how many visits it took to make a sale.
In fact, once there is value attached to information, information can actually be sold as a stand-alone product.

A portal site and a dashboard are actually very similar. A dashboard assembles information from many sources and integrates it on a screen as if it came from a single source. For example, business analytic software could present a screen that shows information available from Customer, Sales, Product, Store, and Marketing Campaign data sources. Users could then run queries combining data from all these sources to understand who was buying what, in which store(s), during what times, etc. Dashboard software was originally developed by Hewlett-Packard and used to communicate with the operating system. Now, dashboards are part of many knowledge management systems and provide the user interface to business data and procedures. The term is often used with business or corporate portals.

Portals present an easy way to get to data and are high-level Websites that allow browsers a one-stop location to start Web searches. They're often called gateway sites, as they provide a gateway to other sites. There are various kinds of portals. AOL and Yahoo are general interest portals. Other portals have been built around specific interests such as sports, women's issues, the stock market, etc. Companies are building their own portals called EIPs (Enterprise Information Portals) as gateways to their own applications, documents, reports, etc. as well as Internet sites. And, portals are used to search for data from both the Internet and internal sources and interface with dashboards for analytical queries.

(BI) Business Intelligence software was really not possible until the last few years. Computers were not fast enough, and disks were neither big enough nor fast enough. It really wasn't possible to build systems that worked with unstructured data, which is what BI needs to do. Well, it's possible now! And BI is today's hottest application.

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CSTA 2003

CSTA (Computers: Systems, Terms and Acronyms) our flagship seminar, is completely dynamic – it changes with technology and almost every session includes new information. Beginning in August, we're introducing a major update! CSTA 2003 is now a one-day session. And, YES! We are covering in one day what we used to do in two.

The 1990s produced incredible changes in IT – the use of PCs and the Internet is virtually universal in today's business world. Because everyone's so used to computers, we can take less time to explain some of the technology, but there's a more important reason. The pervasiveness of the Internet allowed us to create TechRef – our online database of computer technology. This database contains not just current technology, but also legacy information and future plan announcements. It's updated 24/7, so, during training, we can refer to TechRef for coverage of legacy systems and details on uncommon areas of technology. This enables us to cover today's technical environment in a shorter time. Everyone who attends CSTA, whether in a classroom setting or over the Web, receives a one-year subscription to TechRef and can use it for review, further information, keeping up with technology, and asking questions (TechRef includes a built-in email function for any technical question you have after training).

So:

TechCheck

1. Delta Airlines is making technical news by an exploratory use of wireless technology. What is Delta using wireless for?

2. What do Jaguar and Panther have in common?

3. Which of the following does not belong?

(a) distribution
(b) flavor
(c) release
(d) vocabulary

Short GIS (Geographic Information System) Vocabulary

GIS systems combine such things as demographics, corporate revenues, and taxes with maps. The maps allow geographically pertinent information to be incorporated into standard company information processing. These systems work with spatial information and actually are special-purpose digital databases holding spatial data. In addition to the database, GISs contain subsystems for: 1) data input; 2) data storage, retrieval, and representation; 3) data management, transformation, and analysis; and 4) data reporting and product generation. The systems contain both the database with geographic data already in the database, and the processing systems.

DEM (Digital Elevation Model) Data architecture. An exchange format developed by the United States Geological Survey for geographical and topographical data.

DLG (Digital Line Graph) Data used in GIS (Geographic Information System) products. A digital map developed from the information printed on USGS (United States Geological Survey) topographical quadrangle maps.

geocoding Process of assigning map coordinates to data such as customer or store addresses. Used to develop GIS (Graphical Information System) software.

geodata Data that identifies the geographical location and characteristics of natural or man-made features and boundaries of the earth. Geodata represent abstractions of real-world entities, such as roads, buildings, vehicles, lakes, forests and countries.

GPS (Global Positioning System) Communications. Network and location system. Uses GPS satellites to communicate with GPS chips in handsets. Developed for the military for navigation and surveying, GPS can determine location very precisely.

raster Data architecture. Used in geoprocessing to refer to digital geographic databases built from 'grid cells' in a matrix. Many satellites transmit raster images of the earth's surface. Reflectance of sunlight at a certain wavelength is measured for each cell in an image.

SDTS (Spatial Data Transfer Standard) Communications standard used to define the transfer of digital spatial data between diverse computer systems. Works with spatial data referencing, georeferencing, and other associated metadata.

spatial data Spatial data is data that pertains to the space occupied by objects and is described by points, lines, rectangles, surfaces, volumes and etc. It defines geographical structures such as cities, rivers, roads, mountains, etc. and is used in GIS (Geographic Information Systems) applications, environmental monitoring, and business analysis systems.

TIGER (Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing file) GIS data. Type of Digital map developed by the U.S. Bureau of the Census for the 1990 population census. TIGER maps are available for every county in the United States and for the millions of census blocks in urban areas. Used in many GIS (Geographic Information System) packages.


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Answers to TechCheck

1. Delta's actually using wireless technology to track baggage. RFIDs (Radio Frequency Identification Devices) are used by IT in configuration management. An RFID tag is placed on a physical asset and sends a signal to a reader which inputs information on all the devices to an asset management system. This is used to keep track of assets which are not connected to a computer system. While it's fairly easy to track hardware and software, non-connected devices such as medical equipment in a hospital or mobile cell phones are much harder to track. Delta is testing the use of RFIDs to track baggage in place of the currently used bar codes.

2. Both are versions of Apple's Mac OS X operating system: Jaguar is 10.2, released in 2002, and Panther is 10.3 released in 2003. Mac OS X is, by the way, pronounced "Mac Oh-Ess-Ten," the "X" is really a ten!

3. (c) does not belong. (a), (b), and (d) are all versions of the same software written by different vendors or groups: different versions of Linux are called distributions, different versions of Unix are called flavors, and different versions of XML are called vocabularies. Releases are different versions of software by the same vendor or group, usually upgrades to the software.

4. SAP customers can use its own database, SAP DB, which was turned over to mySQL in 2003, so the four choices are mySQL, Oracle, DB2, and SQL Server.

5. UnitedLinux is a Linux distribution supported by four vendors: