vpnsite.net

Information System and technologies have become a vital component of successful businesses and organizations.

Information System means an interconnected set of information resources under the same direct management control that shares common functionality. A system normally includes hardware, software, information, data, applications, communications and people, while an information system is the arrangement of people, data, processes, presentation of data and information technology that supports our everyday needs. It is actually technologically implemented medium for recording, storing, and disseminating linguistic expressions, as well as for drawing conclusions from such expressions. The computer technology is used for implementing information systems.

TYPES OF AN INFORMATION SYSTEM

Information System can be divided in two basic forms

1. OPERATIONS SUPPORT

SYSTEMS

It is further subdivided into
the following

Transaction Processing System (TPS)
Enterprise Collaboration System
Process Control System

2. MANAGEMENT SUPPORT

SYSTEM

It is further subdivided into the following

Management Information System (MIS)
Decision Support System (DSS)
Executive Support System (ESS)

TOOLS FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF AN INFORMATION SYSTEM

The steps which are involved in the development of an Information System are:
Analysis, Feasibility Study, System Design, Testing, Implementation, Documentation.

TRENDS IN INFORMATION SYSTEM:
It is generally accepted that information is a vital commodity for the successful operation of today’s organizations. Nowadays modern business organizations are using computerized information systems in order to obtain desired information. However, as the technology advances rapidly the main issue is how can an organization should effectively use such an information system which its management sometimes can be unpredictable in order to effectively help the whole organization structure to improve and take the most out of it.

It seems fairly obvious that Information systems have played an important linking role even before the advent of the Internet. Thus, for example, the possibilities offered by Information systems have strongly influenced the way managers were able to exercise control and therefore constituted an important factor in the organization of large-scale enterprise and their geographic extension. The same is true for governments and their statistical apparatus. The recent integration of computer networks and electronic data exchange facilitated the creation of common databases and policies among governments, speeding up developments, which had started earlier. It also created new possibilities for business, for example enabling companies to develop new organizational practices (e.g. just-in-time).

However, the role of Information systems in the organization is shifting to support business processes rather than individual functions. The focus is outwards to customers, rather than inwards to procedures. Businesses are changing more and more rapidly.

This poses a challenge to existing Information systems, which are often inappropriately structured to meet these needs. It also poses a challenge to the people who design, work and use these systems, since they may hold outdated assumptions.

To ensure the services provided by Information systems whenever needed and their failure will not cause catastrophic disaster their reliability and efficiency become extremely important. Imagine what would happen when a banking system malfunctions due to some critical faults in the system or when a healthcare information system provides wrong advice for patients.
It is even not over-saying that our lives are already under control of computer systems but their reliability and efficiency has become extremely important

APPLICATIONS OF INFORMATION SYSTEM:
There is a wide range of applications of information system that are implemented in today’s world. To name a few such as
1. Sales analysis, production performance and cost trend
reporting system
2. Product Pricing, profitability forecasting and risk
analysis system
3. Sales and inventory processing and accounting System
4. Geographic Information systems
5. Health Care Information Systems
6. Banking Information System
7. Petroleum Refining System
8. Power Generation System
9. Steel Production System

[tags]article submission, articles, writers, writing, publishing, ezine, email marketing, email newsletter, email[/tags]

Unless you’ve been residing in a cave for the last couple of years, you’ve probably at least heard the word “VoIP” even if you didn’t realize what all the excitement is about.

VoIP stands for “Voice over Internet Protocol” and it’s going to change the way you think about making long distance phone calls. Basically, VoIP technology turns analog audio signals (like the sounds you hear when talking on your regular telephone) into a digital signal (which is then transmitted over the Internet.) So why is VoIP revolutionizing the industry? Because it means that by acquiring your hands on some of the free software that’s available right now, you can totally bypass your telephone company, and start making long distance phone calls for free!

Here’s what’s got the phone companys buzzing: This revolutionary technology has the ability to completely change the phone system of the entire world! Maybe you’ve seen television commercials for one of the pioneers of VoIP - Vonage. Vonage brands itself as the “broadband telephone company”, and offers enticing perks to customers who switch to its service, like low-cost 800 numbers, very cheap international rates (fees are waived from the American to Canada, and how about .03 cents a minute to call Paris?) But Vonage isn’t the sole company who is interested. AT&T is setting up VoIP calling in many areas of the U.S. and there are more major players on the scene as well, such as Skype, who is relying on viral advertising to get the word out.

One of the really interesting thing about VoIP is that there’s not just one way to make a call. There are actually three:

ATA - is the most commonly used VoIP method right now. Using the ATA (analog telephone adaptor), you connect your regular telephone to your computer or Internet connection. The ATA is an analog-to-digital converter and it takes the analog signal from your phone and converts it into digital data and transmits it over the Internet.

This is how Vonage does it, and AT&T ’s CallVantage will be doing it. The ATA is free with their services. And utilizing an ATA is so simple that anyone can do it. Open the box, plug the cable from your phone into the ATA instead of the wall socket, and you’re set. Based on your computer, and where you live, and what type of Internet connection you have, you might have to also install the software onto your computer, but even my grandmother knows how to do that these days.

IP Phones - They look just like the phones we’re used to. They have a handset, cradles and buttons. But an IP phones use an RJ-45 Ethernet connector instead of the standard RJ-11 phone connectors. It connect directly to your router and all the hardware and software is already built inside to handle your IP calls. Look for Wi-Fi IP phones to be available in the near future, which will allow you to make VoIP calls from any Wi-Fi spot. (Can you see the power of that? Just take your IP phone with you when you travel, and stop in at any Internet caf

Electronic data interchange (EDI), as the name implies, is a method of electronic information exchange between two business entities. It involves the usage of computer networks and related software to transmit information related to businesses. EDI is an efficient method of decreasing costs, overheads and errors that commonly occur during business transactions. Additionally, business information between partners can easily be interchanged. Apart from information exchange, EDI helps in coordinating business transactions by performing tasks such as invoice generation and initiating delivery orders.

EDI is basically a subset of electronic commerce. While electronic commerce includes all the facets of electronic business interaction such as money transfers, person-to-person interaction and information sharing, EDI involves only the exchange of business information. The information is passed in the form of messages. Each message contains a basic information unit called a data element. A single message may contain more than one data element. These data elements form a compound document that corresponds to a business form. A field definition table containing information on the data elements is also included in the EDI message.

EDI was first used by the automobile industry during the 1970’s. This system was then gradually adopted by other industries such as manufacturing, finance, healthcare, retail and shipping. The earlier EDI systems were operated on private company networks. Electronic data interchange is now increasingly done using the Internet. Even the open standard XML format is utilized for information exchange. Additionally, the older standard data entry forms are being replaced with custom designed interfaces. Special programming tools are provided so that companies can define their own interface.

Large corporations usually tend to build their own proprietary EDI systems. Small organizations have the option of utilizing the services of a VAN (value added network) provider. These providers act as third-party members in business transactions by providing transaction services, security, communication protocols and other services needed for an EDI system. Some VAN providers even offer the network required to implement the system.

EDI provides detailed information on EDI, EDI Outsourcing, EDI Software, EDI Services and more. EDI is affiliated with Contact Management Systems.

[tags]EDI, EDI Outsourcing, EDI Software, EDI Services[/tags]

I guess you haven

Most people understand that the “hardware” part of their computer is the real physical parts, like the keyboard, mouse, modem, hard drive and so on. They understand that the “software” is computer bits stored on the hard drive, CD-ROM, or other storage media. But most people are a little hazy about exactly what a “driver” is.

In this article, I’m going to reveal in plain English what a driver is, why we need drivers, and exactly where the drivers are hiding. To give you a basic understanding, I’m going to go back, way back, to the early days of computers.

The Early Days

The year is 1981 and the world is in the midst of a severe resession. IBM’s main frame business has slowed and the company is losing money. Up until now they had been laughing at the array of microcomputers on the market: Atari, Commodore, sinclair. Toys really, mostly used to play computer games.

The problem was, these “toys” were selling like hot cakes. IBM had to get into that market and get into it fast. They didn’t have time to design and build a computer complete enough to compete in the market, so they built an “open system”. They used commonly available electronic components and they published every design detail (including the code), and they even provided plug in slots so that others could build components for their computer.

And people did provide components for the IBM PC. They provided video cards, memory expansion cards, input-output port cards, game port cards, hard disk interface cards, and much more. How were all these various devices able to interface with the PC’s operating system? That’s where a “driver” comes in.

A hardware device is constructed with various electronic components using various control signals, but the software interface to the operating system is standardized. A device’s interface to the operating system must follow the interface specification. A driver is a piece of software that translates the hardware’s control signals to signals that the operating system expects, and translates signals from the operating system to the hardware’s control signals.

When the computer is started up, it would look in the “system” directory for files with the extension “.drv” and load them into memory. Specific files like autoexec.bat, config.sys, and win.ini were used to inform the operating system about drivers. Hardware would be configured through these files, or through jumpers located on the device itself.

The driver specification evolved along with the PC. Today when a PC starts, it executes the program ntdetect.com which queries the hardware components and builds the registery key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINEHARDWARESYSTEMCurrentControlSet. This key exists only in memory and is created each time the computer boots. If all the drivers are loaded successfully, a copy of the key is saved as ControlSet00X.

Under the registery key CurrentControlSet, the subkey “Enum” contains a subkey for each harware device on the computer. Each device key contains fields for Hardware ID, Driver ID, Device Parameters, and other configuration data. The 32-bit drivers are files with the extension “.sys” and can be found in the folder C:/winnt/system32.

Driver Signing

Microsoft has been the brunt of much criticism because of the poor reliability of the Windows Operating System. I feel that much of this criticism is justified. On the other hand, as I described in part 1 of this article, the PC was designed by IBM as an “open” system. Anyone can sell a hardware device (or software) for the PC. Should Microsoft be held responsible for the quality from a third-party?

As I described in Part 1 of this article, the operating system doesn’t interface directly to a hardware device. There is a piece of software called a “driver” that translates the hardware’s control signals to signals that the operating system expects, and translates signals from operating system to the hardware’s control signals. Obviously, the hardware manufacturer provides the driver.

Because the driver works between the operating system and the hardware, a bug in the driver can cause a serious problem. Many of the problems with Windows have come from bugs in third-party drivers that Microsoft had nothing to do with. For this reason, Microsoft created a Hardware Quality Lab to test drivers. A hardware manufacturer can submit their driver for testing, and if it is passes rigorous compatibility testing, it receives Microsoft’s digital signature.

You may have received a message during the installation of a hardware device warning that the driver was not signed. Why would a hardware manufacturer fail to have their driver certified by Microsoft? The computer hardware market is very competitive and the manufacturer might want to bring a new product to market before thorough testing can be completed. Or maybe they don’t want to or can’t afford to pay Microsoft for certification. The question is, should you click on the “Continue” button to install the unsigned driver?

In my experience, I have never been able to trace a problem to an unsigned driver. If it’s your home computer and you performed a back-up recently, go ahead and install the unsigned driver. If it’s a computer on a corporate network, you may want to back-out of the installation and see if you can locate a signed driver first. Many times a manufacturer will release a product with an unsigned driver, then later provide a signed driver as a free download from their website.

If you decide to go ahead and install an unsigned driver, you can always update the driver later. If your computer works with the unsigned driver, I would not update the driver. When it comes to updating drivers (or the computers BIOS) I go by the old saying, “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”.

To update a driver, select Start | Settings | Control Panel and double-click on the “System Properties” Utility. In the “System Properties” Utility, select the “Hardware” tab and click on the “Device Manager” button. In the “Device Manager” window, right-click on the device in the list and select “Properties” in the popup menu. In the “Properties” dialog box, select the driver tab and click on the “Update Driver…” button.

In the “Properties” dialog box driver tab, you may have noticed the “Roll Back Driver” button. If your computer has problems with the new drive, you can click on the “Roll Back Driver” button to roll back to the previous the driver. Driver roll back saves only one previous driver, so if you update a driver, then update it again, the original driver is gone. If the computer has problems with the new driver, always roll back to the original driver before trying a different one. That way you’ll always have the original driver to roll back to.

Copyright(C) Bucaro TecHelp.

Permission is granted for the below article to forward, reprint, distribute, use for ezine, newsletter, website, offer as free bonus or part of a product for sale as long as no changes are made and the byline, copyright, and the resource box below is included.

About The Author

Stephen Bucaro

To learn how to maintain your computer and use it more effectively to design a Web site and make money on the Web visit bucarotechelp.com To subscribe to Bucaro TecHelp Newsletter visit http://bucarotechelp.com/search/000800.asp

[tags]drivers,device drivers,software drivers,personal computer,computer techsoftware[/tags]

I had an application that I was working where the client insisted on using an Access database for the application. The application was running on a two node server farm so the Access database had to be located on a seperated machine and accessed over the network. When upgrading the server farm from 2000 to 2003 the client ran into an issue accessing the database.

After checking to make sure it wasn’t an error with the connection to the location where the database was held I attempted to put the database underneath the site and connect to it there. Well that connection worked fine and the data could be accessed.

Long story short after some research and some long hours on this I found that the issue was a combination of things. First under IIS 6 all applications are run under application pools. The application pools do not pass the identity along that they run under. This creates a problem when trying to access a remote drive. To solve this issue you can enable impersonation of the account that you had IIS to run as the anonymous user. To do this you need to open the web.config file of your application. Under the and then insert a line that is similar to this:

< IDENTITY impersonate=""true"/" >

This line should be used if you wish to impersonate the user as the account that the user is logged in as on their desktop.

or

< IDENTITY impersonate=""true"" userName=""< your" user name >” password=”< USER account password > “/>

This line should be used if you want to specify one specific account to impersonate.

After I turned on the impersonation in my project another issue appeared. I got the dreded /< YOUR name application > Application Error. This issue was addressed in Microsoft KB82719 Article.

When a .NET application executes it uses the TEMP folder of the ASPNET user, or whatever user you have specified to run your .NET applications, to run and store temporary files. When you run an Access database/application temporary files are opened but since you are impersonating a user that user does not have access to open these files under the ASPNET temp directory. The solution for this is simple, go into the file structure and grant the account access to the temp folder in C:Document settingsServerNameASPNETlocal settings folder. Only give the account access to the Temp folder so that a security risk is not created.

Jason Fortner is co-founder of Total Productivity Solutions, http://www.totalproductivitysolutions.com, a company that specilizes in SharePoint, Webpart and .NET development. More tips on web development visit Total Productivity Solutions.

[tags].NET, ASP, ASP .NET, Server 2003, database connection, Total Productivity Solutions[/tags]

August, 2006

Data and information security has become one of the most pertinent issues facing today’s businesses and yet it is often overlooked. Did you know that according to a Deloitte Touche Survey more than 50% of companies admitted to having a data loss between June 2005 and June 2006? Roughly 33% of them directly resulted in financial loss. A survey by Zoomerang showed that 34% of companies do not have a security policy 0that forbids downloading non-business applications on company-owned computers. In 2005 55% of all online users reported being infected by spyware according to a Bigfoot Interactive survey.

For small businesses, every dollar spent on IT must have a demonstrated business value. For security products that can be a difficult task. Unless you have experienced an attack on your web server, a SQL injection attack on your e-commerce site, or have had a virus outbreak on your network most managers and decision makers balk at the idea of spending significant money on a suite of network security products.

Just as it is difficult for a home owner that moves to Florida to see why it might be worthwhile to spend $5-10k on hurricane shutters, it is hard for managers to understand putting a significant portion of their IT budget into security products. However, when that same homeowner has lived through a couple of hurricane seasons or starts talking to their neighbors about what the 2005 season was like it doesn’t take them long before not only are they willing to spend the money, but they can’t wait to do it. The shortcoming of this analogy is that the potential loss for a business can be worse than for a homeowner and all too frequently there isn’t insurance to cover lost revenue. To make it worse you could even be held liable for not taking appropriate actions to secure your customers private information.

Some pertinent questions for a manager or business owner to get them thinking in right direction would be: What would happen if our servers were stolen? What would happen to the company if a fire burned down the office and every piece of technology was lost? What would be the consequences if our competitors were able to gain access to trade secrets? What would be the legal ramifications? What would we loose in employee productivity while this data is restored ($)? Could it be restored? How much down-time on our network can we survive? How would this affect the public image of our company?

The answers to these questions are often not easy to come to grips with. Too often managers ignore them and do not give them the attention they deserve. In effect, they are playing the odds that this will not happen to them and they do not prepare for what is a very real and impending threat. Data and information security is not something they understand or have experience with so they ignore it and treat it like it not a real danger. So regardless of the reasons why, their critical and confidential business data remains insecure and they have no systems in place to audit or monitor activity on their network devices or prevent a potential attach from happening.

It is also very important to remember that a high percentage of attacks are from the inside, not the outside of your network. Disgruntled employees can pose a very high security risk. Also, your company does not necessarily have to be a “target”. Many attacks are generated by random scripts that search for any open target. The question is will you be ready for it when that attempt is made or will an attacker be all too ready to take advantage of your unprotected network?

So what is the right perspective or approach? To use an analogy, data security should be viewed like business insurance. The right perspective is that the possibility of an attack or attempted access to unauthorized data as not only likely but just a matter of time. Like insurance, an evaluation should be performed regularly to make sure the right kind of “coverage” is in place. It should have a place in management meetings and be reviewed with the principals of the business and not just left to “the IT guys”. The executive management needs to play a big role in deciding what information is the most private so that it can properly protected.

So what is a business owner to do? Take the time for a comprehensive approach to the security of your information. Put a business security policy in place and stick to it. This may include consulting with one or more security experts that specialize in this type of work. Perhaps it is something as simple as making sure your internal IT staff has already taken the necessary precautions, but then to start working with them from the management level. Part of your policy should be a scheduled testing and improvement to the security measures already in place. Data and network security is not a static solution that you can implement once and leave alone. It is something that needs to be monitored, tested, and improved on a regular basis.

The good news is that a secure environment for your data can be achieved. It may not come easily and there will be a price attached to it, but the cost attached to remaining unsecured is much higher.

—————————————————————

This article may be republished freely providing proper acknowledgment is given to Nathaniel Fisher as the author. The following bio of the author must be included in all publication. www.fidelitynetworks.com

Nathaniel Fisher is the President and Senior Consultant at Fidelity Networks and Development. Fidelity was founded in 2000 and is based in South Florida specializing in networking infrastructure, computer support, and custom application development. Nathaniel has been in the IT industry for over 10 years.

[tags]data,information,security,fidelity,networks,fidelity networks,business,virus,spam[/tags]

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur.Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Data mining can be technically defined as the automated extraction of hidden information from large databases for predictive analysis. In other words, it is the retrieval of useful information from large masses of data, which is also presented in an analyzed form for specific decision-making.

Data mining requires the use of mathematical algorithms and statistical techniques integrated with software tools. The final product is an easy-to-use software package that can be used even by non-mathematicians to effectively analyze the data they have. Data Mining is used in several applications like market research, consumer behavior, direct marketing, bioinformatics, genetics, text analysis, fraud detection, web site personalization, e-commerce, healthcare, customer relationship management, financial services and telecommunications.

Business intelligence data mining is used in market research, industry research, and for competitor analysis. It has applications in major industries like direct marketing, e-commerce, customer relationship management, healthcare, the oil and gas industry, scientific tests, genetics, telecommunications, financial services and utilities. BI uses various technologies like data mining, scorecarding, data warehouses, text mining, decision support systems, executive information systems, management information systems and geographic information systems for analyzing useful information for business decision making.

Business intelligence is a broader arena of decision-making that uses data mining as one of the tools. In fact, the use of data mining in BI makes the data more relevant in application. There are several kinds of data mining: text mining, web mining, social networks data mining, relational databases, pictorial data mining, audio data mining and video data mining, that are all used in business intelligence applications.

Some data mining tools used in BI are: decision trees, information gain, probability, probability density functions, Gaussians, maximum likelihood estimation, Gaussian Baves classification, cross-validation, neural networks, instance-based learning /case-based/ memory-based/non-parametric, regression algorithms, Bayesian networks, Gaussian mixture models, K-means and hierarchical clustering, Markov models and so on.

Data Mining provides detailed information on Data Mining, Data Mining Tutorials, Business Intelligence Data Mining, Web Data Mining and more. Data Mining is affiliated with Offshore Data Entry.

[tags]Data Mining, Data Mining Tutorials, Business Intelligence Data Mining, Web Data Mining[/tags]

Mobile phone penetration is increasing globally. With the increase in handsets, being able to communicate with the handset owners in their own language is something that is becoming increasingly important.

The first question that comes to mind is how it works when foreign languages are sent to mobiles from a web site. Based on the fact that computers fundamentally just deal with numbers, letters and characters are stored using a unique number for each and in the past these unique numbers had to be assigned through the use of encoding systems. As a result hundreds of different encoding systems existed, none compatible with each other and none of them containing enough characters to deal with all languages. All this changed with the invention of Unicode. With Unicode one number for each letter has been assigned (a standard has been set) and it is network, platform and language independent. The emergence of Unicode standards and tools allowed web platform owners and developers to develop additional tools which enables end users to send sms in their own language.

These applications are especially important in the Middle East (Arabic), Far East (Chinese, Taiwanese, Hindi etc.) and European countries where normal English characters cannot be used to communicate in data format for example Greece, Finland, Norway - just to name a few.

Prior to development of a user-friendly Java based application, users had to be familiar with Hex and the conversion of Unicode characters into Hex in order for the binary data to be sent to recipients via mobile phones from web sites.

This now all changed for end users. The java based application used for sending Unicode allows users to send sms from the web site in the language their keyboard is set to. Once logged in, users have the opportunity to choose whether they want to send their text message in Unicode or in English. After selecting Unicode, the user is presented with the opportunity to send their message in Hex or based on their keyboard settings (Keyboard input).

The process is extremely simple and user friendly - if your keyboard is set (for example) to Greek, you simply type the message in and click on “send” - the text will be delivered to the recipient in Greek. Unicode is still limited to 70 Characters, which is a GSM restriction, but the use of 160 characters is currently under development.

Visit http://www.smswarehouse.com for more details and a free test account.

About The Author
Marinda Stuiver has been working in the marketing industry since 1996. She worked as International sales and marketing consultant for Station Africa Telecoms where one of her responsibilities was media liaison during sponsored events such as the Camel Trophy 4X4 events, Kathy O’Dowd’s firs ascent of Mt Everest, the 1999 BT sponsored Vasco da Gama Yacht race and many more. She started her own online consultancy in 2000 (E-SPECTATIONS.COM) and launched a new division in January 2005 called SMSwarehouse. Her major area of interest is convergence of technologies and she works as a consultant in this specific arena. PR forms a big part of her daily duties and services to clients but she also enjoys writing about her outdoor experiences and adventures.

[tags]english characters, unicode the, unicode or[/tags]