I haven’t find out the reason yet(i believe it’s about your joomla theme), but i got a solution.

Please delete this piece of code ” <div class=”clr”></div>” from all the following files in this location

[your joomla folder]/components/com_docman/themes/default/templates

Files:

/page_docedit.tpl.php
/categories/category.tpl.php
/categories/list_item.tpl.php
/documents/document.tpl.php
/documents/list_item.tpl.php
/general/menu.tpl.php
/upload/step_3.tpl.php

done!

any other problems please leave your comment.

instead of deleting ” <div class=”clr”></div> “, change it to “<br />”

updated 15 06 2009

cheers

HP printer’s other functions works well but the scanner does not work and the sentences shows as above.

It is because that HP Solution Center (the scanning software that comes with many HP scanners) has a bug. In Vista OS, it crashes when tablet functionality is enabled.

After many weeks of escalation, it has still not been acknowledged or resolved,  because it bounced between HP and Microsoft.

The easiest way to solve this is:

1. enter “services” in the search bar in the start menu and click “Services” in the search result.

:

2. stop these two servecs “Tablet PC Input Service” and “TabletServicePen”. (click the service and then click the “stop” button on top left hand corner)

3. your scanner should work properly now. if you need pentablet input, start the services again.

got any other problems reply here. cheers

What they need to do this (apart from a great-looking, functional, usable and accessible website!) is some sort of shopping-cart system to allow their customers to add, remove and update the products they wish to buy.

This article will walk through the simple steps to achieve this, using the server-side language PHP and a MySQL database.

Setting up the database

Let’s take as our example a bookseller. They are not the best-stocked bookseller in the world, having as they do only three titles in stock, but it is enough for our example. Let’s create the database and add some stock:

1. CREATE TABLE books (
2. id int(6) unsigned NOT NULL auto_increment,
3. title varchar(100) NOT NULL default '',
4. author varchar(100) NOT NULL default '',
5. price decimal(3,2) NOT NULL default '0.00',
6. PRIMARY KEY (id)
7. ) TYPE=MyISAM;
8. INSERT INTO books VALUES (1, 'Where God Went Wrong', 'Oolon Colluphid', '24.99');
9. INSERT INTO books VALUES (2, 'Some More of God\'s Greatest Mistakes', 'Oolon Colluphid', '17.99');
10. INSERT INTO books VALUES (3, 'Who Is This God Person Anyway?', 'Oolon Colluphid', '14.99');

Now that step is out of the way, let’s create our shopping cart.

Identify our requirements

The cart we are going to build should be pretty familiar to most internet users. It will provide a means of displaying a message on every page of the site (along the lines of “You have 5 items in your shopping cart”), which when clicked will take the customer to a list of the items in the cart; each item may be removed or have its quantity updated.

As all of our stock details are stored in the database, the only piece of information that we need to store about each customer is the id of each product they have added to their cart. To do this, we are going to use PHP’s built-in session handling capabilities.

Using sessions in PHP

PHP’s session handling is very easy to understand.

To ‘switch it on’, simply add session_start(); at the top of your code; you can then store values (or arrays) in session variables:

$_SESSION['name'] = ‘Matthew’; $_SESSION['age'] = 31;

These $_SESSION variables will now be available to any PHP scripts on other pages (as long as you’ve included the session_start(); call first).

A short note on cookies

The default behaviour of PHP sessions is to store the session ID (a long string of numbers and letters that identifies you to the server) as a cookie on your computer; however, even if you have cookies disabled this functionality will still work – PHP will instead append the session ID to each link on the site (in the form ‘mypage.php?PHPSESSID=’) so that it can continue to accurately track visitors from page to page.

Creating the cart

We will store the contents of the shopping cart as a comma-separated list of product ids in a session named (unsurprisingly) ‘cart’ – for example, a cart containing “1,1,3,1,2” has four items; three of product #1, and one each of products #2 and #3.

Firstly, let’s create the code to display the “You have X items…” message on every page:

1. function writeShoppingCart() {
2. $cart = $_SESSION['cart'];
3. if (!$cart) {
4. return '<p>You have no items in your shopping cart</p>';
5. } else {
6. // Parse the cart session variable
7. $items = explode(',',$cart);
8. $s = (count($items) > 1) ? 's':'';
9. return '<p>You have <a href="cart.php">'.count($items).' item'.$s.' in your shopping cart</a></p>';
10. }
11. }

This function first gets the value of the ‘cart’ session variable into a local variable, mainly to save on typing. If the cart is empty, we return an appropriate message; if not, we use the explode() function to create an array of all the products in the cart, and then count() them and display the result (the $s variable is there to make plurals display correctly).

Now we can display the correct message anywhere on the site:

echo writeShoppingCart();

I hope that made sense; let’s move on to displaying the contents of the cart itself.

Show me the money

The shopping cart page itself (cart.php) can be arrived at in a couple of ways. The user may have clicked on the link created by the writeShoppingCart() function above; or, they may have clicked an ‘Add to cart’ link on a product page.

If it was the latter, we need to intercept that click and update our cart contents before displaying the new list of products – simple enough, as all we need to do is append the id of the clicked product to the ‘cart’ session variable. Our product links are going to look like this:

<a href="cart.php?action=add&id=1">Add to cart</a>

Don’t worry about the ‘action=add’ bit, we’ll get to that later. The id can now be extracted from $_GET[‘id’] and added to our cart:

1. $cart = $_SESSION['cart'];
2. if ($cart) {
3. $cart .= ','.$_GET['id'];
4. } else {
5. $cart = $_GET['id'];
6. }
7. $_SESSION['cart'] = $cart;

Now, on to the contents of our cart!

Multiple items, one product

As in our example above, it is entirely possible that a customer might have more than one of a certain product in their cart. As we don’t want to list duplicate items when we display the contents, we need to figure out a way to combine any of the same product into one entry (with a corresponding quantity attached).

1. $cart = $_SESSION['cart'];
2. if ($cart) {
3. $items = explode(',',$cart);
4. $contents = array();
5. foreach ($items as $item) {
6. $contents[$item] = (isset($contents[$item])) ? $contents[$item] + 1 : 1;
7. }

This time, after exploding the list of product ids, we have iterated through them to create a new array named $contents, which consists of key=>value pairs where the key is the product id and the value is the quantity of that product in the shopping cart. So to take our example above, a cart containing “1,1,3,1,2” would become an array where ‘1’=>3, ‘2’=>1, ‘3’=>1.

Now that we have an accurate count of unique products, let’s query the product database for each one and output its details into a table:

1. $total = 0;
2. $output[] = ‘<table>’;
3. foreach ($contents as $id=>$qty) {
4. $sql = 'SELECT * FROM books WHERE id = '.$id;
5. $result = $db->query($sql);
6. $row = $result->fetch();
7. extract($row);
8. $output[] = ‘<tr>’;
9. $output[] = ‘<td><a href=”cart.php?action=delete&id=’.$id.’” class=”r”>Remove</a></td>’;
10. $output[] = ‘<td>’.$title.’ by ‘.$author.’</td>’;
11. $output[] = ‘<td>£’.$price.’</td>’;
12. $output[] = ‘<td><input type=”text” name=”qty’.$id.’” value=”‘.$qty.’” size=”3″ maxlength=”3″ /></td>’;
13. $output[] = ‘<td>£’.($price * $qty).’</td>’;
14. $total += $price * $qty;
15. $output[] = ‘</tr>’;
16. }
17. $output[] = ‘</table>’;
18. $output[] = ‘<p>Grand total: £’.$total.’</p>’;

(*Note*: I’m using a PHP class to handle my database connections, so your code may need to be slightly different).

Pretty simple stuff – we iterate through the new $contents array and query the database for each product id. Then we output the relevant details for each product; title, author and price, and at the bottom we show the grand total for the order. For each item, we’ve also included a link to remove the item from the cart, a textbox containing the current quantity of that item, and a total price (obviously this will only differ from the base price if the quantity is not 1).

The reason I’m using $output[] = … is that I am buffering the output into an array to print to the screen later.

So far so good – now how about removing products from the cart?

Deleting a product

As shown above, the link to delete a product from the cart follows the same format as the ‘add a product’ link:

<a href="cart.php?action=delete&id=1">Remove</a>

Let’s expand on the code from earlier by adding a switch() statement to handle the different things that might happen to our cart:

1. $cart = $_SESSION['cart'];
2. $action = $_GET['action'];
3. switch ($action) {
4. case 'add':
5. if ($cart) {
6. $cart .= ','.$_GET['id'];
7. } else {
8. $cart = $_GET['id'];
9. }
10. break;
11. case 'delete':
12. if ($cart) {
13. $items = explode(',',$cart);
14. $newcart = '';
15. foreach ($items as $item) {
16. if ($_GET['id'] != $item) {
17. if ($newcart != '') {
18. $newcart .= ','.$item;
19. } else {
20. $newcart = $item;
21. }
22. }
23. }
24. $cart = $newcart;
25. }
26. break;
27. }
28. $_SESSION['cart'] = $cart;

The new ‘delete’ case iterates through the ‘cart’ session, looking for any product ids that AREN’T the one we’re deleting, and adding them to a temporary variable called $newcart. When it’s finished, it puts the revised cart contents back into $cart.

Updating a product

Lastly, we are going to allow customers to update the contents of their shopping cart by manually changing the value in the quantity box for each product.

To make this work, we’ll wrap the shopping cart table in a <form> so that the ‘update cart’ button will submit the form:

1. $output[] = ‘<form action=”cart.php?action=update” method=”post” id=”cart”>’;
2. $output[] = ‘<table>’;
3. foreach ($contents as $id=>$qty) {
4. $sql = 'SELECT * FROM books WHERE id = '.$id;
5. $result = $db->query($sql);
6. $row = $result->fetch();
7. extract($row);
8. $output[] = ‘<tr>’;
9. $output[] = ‘<td><a href=”cart.php?action=delete&id=’.$id.’” class=”r”>Remove</a></td>’;
10. $output[] = ‘<td>’.$title.’ by ‘.$author.’</td>’;
11. $output[] = ‘<td>£’.$price.’</td>’;
12. $output[] = ‘<td><input type=”text” name=”qty’.$id.’” value=”‘.$qty.’” size=”3″ maxlength=”3″ /></td>’;
13. $output[] = ‘<td>£’.($price * $qty).’</td>’;
14. $total += $price * $qty;
15. $output[] = ‘</tr>’;
16. }
17. $output[] = ‘</table>’;
18. $output[] = ‘<p>Grand total: £’.$total.’</p>’;
19. $output[] = ‘<div><button type=”submit”>Update cart</button></div>’;
20. $output[] = ‘</form>’;

Note that, even though the form uses the POST method, its action includes a GET variable, “action=update”. Again, we can expand our previous code to process any quantity updates:

1. case 'update':
2. if ($cart) {
3. $newcart = '';
4. foreach ($_POST as $key=>$value) {
5. if (stristr($key,'qty')) {
6. $id = str_replace('qty','',$key);
7. $items = ($newcart != '') ? explode(',',$newcart) : explode(',',$cart);
8. $newcart = '';
9. foreach ($items as $item) {
10. if ($id != $item) {
11. if ($newcart != '') {
12. $newcart .= ','.$item;
13. } else {
14. $newcart = $item;
15. }
16. }
17. }
18. for ($i=1;$i<=$value;$i++) {
19. if ($newcart != '') {
20. $newcart .= ','.$id;
21. } else {
22. $newcart = $id;
23. }
24. }
25. }
26. }
27. }
28. $cart = $newcart;
29. break;

This looks quite complicated, but it’s fairly straightforward; we interrogate the contents of the $_POST array (which holds all our quantity values) and extract the relevant id and value pairs. For each product, we then delete all the existing instances of it, and re-insert the new quantity.

There are a number of ways this could have been done – for example, by counting the existing number of each product present in the cart and figuring out whether we needed to add or remove items – but this seemed the easiest way to process the quantity updates.

Summary

And that’s about it! A functional and easy shopping cart script – here’s the final function to display the contents of the cart:

1. function showCart() {
2. $cart = $_SESSION['cart'];
3. if ($cart) {
4. $items = explode(',',$cart);
5. $contents = array();
6. foreach ($items as $item) {
7. $contents[$item] = (isset($contents[$item])) ? $contents[$item] + 1 : 1;
8. }
9. $output[] = ‘<form action=”cart.php?action=update” method=”post” id=”cart”>’;
10. $output[] = ‘<table>’;
11. foreach ($contents as $id=>$qty) {
12. $sql = 'SELECT * FROM books WHERE id = '.$id;
13. $result = $db->query($sql);
14. $row = $result->fetch();
15. extract($row);
16. $output[] = ‘<tr>’;
17. $output[] = ‘<td><a href=”cart.php?action=delete&id=’.$id.’” class=”r”>Remove</a></td>’;
18. $output[] = ‘<td>’.$title.’ by ‘.$author.’</td>’;
19. $output[] = ‘<td>£’.$price.’</td>’;
20. $output[] = ‘<td><input type=”text” name=”qty’.$id.’” value=”‘.$qty.’” size=”3″ maxlength=”3″ /></td>’;
21. $output[] = ‘<td>£’.($price * $qty).’</td>’;
22. $total += $price * $qty;
23. $output[] = ‘</tr>’;
24. }
25. $output[] = ‘</table>’;
26. $output[] = ‘<p>Grand total: £’.$total.’</p>’;
27. $output[] = ‘<div><button type=”submit”>Update cart</button></div>’;
28. $output[] = ‘</form>’;
29. } else {
30. $output[] = ‘<p>You shopping cart is empty.</p>’;
31. }
32. return join('',$output);
33. }

Note that if the cart is empty, a suitable message is displayed.

Please feel free to download a .rar of all the files:http://www.studyblog.net/uploads/simple_PHP_shopping_cart_script.rar – any questions, comments or suggestions on how the code could be improved gratefully received

” error reading from file X :\autorun.dat. Verify that the file exists and that you can access it.
“

the problem is that in Vista, you must have the authority to visit a certain file.

you can do the following to solve the problem:

1. copy all the content in the Fifa 09 DVD to your hard drive.
2. Right click the autoruan.dat then chose Properties

3. Click ‘Security’ Tab then click ‘Edit…’

4.  Select each user in, and tick the ‘Full control’

5. Click ‘Ok’ save all your changes.

Now, you will be able to install the game.

If there is other problem, reply this post http://www.studyblog.net/archives/120 in my blog www.studyblog.net , I’ll try to find a solution for you.

Enjoy!

Using the BAIT (Business, Applications, Information, Technology) architecture stack, give examples of

a) A set of important business processes that would be relevant for Air Centre to document and manage for their business.

This case is assumed that Air Centre has implemented a differentiation strategy by providing customers with all aspects, real time information about airline ticket through internet. The online service allows customers to compare flights from different airline companies. Moreover, customers can book their airline tickets online and simply pick up their tickets by validated transaction number to airline’s check in counter.

The following business goals for the Air Centre were assumed according to the information provided.

• Improve customer satisfaction by providing 24/7 online booking service.
  
• Cut operational costs by automating business processes.

Based on the above mentioned business strategy and goals, the following basic three business processes can be identified for Air Centre with regard to online ticket selling (Handling of other business functions such as human resources, payroll were excluded for simplicity purposes).

1) Ticket acquisition process - deals with the transactions between Air Centre and airline companies.

2) Customer booking process - front end transaction between Air Centre and customers.

3) Accounting process - deals with account payable and account receivable in back end.

All these three major processes can be further broken down into more specific levels:

Ticket acquisition process

• Air Centre negotiates with airline companies and gets air ticket quotas from them.
  
• Updates the information of airline ticket in Air Centre’s own database.
  

Customer booking process

• Customer searches airline ticket information from Air Centre’s website.
  
• Displays basic airline information (i.e. airline companies, flight, and timetable). This information is retrieved from Air Centre’s own database.
  
• Customer selects a specific flight.
  
• Displays up-to-date information, e.g. current price, available seats. This information is retrieved from airline companies’ database (i.e. real time retrieval).
  
• Customer confirms his/her selection and makes payment.
  
• Issues the transaction number to the customer.
  
• Updates Air Centre’s own databases, including CRM databases airline ticket database and accounting database.
  
• Air Centre informs the booking information to the relevant airline companies.
  

Accounting process

• Debits account receivable from customer when a customer confirms his/her airline ticket selection.
  
• Credits account receivable and debits cash account when the payments from customers are received.
  
• Credits account payable to respective airline companies when the airline ticket quotas are received from the airlines.
  
• Debits account payable and credits cash account when the payments to airline companies are made.
  

The described business processes fall under the business architecture in the BAIT architecture stack.

b) Following on from the business processes you described, for each process, identify a relevant application (i.e. a general description of an application in terms of functionality) which will satisfy that process.

Following is a description of the relevant applications for each of the above mentioned processes in terms of the major functionalities that the applications should possess.

Ticket acquisition process

This process needs to be supported by an application which has the following set of functionalities.

• Quota management – Aids the negotiation procedures between Air Centre and different airline companies and manage the acquired airline ticket quotas as the sales of air tickets occur.
  
• Reporting – Provision of various reports on airline ticket quotas to the Air Centre management.
  

Customer booking process

In order to facilitate this process, a software application with following functionalities is required.

• Search – To allow the customers to search the available flights for their trip and to compare air ticket prices.
  
• Single/ Group reservation – With this, customers can make single or group ticket purchases as per their interest and amend, cancel or confirm their reservations. This allows Air Centre to provide flexible, convenient booking options to customers.
  
• Pricing, specials and promotions management – This feature supports the pricing of air tickets based on the commission receive from various airline companies, promotions of special air travel packages available from different airlines and other marketing options.
  
• Transaction management - Generates a transaction number for each confirmed air ticket purchase, issues it to the customer and informs the transaction number to respective airline companies.
  
• Reporting – This feature provides Air Centre management the relevant reports required on the customer air ticket purchases.
  

Accounting process

To assist the accounting process an accounting application with modules such as general ledger, accounts receivable, accounts payable, cash flow management and reporting is required.

• Accounts receivable - To process the receipts of payments from customers.
  
• Accounts payable - To process the payments owing to airline companies.
  
• Cash book – To process the cash payments and cash receipts regarding air ticket sales.
  
• General ledger – To process all other accounts except cash, accounts receivable and accounts payable.
  
• Cash flow management – To track down the cash inflows and outflows between different departments and third parties with regard to air ticket sales. This feature is important to ensure the financial security of Air Centre.
  
• Reporting – To create the standard accounting reports for any arbitrary date or an accounting period. This feature increase the visibility for decision making and let the management of Air Centre knows who well they are performing.
  

In order to maximize client satisfaction and thereby improve customer loyalty and retention, Air Centre can implement a CRM application. Even though this application does not directly support the business processes, deployment of this application will provide a competitive advantage to Air Centre over it rivals. Since a CRM application stores customer data securely in one centralized location and provides easy access to always up-to-date customer information, it helps the Air Centre to determine and document individual customer metrics, study specific customer preferences, better manage customer issues. Such a customer centric approach assists the Air Centre to improve customer satisfaction and thereby maximize customer retention, which in turn helps to improve its ROI.

The briefed applications fall under the application architecture of BAIT stack.

c) Identify what information is required by Air Centre to:

(I) Manage the business processes for Air Centre’s systems.

(II) Understand the interfaces from external systems (i.e. other organizations)

An information architecture analysis was carried out to define the major types and sources of data necessary to support the Air Centre business. In order to realize the business processes analysed in question 1a, Air Centre need to manage information internally, as well as externally.

Internal data sources

• Flight/Quota database - stores general air ticket information from diverse airline companies. The main purpose of this database is to provide customers with comprehensive choices and basic airline ticket information. The update of the information in this database is not real-time, but it happens on a pre-specified frequency. Such information includes: flight route, flight schedule of different airline companies, prices.
  
• Operations/Bookings database - stores customer booking information. Once customers finish the booking process, customer personal information as well as air ticket information will be updated immediately. The amendments, cancellations and confirmations are updated accordingly. Such information includes: customer number, customer name, customer address, transaction number, airline company, flight number and so on.
  
• Accounting database - stores accounting information of transactions with customers and airline companies. Air Centre gets the payment from customers via credit cards and airline companies for the air ticket quotas. The relevant information includes: account number, account owner, amount, and payment deadline.
  
• CRM database - stores current and prospective customer information. Customers’ booking history and other relevant information are recorded for further use such as for marketing and customer relationship management.
  

  Eg: customer number, customer name, date, airline selected, type of travel class, destination city, departure city, selected route, etc.
  

All the above data sources fall into information architecture of BAIT architecture stack.

External data sources

• After customer makes selection of the particular air ticket, Air Centre’s system requires connecting to the relevant airline company’s database to retrieve real-time information, which includes the up-to-the-minute price, applied conditions, transit information, etc. The confirmed air ticket booking information along with the issued transaction number need to be sent to the airline company. In addition, Air Centre needs to communicate with banks and other credit card companies to get verification of customer credit card information such as credit card number, credit card holder, amount owed for Air Centre, etc.
  

To provide uninterrupted service to its customers, the software applications of Air Centre need to communicate with each other. Furthermore the software applications that support the air ticket acquisition process and customer booking process require communicating with business applications of various airline companies and banks and other credit card companies. Therefore, a well–integrated, networked software infrastructure is necessary to truly capitalize on the business benefits of Air Centre’s software applications. These software applications may have been developed using diverse technologies and data structures. Thus, a middleware application is essential to enable the integration, pushing applications out and unleashing the domain-specific value of each application. This enables seamless communication between heterogeneous software applications without having to make extensive changes to the applications or data structures.

This middleware application falls under the technology architecture in the BAIT architecture stack.

Question 2

a) Describe the inter-relationship between the BAIT architecture layers in the example given in question 1 and identify why it is important for Air Centre to understand this relationship (ie. Trace the relationship between the business processes to application to information to technology).

As discussed in question 1, the business architecture defines the business strategy, business goals and key business processes for the Air Centre. It is evident that the business policy and strategy drives the business architecture. The application architecture provides a blue print for the individual application systems to be deployed, their interactions, and their relationships to the core business processes which are described in the business architecture of the organisation. Hence, business architecture stipulates the application architecture. The information architecture describes the structure of the Air Centre’s logical and physical data assets required by its business applications and data management resources. Thus, we can say that application architecture entails the information architecture. The software infrastructure intended to support the deployment of core, mission-critical applications is described by the technology architecture. Therefore, technology architecture is supported by both the application architecture and information architecture. (Schekkerman, J. (2003)

The interrelationships between these architecture stacks and their joint properties are described by the company’s enterprise architecture. It structures and processes govern adherence to Air Centre’s technology strategy and provides a managed environment for using technology. It is crucial for Air Centre to understand the interrelationship among its BAIT architecture stacks in its enterprise architecture. Collectively, these architecture stacks address important enterprise wide concerns, such as:

• Aligning company’s business model with its strategy
  
• Enabling business changes and technology-based business opportunities
  
• Allowing easier introduction of new technologies and standardization
  
• Driving data/information consolidation
  
• Enabling seamless enterprise application integration
  
• Facilitating outsourcing as appropriate
  
• Utilizing company assets more efficiently
  
• Facilitating better change management
  
• Utilizing enterprise architecture as a blueprint for existing and desired capabilities and facilitating gap analysis
  
• Utilizing enterprise architecture as a tool for strategic, acquisition and capital investment planning
  

(Thorn, 2008)

Therefore, effective documentation and communication of Air Centre’s enterprise architecture is crucial to achieve the above mentioned rationales.

b) What risks would arise if Air Centre did not document its enterprise architecture as you have described in question 1?

Since insufficient documentation is unable to capture the complexity of and provide understanding in the firm’s Enterprise Architecture, Air Centre needs to encounter a multiplicity of risks.

Incompatible software and hardware

As described above, the information system of Air Centre consists of many applications, namely, data acquisition, search, payment, and accounting application. If these applications are implemented by different vendors who are specialised in the related area, this will create significant incompatibility among the applications as well as hardware being used (Bernard, 2005). Without the proper documentation of its enterprise architecture, Air Centre may not be able to integrate them due to a lack of understanding in the structure, and technology of the firm’s information system.

Inability to share information across the enterprise and to link with external firms

In this case, Air Centre is assumed that it contains many business processes which use applications from different vendors. Each application may independently require information that fulfils its functionalities. Therefore, information may effectively flow within a particular business process, but it might not be able to be shared with other lines of business and external partners (Bernard, 2005). With the documentation of enterprise architecture, Air Centre is capable of identifying the required information across different business processes and of reusing the information. Since it reduces data redundancy and it can effectively use the information, it increases the interoperability among business processes (Brown, 2004). This helps Air Centre to save its resources in terms of time and money. Further, it can relate sources of information from various business processes and analyse them to gain knowledge which may result in competitive advantage.

Inability to communicate the company’s enterprise architecture to management

If Air Centre does not document its enterprise architecture, its management or stakeholders might be incapable of seeing the information system, not only the current architecture views but also the future views. When Air Centre needs to change its architecture without documents, there is no communication tool (Brown, 2004). Hence, it will create difficulties in showing the importance of the changes and in convincing the management.

Higher “complexity barrier”

Brown (2004, p.3) defines a “complexity barrier” as “an inhibitor of change”. He claims that people in large organizations resist changes unless their information is documented through enterprise architecture. Change involves uncertainty and variables. Air Centre might fail to transform its enterprise architecture unless it truly understands its existing and future views. With the proper documentation, Air Centre can capture the complexity. Hence, it is very likely to comprehend the architecture and to have a highly effective plan for the transformation. Further, it is easier to communicate with people in the company about the changes and plans. Therefore, Air Centre can reduce resistance to changes.

c) What are the risks involved in upgrading a set of technology hardware (eg. update or change of critical servers) if the Enterprise Architecture is not understood? Describe the risks this could have on the other 3 architectural layers if it was not done in a managed way.

In order to reach the goal of technology transformation, Air Centre should clearly comprehend its existing and future Enterprise Architecture. If Air Centre upgrades its hardware without understanding, this may result in incompatible software and hardware. As a result, it can cause a multiplicity of impacts upon information, application, and business architecture.

Impacts on application architecture

Since the existing applications do not match with the new hardware, the applications are unable to perform their tasks effectively, or even unable to be used at all. Hence, the application software needs to be upgraded or replaced in order to fulfil the requirements derived from business processes. In the worst case, the application architecture may need to be redesigned which may results in redesigning the information architecture as well.

Impacts on information architecture

As described in question 2a, the application architecture entails the information architecture. Major changes in application layer caused by incompatibility problems directly affect the structure of information as well as data flows among various applications. Therefore, Air Centre may need to revise its existing information structure and design new data flows to be suitable for the changed applications and the newly implemented hardware.

Impacts on business processes

Technology is used to support business processes by enabling information flows, which in turn helps the enterprise to achieve its business goals (Bernard, 2005). Hence, Air Centre should understand its business processes and requirements in order to identify appropriate supporting technology. Without understanding, technology is unlikely to enable the achievement of business processes. Further, if hardware and software were incompatible, the applications would be incapable of executing their tasks properly, which in turn results in the performance of business processes. Technology that does not support business processes is considered as a waste of resources, especially in an enterprise where possesses a very limited of resources.

References

Bernard, S. A. (2005). An introduction to enterprise architecture, 2^nd ed., Indiana, USA: AuthorHouse.

Brown, T. (2004). The value of enterprise architecture. Retrieved September 05, 2008, from http://www.modaf.com/file_download/19

Schekkerman, J. (2003) How to survive in the jungle of enterprise architecture frameworks: Creating or choosing an enterprise architecture framework, 2^nd ed., USA: Trafford.

Thorn, S. (2008, January). Service management and enterprise architecture: Two pillars of IT governance, 1-2. Retrieved September 05, 2008, from http://opensource.sys-con.com/ node/493465

When I started my bachelor’s degree in the university in China, I had more spare time than in high school and I started a small website which actually a forum. At the beginning, the reason why I built the website is just interest and that I wanted to obtain some experience about websites and programming. At the very start, the main audience is students in my university and then expended to universities all over the country. The categories of the forum includes image sharing, funny stories, past exam papers, second hand goods on campus, studying abroad information, computer games, English study and so on. As the website grew bigger, problems started to occur. This, from my point of view, is the problem of a legacy system and the small website I started is a legacy system. This paper discussed what should be done upon this situation. (Some actions I actually did and some I think should be done after taking this subject)

Question 1

a)

Hardware

When I start the website, I am a poor student and in China the most popular dynamic website language is ASP, so I bought a very cheap windows webhost plan and my domain name from a small ISP. Plan detail shows in Table 1.

Table 1

Software

The system environment of the host plan has shown in Table1. For my website I chose a free forum system DvBBS (www.dvbbs.net) which is written in ASP and uses Access and I also used some plugins provided by DvBBS to manage and enrich the website. I put the forum in the /bbs directory of my website. I abstracted some information from the forum’s database using ASP and SQL for the homepage, such as the latest posts of each category, the latest images, most visited post this week/month, most replied post this week/month, thread starter rank( who starts thread most) and so on, and optimise a bit for the search engine. I use Google AdSense to generate income, although not much at the beginning.

Processes

My girlfriend and I play the administrator role and some of my friends who are also interested in building website or surfing internet became moderators of different categories of the forum. We all have the privileges to delete rubbish post, stick and edit post, reward users etc. The main job is to start new post which may attract audience and the search engine and answer some questions in the forum.

b)

As the website grew bigger, it became a problematic legacy system. The reasons that it need to be transformed are listed below:

• The accessing speed became slow especially when using the searching function, because the host plan I bought provide limited bandwidth and Access database has its constraints.
  
• As more users registered, at peak time like 8 pm, the website often reaches it connection limits and people cannot access it.
  
• As lots images and lots attachments like past exam papers are uploaded, the storage (500 MB) is not enough for further development.
  
• Some people I met on the internet became moderators who are geographically distant. As a result the management become hard given the forum system DvBBS because it does not provide much management tools.
  

Question 2

a)

In order to solve the problems above, actions need to be taken.

The main cause of the problem is the host plan I bought, so I need to change to a host plan which can support larger website, which also means I may also need to change ISP. Furthermore, cost still has to be considered. Then I list some criteria for the new host:

• Relatively lower cost
  
• SQL database (SQL server or MySQL)
  
• Larger storage
  
• Bandwidth (speed)
  
• No connection limit
  

As I decided to use SQL database and I need a better management of the moderators, I also need to change the forum software which support Access only and provides limit management functions. The things below need to be considered:

• Low cost (free is the best)
  
• SQL server or MySQL database driven
  
• Easy data immigration (from current Access to SQL)
  
• Better management tools
  

Based on the criteria list above for the new website, the project plan was developed as in Table 2 and put Activity on Node Network Diagram in the appendix.

Table 2

To summaries, the following actions are taken:

• Retargeting: change platform from win server, IIS, ASP, Access to Linux, Apache, PHP, MySQL;
  
• Revamping: new software better interface, redo the theme for the new website;
  
• Source code translation: change homepage from ASP to PHP but keep identical looking;
  
• Function transformation: change plugins and add management tools.
  

b)

With any project undertaken there is the potential for problems to occur. Some may be unforeseen, however an attempt to identify risks should be made and a method of responding to the identified risks documented. (Clifford Gray, 2006) Table 3 lists potential risks for the new website project and methods of managing the risks to minimise their impact on the project’s success should they occur. Identifying the risks sooner rather than later reduces response times, minimises surprises, and allows time to find the root causes.

Table 3

Conclusion

Although the project I took is much smaller than that a bank get rid of its legacy, I still could feel the some of the causes of legacy systems, for example, lacking long-term consideration, poor documentation (for the self –developed front page and plugins) etc. and the difficulties of replacing legacy systems, for instance, data transformation (I have to compromise lots of functions, especially third party plugin functions), source code translation (for the front page) etc.

Reference

Clifford Gray, E. L. (2006). Project Management (Third Edition ed.). New York: McGraw Hill.

Note: 1,074 words excluding tables and appendix.

Appendix:

Activity on Node Network Diagram

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE APPLICATION PROPOSAL

Submitted By:

274620: Vasundhara Rajagopalan

281788: Ambarish R Srikar

198290: Krishna Guduru

276279: Kai Dong

Business Intelligence (306-622)

Faculty of Economics and Commerce

Dr. John Williams

Group Assignment- Semester 2, 2008.

Business Intelligence Proposal

“Bradbury Ltd.”

(WORD COUNT: 3322)

Table of Contents

Executive Summary

1. Section 1: Business Intelligence

1.1 Business Intelligence

1.2 BI and Bradbury Ltd.

2. Section 2: Future:

2.1 Expected Evolution of BI over 5 years

2.2 Evolution of BI and Bradbury Ltd

3. Section 3: Potential Limitations of BI

4. Section 4: Technology:

4.1 Technology options of BI for Bradbury Ltd.

5. Section 5: Conclusion.

6. Section 6: References

Executive Summary:

AKKV Inc, sincerely thank Bradbury for the opportunity given to us to prepare project report on the usefulness of BI for their operations.

This report is presented to Bradbury management about the benefits of using Business Intelligence in their S&OP (Sales and Operational Planning) operations to effectively utilize the sales data from their existing operations. This report is helps Bradbury in understanding the BI tools and how the organization utilize their sales data for the better profitability and market share in their confectionery business.

The key objectives of this report is

• Understanding of Business Intelligence and its future
  
• Tools and Techniques used in Business Intelligence
  
• Potential limitations of using Business Intelligence for Bradbury
  
• Useful Business Intelligence tools for Bradbury
  
• Future of Bradbury using BI
  

Based on the available secondary research data on Bradbury and Business Intelligence, we strongly recommend Bradbury to implement Business Intelligence in their operations. With the help of BI tools, company can understand consumer behavioral patterns and helps in new product introductions which lead to better profitability and gain sustainable competitive advantage in the market.

Basic assumptions of this project report are as follows:

1. This project report addresses only the usefulness of Business Intelligence for the Bradbury and available BI tools for the benefit of the company.
   
2. AKKV Inc., have not taken financial implications of using Business Intelligence for their ROI
   
3. This report is based on secondary research data.
   

1. BUSINESS INTELIGENCE

1.1 Business Intelligence:

Business Intelligence is techniques, applications and practices for the collection, integration, analysis and presentation of business information for strategic decision making (Wikipedia)

Business Intelligence systems deliver the insight, reporting capability and drill down analysis required for intelligent decision making process through out the company. A BI solution can consolidate the data from every corner of the enterprise such as sales and marketing, production, finance and other external data which ultimately helps the company to understand historical and current data to predict the future of business.

1.2 Business Intelligence and benefits to Bradbury Ltd.:

Competition is the main driver in consumer centric industries like FMCG. Globalization, deflation, diversification of sales channels and important of all changing customer demands have created cutthroat competition in which retailers struggle to turn profits.

These profitability challenges involve both revenue and cost. Sales remain flat as many companies don’t understand customer behavior and buying habits well enough to make decision about Product, Price, Promotion and Placements. Analyzing each and every aspect would give vital information about the consumer buying habits which would be useful to new product introduction. Such analysis is only possible with the help of Business Intelligence in the organization.

The following Business Intelligence techniques help Bradbury to derive better results from their sales data.

Sales Intelligence:

Though the sales data was available to Bradbury, but was never utilized for proper analysis.

Sales Intelligence such as converting data about customers, merchandise and operations into knowledge that provides greater insights into performance and that empowers the organizations to make more informed decisions, gain competitive advantage, strengthen customer loyalty and improves profitability.

• Customer intelligence helps the company to identify, acquire, activate, serve and retain most profitable customers.
  
• Merchandise intelligence helps to drive revenue, profit margins and earn customer loyalty with merchandise optimization plans, assortments, pricing, space planning and allocation. This is possible with the predictive analysis and demand forecasting techniques of Business Intelligence.
  
• Operational Intelligence helps them to leverage the organizational assets to trade with vendors and help to serve customers more efficiently to derive more profitability.
  

Demand-driven forecasting:

Demand forecasting is the activity of estimating the quantity of products or service that consumers will purchase. It is the fundamental component of any organizations sales and operational planning process. Demand forecasting success depends on its ability to predict the future requirements with a reasonable degree of accuracy. It involves techniques of both educated guesses and quantitative methods such use of historical sales data and current data from markets. Demand forecasting is mainly used for pricing decisions, in assessing future capacity requirements and entering new markets. (Wikipedia)

Following benefits can be derived from demand-driven forecasting as Bradbury’s business is very much customer oriented:

• Use Business Intelligence to drive what-if analysis and disseminate results across the organization to make better decisions
  
• It helps in creating weighted consensus forecast by tracking variation between forecasted and actual sales to aid the sales & operation planning process
  
• Reduce finished goods inventory levels and stock-outs and shorten the time it takes to drive the supply chain to realize significant savings
  
• Helps to develop a profitable demand plans based on optimal product mix and marketing strategies to improve forecasting performance across the product hierarchy
  

Apart from the Business Intelligence framework that supports predictive analysis and behavioral patterns of consumer the following capabilities in the framework would help Bradbury to achieve its Profitability and better return on Investments (ROI).

• Dashboards – provides easy access to specific data and reports that need to be reviewed and evaluated.
  
• Report viewing – detailed analysis of key business drivers
  
• Report creation (standard recurring reports as well as ad-hoc reports) – would help in evaluation of S& OP metrics such as forecast volatility, demand consumption, forecast accuracy, supply chain liabilities, inventory management and financial evaluations.
  
• Advanced data exploration
  
• Web report creation and viewing.
  

The Sales & Operational Planning process supported by a BI solution which provides direct access to dash boards with embedded reports. Analysis can be performed with drill down capability and entire process can be linked back to business warehouse and an advanced planning [Hymanson 2008].

[Sourced from: Hymanson 2008]

2. FUTURE OF BI

2.1 Expected evolution of Business Intelligence over 5 years:

The future of business intelligence (BI) involves unstructured information, real-time analytics and semantic search. The new wave of BI is that it would combine structured information with unstructured information, utilizing text analytics to turn free text into information that can be stored in a dynamic data warehouse, which means extracting information from unstructured data and appending it to structured data for analysis. Analyzing data in real-time, delivering BI to mobile devices would realize the true vision of the future BI. Making use of semantics and enterprise search, and analyzing all kinds of content, including text, voice and even images is futuristic area of BI, which involves no platforms and no real standards yet.

There are very real ways that next-generation BI can help companies solve problems and save money on customer care, market intelligence, product quality and research and discovery. Some areas of great importance would be unstructured information management, search tools, Content Discovery, deep analytics and advanced data visualization technologies. Innovations in search space will involve the use of “natural language search”, new storage mechanisms, new data storage mechanisms and new approaches to user experience for future BI– an important concept that will make BI accessible to varied user community while reducing the maintenance costs.

To summarize the major expected developments in Business Intelligence would be:

• Web based BI tools that will provide self diagnosis, provided quality control is maintained. Bi will emerge to be used with geographic capabilities like GPS etc.
  
• Major technologies that will support the BI to grow faster will be intelligent agents, neural networks; case based reasoning and fuzzy logic.
  
• Tools for e-commerce which is currently limited to recommendations of few products and brands will expand to include better real time web based analytics applications. BI will be combined with web based enterprise systems particularly CRM, ERP and KM directly linking it to operational activities.
  
• Grid computing will be used for analytics of very large amount of data.
  
• Formalized use of independent Knowledge management system in organizations to pass the knowledge bases to others. Mobile access to KPI and anytime visual access to what is happening in business.
  
• Increased use of wireless technologies will enable employees to work from anywhere and anytime they want.
  

1. Future of BI and Bradbury Ltd.
   

Bradbury, in the future, when they get more clean data and hardware are well developed upon Moore’s Law, would be able to eliminate the limitations mentioned in section 3 and get the following benefit:

1. Faster, more accurate reporting:

With wireless and mobile networks, managers in Bradbury could get faster, more accurate reporting. For example a BI system could enable buyers, financial analysts, marketing analysts, regional managers, merchandisers, and field sales representatives to analyse sales and inventory data from their desktop or mobile devices. System fed by a data warehouse could provide Bradbury with the ability to track sales performance and inventory levels of every Bradbury stores. Visualized report also gives decision maker the ability to quickly identify important trends in corporate and market data.

Natural language based search engines such as about.com will be intensely used that are specialized in certain domains facilitating reduction in costs. Also voice technologies and natural language processing will be widely used. As a result, BI users, who do not have technical background, will be able to use BI tools more efficiently. For example, one can use natural language to request an ad hoc report from the system.

2. Improved decision making

In the future when combine BI tools with other enterprise applications such as ERP, CRM and SCM and with the real-time data, Bradbury could make faster smarter decisions. For example, with the real-time customer demand data from the CRM, Bradbury will be able to identify the fast-change customer preference in the food industry and launch new product faster than competitors and as a result seize the new market. BI also supports for all four phases of decision making.

(Sourced from: Turban 2008)

1. Intelligence phase

A decision maker attempts to determine whether a problem or opportunity exists, identify its symptoms, determine its magnitude, and explicitly define it. For example Business performance management (BPM) is a real-time system that alerts managers to potential opportunities, impending problems, and threats, and then empowers them to react through models and collaboration. Cadbury, who is possibly Bradbury’s largest competitor over produced chocolate bars and cost a 32 million pounds lost. (McCue, 2006) if BPM are used properly, managers should be able to identify the problem (forecast error) earlier and avoid the significant lose.

2. Design and choice phases

The boundary between the design and choice phases is often unclear because certain activities can be performed during both of them and because the decision maker can return frequently from choice activities to design activities. In these phases, decision makers will find or develop and analyse possible courses of action, including understanding the problem and testing solution for feasibility. BI might help to seek for alternatives; either optimization or sub optimization and simulation can be used to analysis the feasibility of the solution and evaluate the alternatives in terms of goal attainment.

3.
Implementation phase

Implementation is about actually putting the solution in place. BI would be able to collect data of the actual implementation and help managers to monitor.

• Increased revenue
  

There are three aspect of increasing revenue. First, BI helps higher level managers to indentify new trends and opportunities. Second, manual processes are replaced with computerised processes more widely and as result it reduces cost and human errors. Third, BI would be able to secure the system and protect security and privacy information. As a result reduce the risk.

3. Potential Limitations of BI

The implementation of BI solutions for Bradbury may have the following limitations due to time, cost, and technical (software, hardware, skills etc.) constrains.

• Cost of setting up BI tools, DSS tools would be very expensive and it takes long time to implement.
  
• Availability of Skilled people to use BI tools to generate meaningful reports.
  
• Results generated from BI are based on historical data and they have to depend on real time data in future.
  
• Complex mathematical modelling of analysis would lead to delays in report generation.
  
• Open source applications pose a threat to privacy of data.
  

4. TECHNOLOGY

4.1 Technology Options of BI for Bradbury LTD:

The problem Bradbury faces is that they are not able to utilize their sales data to maximize their profit potential. There are various BI tools that would enable the company to understand and use their sales data to the maximum effect. In order to utilize their sales data Bradbury must acquire both BI tools and BA tools. Business Intelligence tools help the company in acquiring data, information and knowledge from a variety of sources and organize them preferably in data warehouses and use them decision making. Business Analytics provides the models and the procedure to conduct the analysis on the data, information obtained by BI tools that would enable an enterprise to make better strategic decisions.

(Sourced from: Turban 2008)

Useful Tools: (Information and Knowledge Discovery)

1. DATA WAREHOUSE: [DW]

A data Warehouse is a pool of data produced to support decision making. It contains current and historical data of the company which is used to make managerial decisions. Data are usually stored in a structured format in a DW so that it is ready to be analyzed. Data warehouse is an essential part of BI system because complex analysis and query executions for thousands of records are conducted on them. Data Warehouses combine information from multiple data sources and provides an unified source of information that a user can query from.

Bradbury would need to implement a Data Warehouse in order to store all their sales and transactional data along with their historical data. Their main problem is underutilization of their sales figures and a well established Data Warehouse would provide them a platform for conduction various analysis on these data. The only limitation with data warehouses is that it is used only with structured data and not on unstructured data. The Extraction, Formation and Load [ETL] is the heart of the DW process. Extraction relates to reading data from one or more databases, Formation relates to converting the data into the form that it needs to be in order to be stored in the DW. Load is to load the data in the DW. ETL tools transport data between source and target and documents the metadata along with the change process of the data. ETL is very important for data integration and is necessary in order to maintain a well integrated data warehouse.

2.
OLAP: Online Analytical Processing:

OLAP includes activities that provide modeling, analysis and visualization capabilities to large set of data in a data warehouse system and they provide multidimensional view of a data. OLAP tools examine many data items in complex relationships and looks for patters and trends along with user queries. OLAP acts as a base for direct decision support. Since OLAP provide multidimensional view of a data the sales figures of Bradbury can be viewed in many dimensions for example sales volume for each region or channels or product type in terms of time period or branches etc. In an OLAP query the analyst must specify as to what to look for in terms of information or patters etc.

3. DATA MINING:

Data Mining relates to knowledge discovery in databases. It refers to extracting hidden, predictive information from databases. Data Mining finds patterns in the data and sometimes may infer rules from them. Data Mining is used for market segmentation as it helps to understand consumer behavior. Clustering is an important Data Mining tool that helps segment consumers based on their qualities and commonalities.
Bradbury would definitely benefit from data mining as figuring out consumer behavior and patterns would increase their sales figures, few patters that might emerge would be wine and chocolate or flowers and chocolates, few examples would be that of white wine selling more in spring and milk chocolate or white chocolate along with it or dark chocolate with red wine etc.

4. TEXT MINING:

Text Mining is the application of data mining to unstructured data. It could be text files or documents and text mining finds the hidden content of documents. It helps in finding previously unknown and non-obvious patters in unstructured data. It groups documents by common themes, relates documents across unnoticed divisions etc.

5. WEB MINING [future]:

Since the future of BI looks towards open sourced virtual data obtained through a web browser web mining is an essential tool that would be useful in the future for Bradbury. Web Mining is the discovery and analysis of information from the web by web based tools. Amazon.com uses CLICKSTREAM which is a tool similar to web mining that analyses consumer behavior and predicts possible purchases based on a users web browsing pattern. Web Mining has similar tools that analyses the content of the web pages [web content mining], analyses the links included in web documents [web structure mining] and web pages visited [usage mining]. These tools can be used on Bradbury’s web pages or other web sites and documents related to their industry or their substitute and compliment industries.

Useful Tools: (Decision Support and Intelligence Systems):

1. DSS- DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM

Business Intelligence systems monitor situations and identify problems/opportunities using analytical methods, a user must identify if there is a need for analysis in a BI system, and it is mainly used in structured databases. DSS is a computer system that helps management utilize data and models and helps in solving unstructured problems. DSS supports decision making in semi-structured and unstructured situations by combining human element and computer information, and they support sequential decisions. DSS
system utilizes the data obtained from BI applications and comes up with intelligent solutions for problems. DSS uses the available data and according to the situation it manipulates the model and gives out results, in terms of Bradbury sales figures from historical data and multidimensional view of data from OLAP tools etc can bring about a successful pattern in the market.

2.
DATA MINING & PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS:

Predictive analytics is a tool of DSS that helps determine probable future outcome for any situation occurring. Predictive analytics is an essential part of DSS because it forecasts what will happen because DSS is designed to determine what will happen and not what has happened. Data mining information would be used for predictive analytics as they provide information and knowledge about customer pattern and segmentation and other information. Using these data Predictive Analytic tools would give potential marketing or managerial strategies. Bradbury would be beneficial from this because of their sales data and their previous customer buying pattern. Since their sales figures are good it indicates that customers are happy with their product and any new pattern or customer segment would result in the company maximizing their potential.

3.
WEB ANALYTICS [future]:

Web analytics is the application of BA tools on web based processes, mostly related to e-commerce. The data obtained through the web mining tools are analyzed using these tools and they are highly visual in nature eg: CLICKSTREAM.

4.
DATA VISUALIZATION:

Data visualization is a technique which communicates information clearly and effectively. It combines the aesthetic form and functionality to convey the ideas effectively by providing insights into complex data set in a more intuitive way. Data Visualization technique would help Bradbury to grow their business strategically by analyzing the customer behavioral trends.

• Interact with visual environments to explore ideas, investigate patterns and discover previously hidden facts.
  
• It makes complex interrelationships visible in an easy-to-understand picture or format for the average viewer.
  
• Ability to perform more detailed analysis such as target markets, product functionality, demographics, attach rates, effects of promotion and discounts would help in establishing demand profiles.
  
• Reduce forecast cycle times to meet the current demands of the market.
  
• Data visualization provides immediacy and responsiveness for greater productivity.
  

5. CONCLUSION:

Fast paced economic and regulatory pressures, global emphasis and global pressures, instantaneous decision making along with the need to stay competitive in the marketplace, have made business intelligence
(BI) more important than ever for enterprise application users. BI gives users the ability to extract, consolidate, change, and analyze data in ways that are not possible in other approaches to enterprise applications. It also allows users to exploit subsets of data within different organizational systems, such as customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), finance, and human resources (HR) to combine various dimensions of organizational data in order to create a single view. The value proposition here is getting the right information to the right person at the right time so they can make the decisions that would then allow the business to adapt faster and in efficient manner.

6: References:

1. Turban Efraim, Aronson E Jay, Liang p Ting, Sharda Ramesh 2007 ” Decision Support and Business Intelligence System”
   
2. Lyndsay Wise (July 11, 2007 ), “Why Manufacturers Should Cash In On the Promise of Business Intelligence” , retrieved September 25, 2008 from: http://www.technologyevaluation.com/Research/ResearchHighlights/BusinessIntelligence/2007/07/research_notes/PC_BI_LW_07_11_07_1.asp
   
3. Lyndsay Wise (June 18, 2007), “Five Steps to Business Intelligence Project Success”, retrieved September 25, 2008 from: http://www.technologyevaluation.com/Research/ResearchHighlights/BusinessIntelligence/2007/06/research_notes/TU_BI_LW_06_18_07_1.asp
   
4. Mukhles Zaman (November 8, 2005), “Predictive Analytics; the Future of Business Intelligence”, retrieved September 25, 2008 from:
   http://www.technologyevaluation.com/Research/ResearchHighlights/BusinessIntelligence/2005/12/research_notes/TU_BI_XMZ_12_24_05_1.asp
   
5. Jean Thilmany, Manufacturing Business Technology, (January 9, 2007), “Good forecasting tools point the way to lower inventories” , retrieved September 25, 2008 from http://www.mbtmag.com/article/CA6476088.html?q=cadbury+business+intelligence
   
6. Aberdeen group White paper (June 2004), Sales & Operational Planning Benchmark report, Leveraging S & OP for competitive advantage retrieved on September 30, 2008 from www.aberdeengroup.com
   
7. Demand driven forecasting retrieved on September 30, 2008 from http://www.sasl.com/solutions/sci/ddf.html
   
8. Jack Hymanson, Whitepaper on Enhancing Sales and Operations Planning with forecasting analytics and Business Intelligence retrieved on September 30, 2008 from http://web3.custompublish.com/getfile.php/736087.1184.wvfpxxurrp/whitepaper.pdf?return=sasfans.custompublish.com
   
9. Wikipedia, Demand Forecasting, retrieved on October 1, 2008 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand_Forecasting
   
10. Wikipedia, Business Intelligence, retrieved on September 28, 2008 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_intelligence
    

1. McCue, A. (2006, Jun 09). IT glitch results in Cadbury chocolate glut. Retrieved Oct 1, 2008, from ZDNet Australia: http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/soa/IT-glitch-results-in-Cadbury-chocolate-glut/0,130061733,139259206,00.htm
   

put the articles together and make them easy to read and share.

What is Extreme Programming(XP)?

Extreme Programming (XP) is actually a deliberate and disciplined approach to software development. About eight years old, it has already been proven at many companies of all different sizes and industries world wide.
XP is successful because it stresses customer satisfaction. The methodology is designed to deliver the software your customer needs when it is needed. XP empowers your developers to confidently respond to changing customer requirements, even late in the life cycle.
This methodology also emphasizes team work. Managers, customers, and developers are all part of a team dedicated to delivering quality software. XP implements a simple, yet effective way to enable groupware style development.
XP improves a software project in four essential ways; communication, simplicity,

feedback, and courage. XP programmers communicate with their customers and fellow programmers. They keep their design simple and clean. They get feedback by testing their software starting on day one. They deliver the system to the customers as early as possible and implement changes as suggested. With this foundation XP programmers are able to courageously respond to changing requirements and technology.
XP is different. It is a lot like a jig saw puzzle. There are many small pieces. Individually the pieces make no sense, but when combined together a complete picture can be seen. This is a significant departure from traditional software development methods and ushers in a change in the way we program.

When should Extreme Programming be Used?

Extreme Programming (XP) was created in response to problem domains whose requirements change. Your customers may not have a firm idea of what the system should do. You may have a system whose functionality is expected to change every few months. In many software environments dynamically changing requirements is the only constant. This is when XP will succeed while other methodologies do not.

XP was also set up to address the problems of project risk. If your customers need a new system by a specific date the risk is high. If that system is a new challenge for your software group the risk is even greater. If that system is a new challenge to the entire software industry the risk is greater even still. The XP practices are set up to mitigate the risk and increase the likelihood of success.

XP is set up for small groups of programmers. Between 2 and 12, though larger projects of 30 have reported success. Your programmers can be ordinary, you don’t need programmers with a Ph.D. to use XP. But you can not use XP on a project with a huge staff. We should note that on projects with dynamic requirements or high risk you may find that a small team of XP programmers will be more effective than a large team anyway.

XP requires an extended development team. The XP team includes not only the developers, but the managers and customers as well, all working together elbow to elbow. Asking questions, negotiating scope and schedules, and creating functional tests require more than just the developers be involved in producing the software.

Another requirement is testability. You must be able to create automated unit and functional tests. While some domains will be disqualified by this requirement, you may be surprised how many are not. You do need to apply a little testing ingenuity in some domains. You may need to change your system design to be easier to test. Just remember, where there is a will there is a way to test.

The last thing on the list is productivity. XP projects unanimously report greater programmer productivity when compared to other projects within the same corporate environment. But this was never a goal of the XP methodology. The real goal has always been to deliver the software that is needed when it is needed. If this is what is important to your project it may be time to try XP.

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Bibliography

At today’s Cisco Systems, the fewer suppliers the better. (2006). Purchasing
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Attri, H. (2006, 6 27). Extracting Value from Difficult Supply Chains. Retrieved from eKNOWtion: http://www.eknowtion.com/show_article.php?id=22

Carbone, J. (2006). Supply Chain Manager of the Year. Purchasing
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Cisco System - The Supply Chain Story (2003).

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