edit formulas

When you create a formula that contains a function, the Formula Palette helps you enter worksheet functions. As you enter a function into the formula, the Formula Palette displays the name of the function, each of its arguments, a description of the function and each argument, the current result of the function, and the current result of the entire formula. To display the Formula Palette, click Edit Formula in the formula bar.

You can use the Formula Palette to edit functions in formulas. Select a cell that contains a formula, and then click Edit Formula to display the Formula Palette. The first function in the formula and each of its arguments are displayed in the palette. You can edit the first function or edit another function in the same formula by clicking in the formula bar anywhere within the function.

Enter a formula that contains a function

¨ Click the cell in which you want to enter the formula.

¨ To start the formula with the function, click Edit Formula in the formula bar.

¨ Click the down arrow next to the Functions box .

¨ Click the function you want to add to the formula. If the function does not appear in the list, click More Functions for a list of additional functions.

¨ Enter the arguments.

¨ When you complete the formula, press ENTER.

About using functions to calculate values

Examples of common formulas

The following are examples of some commonly used formulas in Microsoft Excel.

Description Formula

Calculates the running balance in a checkbook register. In this example, assume that cell D7 contains the current transaction’s deposit, cell E7 contains any withdrawal amount, and cell F6 contains the previous balance.To calculate the current balance for the first transaction (cell F7):=SUM(F6,D7,–E7)As you enter new transactions, copy this formula to the cell that contains the current balance for the new transaction.

Joins a first name stored in one cell with a last name stored in another cell. In this example, assume that cell D5 contains the first name, and cell E5 contains the last name. To display the full name in the format

“first_name last_name”:=D5&” “&E5To display the full name in the format

“last_name, first_name”:=E5&”, “&D5

Increases a numeric value stored in one cell by a percentage, such as 5 percent. In this example, assume that cell F5 contains the original value. =F5*(1+5%)If the percentage amount is stored in a cell (for example, cell F2):=F5*(1+$F$2)The reference to cell F2 is an absolute cell reference so that the formula can be copied to other cells without changing the reference to F2.

Creates a piece of text that joins a date stored in a cell with another piece of text ¾ for example, if cell F5 contains a billing date of 5-Jun-96, and you want to display the text “Statement date: 5-Jun-96” in cell G50. =”Statement date: “&TEXT(F5, “d-mmm-yy”)Note Use the TEXT function to format a number, date, or time value as a piece of text.

Creates a total value for one range based on a value in another range. For example, for every cell in the range B5:B25 that contains the value “Northwind”, you want to calculate the total for the corresponding cells in the range F5:F25. =SUMIF(B5:B25,”Northwind”,F5:F25)

Creates a total value for one range based on two conditions. For example, you want to calculate the total value of the cells in F5:F25 where B5:B25 contains “Northwind” and the range C5:C25 contains the region name “Western”. =SUM(IF(B5:B25=”Northwind”,

IF(C5:C25=”Western”,F5:F25)))Note This is an array formula and must be entered by pressing CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER.

Counts the number of occurrences of a value in a range of cells ¾ for example, the number of cells in the range B5:B25 that contain the text “Northwind”. =COUNTIF(B5:B25,”Northwind”)

Counts the number of occurrences of a value in a range of cells, based on a value in another range ¾ for example, the number of rows in the range B5:B25 that contain the text “Northwind” and the text “Western” in the range C5:C25. =SUM(IF(B5:B25=”Northwind”,

IF(C5:C25=”Western”,1,0)))Note This is an array formula and must be entered by pressing CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER.

About calculation in workbooks

Create a name to represent a formula or a constant value

¨ On the Insert menu, point to Name, and then click Define.

¨ In the Names in workbook box, enter the name for the formula.

Practical sheet for Sorting data

Table 1

Starting and Using MS PowerPoint and Getting to Work

Starting and exiting PowerPoint97

Starting PowerPoint:

In Windows 95/ NT: Start button, Programs, (Microsoft Office), PowerPoint
In Windows 95/ NT: Use PowerPoint button in Microsoft Office short-cut bar

Exiting PowerPoint

File menu and the Exit command
Press Alt + F4
Click PowerPoint window’s close button

Creating A New Presentation

Three choices for starting a new presentation

AutoContent Wizard: offers highest degree of help
Templates: offers standardized group of slides
Start from scratch with totally blank presentation
Double-click the AutoContent wizard on the Presentations tab on the New Presentations dialog box obtained from the File, New menu- command.
Presentation Templates: same as AutoContent Wizard
Presentation Design Templates: Offer only a color scheme and “look” for slides
From File, New menu-command, use General tab of New Presentations dialog box. Double Blank presentations icon and select auto-layout you wish of new slide dialog box.

Creating a new presentation with the AutoContent Wizard

Creating a new presentation with a template

Creating a blank presentation

Getting Around in PowerPoint

4. The application window

Standard Win95 window with title bar, window control buttons ( maximize, minimize and close) and menu bar and three toolbars.

5. The presentation window

Center of the PowerPoint window where all the slides are and can be seen in different views.

6. Using shortcut menus:

Context-sensitive menu on clicking right mouse button on object you want.

7. Working with toolbars

Learning more about toolbars: tool-tips, status bar display with mouse pointer over it, using “what’s this?” of help menu.
Turning tool-bars on and off: right-click with mouse where there isn’t a button or use View – Toolbars menu-command.
Moving tool-bars using drag and drop. Toolbar docks and floating toolbars.

8. Getting Help

9. The Office Assistant

This is new for Power Point97. When you first start PowerPoint97, the Office assistant appears in its own little window. The default assistant “Clipart” is animated and comes with a special type of dialog box called a balloon. You can summon the assistant using the Help menu or the tool-bar with question mark icon. The assistant tries to ask context-sensitive questions through his balloon, but you can always use the search facility to ask a question in plain English.

10. Using the contents and index of the help menu

Use Help, Contents and Index command-menu.
Contents (help books), Index topics with search facility, Search facility builds database and then searches for text within help files

11. F1 for help

This old software in general stand-by now brings forth the office assistant.

12. Context sensitive for screen elements

What was an arrow with question mark tool-button in PowerPoint 95 is now a “what’s this” command on the “Help” menu. Click it and then click on screen element you need help with

13. Working with Slides in Different Views

Changing views

Use View menu and Outline, Slide, Slide Sorter or Notes Page command as desired

Use tool buttons at bottom of screen above status bar

Moving from slide to slide

In various views use scroll bar and/ or mouse to select particular slide.

Editing slides

Easiest in outline mode by selecting text with mouse.
Slide view allows you to edit both text and objects like pictures, graphs etc.

Working with a bulleted list

In outline view, simply click on arrow buttons to move up and down various levels of the bulleted list.

Saving, Closing and Opening Presentations

Saving a presentation

Ctrl+S, File-save menu, Save as (File type) PowerPoint95 for backward compatibility
Save first or save dialog box appears on using File, Close menu-command or Alt+F4.
File Open or Ctrl+O, choose drive and folder and file type if opening file created from other package.

Closing a presentation

Opening a Presentation

Finding a presentation file

File, Open and then type name in file name box of dialog box. Text or property box can be used if you are looking for a file containing certain text. Use advanced button to specify further criteria.

Printing Presentations, Notes and Handouts

Quick Printing

Print tool-button, File, Print, OK buttons – prints entire presentation.

Changing page/ slide setup

Select size of slides to be printed, number slides, portrait or landscape, notes, hand-outs and outline printing.

Choosing what and how to print

Use File, Print option to set various printing options.

Changing a Presentation’s Look

Applying a Presentation Design Template

Choose Format, Apply Design Template on entire presentation.

Using AutoLayouts

Using Slide view select slide, then select Format, Slide Lay-out

Inserting, Deleting and Copying Slides

Inserting a slide

Use Insert, New Slide or Ctrl+M. Outline view inserts a blank slide, allowing you to type in a title or bulleted list. In other views, the New Slide dialog box with auto-layout appears for selection.
Use Insert, select from file. Select drive or folder. Entire presentation is inserted
Word processing document must be in outline view, use Insert, Slides from Outline, locate document and double click on document name.
Click on single slide to select ( not required in Slide or Notes Page view)
In outline view press both control and shift to select any number of neighboring slides with mouse click
In outline or slide sorter view use the shift key with the mouse click

Adding slides from another presentation

Creating slides from a document outline in MS Word

Selecting slides

Deleting slides

Select slide and then use Edit, delete slide menu-command.

Cutting, Copying and Pasting slides

Select and then use Cut or Copy and the paste from tool-bar or Edit menu

Dragging and Dropping slides

Use conventional drag and drop using mouse in outline or sorter view

Re-arranging slides in a Presentation

Rearranging slides in slides sorter view

Use drag and drop

Rearranging slides in Outline view

Click on slide number to select slide, use mouse to drag and drop or click on move up or move down buttons on the left side-bar on screen

Hiding slides

In PowerPoint95 it is Tools, Hide Slide. In PowerPoint97 it is Slide Show, Hide Slide. Remember to select slide first.

Multi-User Vs Client Server Application

There is no denying the fact that the server is a multi-user computer where there is no unusual hardware prerequisite that turns a computer into a server and as such the hardware platform needs to be preferred based on application demands and financial stringency. Servers for client/server applications work unsurpassed when they are configured with an operating system that supports shared memory, application isolation, and preemptive multitasking. An operating system with preemptive multitasking enables a higher priority task to preempt or take control of the processor from a currently executing, lower priority task. The server provides and controls shared access to server resources. Applications on a server must be isolated from each other so that an error in one cannot damage another. Preemptive multitasking ensures that no single task can take over all the resources of the server and thwart other tasks from providing service. There must be a means of defining the relative priority of the tasks on the server. These requirements are specific to the client/server accomplishment and not to the file server implementation. Because file servers execute only the single task of file service, they can operate in a more limited operating background without the need for application isolation and anticipatory multitasking.

The conventional minicomputer and mainframe hosts have acted as de facto enterprise servers for the network of terminals they support. Because the only functionality available to the terminal user is through the host, personal productivity data as well as business systems information is stored on this host server. Network services, application services, and database services are provided centrally from the host server. Many organizations download data from legacy enterprise servers for local manipulation at workstations. In the client/server model, the definition of server will continue to include these functions, perhaps still implemented on the same or similar platforms. Moreover, the advent of open systems based servers is facilitating the placement of services on many different platforms. Client/server computing is a phenomenon that developed from the ground up. Remote workgroups have needed to share expensive resources and have connected their desktop workstations into local area networks LANs have grown until they are pervasive in the organization. However, frequently, they are isolated one from the other. Many organizations have integrated the functionality of their dumb terminals into their desktop workstations to support character mode, host-based applications from the single workstation. The next wave of client/server computing is occurring now, as organizations of the mid-1990s begin to use the cheaper and more available processing power of the workstation as part of their enterprise systems. The Novell Network Operating System (NOS), NetWare, is the most widely installed LAN. It provides the premier file and print server supports. However, a limitation of NetWare for the needs of reliable client/server applications has been the requirement for an additional separate processor running as a database server. The availability of database server software—from companies such as Sybase and Oracle—to run on the NetWare server, is plateful to disseminate this limitation.

Apropos to the functions, Servers provide application, file, database, print, fax, image, communications, security, systems, and network management services. These are each described in some detail in the following sections. It is important to understand that a server is an architectural concept, not a physical implementation explanation. Client and server functions can be provided by the same physical device. With the movement toward peer computing, every device will potentially operate as a client and server in response to requests for service. Application servers provide business functionality to support the operation of the client workstation. In the client/server model these services can be provided for an entire or partial business function invoked through an Inter Process Communication (IPC) request for service. Either message-based requests RPCs can be used. A collection of application servers may work in concert to provide an entire business function. For example, in a payroll system the employee information may be managed by one application server, earnings calculated by another application server, and deductions calculated by a third application server. These servers may run different operating systems on various hardware platforms and may use different database servers. The client application invokes these services without consideration of the technology or geographic location of the various servers. Object technology provides the technical basis for the application server, and widespread acceptance of the CORBA standards is ensuring the viability of this trend. File servers provide record level data services to no database applications. Required memory space for storage is allocated, and free space is managed by the file server.

Catalog functions are provided by the file server to support file naming and directory structure. Filename maximum length ranges from 8 to 256 characters, depending on the particular server operating system support. Stored programs are typically loaded from a file server for execution on a client or host server platform. Database servers are managed by a database engine such as Sybase, IBM, Ingress, Informix, or Oracle. The file server provides the initial space, and the database engine allocates space for tables within the space provided by the file server. These host services are responsible for providing the specialized data services required of a database product—automatic blackout and recovery after power, hardware, or software failure, space management within the file, database reorganization, record locking, deadlock detection, and management. Print servers provide support to receive client documents, queue them for printing, prioritize them, and execute the specific print driver logic required for the selected printer. The print server software must have the necessary logic to support the unique characteristics of each printer. Effective print server support will include error recovery for jams and operator notification of errors with instructions for restart. Fax servers provide support similar to that provided by print servers. In addition, fax servers queue up outgoing faxes for later distribution when communications charges are lower. Because fax documents are distributed in compressed form using either Group III or Group IV compression, the fax server must be capable of dynamically compressing and decompressing documents for distribution, printing, and display. This operation is usually done through the addition of a fax card to the server. If faxing is rare, the software support for the compression and decompression options can be used. Image servers operate in a manner similar to fax servers.

Infrastructure servers provide support for wide area network (WAN) communications. This support typically includes support for a subset of IBM System Network Architecture (SNA), asynchronous protocols, X.25, ISDN, TCP/IP, OSI, and LAN-to-LAN NetBIOS communication protocols. In the Novell NetWare implementation, Gateway Communications provides a leading communications product. In the LAN Server and LAN Manager environments, OS/2 communications server products are available from IBM and DCA. In the Banyan VINES environment, the addition of DCA products to VINES provides support for SNA connectivity. UNIX servers provide a range of product add-ons from various vendors to support the entire range of communications requirements. VMS servers support Decent, TCP/IP, and SNA as well as various asynchronous and serial communications protocols. MVS servers provide support for SNA, TCP/IP, and some support for other asynchronous communications. Security at the server restricts access to software and data accessed from the server. Communications access is controlled from the communications server. In most implementations, the use of a user login ID is the primary means of security. Using LAN Server, some organizations have implemented integrated Response Access/Control Facility (RACF) security by creating profiles in the MVS environment and downloading those to the LAN server for domain control. Systems and network management services for the local LAN are managed by a LAN administrator, but WAN services must be provided from some central location. Typically, remote LAN management is done from the central data center site by trained MIS personnel. The discussion in the following sections more specifically describes the functions provided by the server in a NOS environment. Requests are issued by a client to the NOS services software resident on the client machine. These services format the request into an appropriate RPC and issue the request to the application layer of the client protocol stack. This request is received by the application layer of the protocol stack on the server. File services handle access to the virtual directories and files located on the client workstation and to the server’s permanent storage. These services are provided through the redirection software implemented as part of the client workstation operating environment.

To diminish the effort and effect of installation and maintenance of software, software should be loaded from the server for execution on the client. New versions can be updated on the server and made immediately available to all users. In addition, installation in a central location reduces the effort required for each workstation user to knob the installation process. Because each client workstation user uses the same installation of the software, optional parameters are consistent, and remote help desk operators are aware of them. This simplifies the analysis that must occur to provide support. Sharing information, such as word processing documents, is easier when everyone is at the same release level and uses the same default setup within the software. Central productivity services such as style sheets and macros can be set up for general use. Most personal productivity products do permit local parameters such as colors, default printers, and so forth to be set locally as well. Backups of the server can be scheduled and monitored by a trained support person. Backups of client workstations can be scheduled from the server, and data can be stored at the server to facilitate recovery. Tape or optical backup units are typically used for backup; these devices can readily provide support for many users. Placing the server and its backups in a secure location helps prevent theft or accidental destruction of backups. A central location is readily monitored by a support person who ensures that the backup functions are completed. With more organizations looking at multimedia and image technology, large optical storage devices are most appropriately implemented as shared servers. High-quality printers, workstation-generated faxes, and plotters are natural candidates for support from a shared server. The server can accept input from many clients, queue it according to the priority of the request and handle it when the device is available. Many organizations realize substantial savings by enabling users to generate fax output from their workstations and queue it at a fax server for transmission when the communication costs are lower. Incoming faxes can be queued at the server and transmitted to the appropriate client either on receipt or on request. In concert with workflow management techniques, images can be captured and distributed to the appropriate client workstation from the image server. In the client/server model, work queues are maintained at the server by a supervisor in concert with default algorithms that determine how to distribute the queued work. Incoming paper mail can be converted to image form in the mail room and sent to the appropriate client through the LAN rather than through interoffice mail. Centralized capture and distribution enable images to be centrally indexed. This index can be maintained by the database services for all authorized users to query. In this way, images are captured once and are available for distribution immediately to all authorized users. Well-defined standards for electronic document management will allow this technology to become fully integrated into the desktop work environment. There are dramatic opportunities for cost savings and improvements in efficiency if this technology is properly implemented and used. Article 10 discusses in more detail the issues of electronic document management.

In the early hours database servers were actually file servers with a different interface. Products such as dBase, Clipper, FoxPro, and Paradox execute the database engine primarily on the client machine and use the file services provided by the file server for record access and free space management. These are new and more powerful implementations of the original flat-file models with extracted indexes for direct record access. Currency control is managed by the application program, which issues lock requests and lock checks, and by the database server, which creates a lock table that is interrogated whenever a record access lock check is generated. Because access is at the record level, all records satisfying the primary key must be returned to the client workstation for filtering. There are no facilities to execute procedural code at the server, to execute joins, or to filter rows prior to returning them to the workstation. This lack of capability dramatically increases the likelihood of records being locked when several clients are accessing the same database and increases network traffic when many unnecessary rows are returned to the workstation only to be rejected. The lack of server execution logic prevents these products from providing automatic partial update blackout and recovery after an application, system, or hardware failure. For this reason, systems that operate in this environment require an experienced system support programmer to assist in the recovery after a failure. When the applications are very straightforward and require only a single row to be updated in each interaction, this recovery issue does not arise. However, many client/server applications are required to update more than a single row as part of one logical unit of work. Client/server database engines such as Sybase, IBM’s Database Manager, Ingress, Oracle, and Informix provide support at the server to execute SERVER APPLICATION requests issued from the client workstation. The file services are still used for space allocation and basic directory services, but all other services are provided directly by the database server. Relational database management systems are the current technology for data management. The major disadvantage with the hierarchical technique is that only applications that access data according to its physical storage sequence benefit from locality of reference. Changes to application requirements that necessitate a different access approach require the data to be reorganized. This process, which involves reading, sorting, and rewriting the database into a new sequence, is not transparent to applications that rely on the original physical sequence. Indexes that provide direct access into the database provide the capability to view and access the information in a sequence other than the physical sequence. However, these indexes must be known to the user at the time the application is developed. The developer explicitly references the index to get to the data of interest. Thus, indexes cannot be added later without changing all programs that need this access to use the index directly. Indexes cannot be removed without changing programs that currently access the index. Most implementations force the application developer to be sensitive to the ordering and occurrence of columns within the record. Thus, columns cannot be added or removed without changing all programs that are sensitive to these records. Application sensitivity to physical implementation is the main problem with hierarchical database systems. Application sensitivity to physical storage introduced considerable complexity into the navigation as application programmers traverse the hierarchy in search of their desired data. Attempts by database vendors to improve performance have usually increased the complexity of access. If life is too easy today, try to create a bidirectional virtually paired IMS logical relationship; that is why organizations using products such as IMS and IDMS usually have highly paid database technical support staff. As hardware technology evolves, it is important for the data management capabilities to evolve to use the new capabilities. Relational database technology provides the current data management solution to many of the problems inherent in the flat-file and hierarchical technologies. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, products such as Software AG’s ADABAS and System 2000 were introduced in an attempt to provide the application flexibility demanded by the systems of the day. IBM with IMS and Cull net with IDMS attempted to add features to their products to increase this flexibility. The first relational products were introduced by ADR with Dotcom DB and Computer Corporation of America with Model 204. Each of these implementations used extracted indexes to provide direct access to stored data without navigating the database or sorting flat files. All the products attempted to maintain some of the performance advantages afforded by locality of reference (storage of related columns and records as close as possible to the primary column and record).

The development of a relational algebra defining the operations that can be performed between tables has enabled efficient implementations of RDBMS. The establishment of industry standards for the definition of and access to relational tables has speeded the acceptance of RDBMS as the de facto standard for all client/server applications today. Similar standards do not yet exist for OODBMSs. There is a place for both models. To be widely used, OODBMSs need to integrate transparently with RDBMS technology. Table 4.1 compares the terminology used by RDBMS and OODBMS proponents. Relational databases are characterized by a simple data structure. All access to data and relationships between tables are based on values. A data value occurrence is uniquely determined by the concatenation of the table name, column name, and the value of the unique identifier of the row (the primary key). Relationships between tables are determined by a common occurrence of the primary key values. Applications build a view of information from tables by doing a join based on the common values. The result of the join is another table that contains a combination of column values from the tables involved in the stick together. There remain some applications for which RDBMS have not achieved acceptable performance. Primarily, these are applications that require very complex data structures. Thousands of tables may be defined with many relationships among them. Frequently, the rows are sparsely populated, and the applications typically require many rows to be linked, often recursively, to produce the necessary view. The major vendors in this market are Objectivity Inc., Object Design, onto, and Versant. Other vendors such as HP, Borland, and Ingress have incorporated object features into their products. The application characteristics that lead to an OODBMS choice are shown in Figure 4.3. OODBMS will become production capable for these types of applications with the introduction of 16Mbps D-RAM and the creation of persistent (permanent) databases in D-RAM. Only the logging functions will use real I/O. Periodically, D-RAM databases will be backed up to real magnetic or optical disk storage. During 1993, a significant number of production OODBMS applications were implemented. With the confidence and experience gained from these applications, the momentum is building, and 1994 and 1995 will see a significant increase in the use of OODBMSs for business critical applications. OODBMSs have reached a maturity level coincident with the demand for multimedia enabled applications. The complexities of dealing with multimedia demands the features of OODBMS for effective storage and manipulation.

Client/server applications require LAN and WAN communication services. Basic LAN services are integral to the NOS. WAN services are provided by various communications server products. Article 5 provides a complete discussion of connectivity issues in the client/server model. Client/server applications require similar security services to those provided by host environments. Every user should be required to log in with a user ID and password. If passwords might become visible to unauthorized users, the security server should insist that passwords be changed regularly. The enterprise on the desk implies that a single logon ID and logon sequence is used to gain the authority once to access all information and process for the user has a need and right of access. Because data may be stored in a less physically secure area, the option should exist to store data in an encrypted form. A combination of the user ID and password should be required to decrypt the data. New options, such as floppy less workstation with integrated data encryption standard (DES) coprocessors, are available from vendors such as Beaver Computer Company. These products automatically encrypt or decrypt data written or read to disk or a communication line. The encryption and decryption are done using the DES algorithm and the user password. This ensures that no unauthorized user can access stored data or communications data. This type of security is particularly useful for laptop computers participating in client/server applications, because laptops do not operate in surroundings with the same physical security of an office. To be able to access the system from a laptop without properly utilizing an ID number and password would be courting disaster. NetWare is a family of LAN products with support for IBM PC-compatible and Apple Macintosh clients and IBM PC-compatible servers. NetWare is a proprietary NOS in the strict sense that it does not require another OS, such as DOS, Windows, Windows NT, OS/2, Mac System 7, or UNIX to run on a server. A separate Novell product—Portable NetWare for UNIX—provides server support for leading RISC-based UNIX implementations, IBM PC-compatible systems running Windows NT, OS/2, high-end Apple Macs running Mac System 7, and Digital Equipment Corporation VAXs running VMS. NetWare provides the premier LAN environment for file and printer resource sharing. It had 62 percent of the market share in 1993. It is widely installed as the standard product in many organizations.

Suffice it to say that LAN Manager and its IBM derivative, LAN Server, are the standard products for use in client/server implementations using OS/2 as the server operating system. LAN Manager/X is the standard product for client/server implementations using UNIX System V as the server operating system. Microsoft released its Advanced Server product with Windows NT in the third quarter of 1993. During 1994, it will be enhanced with support for the Microsoft network management services, currently referred to as “Hermes,” and Banyan’s Enterprise Network Services (ENS). Advanced Server is the natural migration path for existing Microsoft LAN Manager and IBM LAN Server customers. Existing LAN Manager/X customers probably won’t find Advanced Server an answer to their dreams before 1995. AT&T has taken over responsibility for the LAN Manager/X version. Vendors such as Hewlett-Packard (HP) have reticence the product from AT&T. AT&T and Microsoft has an agreement to maintain compatible APIs for all base functionality. LAN Manager and Advanced Server provide client support for DOS, Windows, Windows NT, OS/2, and Mac System 7. Server support extends to NetWare, AppleTalk, UNIX, Windows NT, and OS/2. Client workstations can access data from both NetWare and LAN Manager Servers at the same time. LAN Manager supports NetBIOS and Named Pipes LAN communications between clients and OS/2 servers. Redirection services are provided to map files and printers from remote workstations for client use. Advanced Server also supports TCP/IP communication. In early 1994, Advanced Server still will be a young product with many missing pieces. Even more troublesome, competitiveness between Microsoft and Novell is delaying the release of client requestor software and NetWare Core Protocol (NCP) support. Microsoft has added TCP/IP support to LAN Manager 2.1 and Advanced Server along with Net View and Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) agents. Thus, the tools are in place to provide remote LAN management for LAN Manager LANs. Microsoft has announced support for IBM Net View 6000 for Advanced Server management.

Advanced Server provides integrated support for peer-to-peer processing and client/server applications. Existing support for Windows NT, OS/2, UNIX, and Mac System 7 clients lets application, database, and communication servers run on the same machine as the file and print server. This feature is attractive in small LANs. The native operating system support for preemptive multitasking and storage protection ensures that these server applications do not reduce the reliability of other services. Even as Windows NT is rolled out to provide the database, application, and communications services to client/server applications, the use of Novell as the LAN NOS of choice will continue for peripheral resource sharing applications. Microsoft has attempted to preempt the small LAN market with its Windows for Workgroups product. This attacks the same market as NetWare Lite with a low-cost product that is tightly integrated with Windows. It is an attractive option for small organizations without a requirement for larger LANs. The complexities of systems management make it less attractive in an enterprise environment already using Novell. WWW can be used in conjunction with Novell for a workgroup wishing to use some WFW services, such as group scheduling. IBM has entered into an agreement to resell and integrate the Novell NetWare product into environments where both IBM LAN Server and Novell NetWare are required. NetWare provides more functional, easier-to-use, and higher-performance file and print services. In environments where these are the only LAN functions, NetWare is preferable to LAN Manager Derivatives. The capability to interconnect to the SNA world makes the IBM product LAN Server attractive to organizations that prefer to run both products. Most large organizations have department workgroups that require only the services that Novell provides well but may use LAN Server for client/server applications using SNA services such as APPN. IBM and Microsoft had an agreement to make the APIs for the two products equivalent. However, the dispute between the two companies over Windows 3.x and OS/2 has ended this cooperation. The most recent releases of LAN Manager NT 3 and LAN Server 3 are closer to the agreed equivalency, but there is no guarantee that this will continue. In fact, there is every indication that the products will diverge with the differing server operating system focuses for the two companies. IBM has priced LAN Server very attractively so that if OS/2 clients are being used, LAN Server is a low-cost option for small LANs. LAN Server supports DOS, Windows, and OS/2 clients. No support has been announced for Mac System 7, although it is possible to interconnect AppleTalk and LAN Server LANs to share data files and communication services.

Street Talk enables resources to be uniquely identified on the network, making them easier to access and manage. All resources, including file services, users, and printers, are defined as objects. Each object has a Street Talk name associated with it. Street Talk names follow a three-level hierarchical format: Item@Group@Organization. For example, a user can be identified as Psmith@Cerritos@Tnet. All network objects are stored in a distributed database that can be accessed globally. Novell’s NDS is similar to Street Talk in functionality. However, there are key differences. NDS can partition and replicate the database, which will generally improve performance and reliability. NDS is X.500-compliant and enables multiple levels of hierarchy. Street Talk supports a fixed three-level hierarchy. The NDS architecture offers more flexibility but with corresponding complexity and Street Talk is less flexible but fewer complexes to manage. One advantage the current version of Street Talk has over NDS is that Street Talk objects can have unlimited attributes available for selection. Novell and Microsoft have announced support for Banyan ENS within their products to be available in Q2 1994. Banyan and DCA provide SNA services to the VINES environment. VINES support UNIX, DOS, Windows, OS/2, and Mac System 7 clients. NFS is the standard file system support for UNIX. PC NFS is available from Sun Select and FTP to provide file services support from a UNIX server to Windows, OS/2, Mac, and UNIX clients. Client/server computing requires that LAN and WAN topologies be in place to provide the necessary internetworking for shared applications and data. Gartner Group1 surveyed and estimated the Microsystems’ integration topologies for the period 1986-1996; the results appear in Figure 4.6. Of special interest is the projection that most workstations will be within LANs by 1996, but only 14 percent will be involved in an enterprise LAN by that date. These figures represent a fairly pessimistic outlook for interconnected LAN-to-LAN and enterprise-wide connectivity. These figures probably will prove to be substantially understated if organizations adopt an architectural perspective for the selection of their platforms and tools and use these tools within an organizationally optimized systems development environment (SDE). Routers and communication servers will be used to provide communication services between LANs and into the WAN. In the client/server model, these connections will be provided transparently by the SDE tools. There are significant performance implications if the traffic volumes are large. IBM’s LU6.2 implementation in APPC and TCP/IP provides the best support for high-volume, LAN-to-LAN/WAN communications. DEC’s implementation of DECnet always has provided excellent LAN-to-WAN connectivity. Integrated support for TCP/IP, LU6.2, and IPX provides a solid platform for client/server LAN-to-WAN implementation within DECnet.

The lack of real estate on the desktop encouraged most organizations to move to a single device—using terminal emulation from the workstation—to access existing mainframe applications. It will take considerable time and effort before all existing host-based applications in an organization are replaced by client/server applications. In the long term, the host will continue to be the location of choice for enterprise database storage and for the provision of security and network management services. Mainframes are expensive to buy and maintain, hard to use, inflexible, and large, but they provide the stability and capacity required by many organizations to run their businesses. As Figure 4.7 notes, in the view of International Data Corporation, they will not go away soon. Their roles will change, but they will be around as part of the enterprise infrastructure for many more years. Only organizations who create an enterprise architecture strategy and transformational plans will accomplish the migration to client/server in less than a few years. Without a well-architected strategy, gradual evolution will produce failure. Information that is of value or interest to the entire business must be managed by a central data administration function and appear to be stored on each user’s desk. These applications are traditionally implemented as Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) to the mainframe or minicomputer. With the client/server model, it is feasible to use database technology to replicate or migrate data to distributed servers. Wherever data resides or is used, the location must be transparent to the user and the developer. Data should be stored where it best meets the business need. Online Transaction Processing applications are found in such industries as insurance, finance, government, and sales—all of which process large numbers of transactions. Each of these transactions requires a minimal amount of user think time to process. In these industries, data is frequently collected at the source by the knowledgeable worker. As such, the systems have high requirements for availability, data integrity, performance, concurrent access, growth potential, security, and manageability. Systems implemented in these environments must prove their worth or they will be rejected by an empowered organization. They must be implemented as an integral part of the job process. OLTP has traditionally been the domain of the large mainframe vendors—such as IBM and DEC—and of special-purpose, fault-tolerant processors from vendors such as Tandem and Stratus. The client/server model has the capability to provide all the services required for OLTP at much lower cost than the traditional platforms. All the standard client/server requirements for a GUI—application portability, client/server function partitioning, software distribution, and effective development tools—exist for OLTP applications. The first vendor to deliver a production-quality product in this arena is Cooperative Solutions with its Ellipse product. Prior to Ellipse, OLTP systems required developers to manage the integrity issues of unit-of-work processing, including currency control and transaction rollback. Ellipse provides all the necessary components to build systems with these features. Ellipse currently operates with Windows 3.x, OS/2 clients, and OS/2 servers using the Sybase database engine. Novell is working with Cooperative Solutions to port Ellipse as a Novell NetWare Loadable Module (NLM). It provides a powerful GUI development environment using a template language as shorthand for development. This language provides a solid basis for building an organizational SDE and lends itself well to the incorporation of standard components. As UNIX has matured, it has added many of the features found in other commercial operating systems such as VMS and MVS. There are now several offerings for OLTP with UNIX. IBM is promoting CICS 6000 as a downsizing strategy for CICS MVS. Database services will be provided by a combination of AIX and MVS servers.

With the release of Windows NT (New Technology) in September of 1993, Microsoft staked its unique position with a server operating system. Microsoft’s previous development of OS/2 with IBM did not create the single standard UNIX alternative that was hoped for. NT provides the preemptive multitasking services required for a functional server. It provides excellent support for Windows clients and incorporates the necessary storage protection services required for a reliable server operating system. Its implementation of C2 level security goes well beyond that provided by OS/2 and most UNIX implementations. It will take most of 1994 to get the applications and rugged zing necessary to provide an industrial strength platform for business critical applications. With Microsoft’s prestige and marketing muscle, NT will be installed by many organizations as their server of choice. IBM provides MVS as a platform for large applications. Many of the existing application services that organizations have purchased operate on System 370-compatible hardware running MVS. The standard networking environment for many large organizations—SNA—is a component of MVS. IBM prefers to label proprietary systems today under the umbrella of SAA. The objective of SAA is to provide all services on all IBM platforms in a compatible way—the IBM version of the single-system image. There is a commitment by IBM to provide support for the LAN Server running natively under MVS. This is an attractive option for organizations with large existing investments in MVS applications. The very large data storage capabilities provided by System 370-compatible platforms with MVS make the use of MVS for LAN services attractive to large organizations. MVS provides a powerful database server using DB2 and LU6.2. With broad industry support for LU6.2, requests that include DB2 databases as part of their view can be issued from a client/server application. Products such as Sybase provide high-performance static SERVER APPLICATION support, making this implementation viable for high-performance production applications. Digital Equipment Corporation provides OPENVMS as its server platform of choice. VMS has a long history in the distributed computing arena and includes many of the features necessary to act as a server in the client/server model. DEC was slow to realize the importance of this technology, and only recently did the company enter the arena as a serious vendor. NetWare supports the use of OPENVMS servers for file services. DEC provides its own server interface using a LAN Manager derivative product called Patchworks. Patchworks run native on the VAX and RISC Alpha RXP. This is a particularly attractive configuration because it provides access on the same processor to the application, database, and file services provided by a combination of OPENVMS, NetWare, and LAN Manager. Digital and Microsoft have announced joint agreements to work together to provide a smooth integration of Windows, Windows NT, Patchworks, and OPENVMS. This will greatly facilitate the migration by OPENVMS customers to the client/server model. VAX OPENVMS support for database products such as RDB, Sybase, Ingress, and Oracle enables this platform to execute effectively as a database server for client/server applications. Many organizations have large investments in VAX hardware and DECnet networking. The option to use these as part of client/server applications is attractive as a way to maximize the value of this investment. DECnet provides ideal support for the single-system image model. LAN technology is fundamental to the architecture of DECnet. Many large organizations moving into the client/server world of computing have standardized on DECnet for WAN processing. For example, Kodak selected Digital as its networking company even after selecting IBM as its mainframe outsourcing company.

UNIX is a primary player as a server system in the client/server model. Certainly, the history of UNIX in the distributed computing arena and its open interfaces provide an excellent opportunity for it to be a server of choice. To understand what makes it an open operating system, look at the system’s components. UNIX was conceived in the early 1970s by AT&T employees as an operating environment to provide services to software developers who were discouraged by the incompatibility of new computers and the lack of development tools for application development. The original intention of the UNIX architecture was to define a standard set of services to be provided by the UNIX kernel. These services are used by a shell that provides the command-line interface. Functionality is enhanced through the provision of a library of programs. Applications are built up from the program library and custom code. The power and appeal of UNIX lie in the common definition of the kernel and shell and in the large amount of software that has been built and is available. Applications built around these standards can be ported to many different hardware platforms. The objectives of the original UNIX were very comprehensive and might have been achieved except that the original operating system was developed under the auspices of AT&T. Legal ramifications of the consent decree governing the breakup of the Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs) prevented AT&T from getting into the computer business. As a result, the company had little motivation early on to promote UNIX as a product. To overcome this, and in an attempt to achieve an implementation of UNIX better suited to the needs of developers, the University of California at Berkeley and other institutions developed better varieties of UNIX. As a result, the original objective of a portable platform was compromised. The new products were surely better, but they were not compatible with each other or the original implementation. Through the mid-1980s, many versions of UNIX that had increasing functionality were released. IBM, of course, entered the fray in 1986 with its own UNIX derivative, AIX. Finally, in 1989, an agreement was reached on the basic UNIX kernel, shell functions, and APIs. The computing community is close to consensus on what the UNIX kernel and shell will look like and on the definition of the specific APIs. Figure 4.8 shows the components of the future standard UNIX operating system architecture.

During all of these gyrations, one major UNIX problem has persisted that differentiates it from DOS, Windows NT, and OS/2 in the client/server world. Because the hardware platforms on which UNIX resides come from many manufacturers and are based on many different chip sets, the “off-the-shelf” software that is sold for PCs is not yet available for UNIX. Software is sold and distributed in its executable form, so it must be compiled and linked by the developer for the target platform. This means that organizations wishing to buy UNIX software must buy it for the specific target platform they are using. This also means that when they use many platforms in a distributed client/server application, companies must buy different software versions for each platform.

UNIX is particularly desirable as a server platform for client/server computing because of the large range of platform sizes available and the huge base of application and development software available. Universities are contributing to the UNIX momentum by graduating students who see only UNIX during their student years. Government agencies are insisting on UNIX as the platform for all government projects. The combination of these pressures and technology changes should ensure that UNIX compatibility will be mandatory for server platforms in the last half of this decade. OSF initially developed Motif, a graphical user interface for UNIX, that has become the de facto UNIX GUI standard. The Distributed Computing Environment (DCE) is gaining acceptance as the standard for distributed application development although its Distributed Management Environment has yet to achieve such widespread support. OSF/1, the OSF defined UNIX kernel, has been adopted only by DEC, although most other vendors have made promises to support it. OSF/1 brings the promise of a UNIX micro kernel more suitable to the desktop environment than existing products. The desire for a standard UNIX encourages other organizations. For example, the IEEE tackled the unified UNIX issue by establishing a group to develop a standard portable operating system called POSIX. The objective is to develop an ANSI standard operating system. POSIX isn’t UNIX, but it is UNIX-like. POSIX standards (to which most vendors pledge compliance) exist today. DEC’s OPENVMS operating system, for example, supports published POSIX standards. POSIX at this point, however, does little to promote interoperability and portability because so little of the total standard has been finalized. Simple applications that will run across different POSIX-compliant platforms will be written. However, they will be limited applications because developers will be unable to use any of the rich, non-POSIX features and functions that the vendors offer beyond the basic POSIX-compliant core. X/Open started in Europe and has spread to include most major U.S. computer makers. X/Open is having significant impact in the market because its goal is to establish a standard set of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that will enable interoperability. These interfaces are published in the X/Open Portability Guide. Applications running on operating systems that comply with these interfaces will communicate with each other and interoperate, even if the underlying operating systems are different. This is the key objective of the client/server model. The COSE announcement by HP, IBM, SCO, Sun, and Univel (Novell/USL) in March 1993 at the Uniforms Conference is the latest attempt to create a common ground between UNIX operating systems. The initial COSE announcement addresses only the user’s desktop environment and graphical user interface; although in time it is expected to go further. COSE is a more pragmatic group attempting to actually “get it done.” Another major difference from previous attempts to create universal UNIX standards is the involvement of SCO and Sun. These two organizations own a substantial share of the UNIX market and have tended to promote proprietary approaches to the desktop interface. SCO provides its Open Desktop environment, and Sun offers Open Look. The commitment to Motif is a significant concession on their part and offers the first real opportunity for complete vendor interoperability and user transparency to platform.

In October of 1993, Novell decided to bestow the rights to the UNIX name to X/Open so that all vendors can develop to the UNIX standards and use the UNIX name for their products. This largely symbolic gesture will eliminate some of the confusion in the marketplace over what software is really UNIX. COSE is looking beyond the desktop to graphics, multimedia, object technology, and systems management. Networking support includes Novell’s NetWare UNIX client networking products, OSF’s DCE, and SunSoft’s Open Network Computing. Novell has agreed to submit the NetWare UNIX client to X/Open for publication as a standard. In the area of graphics, COSE participants plan to support a core set of graphics facilities from the X Consortium, the developer of X Windows. Addressing multimedia, the COSE participants plan to submit two joint specifications in response to the Interactive Multimedia Association’s request for technology. One of those specifications, called Distributed Media Services (DMS), defines a network-independent infrastructure supporting an integrated API and data stream protocol. The other—the Desktop Integrated Media Environment—will define multimedia access and collaboration tools, including at least one basic tool for each data type supported by the DMS infrastructure. The resulting standard will provide users with consistent access to multimedia tools in MultiFinder environments. COSE also addresses object technology, an area targeted by IBM and Sun. The group will support the efforts of the Object Management Group (OMG) and its Common Object Request Broker (CORBA) standard for deploying and using distributed objects. IBM already has a CORBA-compliant object system in beta test for AIX. Sun built an operating system code named spring as a proof of concept in 1992. Sun has a major project underway, called Distributed Objects Everywhere (DOE), that is producing very exciting productivity results. Finally, COSE will focus on the management of distributed file systems, distribution, groups and users, print spooling, software installation licensing, and storage. It is not a coincidence that these vendors are coming together to define a standard UNIX at this time. The COSE effort is a defensive reaction to the release of Microsoft’s Windows NT. With this commitment to a 32-bit desktop and server operating system, Microsoft has taken the wind out of many of the UNIX claims to technical superiority. Despite its numerous advantages as a desktop and server operating system, UNIX never has been widely accepted in the general corporate world that favors DOS/Windows and Novell’s NetWare. A key drawback to UNIX in the corporate arena has been the lack of a single UNIX standard. UNIX has a well established position as the operating system of choice for distributed relational databases from vendors like Informix, Ingress, Oracle, and Sybase. Most of these vendors, however, will port their products to Windows NT as well. Any effort to reduce the problems associated with the multiple UNIX variants will do much to bolster the stature of UNIX as a worthwhile alternative to Windows NT.

Spin this fantasy around in your mind. All the major hardware and software vendors get together and agree to install a black box in their systems that will, in effect, wipe away their technological barriers. This black box will connect a variety of small operating systems, dissimilar hardware platforms, incompatible communications protocols, all sorts of applications and database systems, and even unlike security systems. And the black box will do all this transparently, not only for end users but also for systems managers and applications developers.2 OSF proposes the distributed computing environment (DCE) as this black box. DCE is the most important architecture defined for the client/server model. It provides the bridge between existing investments in applications and new applications based on current technology. Figure 4.10 shows this architecture defined by the OSF. The first product components of DCE were released in the third quarter of 1991. DCE competes directly with Sun’s open network computing (ONC) environment and indirectly with many other network standards. OSF/1 and DCE are almost certain to win this battle because of the massive market presence of the OSF sponsors. IBM has now committed to making its AIX product OSF/1 compatible by early 1994. It will be 1995 before the product is mature and complete enough to be widely used as part of business applications. In the interim, product vendors and systems integrators will use it to build portable products and applications. The general availability of code developed for previous, similar product components will speed the process and enable new development to be modeled on the previous releases. DCE has been described as another layer grouping in the OSI model.3 DCE provides the link between pure communications on the lower layers and end-user applications.

These components become active whenever a local application requests data, services, or processes from somewhere. The OSF says that DCE will make a network of systems from multiple vendors appear as a single stand-alone computer to applications developers, systems administrators, and end users. Thus, the single-system image is attained. Remote Procedure Call (RPC) and Presentation Services: Interface Definition Languages (IDLs) and RPCs enable programmers to transfer control and data across a network in a transparent manner that helps to mask the network’s complexity. DCE uses the RPC originally developed by the HP Apollo Network Computing System (NCS), with some enhancements by DEC and IBM. NCS also provides the Network Data Representation (NDR), a virtual data representation. NDR enables data to be exchanged between various vendor products transparently. Conversions (as necessary) will take place with no intervention by the caller. Naming, security, file system, and data type conversions may take place as data is transported between various platforms. Naming: User-oriented names, specifying computers, files, and people should be easily accessible in a distributed environment. These directory services must offer standard appearance and rules for all clients. DCE supports the X.500 directory services standard, adding extensions from DEC’s Domain Name Service (DECdns). The standardized X.500 code is Siemens Nixdorf’s DIR-X X.500 service. Security: Distributed applications and services must identify users, control access to resources, and guard the integrity of all applications. DCE uses the Kerberos authentication service, developed by MIT as part of its Athena networking project and enhanced by Hewlett-Packard. This service is one of the major challenges to making products available quickly, because very few products today are developed with an awareness of this specification. Threads: This terminology represents a method of supporting parallel execution by managing multiple threads of control within a process operating in a distributed environment. Threads enable systems to start up multiple processes and forget about them until they are completed. This is especially important for network servers that may have to handle many requests from many clients at the same time. They must be able to do this without waiting for the previous request to complete. DCE is using DEC’s Concert Multithread Architecture (CMA) implementation. Time Service: A time service synchronizes all system clocks of a distributed environment so that executing applications can depend on equivalent clocking among processes. Consider that many machines operating in many time zones may provide processes as part of a single application solution.

It is essential that they agree on the time in order to manage scheduled events and time-sequenced events. DCE is using a modification of DEC’s Distributed Time Synchronization Service. Distributed File Services: By extending the local file system throughout the network, users gain full access to files on remote configurations. DCE uses Sun’s Network File System (NFS) Version 2 and provides next-generation capabilities with the Andrew File System (AFS), developed at Carnegie-MellonUniversity and commercialized by Transact Corp. Diskless operations under AFS are supported by development work done by Hewlett-Packard. PC Integration: Integration enables PCs using MS-DOS, Windows NT, and OS/2 to access file and print services outside the MS-DOS environment. DCE uses Microsoft’s LAN Manager/X. Management: Although partly addressed by the previous components, management is so complex in a distributed, heterogeneous configuration that OSF has defined a new architecture: distributed management environment (DME). DME provides a common framework for the management of stand-alone and distributed systems. This framework provides consistent tools and techniques for managing different types of systems and enables vendors to build system management applications that work on a variety of platforms. OSF will base DME on technology from Hewlett-Packard’s Open View product.

SAA is IBM’s distributed environment. SAA was defined by IBM in 1986 as an architecture to integrate all IBM computers and operating systems, including MVS, VM/CMS, OS/400, and OS/2-EE. SAA defines standards for a common user access (CUA) method, common programming interfaces (CPI), and a common communication link (APPC). To support the development of SAA-compliant applications, IBM described SAA frameworks (that somewhat resemble APIs). The first SAA framework is AD/Cycle, the SAA strategy for CASE application development. AD/Cycle is designed to use third-party tools within the IBM SAA hardware and mainframe Repository Manager/MVS data storage facility. Several vendors have been selected by IBM as AD/Cycle partners, namely: Intervolve, Knowledge Ware, Bachman, Synod, Systematic a, and Easel Corp. Several products are already available, including the Easel Workbench toolkit, Bachman DB2, CSP tools, and the Knowledge Ware Repository and MVS tools. Unfortunately, the most important component, the Repository Manager, has not yet reached production quality in its MVS implementation and as yet there are no plans for a client/server implementation. Many original IBM customers involved in evaluating the Repository Manager have returned the product in frustration. Recently, there has been much discussion about the need for a production-quality, object-oriented database management system to support the entity relationship (ER) model underlying the repository. Only this, say some sources, will make implementation and performance practical. A further failing in the SAA strategy is the lack of open systems support. Although certain standards, such as Motif, SERVER APPLICATION, and LU6.2, are identified as part of SAA; the lack of support for AIX has prevented many organizations from adopting SAA. IBM has published all the SAA standards and has licensed various protocols, such as LU6.2. The company has attempted to open up the SAA software development world. IBM’s director of open systems strategy, George Siegel, says that IBM believes in openness through interfaces. Thus, the complete definition of APIs enables other vendors to develop products that interface with IBM products and with each other. Recent announcements, such as support for CICS AIX, point to a gradual movement to include AIX in the SAA platforms. The first SAA application that IBM released, Office Vision, was a disaster. The product consistently missed shipping dates and lacked much of the promised functionality. IBM has largely abandoned the product now and is working closely with Lotus and its workgroup computing initiatives. IBM has consistently defined common database, user interface, and communications standards across all platforms. This certainly provides the opportunity to build SAA-compliant client/server applications.

IBM has clarified System View as its DME product. System View defines APIs to enable interoperability between various vendor products. It is expected to be the vehicle for linking AIX into centralized mainframe sites. IBM has stated that System View is an open structure for integrating OSI, SNA, and TCP/IP networks. At this time, System View is a set of guidelines to help third-party software developers and customers integrate systems and storage management applications, data definitions, and access methods. The guidelines are intended to further support single-system image concepts.

In view of the above, it is a significant fact that The recent introduction of CICS for OS/2, AIX, and OS/400 and the announcement of support for AIX mean that a single transaction-processing platform is defined across the entire range of products. Applications developed under OS/2 can be ported to interoperate between OS/2, OS/400, MVS, and eventually AIX, without modification. COBOL and C are common programming languages for each platform. SERVER APPLICATION is the common data access language in all platforms. The failure of SAA is attributable to the complexity of IBM’s heterogeneous product lines and the desire of many organizations to move away from proprietary to open systems solutions. This acknowledgment piloted IBM to announce its new Open Enterprise plan to replace the old System Application Architecture (SAA) plan with an open network strategy. System View is a key IBM network product linking OS/2, UNIX, and AS/400 operating systems. Traditional Systems Network Architecture (SNA) networking will be replaced by new technologies, such as Advanced Peer-to-Peer Communications (APPC) and Advanced Peer-to-Peer Networking.

The Importance of Information Technology System

In the world of globalization, Information system is such where data are collected, classified and put into process by interpreting the result thereon in order to endow with an integrated series of information for further communicating and analyzing phenomena. In a progressively more spirited worldwide atmosphere, Information System plays a vital role as ‘enabler and facilitator’, which endows with strategic values to the officialdom and substantial step up to the excellence of administration. ‘An Information System is a meticulous type of work system that uses information technology to keep in custody, situate on the air, store, retrieve, manipulate or display information, thereby partisan one or more other work structure’. In totting up to taking sides’ assessment making, co-ordination and control, information systems may also help managers and workers inspect problems, visualize complex subjects and generate new merchandise or services.

Work systems and the information systems that support typically undergo at least four phases: a) initiation, the process of defining the need to change an existing work system b) development, the process of acquiring and configuring/installing the necessary hardware, software and other resources c) implementation, the process of making new system operational in the organization, and d) Operation and maintenance, the process concerned with the operation of the system, correcting any problems that may arise and ensuring that the system is delivering the anticipating benefits. The management of these processes can be achieved and controlled using a series of techniques and management tools which, collectively, tend to be known as Structured Methodologies. Two important methodologies: PRINCE (Projects IN a Controlled Environment), and SSADM (Structured Systems Analysis and Design Methodology), developed by the Central Computing and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA), are used widely in the UK public sector and in some Developing Countries, like Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal etc. Prior to comment on the application of these methods in the Developing Countries, it would be pertinent to describe brief outlines of these methodologies. PRINCE is a project management method; not system development, which covers the organization, management and control of projects. Since its beginning in 1989, PRINCE has become extensively used in both the public and private sectors and is now the UK’s de facto standard for project management. Although PRINCE was originally developed for the needs of IT projects, the method has also been used on many non-IT projects. PRINCE requires a dedicated team to be established to manage and carry out each project. It therefore aims to provide a supporting framework between the current state of affairs and the planned future state. PRINCE focuses attention on end-products rather than activities, ensuring that the organization actually gets what it wants out of the project. Quality is seen as a necessary and integral part of the project and the focus on end-products enables the criteria by which quality is to be judged to be specified at the outset of the project. It requires the development of a viable “business case” for the project at its outset and that the business case needs to be periodically reviewed.

In PRINCE a project is regarded as having the following characteristics:

2 defined and unique set of technical products to meet the business needs

2 corresponding set of activities to construct those products

2 certain amount of resources

2 finite lifespan

2 organisational structure with defined responsibilities

Key elements of PRINCE are shown in the following Diagram:

Diagram – Key Elements of PRINCE

In PRINCE, an approach to planning based on products rather than activities and the use of this approach for the benefits. It also emphasises that projects needs to define the ‘shape’ or manageable phases of a project to promote sound business control. Stages are characterised by the production of specific products.

The PRINCE model for projects is based on two main principles:

The project is a joint responsibility between users, the developers and the organisation for whose benefit the end-product is being developed

In order for projects to succeed, a special structure is demanded to manage the project throughout its life – from conception through build to handover. This structure is distinct from normal line management.

Using these principles, the model defines three levels of activity:
Overall project management and major decision making
Day-to-day management
Production of end-products

These three levels of activity are assigned respectively to the Project Board, to the Project and Stage Managers, and to the Technical Teams.

2.2 The latest version of the method, PRINCE 2, is a process-based approach for project management providing an easily tailored and scaleable method for the management of all types of projects. Each process is defined with its key inputs and outputs together with the specific objectives to be achieved and activities to be carried out. In the following diagram, the process-based approach is shown:

Diagram – PRINCE 2 Process Model

2.3 PRINCE 2 provides benefits to the organisation, as well as the managers and directors of the project, through the controllable use of resources and the ability to manage business and project risk more effectively. PRINCE enables projects to have:

² A controlled and organised start, middle and end;

² Regular reviews of progress against plan and against Business Case;

² Flexible decision points;

² Automatic management control of any deviations from the plan;

² The involvement of management and stakeholders at the right time and place during the project;

² Good communication channels between the project, project management, and the rest of the organisation.

3.0 OVERVIEW OF SSADM

3.1 SSADM is a highly structured and rigorous method of systems development, was originally developed by Lear month and Burchett Management System (LBMS) following an investigation by the CCTA into adopting a standard Information System (IS) development method for use in UK government projects. It was launched in 1981 and by 1983 became mandatory for all the government IS developments. This gave SSADM a large toehold in the IS structured methods market.

It is a prerequisite for SSADM that user commitment and involvement are agreed right from the start. It provides a top-down approach, where a high level picture is drawn up and subsequently refined into lower levels of detail. One extremely important concept in SSADM is the distinction between logical and physical views of system components.

3.2 Following are the aims of SSADM:

v Provide a sound platform for communications between analysts, designers and users;

v Reduce errors and gaps in the specification produced

v Improve the quality of software documentation and the productivity of analysts;

v Reduce potential risks by presenting analysts with a structural framework for the use of techniques, and a standard for documentation end-products;

v Provide techniques for checking completeness and accuracy;

v Improve the maintainability of the new systems;

v Reuse staff and skills on other projects;

v Protect investment in analysis and design, and to allow freedom in implementation techniques.

3.3 SSADM consists of three main components:

The structure or framework of an SSADM project
A set of standard analysis and design techniques
The products of each technique

3.4 The structure of SSADM might appear a little complex at first, but will make more sense as we began to look at the method in more detail. Following diagram illustrates the breakdown of the life cycle into a hierarchy of modules, stages, steps and tasks.

SSADM

STEP

Figure 1- SSADM Structure Breakdown

Each module represents a SSADM phase, and is made up of one or two stages. Where a module contains two stages, one will be an analysis or design and the other will be a project decision stage. Each stage is made up of between two to seven steps, which provide the framework for applying and controlling the development techniques. The tasks to be carried out within each step define how the techniques should be used, and specify the required standard of the products output from the step. Following diagram shows the breakdown of SSADM’s modules and stages.

Figure 2 – The Stages of SSADM

3.5 The major analysis techniques mainly used are as follows:

v Business Activity Modelling (BAM) – explicitly describes what goes on that part of the business under investigation. The activities are defined from purely a business rather than on ARE perspective. Recommended approach to be used in the construction of a BAM may be Soft System Methodology (SSM), Functional Decomposition or Resource Flow Diagrams.

v Logical Data Modelling (LDM), representing system data, is applied throughout the life cycle to provide the foundation of the new system;

v Work Practice Model (WPM) maps business activities onto the organisation structure defining user roles to the underlying business activities.

3.6 The key important thing is the end-product. Each step has number of tasks associated with it, most of which lead to the creation or enhancement of standard SSADM products. At the end of an SSADM project the new system will be described by the sum of these products. Products can be divided into three basic groups: Processing, Data and System-User (or Human-Computer) Interface.

4.0 Application of PRINCE AND SSADM in Developing Countries- A few Comments

4.1 Implementing Information System in developing countries is a complicated exercise, particularly in the public sector. With the growing needs in the information age, and by the pressure from the international donors, big and ambitious projects has been undertaken by the public sector in developing countries. But due to the lack of standard procedures and methodologies for IS development caused many projects to combat problems in the implementation stage. Many projects failed to attain their business needs, as they were too large and highly ambitious. Basic reasons for the project failure in the developing countries can be characterised as the following:

v Solving wrong problem;

v Technology led, not business;

v Lack of major stakeholder involvement;

v Experts lead, rather than facilitate;

v Lack of commitment and hidden agenda;

v Benefits not identified and quantified at outset.

Nowadays, the developing countries are applying both PRINCE AND SSADM methodologies, the project management development techniques, specially designed for IT projects that are funded by the UK Department for International development (DFID).

In Bangladesh, private sectors are advancing with IS development, but it is not the identical situation in the public sector. The reasons behind this may be the poor salary structure in the public service, which never give confidence to the prospective talents and system designers to join the public services. Most of the IT projects are donor funded; domestically financed IT projects rarely experience success like the donor projects. However, Reforms in Budgeting and Expenditure Control and Financial Management Reform Programme project, funded by DFID, has been well thought-out as the most booming project in Bangladesh. At the early stage of RIBEC project (Phase 2), it was observed that, the project was design to develop and modernise the budgeting and accounting system of the government of Bangladesh. The experts mainly dominated that phase, including lots of things to cover. There was lack of stakeholders’ involvement; problems were not recognised at the initial stage. Only a range of high-grade staff in the relevant field was given a general IT training. There was no follow up; no visible product was seen. Benefits were not identified. No system was developed to automate the budgeting and accounting system. So this phase 2 had experienced a massive failure.

Having awful experience, the following phase (2A and 2B), and a downsized project with specific output targets came up with analysing user requirements. This phase focused on sustainability and proved successful with sustainable solutions especially in the software development for budgeting and accounting Substantive training had been offered to the users of the systems. Stakeholders have been involved in the software development process and the local vendors who will be easily available in the future, developed the systems. Following PRINCE and SSADM as methods for project management and system development, RIBEC project is now considered as a model for other projects which implies the potential scope for applying these methodologies.

Financial Management Project for HMG Nepal has been designed to establish a reliable database to ensure user friendly and reliable financial information and to computerise budgetary system. CCTA guidelines for IS strategy including PRINCE and SSADM were followed in developing the system. In Pakistan, Lahore WASA project experienced badly as the original proposal was too big and not phased project; no analysis of business needs, solution was technology led, benefits were not identified at outset, high risk strategy, questionable long-term sustainability, lack of training facilities and computing skill within organisation etc. So, 2 years’ costs and effort were wasted. Following the DFID approach of project management, Lahore WASA turn out to be successful and benefits are realised especially in the billing from bimonthly billing to daily billing and reduction in bill production cycle. The main project management approach in the new proposal includes: redefinition of purpose, identify business benefits, prioritise outputs, involvement of stakeholders, DIFID played the role as the facilitator not doer, ownership of solution by stakeholders, use of local consultant etc, phased development, distributed system.

In view of the above it is evident that ‘Information technology and Information systems for what they really are – powerful and valuable tools, but not magic. When applied thoughtfully, these tools can bring important benefits for individuals, organisations, and customers. When misapplied, they can waste tremendous amounts of time, effort, and money’ The UK, a developed country that is economically and technologically advanced, designed PRINCE AND SSADM, to meet their own requirements. It cannot be expected that these structured methodologies would equally suit the resource scarce developing countries. But the above discussions surmise that there is potential scope and rationale for applying PRINCE AND SSADM that would facilitate the developing countries for better project management and system development. But again, these methodologies should not be considered as the “solutions”, rather these frameworks should be used thoughtfully, tailored to manage projects efficiently and to develop effective information systems to cope with the challenge of change.

An ideal Intranet ambiance

In recent times I have gone through an article on intranet where it has been reflected in the sense that an artistic method feasible to intranet can be put side by side to a composition process where we can endeavor to construct the roof of the house before we place the underpinning, and we may facade somber problems. Let us dispense the concrete for the foundation of the house before we put in the necessary plumbing for water and sewer access, and have to spend more money than we bulldoze for. We can build a house one footstep at a time and as such we can make certain the house which has a strong foundation. Buildings with strong nitty-gritty tending to a certain period. When we have more or less done with the frame of the house, we build a roof. Although the roof of the house is the top of the structure, we do not stop there. It takes more than a covered frame to make a house. We hire an electrician to do the wiring and bring back the plumber to finish the plumbing. Afterward, we hang plaster board, add insulation, finish the exterior, add fixtures, and before we know it, we have a house that we can call home. We build an intranet in the same way, one step at a time. We can initiate on the intranet is about as glamorous as the water and sewer pipes waiting for the foundation to be poured around them; for just when we are ready to roll back our sleeves and dive into the intranet creation process with both feet, we might discover we need to conduct research, planning, or consider the requirements of the intranet. When we finally flesh out the foundation of the intranet, we start to build the framework. The basic components of any intranet are the hardware and software that make it work. The hardware used in the intranet is focused to determine the way the intranet is operated.

Our usable intranet software determines what the intranet will be used for. Eventually, when we finish scheming the intranet, but we find still have to develop the hot Java-powered applications for the intranet. Even when we have completed the design and development processes, the intranet still is not over and furnished in order to check the structure of the work for flaws. We make sure that we have used the right structure and created the best tools. Once all this is done, we finally have an intranet worthy of the CEO’s whole hearted embrace. We should then have to build the whole house at once and we will be overwhelmed. The same is true for any creative process. When we are building our intranet and its applications, we need to manage many things on a level of general organization and on a more specific level. If we mismanage expectations, our intranet might not turn out as we plan. Our potential anticipation and the opportunity of our superiors might be totally different. Before we start to design the intranet and the Java-powered applications for the intranet, make sure our prospect and the expectations of our administrator network. A good way to do this is to ensure that the infrastructure channels are updated and used.

To make convinced that our scheme is an overwhelming success; we should argue outlook throughout the progress of the intranet, principally as we develop our intranet applications. If we develop a rapid prototype of key applications, our superiors should be the ones to verify that the designs meet their expectations. If the model does not meet their outlook, maybe the prototypes were an example of what not to do, or maybe the expectations of management are unrealistic. If our prototypes meet or exceed the expectations of our superiors, we have a green light and our project is well on its way to a successful implementation. We should also manage our personal expectations for the intranet and its applications. Our expectations play a major role in the success of the intranet. Realistic expectations ensure the success of our intranet. If we perceive the intranet as an impossibly large undertaking, we might cripple by virtue of wide range of knowledge in this regard. If we perceive the intranet as a trivial undertaking, we will not produce the best possible structure and tools for our organization. It is best to find a balance in our perceptions about the intranet. As we begin to design the intranet, keep in mind that the intranet creation process is a team effort. Few individuals will be able to handle all aspects of creating the intranet and its applications. For this reason, we should have an accurate perception of our abilities and know when it is in the best interest of the project to delegate tasks.

Generating an intranet is exhilarating and demanding and as such we have to break a new ground, making efforts for new things, and carry out research work with a new-fangled request. Managing the intranet is the creation of an amazing process in whatever way some one will motivate us. If one way of thinking about the intranet is not motivating, we change tactics. We need to do whatever it takes to get the job done. We do not limit a few strategies or stick with one strategy when it obviously is not working. Make a list of strategies. If one strategy is not working, switch to a new one. If we do not have a new one, create a new one. The strategy we use can be very basic. A great strategy to start with is to plan to work on the project every day until it is completed. In addition to this strategy, we should add planning to involve both management and users in the development process. The degree of participation for management and users might need to be adjusted throughout the development process. Our role in the project should be a part of our strategy. Initially, we might want to work closely with the development team. Later, we might discover that our best role is to manage the development at a higher level. Or if we are the top programmer or network administrator, we might find that we need to work on application design rather than the actual programming. Adapting our role as necessary can help the project flourishing.

When we start working on the intranet design and creation process, one of the first things we should do is develop goals. Our goals should take into consideration the complexities and nuances of the intranet we plan to develop for our organization. Goals should be clear and relevant to the problem at hand. Set major goals relevant to the purpose, scope, and audience of the intranet. Also, set minor goals or milestones for the stages of the intranet development and its applications. Goals and milestones help define the intranet development process as a series of steps or achievements. One major goal could be to complete the planning of the intranet; another major goal could be to complete the design of the intranet. The series of steps necessary to complete the major goals are the minor goals or milestones. Our first milestone will be to start work on the intranet. Another milestone might be to select and purchase the necessary intranet software, such as Web server software, browser software, and a Java Development environment. Our goals are to complete the major steps of the development process, such as planning and design. In designing a constructive intranet system, the intranet designer may create or provide rules that pertain specifically to the intranet’s law or scope of control, such as the Information Systems department that will have overall responsibility for the intranet after completion. As we start to create the intranet, these rules might seem perfectly acceptable. However, as we conduct planning for the intranet and its applications, we might find that the overall responsibility of the intranet should be divided amongst the departments that will set up intranet servers. If these early rules cannot be modified to fit the current situation, we will have problems. We might encounter delays due to loss of efficiency or the final product might not be what was expected.

No rule should ever be considered absolutely and even the best of rules should be interpreted as guidelines that can vary depending on the situation. Rules for a complex project like our intranet should be flexible and make sense. A rule that conflicts with something we are trying to do should be reexamined. The rule might be inappropriate for the situation we are trying to apply it and as such our intranet will never be put into action if we avoid working on it. Putting off work until something is due is a poor practice. Relinquish when things do not go our way or when we seem to have a block is another poor practice. Even if we flourish on cut-off date, sketch to work toward intranet’s goals and milestones regularly-every day if necessary and possible. We should also plan to work on the intranet and its applications during those times when our thoughts are not flowing. Everyone has bad days and good days. Some days we take more breaks. Some days we work straight through the day and into the night. We might tend toward other destructive behavior besides avoiding or putting off work. Sometimes programmers go to the opposite extreme. They tear things apart impulsively before letting the work cool off so they can look at it objectively. Never hack our code just because a few users didn’t like our application’s interface. Managing the aspects of the intranet’s design and creation is only the beginning. The next step is to determine the best organization for our intranet. Over the years, three models have developed for information systems like our intranet: centralized, decentralized, and a combination of centralized and decentralized. The three computing models are really driven by the types of computers in use at an organization.

Following the centralized model, all computer resources are centered in one location and under the management of one organization. When we think of centralized computing, think of mainframes and computer centers. With the introduction of file server and client server computing, most organizations moved away from the centralized model toward a decentralized model. In decentralized computing, computer resources are spread throughout the organization and under the management of the departments in which the computers are located. When we think of decentralized computing, think of the high-power workstations and servers. After the big move to decentralize computer resources and dismantle massive computer centers, many managers had a rude awakening to the anarchy decentralized computing can cause. Let us imagine an organization where each department sets the rules and decides the standards, like what hardware and software to purchase and how that hardware and software should be set up. Then imagine the nightmare of trying to support the gauntlet of software and hardware installed throughout an organization the size of AT&T. Because of a lack of control with decentralized computing, many organizations are moving to the happy middle ground of a mixed computing model. In this mixed model, a centralized Information Systems management sets broad policy, such as the direction and purpose of key computing initiatives, and the individual departments are free to work within those guidelines.

As we thrash out the accomplishment of the intranet with management, we should consider keeping the three working out models in mind. While our organization might currently use a specific model, we can apply any of the models to the design of our intranet and should egg on administration to prefer the mock-up that wills finest hand round our institute. In an ideal world, the concluding pronouncement will be based on the necessary responsibility and control of the intranet resources. Subsequent a centralized model, a specific department within the organization will be responsible for the intranet. This identical division will be accountable for the setup, design, and administration of our intranet servers. The department will also be responsible for creating the necessary publications and applications based on user requests. With a centralized model, there will usually be a formal approval process for new publications, applications and services. This means that if the Human Resources department wanted an application to track employee files, a formal request would be required. Once the request is approved, the intranet developers would work with Human Resources to create the application. The problem with centralized control and formal approval processes is that they put creativity and timeliness in thumbscrews. Following a decentralized model, each department within the organization is responsible for its section of the intranet. All departments that want to create intranet services will have to set up, design and administer their own intranet servers. Each department will also be responsible for creating the publications and applications used by the department.

When we can draw on a decentralized model, we hack out the prescribed endorsement procedure for new publications, applications, and services. This means anyone can create intranet resources. Greater freedom and few controls means that new services can be set up quickly by anyone who wants to set them up. This freedom and lack of controls can also lead to abuse of the intranet resources. When someone publishes potentially offensive material or when the usefulness of the intranet deteriorates because so much junk has been created? By adopting elements of both the centralized and decentralized model that fit the needs of the organization, we might be able to balance the need for strict control with our artistic self-determination. For paradigm, we could create an intranet with a centralized Web server that links together departmental servers. The IS staff would be responsible for maintaining the central server and updating links to resources throughout the organization. The individual departments would be responsible for maintaining their own servers. To ensure the intranet is not abused, one person within each department could be responsible for that department’s intranet resources.

The real stars on our intranet are the applications we plan to develop. Still, we will need content for our intranet. Most of our content will be in the form of hypertext documents that are served by our Web server and displayed by our chosen Web browser. As we consider the type of content we want to publish on our intranet, think about how we will organize that content. We can organize hypertext documents in many ways. The structure that is best for a particular document depends on the complexity of the material we plan to present. For a small document with limited complexity, a simple structure is often best. Simple structures include linear and linear with alternative paths. The simplest way to structure a hypertext document is in a linear fashion. Using a pure linear structure, we can create a hypertext publication with a structure resembling a traditional print publication. Readers move forward and backward in sequence through the pages of the publication. An alternative path structure gives readers more options or paths through a document. By providing alternative paths, we make the structure of the publication more flexible. Instead of being able to move only forward and backward through the publication, readers can follow a branch from the main path. In a linear structure the branches will rejoin the main path at some point. The hierarchical structure is the most logical structure for a publication of moderate complexity. In this structure, we organize the publication into a directory tree. Readers can navigate through the publication, moving from one level of the publication to the next, more detailed, level of the publication. They can also go up the tree from the detailed level to a higher level and possibly jump to the top level.

The information bank tree intimately look a lot like the way we store files on our hard drive in a main directory with subdirectories leading to files. We could also think of the hierarchy as a representation of an actual tree. If we invert the tree, the trunk of the tree would be the top level of the publication. The trunk could be the overview of the publication. The large boughs leading from the trunk would be the next level of the document structure. The boughs could be chapter overview pages. Branches leading from the boughs would be the next level, or the pages within chapters. A combined linear and hierarchical structure is one of the most used forms for hypertext publications. This is because it is an extremely flexible, but still highly structured method. Readers can move forward and backward through individual pages. They can navigate through the various levels of the publication by moving up a level or descending to the next level. They can also follow parallel paths through the document. The most complex structuring method is the integrated web. This method lets the reader follow manifold paths from many options. This is a good method to use when we want the reader to be able to browse or wander many times through the publication we have created. Each time through the publication, readers will probably discover something new. After considering the various styles for hypertext documents, we should examine the various tools we will need to develop the intranet. A tool is anything that supports the task we are working on. The tools for unleashing the power of our intranet are based on the existing tools for the Internet itself, which includes protocols, resource tools, and information services. TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol Internet Protocol) is the foundation of the worldwide Internet. We must install TCP/IP on our network to enable intranet services. A protocol is a set of rules for programs communicating on the network. It specifies how the programs talk to each other and what meaning to give to the data they receive. Without TCP/IP setting the rules for our network communications, we cannot use Internet technologies. Suffice it to say that if our organization already has access to the World Wide Web; we might already have the necessary TCP/IP configuration in place. Furthermore, TCP/IP is built into some operating systems, including Windows 95, Windows NT, and most variants of UNIX. If we have an operating system where TCP/IP is not built in and do not have TCP/IP installed, we will need to purchase TCP/IP software. Fortunately, TCP/IP software is widely available from software vendors.

An intranet without Web services is like a world without water. The key to the World Wide Web is the hypertext transfer protocol. HTTP offers a means of poignant from document to document, or of indexing within documents. Accessing documents published on our intranet involves communications between browsers and servers. In a browser, such as the Netscape Navigator, the HTTP processes are virtually transparent to the user. All the user really has to do is activate links to move through our Web presentation. The browser takes care of interpreting the hypertext transfer commands and communicating requests. The mechanism on the receiving end, which is processing the requests, is a program called the Hypertext Transfer Protocol Daemon (HTTP). A daemon is a UNIX term for a program that runs in the background and handles requests. The HTTP daemon resides on our Web server. Before setting up or installing server software, we must determine what platform the Web server will run on. Until recently, our choices were limited, but this changed rapidly as the World Wide Web grew in attractiveness. Today, Web server software and server administration tools are available for almost every platform. And, like other software developed for use on the Internet, this software is available as freeware, shareware, and commercial software. We will find that UNIX platforms have the most options for server software. Until recently, there was only one good choice for the Windows NT environment, but this has changed. There are now many excellent commercial and freeware choices for Windows NT. For other platforms, there is generally only one choice in server software. Having only one choice of server software for the Windows system which doesn’t mean the quality of the server software is poor. Quite the contrary, the quality of the software is often quite good. Tools are an essential part of any operation. Resource tools provide the means for sending and retrieving information. There are three basic tools of intranet working:

Electronic mail is a great way to communicate. E-mail as a way to send letters to anyone within the company instantly. Many e-mail programs enable delivery of mail to single users or groups of users. Some e-mail programs even provide ways to computerize responses. Most browser packages are packaged with e-mail software. File transfer protocol provides the basic means for delivering and retrieving files around the network. The files can be text, sound, or graphics. FTP provides a springboard for many information-based approaches to retrieving information. Many higher level tools that have friendlier interfaces use FTP or a protocol similar to FTP to transfer files. Just about every browser currently available supports FTP. Telnet lets our intensive log into another system and browse files and directories on that remote system. Telnet is valuable because it is easy to use and basic to the network. When we telnet to another computer, we can issue commands as if we were typing on the other computer’s keyboard. On some platforms, like UNIX, telnet is a built-in resource. On other platforms, we will need a telnet tool. The basic resource tools are indispensable when used for the purpose that they were designed for. They even provide the fundamental basis for many high-level resource tools, but they simply weren’t designed for the advanced manipulation of the wealth of information available on the Internet. This is why dozens of information resource tools have been designed to manipulate networked data.

At this point in time, there will be a list of high-level resource tools we might want to use on our intranet: A system to automatically gather, index, and serve information on the Internet. Archie is a great tool for searching our intranet’s file archives. Once we set up Archie services, users can access Archie resources with their browser. A distributed information service that enables us to move easily through complex webs of network resources. Gopher uses a simple protocol that enables a Gopher client to access information on any accessible Gopher server. Most browsers directly support Gopher. An automated mailing list distribution system. Users can subscribe to LISTSERV lists we set up on the intranet, which enables them to read e-mail posted to the list or to post e-mail to the list. Once we set up a LISTSERV server, users can join lists and participate in lists using standard Internet e-mail software. Most browser packages include e-mail software. A bulletin board system of discussion groups called newsgroups. Users can participate in newsgroups posting messages to the group and can read messages posted by other newsgroup members. Once we set up a newsgroup server, users can browse newsgroups and post information to newsgroups using a newsgroup reader. Most browser packages include a newsgroup reader. A distributed information service for searching databases located throughout the network. It offers indexed searching for fast retrieval and an excellent feedback mechanism that enables the results of initial searches to influence later searches. WAIS servers are best accessed via CGI scripts, which allow users to search databases using their browser. Using HTML development tools, we can quickly and easily create HTML documents for our intranet. HTML editors have features similar to our favorite word processor and enable us to easily create documents in HTML format. Typically, these editors enable us to select HTML elements from a pull-down menu. The menu has brief descriptions of elements we can add to the document. The editor places the element in the document in the proper format, which frees us from having to memorize the format. When creating complex forms, we ‘all find HTML editors especially useful. HTML templates enable us to add the functionality of an HTML editor to our favorite word processor. The great thing about templates is that we can use all the word processor’s features, which could include checking grammar and spelling.

In view of the above, it is evident; knowledge on the structure blocks for creating a perfect intranet is only the first step toward implementing our intranet. Our intranet will require content, which can be well thought-out in a diversity of approach and shaped with a variety of co-worker applications. We will also necessitate setting up critical networking protocols, like TCP/IP, and services like the WWW. Once we have selected the basic tools we have to create the intranet and measured how we will organize it, we can chart it all the way through achievement. More significantly, we ‘all are using the proverbial skin texture of our word processor to add HTML formatting to our documents. Although the task of creating HTML code is fairly complex, some helper applications called converters try to automate the task. HTML converters convert our favorite document formats into HTML code and vice versa. At the touch of a button, we could make over a Word for Windows file into an HTML document.

Data net Vs Network

The network is the computer’s most apposite portrayal of client/server configuring where the users would like to feel that somewhere on the network, the services they need are available and are accessible based on a criteria and right of access, without regard to the technologies involved. When ready to move beyond personal productivity stand-alone applications and into client/server applications, organizations must address the issues of connectivity. Initially, most users discover their need to access a printer that is not physically connected to their client workstation. It is observed that sharing data files among non-networked individuals in the same office can be handled by hand-carrying diskettes, but printing is more awkward. The first LANs installed are usually basic networking services to support this printer-sharing requirement. Now a printer anywhere in the local area can be authorized for shared use. The physical medium to accomplish this connection is the LAN cabling. Each workstation is connected to a cable that routes the transmission either directly to the next workstation on the LAN or to a hub point that routes the transmission to the appropriate destination. There are two primary LAN topologies that use Ethernet (bus) and Token Ring (ring).

Ethernet and Token Ring are put into practice on well-defined Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) industry principles. These principles identify the product requirement detail and afford a pledge to a fixed measurement. This standardization has encouraged hundreds of vendors to develop competitive products and in turn has caused the functionality, performance, and cost of these LAN connectivity products to improve spectacularly over the last five years. Older LAN installations that use nonstandard topologies will eventually require replacement. There is a basic functional difference in the way Ethernet and Token Ring topologies placed data on the cable. With the Ethernet protocol, the processor attempts to unload data onto the cable whenever it requires service. Workstations vie for the bandwidth with these attempts, and the Ethernet protocol includes the appropriate logic to resolve collisions when they occur. On the other hand, with the Token Ring protocol, the processor only attempts to put data onto the cable when there is capacity on the cable to accept the transmission. Workstations pass along a token that one after the other gives each workstation the right to put data on the network.

Latest developments in the capabilities of intelligent hubs have changed the way we design LANs. Hubs owe their success to the efficiency and robustness of the 10BaseT protocol, which enables the implementation of Ethernet in a star fashion over Unshielded Twisted Pair (UTP) wiring. Now commonly used, hubs provide integrated support for the different standard topologies such as Ethernet, Token Ring, and Fiber (specifically, the FDDI protocol) over different types of cabling. By repeating or amplifying signals where necessary, they enable the use of high quality UTP cabling in virtually every situation. Hubs have evolved to provide tremendous flexibility for the design of the physical LAN topologies in large office buildings or plants. Various design strategies are now available. They are also an effective vehicle to put management intelligence throughout the LANs in a corporation, allowing control and monitoring capabilities from a network management center. Newer token-passing protocols, such as Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI) and Copper Distributed Data Interface (CDDI), will increase in use as higher performances LANs (particularly backbone LANs) are required. CDDI can be implemented on the same LAN cable as Ethernet and Token Ring if the original selection and installation are done carefully according to industry recommendations. FDDI usually appears first as the LAN-to-LANBridge between floors in large buildings. Wireless LANs offer an substitute to wiring. Instead of cabling, these LANs use the airwaves as the communications medium. Motorola provides a system—Altair—that supports standard Ethernet transmission protocols and cards. The Motorola implementation cables workstations together into micro cells using standard Ethernet cabling. These micro cells communicate over the airwaves to similarly configured servers. Communications on this frequency do not pass through outside walls, so there is little problem with interference from other users. Wireless LANs are attractive when the cost of installing cabling is high. Costs tend to be high for cabling in old buildings, in temporary installations, or where workstations move frequently. NCR provides another implementation of wireless LAN technology using publicly accessible frequencies in the 902-MHz to 928-MHz band. NCR provides proprietary cards to provide the communications protocol. This supports lower-speed communications that are subject to some interference, because so many other devices, such as remote control electronic controllers and antitheft devices use this same frequency.

It is now a well-accepted fact that LANs are the preferred vehicle to provide overall connectivity to all local and distant servers. WAN connectivity should be provided through the interconnection of the LANs. Router and bridges are devices that perform that task. Routers are the preferred technology for complex network topologies, generating efficient routing of data packets between two systems by locating and using the optimal path. They also limit the amount of traffic on the WAN by efficiently filtering and by providing support for multiple protocols across the single network. WAN bandwidth for data communications is a critical issue. In terminal-to-host networks, traffic generated by applications could be modeled, and the network would then be sized accordingly, allowing for effective use of the bandwidth. With LAN interconnections, and applications that enable users to transfer large files (such as through e-mail attachments) and images, this modeling is much harder to perform. WAN services that have recently emerged, such as Frame Relay, SMDS (Switched Multimegabit Data Service), and imminent ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) services, enable the appropriate flexibility inherently required for these applications. Frame Relay uses efficient statistical multiplexing to provide shared network resources to users. Each access line is shared by traffic destined for multiple locations. The access line speed is typically sized much higher than the average throughput each user is paying for. This enables peak transmissions (such as when a user transmits a large file) that are much faster because they use all available bandwidth. SMDS is a high-speed service that uses cell relay technology, which enables data, voice, and video to share the same network fabric. Available from selected RBOCs as a wide-area service, it supports high speeds well over 1.5 Mbps. ATM is an emerging standard and set of communication technologies that span both the LAN and the WAN to create a seamless network. It provides the appropriate capabilities to support all types of voice, data, and video traffic. Its speed is defined to be 155 Mbps, with variations and technologies that may enable it to run on lower speed circuits when economically appropriate. It will operate both as a LAN and a WAN technology, providing full and transparent integration of both environments. ATM will be the most significant connectivity technology after 1995. ATM provides the set of services and capabilities that will truly enable the “computing anywhere” concept, in which the physical location of systems and data is made irrelevant to the user. It also provides the network managers with the required flexibility to respond promptly to business change and new applications. Interoperability between distributed systems is not guaranteed by just providing network-based connectivity. Systems need to agree on the end-to-end handshakes that take place while exchanging data, on session management to set up and break conversations, and on resource access strategies. Network Management is an integral part of every network. The Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is a well-accepted standard used to manage LANs and WANs through the management capabilities of hubs, routers, and bridges. It can be extended to provide basic monitoring performance measurements of servers and workstations. Full systems management needs much more functionality than SNMP can offer. The OSI management protocol, the Common Management Information Protocol (CMIP), which has the flexibility and capability to fully support such management requirements, will likely compete with an improved version of SNMP, SNMP V2. The existence of heterogeneous LAN environments in large organizations makes interoperability a practical reality. Organizations need and expect to view their various workgroup LANs as an integrated corporate-wide network. Citicorp, for example, is working to integrate its 100 independent networks into a single global net.1 The OSI model provides the framework definition for developers attempting to create interoperable products.2 Because many products are not yet OSI-compliant, there often is no direct correspondence between the OSI model and reality. The OSI model defines seven protocol layers and specifies that each layer be insulated from the other by a well-defined interface.

In view of the above it is evident that the physical layer is the lowest level of the OSI model and defines the physical and electrical characteristics of the connections that make up the network. It includes such things as interface specifications as well as detailed specifications for the use of twisted-pair, fiber-optic, and coaxial cables. Standards of interest at this layer for client/server applications are IEEE 802.3 (Ethernet), and IEEE 802.5 (Token Ring) that define the requirements for the network interface card (NIC) and the software requirements for the media access control (MAC) layer. Other standards here include the serial interfaces EIA232 and X.21. The data link layer defines the basic packets of data expected to enter or leave the physical network. Bit patterns, encoding methods, and tokens are known to this layer. The data link layer detects errors and corrects them by requesting retransmission of corrupted packets or messages. This layer is actually divided into two sub layers: the media access control (MAC) and the logical link control (LLC). The MAC sublayer has network access responsibility for token passing, collision sensing, and network control. The LLC sublayer operates above the MAC and sends and receives data packets and messages. Ethernet, Token Ring, and FDDI define the record format of the packets (frames) being communicated between the MAC layer and Network layer. The internal formats are different and without conversion workstations cannot interoperate with workstations that operate with another definition. And in this connection the network layer is responsible for switching and routing messages to their proper destinations. It coordinates the means for addressing and delivering messages. It provides for each system a unique network address, determines a route to transmit data to its destination, segments large blocks of data into smaller packets of data, and performs flow control. When a message contains more than one packet, the transport layer sequences the message packets and regulates inbound traffic flow. The transport layer is responsible for ensuring end-to-end error-free transmission of data. The transport layer maintains its own addresses that get mapped onto network addresses. Because the transport layer services process on systems, multiple transport addresses can share a single network address. Indeed, the session layer provides the services that enable applications running at two processors to coordinate their communication into a single session. A session is an exchange of messages—a dialog between two processors. This layer helps create the session, inform one workstation if the other drops out of the session, and terminate the session on request. The presentation layer is responsible for translating data from the internal machine form of one processor in the session to that of the other. The application layer is the layer to which the application on the processor directly talks. The programmer codes to an API defined at this layer. Messages enter the OSI protocol stack at this level, travel through the layers to the physical layer, across the network to the physical layer of the other processor, and up through the layers into the other processor application layer and program.

Connectivity and interoperability between the client workstation and the server are achieved through a combination of physical cables and devices, and software that implements communication protocols. One of the most important and most unnoticed parts of LAN implementation today is the physical cabling plant. A corporation’s investment in cabling is significant. For most though, it is viewed strictly as a tactical operation, a necessary expense. Implementation costs are too high, and maintenance is a no budgeted, nonexistent process. The results of this shortsightedness will be seen in real dollars through the life of the technology. Studies have shown that over 65 percent of all LAN downtime occurs at the physical layer. It is important to provide a platform to support robust LAN implementation, as well as a system flexible enough to incorporate rapid changes in technology. The trend is to standardize LAN cabling design by implementing distributed star topologies around wiring closets, with fiber between wiring closets. Desktop bandwidth requirements can be handled by copper (including CDDI) for several years to come; however, fiber between wiring closets will handle the additional bandwidth requirements of a backbone or switch-to-switch configuration. Obviously, fiber to the desktop will provide extensive long-term capabilities; however, because of the electronics required to support various access methods in use today, the initial cost is significant. As recommended, the design will provide support for Ethernet, 4M and 16M Token Ring, FDDI, and future ATM LANs. Wiring standards include RG-58 A/U coaxial cable (thin-wire 10Base2 Ethernet), IBM Type 1 (shielded, twisted pair for Token Ring), unshielded twisted pair (UTP for 10BaseT Ethernet or Token Ring) and Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI for 10BaseT or Token Ring). Motorola has developed a wireless Ethernet LAN product—Altair—that uses 18-GHz frequencies. NCR’s Wave LAN provides low-speed wireless LAN support. Wireless LAN technology is useful and cost-effective when the cost of cable installation is high. In old buildings or locations where equipment is frequently moved, the cost of running cables may be excessive. In these instances wireless technology can provide an attractive alternative. Motorola provides an implementation that uses standard Ethernet NICs connecting a group of closely located workstations together with a transmitter.

The transmitter communicates with a receiver across the room to provide the workstation server connection. Recent reductions in the cost of this technology make it attractive for those applications where the cost of cabling is more than $250 per workstation. Wireless communication is somewhat slower than wired communication. Industry tests indicate a performance level approximately one-half that of wired 10-Mbps UTP Ethernet. NCR’s alternative wireless technology, Wave LAN, is a slow-speed implementation using proprietary communications protocols and hardware. It also is subject to interference by other transmitters, such as remote control electronics, antitheft equipment, and point-of-sale devices. Ethernet is the most widely installed network topology today. Ethernet networks have a maximum throughput of 10 Mbps. The first network interface cards (NICs) developed for Ethernet were much cheaper than corresponding NICs developed by IBM for Token Ring. Until recently, organizations who used non-IBM minicomputer and workstations equipment had few options other than Ethernet. Even today in a heterogeneous environment, there are computers for which only Ethernet NICs are available. The large market for Ethernet NICs and the complete definition of the specification have allowed over 100 companies to produce these cards.3 Competition has reduced the price to little more than $100 per unit. 10BaseT Ethernet is a standard that enables the implementation of the Ethernet protocol over telephone wires in a physical star configuration (compatible with phone wire installations). Its robustness, ease of use, and low cost driven by hard competition have made 10BaseT the most popular standards-based network topology. Its pervasiveness is unrivaled: In 1994, new laptop computers will start to ship with 10BaseT built in. IBM is now fully committed to support Ethernet across its product line. IBM uses the Token Ring LAN protocol as the standard for connectivity in its products. In an environment that is primarily IBM hardware and SNA connectivity, Token Ring is the preferred LAN topology option. IBM’s Token Ring implementation is a modified ring configuration that provides a high degree of reliability since failure of a node does not affect any other node. Only failure of the hub can affect more than one node. The hub isn’t electric and doesn’t have moving parts to break; it is usually stored in a locked closet or other physically secure area. Token Ring networks implement a wire transmission speed of 4 or 16 Mbps. Older NICs will support only the 4-Mbps speed, but the newer ones support both speeds. IBM and Hewlett-Packard have announced a technical alliance to establish a single 100Mbps standard for both Token Ring and Ethernet networks. This technology, called 100VG-AnyLAN, will result in low-cost, high-speed network adapter cards that can be used in PCs and servers running on either Token Ring or Ethernet LANs. The first Any LAN products are expected in early 1994 and will cost between $250 and $350 per port. IBM will be submitting a proposal to make the 100VG-AnyLAN technology a part of IEEE’s 802.12 (or 100Base-VG) standard, which currently includes only Ethernet.

The Ethernet technique mechanism may function well when the cable is lightly loaded but, because of rear-ender that occur when an attempt is made to put data onto a busy cable, the technique provides poor performance when the LAN utilization exceeds 50 percent. To recover from the collisions, the sender retries, which puts additional load on the network. Ethernet users avoid this problem by creating subnets that divide the LAN users into smaller groups, thus keeping a low utilization level. In spite of the prevalent implementation of Ethernet, Token Ring installations are mounting at a fast rate for client/server applications. IBM’s commitment to Ethernet may slow this success, because Token-Ring will always cost more than Ethernet. Figure 5.3 presents the results of a recent study of installation plans for Ethernet, Token Ring, and FDDI. The analysis predicts a steady increase in planned Token Ring installations from 1988 until the installed base is equivalent in 1996. However, this analysis does not account for the emergence of a powerful new technology which has entered the marketplace in 1993, Asynchronous Mode, or ATM. It is likely that by 1996 ATM will dominate all new installations and will gradually replace existing installations by degrees.

A security technique for database perspective

A security technique represents in many organizations as an elementary change in the fortification of network data and even altering the guidelines and measures designed for a security system based on a password applied on an ID file being tricky to protect data for an ideal administration. There is no denying the fact that the changes affect users, administrators, and management where policies and procedures need to be formulated in the sense that a sophisticated as well as integrated data is possible to be set up for overall security of the administration. In real life situation, we face some common scenarios which illustrate the issues in respect of the administrators facing when planning a systematic note installations are concerned.

We can’t depend on expertise alone to protect one’s Notes data. All effectual security systems integrate well planned process. A systematic procedure is the only way to deal with the largest threat we face—the possibility that someone within the organization will gain access to hush-hush information. When we install a Lotus Notes server, we can establish a password that is required to boot the software. If we don’t want to constantly walk from one’s office to the site housing one’s Notes servers, we will want one’s Notes server to boot without human intercession. The only way to complete this objective is to install the Notes server without any password. This system is a potential security leak. Anyone with access to the server has administrative access to all databases stockpiled on the server. Without password shield on startup, one’s data is absolutely open to anyone with physical access to the server. This system causes people to rely on physical security and safekeeping provided by one’s operating system to protect one’s Notes servers. Windows NT users of Lotus Notes can start Notes automatically without having to enter a password at the Notes console—and not compromise security. Instead of requiring a password at the Notes console, protect Notes using NT’s security. Windows NT users can start Notes in a session and require a password in order to access programs running in that session. This strategy allows NT users of Notes to set up Notes servers without any Notes password, but still protect the server from this method is rarely used access. OS/2’s password setup isn’t reliable. OS/2 comes with the capacity to set a keyboard password, and the password can be in effect at startup. In theory, this technique would protect all programs running on the machine from anyone who doesn’t know the keyboard password. However, because bypassing OS/2’s startup password is relatively easy, if we are using the OS/2 version of Notes I recommend that we provide physical security for all servers. We should provide physical security for all one’s Notes servers in any case. It’s a good idea. This section uses several databases shipped with Notes to demonstrate effective use of Notes security. The key databases that we need to protect are the Name and Address Explanation, MAIL.BOX, and a personal mailbox. When setting up security for any database, we need to keep in mind the purpose that that database serves and even incorporated in that purpose is one’s method of managing that particular database. For example, the Name and Address book is set up to allow distributed management, meaning that multiple administrators at different geographic sites should have the ability to add, change, and delete documents in the Name and Address book. This system allows us to have a single Name and Address Explanation for use in a large organization, without requiring a single administrator to be the sole point of contact for administration.

By using Notes, we may have multiple administrators with access to the Name and Address Explanation. In addition, users should have access to their person records. Users can assume part of the responsibility for maintaining their personal information, such as their address, phone number, and fax number. This technique is certainly less burdensome than some other e-mail programs that force users to manage complete address explanations, and can significantly reduce the amount of administrative effort required to maintain a working Notes network. The default settings for the Name and Address Explanation furnish all these goals. The default access is set at this method is rarely used access without giving users the ability to create personal agents and personal folders. The administrator has manager access and can create and delete documents. Other servers that need to reproduce one’s Name and Address Explanation also have manager access. The Name and Address book also has roles, which provide the capability to create and edit groups, networks, servers, and users. These roles enable we to give administrators limited access, based on their specific job responsibilities. This enables administrators to specialize and allows organizations to further distribute the responsibility for maintaining the Address Explanation. One’s procedures for changing the Name and Address Explanation should detail who has access to the Name and Address Explanation and their responsibilities. We should log all attempts to make changes to the Name and Address Explanation.

As a net work management tool MAIL.BOX is a special database used by the mail router in the delivery of e-mail, and is scanned by the mail router on a regular basis. Any document placed in MAIL.BOX which has a “send to” field is processed by the mail router. MAIL.BOX holds

Mail in shipment
Mail that can’t be conveyed to a individual mailbox

As a net work management tool, one’s target for MAIL.BOX should be to avert unofficial access to e-mail. Administrators need to be able to evaluate dead mail but shouldn’t be viewing mail in transit. Users should have only the potential to add mail that they want delivered. Therefore, the default access for a MAIL.BOX file is depositor. It is important to mention that a person with depositor access can create documents but can’t view or update any document in the database, including those he creates. The administrators need at least editor access to view, change, and delete dead mail. Each user has his own or her own personal mailbox. The mail router places all mail for that person in his personal mailbox. Personal mailboxes are generally stored on a server, although a mobile user might create a replica of his personal mailbox on his laptop. A user should be able to access, view, and change any data in his personal mailbox. Most organizations don’t want users to change the design of the personal mailbox, however; therefore, editor access should be provided to users. Editor access gives full rights to the data stored in the database, while preventing any changes to the design or access control list. The administrators need to be able to change the design and access control list for personal mailboxes and therefore need manager access to the personal mailboxes. This may be a quick-tempered situation, especially concerning mailboxes for executives. Administrators with manager access have the capability to read and change mail as they see fit. If this is a concern, we may want to provide a special trusted group of administrators with the ability to have access to personal mailboxes. If we create a special group of administrators with access to personal mailboxes, make sure that only members of this group have access to MAIL.BOX.

As a net work management tool Notes security is based on ID files. ID files hold a user’s name, his public and private key, and any certificates that he may have (and some other information—see Explanation 19, “Administering Notes Security,” for details). The ID file is encrypted and requires a password in order to access it. ID files are created by the administrator, certified by certifiers, and strewn to users. The two methods of distributing ID files may be enumerated as follows:

By means of the Notes Name and Address Explanation
By handling a floppy disk

As a net work management tool the whole process of creating and distributing ID files is fundamentally different from creating and distributing passwords. Passwords used to log on to systems are easy to re-create. Nothing is lost if someone forgets a password; a quick phone call to the help desk creates a new password. Administrators never need to have access to the password; this isn’t true for an ID file. It needs to take care when planning the creation and distributions of ID files are promulgated. There is no central collection point for ID files; in most organizations, ID files are strewn throughout the organization, on each user’s workstation. Some organizations collect ID files on a file server, with each user’s ID file placed in a protected directory accessible only by that user. Using a file server can help minimize problems associated with widely distributed ID files, but even then mobile users will have to carry copies of their ID files on their laptops. One’s first step in designing one’s ID file creation and distribution procedures is to make one’s mind up whether we are going to store ID files centrally on a file server or share out them to users. Most organizations dole out ID files to users, although this method is rarely used. Most users simply aren’t being able of securing their ID files against theft, and wouldn’t know if their ID files had been stolen. This situation represents a real threat to the security of one’s Notes network. If we elect to store ID files on individual workstations, make sure that one’s user information is clear on the need to keep these files secured. In case of storing ID files on a file server has two advantages:

Users’ ID files are easier to deal out securely
Users can log on from any point in the network, not just their workstations

As a net work management tool if we opt for to share out ID files, the next decision that we need to make in designing one’s distribution policy is whether to distribute the ID files using Notes’ Name and Address Explanation or on a floppy disk. The advantage of using the Name and Address Explanation is that Notes provides preset support. The ID file is deleted from the Name and Address Explanation the first time the user accesses his person record. Of one’s the user would be forced to use his person record before proceeding with any other usage of Notes. Distributing ID files on floppy disk provides a ready-made backup copy of the ID file that the user can store and have available should he lose his hard disk.

As a net work management tool when a user fails to memorize a password, providing the user with a new password is a relatively easy task. There is no permanent loss of data involved with forgetting a password. A user who loses an ID file faces far more serious consequences. Any data encrypted using that user’s communal key is lost forever, because that user’s private key is needed in order to decrypt anything that was encrypted with his unrestricted key. In addition, replacing a lost ID file entails more administrative burden than replacing a lost or forgotten password. For this reason, keeping a backup copy of an ID file is a measure of safety and security.

As a net work management tool, there is no way to re-create an ID file once it has been lost. We can have a policy that users keep backup copies of their ID files, but quite often users will forget to update backups when their ID files are updated. It often falls to the administrator to keep a backup of all ID files that have been issued. Of course, keeping the administrator’s copy of ID files updated is also a large task. A compromise used by many organizations is to have administrators keep a backup of the user’s original ID file. This means that the administrator can replace a lost ID file with a backup. The user still must be recertified with any additional certificates that he held in the lost ID file, and get new copies of any encryption keys, but no data is lost. The one exception to this rule is when the user was storing the only copy of an encryption key. If the only copy of an encryption key is lost, any data encrypted with that key is lost. We may be able to find someone capable of breaking the encryption even in cases when no key is available, but we certainly can’t rely on this scenario. No ideal solution predominates to the problem of replacing a lost ID file. Users creating and keeping backups are unreliable, and many users will not understand this requirement. Most users need to perform this task less than once a year, and their unfamiliarity with backing up an ID file can lead to confusion, or simply choosing not to do the backup. If we choose to have one’s administrators keep a backup of all ID files, we are forced to provide one’s administrators with a level of trust that many organizations may not be willing to do. Administrators with access to backups of the ID files have the ability to use an ID file to read any encrypted mail and to assume the identity of any person. Because identities are based on ID files, access to the ID file is synonymous with being able to steal the person’s identity. Administrator access to backup ID files is a controversial point if one’s administrator is also one’s certifier, as a certifier can create IDs and guess an identity basically by creating the distinctiveness as a tentative flow.

There are some steps we can take to secure backup copies of ID files:

Store backup copies of ID files in a secure locked safe
Require multiple passwords for backup copies of ID files

As a net work management tool backup copies of ID files should be kept in a secure, locked safe—not in the administrator’s desk where anyone has casual access. Because ID files are the basis of Notes security, access to ID files must be carefully controlled. ID files are encrypted and protected with a password, but backup copies of ID files often share a common password. Because we don’t want to rely on a single administrator knowing the password to one’s ID files, this password can become fairly well known throughout the organization, at least among the administrative staff. Thus, the backup copies of one’s ID files can become an easy target for hackers wishing to penetrate one’s security system. Requiring multiple passwords can minimize the chance that an administrator will use a backup copy of an ID file to impersonate another user. To replace a lost ID file using a copy with multiple passwords, we first make a copy of the backup ID. Two administrators together can then remove one of the passwords on the ID file and deliver it to the user. If someone has lost an ID file, and we fear that it may have been stolen, don’t just redistribute a backup copy of the ID file. If an ID file is stolen, we need to issue a new ID and prevent anyone from using the old ID file. Before destroying the backup copy of the ID file, we need to use it to decrypt any data encrypted with the original ID file. One’s procedure for decrypting documents using a backup copy of an ID file after someone has lost their ID file should specify that this should take place only in the presence of the person owning the file. We should be prepared to immediately re-encrypt the files with the new ID file.

As a net work management tool, Notes ID files are protected by passwords. This strategy leads many organizations to attempt to extend their policies and procedures regarding passwords to the passwords protecting Notes ID files—a waste of company’s resources. Passwords used to log on to a system and passwords used to protect an ID file are protecting fundamentally different things. Passwords used to log on to a system are part of an authentication system. A person is identified by presenting the correct user ID/password combination. A password protecting an ID file is an access control mechanism that attempts to restrict access to the ID file. A password on an ID file isn’t involved in authentication at all. Common policies regarding passwords include the life span of a password, the minimum length of a password, and requirements for both numeric and alpha characters in a password. Policies surrounding passwords are generally designed to make passwords hard to guess. In traditional password-protected systems, knowledge of a password is all that is needed to gain access to a system. But knowing the password to a person’s ID file is useless without having a copy of the ID file. The password alone provides no access to the Notes system. Only the Notes ID file can provide access to the Notes system. If someone has a copy of the ID file, but doesn’t know the password, he can try to guess the password protecting the ID file. If the hacker has a copy of the ID file, changing the password on an ID file held by one of one’s users does nothing to the copy of the ID file held by the hacker. In addition, the hacker is free to attempt to guess as many passwords as he cares to in an attempt to break into the ID file. Because this process takes place on a system disconnected from the service, we have no way of knowing if someone is attempting to guess a password associated with an ID file. This problem is why Lotus hasn’t incorporated a method of forcing users to change the passwords on their ID files. It’s simply pointless even though changing passwords on ID files is meaningless; in some organizations it is easier to go along than to change policies. Explaining the difference between a log on password and a Notes ID password may be a difficult process in some organizations. Satisfying one’s auditors may mean having a policy asking users to change their passwords on their ID files. Even with a policy, Notes provides no way to enforce this policy. The only resource we have, if an ID file has fallen into this method, is rarely utilized which needs to create a new public and private key for the user and to issue a new ID file for that user. Before scribing the old ID file, one has to make sure, one needs to decrypt all information that was encrypted earlier by using the old ID file, and then re-encrypting this information using the new ID file is virtually important.

As a net work management tool, a security check is concerned with ensuring that a company can track all changes to its databases and has the capability of detecting a security violation when one occurs. When designing one’s policies and procedures, ask one self, “How would I know if a security violation occurred?” To restrict a security audit, we need to know the answer to this question for all databases in one’s Notes network. We need a virtual but a written process for updating the design of one’s Notes applications which may be stated as follows:

Scrutinizing access to one’s Notes resources
Knowing who makes changes and when changes are made to one’s Notes designs
Changing the Name and Address Explanation
Replacing a lost ID file
Decrypting documents after someone loses an ID file

If we work in a financial institution, we probably have lived through a few security audits and have experience meeting audit requirements. We probably have already written procedures for controlling updates to one’s applications and databases. Similar policies would need to be developed to control updates to one’s Notes application designs and databases. Keep in mind that a Notes database is data and application in one package and that data, application, and access control are tightly integrated. Keeping track of all changes to a Notes design and access control list is even more important than tracking code changes for many other applications. Although authentication and access control form the basis of all security systems, we should record activity so that we can reconstruct any security violations. There are two levels of recording we need to consider:

Logging
Audit trails

As a net work management tool, Logging is simply collecting information about any security-related event, such as logging into a system. Most systems today, including Notes, routinely log this type of information. The second level of monitoring, audit trails, is based on logging. A log becomes a useful audit trail when it contains context information, such as the time and the specific actions (such as documents accessed) that occurred. For example, knowing that a person attempted to access a server is fine, but logging the fact that a user attempted to access the system at 10:23, typed in three wrong passwords, along with those three wrong passwords, is far more useful. The second thing that must happen for a log to become a useful audit trail is that the log must be protected. It must be impossible for the log to be deleted or modified. This includes all users, including administrators. The Notes log meets the first essential characteristic of an audit trail. It logs essential access-control events and it records much of the context surrounding each event. However, in Notes there is no way to prevent an administrator from changing the log, so the Notes log in and of itself isn’t a foolproof audit trail. There are two reasons why we would want to keep an audit trail:

To analyze an incident after the fact, we need to be able to analyze an audit trail
A true audit trail provides a higher confidence level that the log is accurate

We need to have a significant exemplification databases to e-mail all changes to one’s personal mailbox, with which we can set up a central database to record all changes. This feature helps track changes to ACL phenomena but isn’t a true audit trail. Typical procedures for updating a Notes design include having servers specifically designated as production servers and not allowing application designers to make changes directly to the production server should be considered. By requiring administrators to approve and then roll out changes, we can track the resources and time of all design changes. Such significant exemplification shows the recommended process for updating Notes applications. Discovering that a security violation has occurred is more difficult in Notes than in a password-protected system. The primary method used by many organizations to detect attempted break-ins on password-protected systems is to track the number of logon attempts for a single user ID. Repeated failed attempts to log on are a sign of hackers attempting to break into one’s system. However, with Notes we have no way of tracking hackers’ attempts to guess passwords for ID files. Anyone with a copy of an ID file can run a guessing program on his or her local machine until finding the password. The Notes server isn’t involved in the process of protecting ID files, and therefore can’t track attempts to break into a Notes ID file.

It is a significant fact that once a hacker gains access to an ID file and has guessed the password for that ID file, he can gain instant access to one’s Notes systems. His access won’t appear any different initially than an ordinary access by the real user. Notes authentication succeeds because the hacker has the correct certificates. We need to know the typical usage patterns of one’s users for clues that a hacker is accessing the system. Perhaps the access is being made at an unusual operation for that user, or the hacker may be attempting to access databases not normally used by that account. Currently, automated tools to detect these user patterns don’t exist, making detection difficult in large Notes networks. We should focus one’s efforts on the critical portions of the Notes system: the Name and Address Explanation, mailboxes, and any highly sensitive databases within one’s organization. Monitoring is a critical part of any security system. For now, Notes relies on administrators haphazardly scanning log records to notice any particular potential violations.

Tracking changes to one’s system requires that all users have and use personal ID files. There is little point in tracking changes if we can’t tell exactly who is making the changes. Many organizations try to ease their administrative burden by using a common ID file for all administrators. This makes changing/creating access control lists easier. Don’t do it!!! If we are serious about security, avoid issuing a common ID file to all administrators. Because administrators will make most of the changes to one’s database design and access control lists, they represent the most serious security threat. Tracking the person actually making the changes is important for one’s security audits. Certifiers are extremely powerful. They can masquerade as any user in one’s organization. Through the ability to create ID files, certifiers have complete access to one’s Notes resources. Both Notes servers and Notes clients rely on certificates to authenticate identities. Authentication succeeds because both the server and client trust a common third party—the certifier who issued the certificate they have in common. Note the word “trust.” If the certifier who issued the certificates isn’t trustworthy, one’s Notes network isn’t secure. Choose one’s certifiers carefully. If a certifier should leave one’s corporation under less than ideal circumstances, we will be faced with the large task of recertifying all users certified by that certifier. We must discard any certificates for which this certifier had access, and create new certificates for each user. Because we can’t know in advance whether we will face this situation, proper planning is required. Fortunately, a proper scheduling can reduce the effort required to recover from a disgruntled certifier. One thing one’s certifiers should never do is certify people by using the organizational certificate. If one’s organizational certificate is used to certify ID files, we would need to recertify every user in the organization when a certifier left the company. We should only use the organizational certificate to create organizational unit certificates. ID files should only be certified using organizational unit certificates. This reduces the number of users that must be recertified when a certifier leaves. Such significant exemplification 4.2 shows the users who would need to be recertified if the Marketing/L3Comm certifier leaves the company. By using an organizational unit certifier to certify ID files, L3Comm reduces the number of users who need to be recertified. In this case, only the marketing department needs to be recertified. One other way to reduce the threat posed by certifiers is to require at least two passwords on all certifier ID files. Access to certifier ID files is what gives certifiers the ability to issue certificates. By requiring two certifiers to be present to use a certifier ID file, we look the odds that a certifier will create fraudulent ID files for his personal use. We should require two passwords on all organizational unit certifier ID files and three passwords on the organization certifier ID file.

Firewalls protect one’s company’s computers from external threats for which the security problem generally arises when a company is trying to connect to the Internet, but Internet protection need not be the only use of firewalls within one’s company. Firewalls can be established between divisions of one’s company. Firewalls attempt to isolate two networks from each other. A firewall attempts to prevent this method is rarely used network packets from passing through to one’s protected networks. Firewalls are a relatively expensive security feature, ranging in price from a few thousand to several hundred thousand dollars. Complex firewalls can easily run tens of thousands of dollars in hardware costs alone. If we’re looking for a low-cost way to provide moderate protection from Internet attacks, we can use two Notes servers as a firewall. Notes can serve as an effective firewall. A Notes-based firewall is different in nature from typical firewalls. Typical firewalls rely on rules specified by administrators to filter TCP/IP packets that can enter or exit the network. Notes-based firewalls rely on Notes security features to block attacks. If we decide to use Notes as a firewall, we need to purchase additional software to provide access to FTP, Usenet newsgroups, the World Wide Web, and e-mail.

Firewalls are designed primarily to prevent TCP/IP network packets from passing through the firewall. An extremely good technique of isolating one’s internal network from this method is rarely used. A TCP/IP packet is to not use TCP/IP on one’s internal network. Notes firewalls are based on this technique. The connection between the external server and the internal server shouldn’t be a TCP/IP connection. This system forces all traffic from the Internet to be translated into a different protocol. In Such significant exemplification 4.4, the two Notes servers are connected with a null modem cable. Notes does all protocol conversions to allow Notes users to access the Internet. We could also set up each server with two network interface cards. In each server, one NIC runs IPX and one runs TCP/IP. All communications between these two servers is done using IPX. This prevents any TCP/IP packets coming from the Internet to travel through one’s server to one’s internal network. Notes traffic is automatically handled by the Notes server. The Notes server will transfer the data coming in from the Internet to the correct protocol when passing it on to the internal server. This method is rarely used Notes traffic can pass through, but no TCP/IP packets are allowed into one’s internal network. In this case, we can use all the security features of Notes to filter the Notes traffic that is allowed into one’s internal network. The real benefit to using Notes as a firewall is that it enables us to tightly control access from within the corporation to the Internet. We can use Notes add-on products such as news readers and Web page readers to translate Internet data into Notes format and provide this data to one’s employees. Because this add-ins are controlled by one’s Notes administrator, users who want to access a new portion of the Internet must have one’s administrator first set up the add-on product to read that portion of the Internet. This technique enables us to provide unlimited access for business uses, while off-putting or purging personal access to the Internet. For example, we can limit access to specific Usenet groups by configuring one’s Notes server to monitor only the desired groups. In Such significant exemplification 4.5, the administrator has selected a subset of all possible Usenet groups. Employees can access only the groups stored as a Notes database on the local server.

Suffice it to say that Notes firewalls enable us to filter the traffic going from one’s internal employees to the Internet. Because all Internet data is translated to/from documents in Notes databases, we can use all of one’s Notes administrative tools to restrict or monitor the information being sent and type of access being allowed. It also makes sense to integrate Internet data into one’s Notes network. Users will appreciate having the worked on Notes to view and search Internet data. By providing a common tool for accessing internal and external data, we eliminate the criteria which are used as special tools just used to access Internet data. Users also appreciate—or at least tend to be less dissatisfied with—an administrator who does a good job of identifying useful Internet resources and making them available through Notes. We can expect to lose access to some of the latest, greatest Web features. We will only have access to the features supported by the products that connect Notes to the Internet. Also, Notes isn’t designed to be a firewall, and only provides a moderate amount of protection. A complete discussion of firewalls and all the desirable features is beyond the scope of this explanation.

For a Notes firewall to be effective at limiting access to the Internet, it must be the only connection from one’s company to the Internet. Otherwise, employees can use the alternate path to access Internet resources. As with all Notes servers, Notes firewalls shouldn’t be used as file servers, FTP servers, or distributed file system servers. Many organizations will never need to worry about encryption. However, data security goes beyond controlling access to data. What if we need to verify that a memo sent two months ago came from the person listed in the “from” field? What if we need to encrypt one’s data while it is being sent from the server to the client? We can accomplish these things with Notes. If we need to send a “For Eyes Only” memo that we want only one person to be able to read, we can encrypt that memo, using one’s intended recipient’s public key. Because we have used the recipient’s public key to encrypt a message, only that recipient’s private key can decrypt that message.

As a net work management tool, when we need to guarantee that a memo came from the person listed in the “from” field, we should use digital signatures. Digital signatures use the user’s private key to attach an encrypted field to the memo. If the memo is altered or distorted in any way after the memo has been digitally signed, we can tell. This is prepared in a way that makes it impossible to know anything about the original document from just the fingerprint. The next step is to use the signer’s private key to encrypt the fingerprint. The encrypted fingerprint is the digital signature. Digital signatures are verified using the public key of the signer. The signature is decrypted to give the original fingerprint. The verifier then generates a new fingerprint based on the current state of the document. If the document hasn’t been changed, and the correct public key is used to decrypt the signature, we know that the document hasn’t been changed since the document was signed and we know the identity of the person signing the document.

As a net work management tool, a note doesn’t make default to encrypt data being transmitted over a network. Notes makes the reasonable assumption that either

We have a secured network
We don’t care if data is captured while being transmitted

This is the way for which the most corporations have been operating for many years and is therefore a reasonable assumption for Lotus to make. If these aren’t valid assumptions for one’s network, we can be significant exemplification Notes to provide its own secure communications channel. In order to use digital signatures or privacy-enhanced memos, both users need to have access to a common Name and Address Explanation. The Name and Address Explanation is where public keys are stored. Of one’s, private keys are stored in the ID file, which should be in a secure place accessible only by the actual owner of that ID file. For example, we digitally sign a memo using one’s own private key, but someone needs access to one’s public key stored in the Name and Address Explanation before they can verify the signature. The same is true for privacy-enhanced mail. We need access to someone’s public key, stored in the Name and Address Explanation, in order to send that person private mail. This level of coordination, having each person have access to a common Name and Address Explanation, is a major drawback to using Notes as a basis for private communications across separate enterprises. Users can mail copies of encryption keys to other users, but only regular users of encryption are likely to do this. One question that many organizations have is, “How can we allow users read-access to data while preventing them from printing or copying this data?” Of one’s resources, there is no way to absolutely prevent users from copying data that they can read, because they can always get out a pencil and paper and write down all the information. Let’s wrap up the discussion of the security basics by using the Notes security elements to accomplish some specific goals. These scenarios are meant as illustrations to help we understand the intent behind each of the Notes security features. We can protect parts of a document by using protective sections. When creating the form, divide the form into sections. For the section that we want to protect, assign a group name that will hold all users with rights to edit that section. The default access to the database should be this method is rarely used access. Users with this method is rarely used access can create documents and read documents, but not edit documents. Only those sections of one’s documents specifically granting editor access can be edited—and then only by those users specifically listed in the group name for that protected section. This ability is often useful in workflow applications. For example, a user may have the right to generate a purchase order document, but shouldn’t be allowed to change the document. This technique would prevent someone from changing a purchase order after it has been this method is rarely used. This method is rarely used Names fields in documents. Users can create documents but, because they aren’t listed. This method is rarely used Names field; they don’t have the ability to edit any document. When we are collecting sensitive information, we want to make sure that users can’t read information submitted from other users. In this case, we want to protect documents from everyone except the person who created it. We do this using reader fields. When the document is created, a reader field that lists the user should be created automatically by using a macro to evaluate data integrity within a remote view of any object oriented utilities. Don’t forget to include any administrative groups and servers that will need access to the document.

If one’s application uses fields that should be personalized only by one’s programs and macros, we want to protect that field from fortuitous alteration by users. We can achieve this by locoing the field as premeditated and entering the name of that field in its formula. As a Notes administrator, we will need to be particularly concerned with the security setup for each database on one’s server. Security is the primary of one’s resources of problems in many Notes installations. A note uses a combination of certificates, public and private keys, and access control lists to provide a finely granulated level of security. The primary weakness in Notes security is the security policies that one’s organization chooses to implement. The most likely route for an attack on one’s Notes system is to gain access ID files containing the private keys and certificates from one’s organization. We will need to carefully design and plan out one’s policies and procedures for managing one’s ID files. Each organization will have to balance the costs versus the benefits. Notes have tightly integrated encryption capabilities based on public-key cryptography technology licensed from RSA. Public-key encryption is the basis for mail encryption, digital signatures, and secure communications channels. Public-key encryption is useful only when there is a convenient way to exchange public keys. Other Internet software, such as PGP, has already spawned a small industry to support the exchange of public keys. Let’s hope that, in the near future, public-key management in inter-enterprise and extra-enterprise applications becomes easier for Notes. Until that time, privacy-enhanced mail and digital signatures are primarily useful within a single domain. If we need to transmit data between two servers and we don’t have a trusted connection between the two servers, we can use port encryption. The data is decrypted by the receiving server. This eliminates the possibility of anyone eavesdropping on one’s conversation virtually in question.

In view of the above, it is evident that data security is inevitable to develop the integral part of a systematic data management which is a central component for smooth administration. For this reason, protection of information in security point of view is vitally important for which a management needs a sophisticated network system for developing RDBMS to ensure value for money audit in terms of the necessity of IT inspection system.

An ideal Intranet ambiance

The World Wide Web

There is no denying the fact that in modern world, the World Wide Web is undoubtedly a preferred source of data which is inevitable to communicate with outside world in the field of business, communication, economics, information and electronic world. The reason of being enthusiastic is to be motivated with others out side surroundings. Not too many years ago, we are boost of the set of files that we preserve with vendor product documentation. We conscientiously send for information on magazine reader service cards for products that we might necessitate to integrate into one of our projects. Our goal is to be able to pull out the merchandise literature when we had to prepare that quick turn-around proposal and then simply confirm pricing. This system does work, but it becomes a burden to maintain where we have to spend a lot of time in filing the information that we receive and can organize our information by vendor and sometimes, however, we desire that we have the information by product category, as we may face troubles memorizing what some of the smaller vendors actually provide for. We also have trouble keeping track of when we receive all the information. It seems as if we have to work hard to keep refreshing the literature, especially in light of the rapid change in products and pricing that goes on in the computer industry. On many World Wide Web sites, including CERN’s home page, we can find more extensive details and a more complete listing of actual events than the brief history of the World Wide Web given here. This prologue to the World Wide Web history aims at providing only a brief overview of events involved in its creation. At first, the World Wide Web contained only a few server and client machines. Within a period of a couple years, however, the computing people caught onto the benefits and stimulation of this new expansion, and the World Wide Web inhabitants growth detonated.

About new Term relevant to Server and client envisaging such type of computers which are the basis for the entire Internet and in due sense, a server is any computer that “serves” or delivers information and data. A client is any computer that requests or receives the information and data. In 1993, the Web had only about 50 servers. Within 18 months, this number was better than before by over 3,000 percent and within the last few years, this number has grown into the millions, and today we can find information and files on the Web from basically somewhere in the world. The World Wide Web was beyond doubt a farsighted undertaking. The future seems to hold no limits. In time, most day after day activities may very well take place through the World Wide Web. Almost every home, school, company, and organization will be connected, and with the click of a mouse, the world will exist at our fingertips. In our travels through the World Wide Web, we are bound to stumble upon some methodological terms and phrases that we don’t know much of this terminology relating to common activities and components present on the World Wide Web. In an attempt to clear the path for some smooth “surfing” through the World Wide Web, several of the most common terms and phrases for encounter are provided here for us to learn and refer to. Specific examples of many of these elements are provided later in the lesson. Just a Minute: The terminology presented here may have many variations in meaning, depending on whom we ask. We’ve tried to stick to the most basic definitions to help us easily understand some of what we’ll make a distinction on the Web.

The most essential parts of the World Wide Web are the rudiments, such as servers, pages, hot links, and more–all of which comprise the bulk of the World Wide Web. The following are some related terms we may see:

Web site: A collected works of World Wide Web credentials, usually consisting of a home page and several correlated pages. We may judge of a Web site as an interactive electronic in such critical phenomena.
Home page: Frequently, the “cover” of a particular Web site. The home page is the main, or first, page displayed for an organization’s or person’s World Wide Web site.
Link: Short for “hypertext link.” A link provides a path that connects us from one part of a World Wide Web document to another part of the same document, a different document, or another resource. A link usually appears as a uniquely decorated word that we can click to be transported to another Web page.
Anchor: A link that takes us to a different part of the same Web page.
Image map: A feature available on the World Wide Web that enables we to click various locations in an graphic image to link to different documents.
Frame: A feature available on the World Wide Web that presents text, links, graphics, and other media in separate portions of the browser display. Some sections remain unchanging, whereas others serve as an exhibit of linked documents.
Table: A feature available on the World Wide Web that presents document text, links, graphics, and other media in row and column format. Table borders may be visible in some documents but invisible in others.

HTML: Hypertext Markup Language. HTML is the coding language for the World Wide Web that informs browsers how to display a document’s text, links, graphics, and other media. This language forms the foundation for all Web pages.
Webmaster: The individual responsible for maintaining and updating the content of a World Wide Web document. Webmasters are the creative forces behind the World Wide Web.
Domain name: The name given to any computer registered on the World Wide Web as an official provider of information and files. Domain names are usually two or more terms separated by periods. Some examples are aol.com or http://www.msu.edu.
URL: Uniform Resource Locator. A URL (pronounced we -Are-El) serves as identification for all World Wide Web documents. The URL is sometimes referred to as a World Wide Web page address. Every site and page on the World Wide Web has a URL.
Browser: A software program that requests, interprets, and presents World Wide Web documents. Frequently used browsers include Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, Lynx, and Mosaic.
Client: In addition to being a computer, a client also can be a software program that requests and acquires information from computers that store World Wide Web documents and files. World Wide Web browsers are also known as clients.
Hot list: An option available in most World Wide Web browsers that maintains a list of frequently accessed home pages. A hot list also refers to a list of home pages related to a particular subject that is published on an organization’s home page.

One of the most universally used capabilities of the Web is its ability to help that the users locate just about anything. Scheduling to take a trip or need to locate a place somewhere in the world? Several Web sites are designed to help we do just that. The World Wide Web contains sites for every automobile manufacturer in the world. Current prices, lease programs, different models, various options, company information, dealership locations nearest we and residuals are all available at these sites.

With high and mighty that we would like to want to attend a class next year at a local campus or university. Well, just about every educational institute maintains a site on the World Wide Web. MichiganStateUniversity, for example, provides an extensive site that offers information ranging from courses available to credit prices, degree program details, and career planning services. Many educational opportunities are available on the Web because many institutions offer for-credit courses and live lectures, right on the Internet. Some of the most matter-of-fact uses for the World Wide Web take account of activities in which we share on a regular basis. If we’re concerned in owning stock (or if we already do), for example, we can find annual reports, current stock prices, and other pertinent information relating to just about any corporation or business, we can also buy and sell stock directly on the World Wide Web without leaving. Okay, now that are well conversant what’s out there on the World Wide Web, we may want to know what it looks like. Again, the only limits to what we find are the imaginations of the Webmasters. The World Wide Web acts as the canvas for millions of undiscovered artists around the world. Sites display text, graphic images, links, and attached media in a variety of styles, designs, and patterns. Many pages display these elements in a simple format that’s easy to understand and navigate. Much of what appears on the Web, however, may use some special elements to add that extra bit of “zing” to a page. Several such features for designing sites include tables, image maps, frames, and animation. Webmasters use these features to design unique, effective, and attractive home pages. Tables involve the organization of information into a row and column format. This World Wide Web feature is particularly useful for charting and graphing text, graphic images, and links,. Furthermore, if the desired appearance involves the arrangement of information into specific dimensions, tables provide the perfect format. On the World Wide Web, we will encounter image maps as well. This feature enables we to click various locations in an graphic image to link to different documents.

Frames are a more advanced design tool for World Wide Web sites. The use of frames allows the division of the display screen into separate sections, each of which may contain text, graphic images, and links. Frames are especially useful if a site contains a list of links related to a certain subject, and the Webmaster wants the linked documents to appear on the screen while the list of links remains visible as well. With the various tools available for constructing a World Wide Web site, we may encounter just about everything in we imaginations during we are to travel as to what is not available now will be shortly, as futuristic ideas for site development already live in the minds of designers. Some futuristic plans for World Wide Web sites include 3-D and interactive displays. The technologies that facilitate this type of design now exist, and a few sites already show a glimpse of the future.

One of the first serious uses of the Web by trade, especially those in the computer industry, was marketing. They understand that with the way they changed their product lines and pricing, it was almost impossible to keep their clients up-to-date. They also had the advantage those computer techniques where among the first users of the Web, so they could reasonably argue that their Web pages were reaching the buying audience. Anyway, it is a great way of doing business when researching and integrating computer systems. If we assume that vendors keep their Web pages up-to-date, which I have found to be the case, we are guaranteed to get the latest information whenever we need it. We do not have to listen to salespeople trying to make a sale or answer all the calls to see whether we are going to buy anything after we receive the literature.

If we do not are successful in finding out the simple pattern (because the parent company has a name that is different from the common product name or someone else got that Internet name first), we will try one of the Internet search engines to find the appropriate page. Some of the common search engines can be found at the following addresses: These engines typically have a box in which we would enter the search criteria. Suppose, for example, that we wanted to find the address for Hewlett Packard printers. We would type Hewlett Packard in as our search criteria and then touch the search button. Virtually we would then get a number of matching responses back in a display. The nice feature about this result is that the underlined lines are actually links to the pages themselves. We can just click on the underlined text to go to the Web site that is described. It is a very easy way to navigate to an unknown location.

Once we find the address of the site that we want, we will typically be taken to the main page for the company. After that, we have the opportunity to follow links to other pages at the site that are of interest to us. We can find general Microsoft information, information about various products, and other literature. As we can see, there is a wealth of information available. Another good use of the Web is to download the latest drivers and other products. Again, once we learn the easy point-and-click interface of the Web, we can navigate to other sites and pages. We can also download software with a single click. It can be a very powerful tool, because there is already a great deal of product support on the Web and it continues to increase. A final note is that many third-party vendors provide a good deal of support through the Web similar to the Microsoft examples that have been covered so far. Obviously, some are better than others. However, even on the poorer sites we can usually get basic product information and numbers to call if we have questions that are not answered on the Web site. We never know until we try. Heck, I even downloaded a specific MPEG driver for an IBM note in such critical phenomena for the Windows 95 operating system in a matter of minutes that helped me get a system out in the field in an afternoon. Imagine how long it would have taken if I had to send for the disk. Web pages are a really great source of information. However, they tend to be a one-way communications vehicle. The provider determines the content and we review it. There is often far more content than we would want to see, so we can usually find what we want. What do we do when we have a really unusual or specific problem, however? One answer to this dilemma is the Internet Newsgroups. There are an enormous number of newsgroups out there with topics ranging from beer making to social commentary (there are a lot of commentary pages for frustrated individuals). Anyway, this is an interactive medium where we post a question or comment in a newsgroup that is devoted to the subject matter that we want to discuss. The goal here is to get a review of what we write by a large number of people, some of whom are experts and others who are amateurs. In most cases, we can find someone who has the same or a similar problem and can provide we with some insight into our situation.

A partial listing of the newsgroups that might be of interest to BackOffice users. Best of all, most newsgroup readers will provide us with a list of newsgroups that are available on news server. We do not have to look at the list provided in a in such critical phenomena that was published several months or years ago. Go out and look at the list in the comp. database sections to see what is currently available. Newsgroups often split up to reduce the number of messages that a given individual has to monitor. Other times, new ones are formed and old ones die out. Check what is currently available using the systematic browser. A few words of caution are in order about newsgroup postings. This is an interesting world subculture where we get some of the best minds in the business. We also get a lot of lonely people and some people that are downright arrogant. Here are some suggestions for those of us who are new to newsgroups:

Carefully evaluate the responses that we receive to questions. Usually, we will get someone with a high level of experience that can really save us a lot of time. Occasionally, we will get people who just want to see their name on a list of postings. If a response does not make sense to we and is not corroborated by other responses, we might want to just ignore it.
Be careful about using inflammatory tones in our postings. There are a number of people out there who are just looking for something to gripe about and this will distract people from the business at hand. We might want to study the etiquette of the Net before we deviate from simple technical question and response postings. There are a lot of people who are sensitive about job postings (even though we see them all of the time in the technical newsgroups for products that are in demand) and topics that do not relate to the designated subject matter of the newsgroup. It’s a good idea to read the newsgroup for a while to see what is generally accepted and what is not.

Newsgroups can be a very powerful tool. They can give we access to other people out there who are doing work similar to our own. Many of these people might have seen the problem before and may have actually solved it. An amazing number of people will take time to help someone whom they do not even know in response to a posting on the newsgroup. A local alternative for those who are not connected to the Internet or who like interpersonal communications is a local users group for NT and/or BackOffice users. What users groups are available in our area? The best way to find out would be to call our local Microsoft representatives or monitor the newsgroups and list servers to see whether there are any in our area. If we know of several people who do work similar to our own, we might want to form our own users group, local contacts that may be willing to have we call them for advice when we are in real trouble. Microsoft NT and BackOffice users groups are relatively new and rare. Here are a few ideas from the local Oracle users group that I belong to—it shows what a group that has been around for a little while can do:

Have speakers from the product vendors come in to discuss new products. We would be amazed at the number of sales and technical people who will even fly in from out of town if we tell them that we have a fair-sized group of people who actually work in the environment of interest.
Provide sessions where members bring up problems that they are challenged with and see whether others have any suggestions for these problems.
Have members present their evaluations of new products that might be of interest to other members. This is often better than having vendor representatives come in, because our members will often give we more candid opinions about the products.
Have members provide feedback on all those major conferences that we would like to attend, but there is no budget or time.

Finally, there is an Internet tool that lets we routinely receive electronic mail on a given subject. We send an e-mail to the appropriate list server administrator who then adds our name to his or her distribution list (this is usually an automated process where we type the word subscribe in the text or heading of our message and it in this connections out our e-mail address). We then continue to receive mailings until we tell them to stop our subscription. In effect, these list servers are the equivalent of electronic magazines that get delivered to our electronic mail inbox as opposed to our paper mailbox. Where do we find out the list servers that are available? We will often find articles discussing them in the appropriate Internet newsgroups. We can also find references to a number of them on various Web pages while we are surfing around. There are several newsgroups on Windows NT and BackOffice that are provided by Microsoft. To subscribe, go to the Microsoft home page and surf around until we find them (they are relatively easy to find once we get the knack of surfing the Web; they move around as the Web pages are designed, so polish up our surfing skills).

In view of the above it is evident that the use of Internet resources was stressed in this argument for the reason that is a current emphasis of Microsoft which enables us to get up-to-date information and software whenever we need them. Traditional printed materials such as this in such critical phenomena provide us with insight and information about the products. Most of the people that we have come across tend to prefer printed material for commentary, general discussions, and step-by-step instructions. The electronic forms of media tend to be better when we need up-to-date information, software to download, or answers to a very specific technical question virtually as a tentative flow.

The role of Internets for Education

Email is in essence for mail transmission electronically among people. There are also mailboxes, mail servers and other features like those in traditional post office systems. Only the difference is the simplicity and speed in the information transmission via computer and Internet. E-mail is a great achievement in the world of communication. It is a great achievement because it allows messages reach its recipients within a very short time. If anybody asks how much time it would take for a letter to reach Bangladesh from EU or USA, even the top officials of the Post department would not be able to answer. The fastest mail delivery system of the world, DHL takes a minimum of three days to deliver mail to a client. There are of course other communication devices like phone, fax, telex, but often those are too costly. Among all the media of information transmission, email is the best as it is the cheapest and also the fastest. Also it ensures privacy or secrecy, as the message is stored in the mailbox of the recipient directly. The sender can be sure that the recipient will obtain the message, which is sometimes impossible to assume in case of Fax. Another great benefit of email is that a user can access his/her messages from any computer of the world that has Internet access, whenever he/she wants to check for e-mail. Every email recipient must have an email address to be identified and to temporarily store the message in the mail server. If there is no address, how you will be able to locate any person among millions of people. You must have an address, and so email is sent to addresses. Example: alam@bangla.net is an email address. Every address must be specified according to the mail server. The unique name before the @ sign would give the identification of the recipient. Here Alma is the user or recipient and bangla.net is the mail server.

By now, everyone has heard of the great educational benefit of the Internet. In fact, as part of our work for any University, we can use the Internet as an integral part of various educational programs at all levels. In this connection, we will be conversant with some questions about education on the Internet which need to be answered: How can we search out in touch with other teachers through the Internet? What are some explicit K-12 wherewithal on the Internet? What are some resources available for higher education institute? Can we give us some examples of how one would find research and other academic information on the Internet? We at first are going to learn how we might connect with some other educators. From there, we will look at some resources geared specifically toward higher education professionals virtually. Assuming that Sabah is an elementary mathematics and special education teacher of Sunbeam School Dhaka. She is interested in distance education, math, and special education. If our hypothetical teacher wants to get in touch with other teachers and resources, what would she do? That’s what we will find out. Just a Minute: We might note that there is a pretty heavy emphasis on glisters in this topic. Unfortunately, many K-12 teachers out there have very limited Internet access and often don’t have access to the latest technology and computers. The K-12 resources you will see in this lesson try to take these factors into account. A vast number of K-12 teachers take advantage of the hundreds of educational glisters that are out there. They can locate glisters on many topics and can contact professionals and experts in their fields with the click of a mouse. Shilla is no different. She has decided that she would like to start off subscribing to three such glisters to see what will happen. First, she is interested in distance education, so he would like to see if there are any glisters out there to help him. When she types in distance education in the search field at Catalysts, he sees that there are indeed some glisters in which he’s interested. Just a Minute: Pay attention to how many subscribers there are on these glisters. Lists with a lot of subscribers will have a lot of information but might be hard to keep current with all the mail they generate. Lists with a low number of subscribers might be easy to keep up with but might have little traffic. After reading the information on how to subscribe to that list, she returns to the search page to search for a mathematics listserv. Because she doesn’t really know where to begin, he searches for math, mathematics so that Catalyst will find any listserv with either of these words in the title. He is rewarded with 64 matches

K-12 News

There are other places Sabah can go on the Internet to find other people who are interested in the same topics as he. After he starts WinVN, his newsreader, and brings up a list of all the newsgroups his news server carries, he is ready to find some relevant newsgroup. Maybe you’d like to find some newsgroups you are interested in, too. Time Saver: Unlike Catalyst searches for listservs, newsgroups won’t have full “English” names. For example, don’t look for a special education newsgroup. Instead, try special, education. Special, or even sped or speced. Be creative in your search terms to find a newsgroup that’s right for you.

1. by choosing Group Find or clicking the Search toolbar button, search for distance. You will notice that WinVN locates the alt.education.distance newsgroup

2. With the group highlighted, choose Group Subscribe Selected Groups.
3. Repeat the first two steps by conducting a search for math. Choose Group Find Next (or press the F3 key) until you locate k12.ed.math.
4. Repeat the first two steps again, this time looking for special. If you repeat the search several times, you will find the group k12.ed.special. We might notice that a few of the newsgroups you found were in the k12.* hierarchy. You might want to spend some time perusing the groups there. If you are a K-12 educator, you are sure to find a group that interests you. Also, if you are interested in what educators in other countries are doing in education, just keep searching your newsgroups and you’ll come in contact with educators all over the world. If you continue your search for math, you will find math-related newsgroups in Canada, Germany, Taiwan, and other locales. Just a Minute: Although this section has focused on K-12 education, there are plenty of glisters and newsgroups available for those in post-secondary education as well. You can use the techniques learned in this section to search for just about any listserv or newsgroup.

K-12 on the Internet

It should be noted right away that, in essence, there really is little difference between finding educational resources and finding any other information on the Internet. World Wide Web and Gopher search engines are useful, as are many of the libraries and files available through Telnet and FTP. We should not hesitate to use the same resources you would use for other purposes when you are looking for information on education. For example, an Excite search for k-12 +education produced over two million hits! The Internet is particularly useful to educators for many reasons, and you’re going to look at these other resources in a little more detail now. One of the most exciting projects I ever worked on was a science project that was completed by two elementary schools in Michigan and Texas. For our project, the two schools took samples from nearby rivers and compared them. They took careful notes on indigenous vegetation, weather patterns, and other factors, all of which were gathered over the Internet. They then used the Internet to compare their results and compose a final project. The power of collaboration like this can’t be denied, but how would you start? One of the first sites to look at would be the listing of K-12 Web servers located at The Texas Education Network (TENET). For example, suppose you are looking for an elementary school in Michigan with which to do a collaborative project.

1. From the state-by-state listing, click Michigan.
2. Next, click the School Districts link.
3. Now click Ingham Intermediate School District.
4. From there, click Ingham County Schools. You then could proceed to any school you like.
5. To finish the exercise, click Lansing.
6. Finally, scroll down and click Home Pages. After you do, you can e-mail or contact many staff and teachers in the LansingSchool District.

Of course, you could click any state and follow many links to other schools and teachers throughout the nation. You might find that you can forge some lasting educational relationships with the help of the Internet.

The Computer without the Internet

As shocking as it might seem, some teachers might want to use their classroom computers for reasons other than accessing the Internet. Many teachers want to make use of educational software. Although there is a lot of commercial software out there, it often is too expensive for teachers and school districts to purchase. However, the Internet offers a wealth of educational software for all K-12 levels. But how do you find it? We could go to `http://www.shareware.com`, and we’d probably eventually find quite a bit. However, Ziff-Davis already has compiled over 10,000 shareware titles for you in ZD Net Software Library, located at `http://www.hotfiles.com/educate.html`. Find Some Chemistry Software

Click the High School and College link to find higher-level programs.
Let us notice that there are two pages of high school and college shareware programs from which to choose. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the Next link.
Scroll down on the next page until you find the four-star-rated Periodic Table of the Elements (Cyber) v.2.1. Click its link.
You’ll be taken to an information page on the Periodic Table software. From here, you can simply click the Download button to put the software on your computer.

In addition to this piece of software, there were almost a dozen other chemistry and high school science programs available at this site. If you simply cannot find something for which you’re looking, you can always conduct a search of the site. There are many other ways in which you can use the Internet in your classroom. Collaboration and educational software use are just two of them. Feel free to explore some more on your own to discover even more uses. The amount of higher education material out there is staggering. Literally hundreds of universities now are on the Web, giving users access to libraries, research, and other resources that only universities can offer. When searching for anything, it’s good to have a jumping-off point from which you can find your way to any university you want. This “jumping-off” place for higher education resources has got to be http://web.mit.edu/cdemello/www/geog.html. This page lists over 3,000 universities worldwide. If we are interested in only U.S. universities, we need to click the United States link to go to http:// www.clas.ufl.edu/CLAS/american-universities.html. This page will take you to Web sites for hundreds of universities from Abilene Christian to Youngstown State. Just A Minute: If community colleges are more our speed, check out http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/cgi-bin/search.html. It has over 500 community colleges from which to choose. Knowing how to get to other universities and their resources is valuable, of course, but it’s research that really drives higher education. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could use the Internet to conduct some of that research? Well, you can. Many journals and other research sources are already online, and more are joining them every day. Suppose you were a professor interested in 19th-century literature doing research on Edgar Allan Poe; where would you go? An outstanding starting point would be the Washington and Lee University’s Libraries and Research Web page at http://liberty.uc.wlu.edu/~dgrefe/various/libres.html. You would see jumping-off points for a variety of different research resources. Although the second section of this page says that the listed resources are for Washington and Lee departments, these resources are generally available for anyone interested in the related topics. We will note that there is a section on the Arts and Humanities; you’ll return to them later.

First, we might want to try your hand at some of the general resources.

To Do: Look for Some Periodical Information

1. Click the Periodical Indexes link.
2. Go to Uncover. By the way, you might want to spend some time exploring Uncover more in-depth on your own time. It is an excellent resource in and of itself.
3. Scroll down and click Search the Uncover Databases.
4. Next, click Search Uncover Now.
5. From the search page, type Poe on line 2 and press Enter.
6. At the time of this search, there were 151 articles something wherein we found one article titled “The Violence of Melancholy: Poe against Himself,” published in the fall 1996 American Literary History periodical. If we go back to the Libraries and Research page, you might want to explore a few of the other general resources available. In particular to our topic, following these paths will take you to even more information: Before you’re finished at Washington and Lee, take a look at one of the departmental links available.

Linking Up with the Department

1. Click Arts and Humanities.
2. Next, click English and then select the Literary Resources and Guides option.
3. Now choose Literary Resources on the Net, and click the US category on the resulting page.
4. The next page shows a large number of links all related to American Literary resources. Scroll down and click Nineteenth-Century, and on the next page, find the 19th-Century link and click it.
5. Finally, scroll down the page until you find the entire section dedicated to the person.

Before you go on, it is important to remember once again that, even though you chose to explore a 19th-century American author, you could have just as easily searched for information on modern quantum mechanics theory or the latest writings on supply-side financial side. The topic really is irrelevant; the process is not.

For K-12 teachers:

Using the methods we may learn a lot in these phenomena to find at least one listserv and one newsgroup related to what we teach. Using a project that we can use for classes, see if we can turn it into a collaborative project and locate a school or teacher to share it with. Pick a topic on which we currently need information and, using the techniques and sites we learned about in this lesson, find at least five resources on the Internet to help us. Email works like a postal system. When someone mails a message (letter), first it is stored in a mail server. This is just like posting the letters in the local post office or letterbox. Mail servers are the storage points like the postal department’s post offices, which act as temporary storage during transfer of letters from sender to receiver. In case of electronic mail, mail servers serve as the sender’s post office; the e-mails are then forwarded to numerous other mail servers before it reaches the recipient’s mail server. The sender’s mail server also plays important role in controlling data traffic. When in any network junction there are jams, then server stores some messages and sends the messages after the network gets free. In this way it protects the traffic jams in the message paths. Besides, there is a different email system, which acts as gateways or translators among POP3 or X.400.

When the message reaches the destination mail-server, it is stored there until the recipient checks for it and receives it.

Internet

As shown in the above figure, it is physically possible to interconnect millions of computers through satellite system and using telephone lines creating a large network. Direct cable connection is an alternative to satellite connection among LANs. Basically Internet is the network of numerous worldwide networks. A server called Internet Server also known as ISP (Internet Service Provider) plays the role of the server computer. If someone has an account or user permission he/she can enter into his/her ISP’s Internet Server, through which he/she can access any Internet Server in the world. Any person can browse through any information from millions of computers after he/she enters an Internet server. For this reason, Internet is a great wonder of modern science, the so-called information super highway. A web-site is a hard disk space in one of the billions of computers in the Internet. A certain web-site will have information on a specific topic. For example Education, Sports, Shopping, Business or any other topic will have several web-sites dedicated to those topics. We can get the news from web-sites of CNN or BBC. A web-site is identified on the Internet by a unique address.

There is versatile usage of the Internet. It is not only the source of huge information, but also a very powerful media to establish direct and easy communication among people and societies. There are the following special features:

The Information Superhighway
The World Wide Web
Bulletin Boards
Chat forums
E-mail
Information Retrieval etc.

IT Skills and Security System

[A book of Fundamental Computer handling and other database topics]

By: Kh. Atiar Rahman

Chief Accounts Officer,

Ministry of Planning

Introduction to Computer

What is Computer?