Saturday, January 7, 2012

Decision Making Skills

  • Using a DECISION MATRIX to help you to decide between alternatives:

SWOT analysis is a subjective method used to evaluate the STRENGTHS, WEAKNESSES, OPPORTUNITIES, and THREATS involved in trying to attain an objective


Reference:
http://www.kent.ac.uk/careers/sk/decisionmaking.htm#DECISION

  • PEST analysis (political, economic, social and technological) describes a framework of macro-environmental factors used in the environmental scanning component of strategic management. It is part of an external analysis when conducting a strategic analysis or doing market research, and gives an overview of the different macro-environmental factors to be taken into consideration. It is a strategic tool for understanding market growth or decline, business position, potential and direction for operations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PEST_analysis


  • Identifying "Big Picture" Opportunities and Threats
Changes in your business environment can create great opportunities for your organization – and cause significant threats.PEST Analysis is a simple and widely used tool that helps you analyze the Political, Economic, Socio-Cultural, and Technological changes in your business environment. This helps you understand the "big picture" forces of change that you're exposed to, and, from this, take advantage of the opportunities that they present.PEST Analysis is often linked with SWOT Analysis [Add to My Personal Learning Plan] , however, the two tools have different areas of focus. PEST Analysis looks at "big picture" factors that might influence a decision, a market, or a potential new business. SWOT Analysis explores these factors at a business, product-line or product level.These tools complement one another and are often used together.
https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTMC_09.htm

business analyst role

What are the challenges a BA may need to overcome to respond to the increased expectations of companies who hire business analysts not just to manage requirements, but

also to perform project management and participate on decision-making processes?


To be truly effective, a BA must consider the project requirements their primary concern, from the development of a product vision and scope to detailed user and

software requirements specifications and the change control processes that will be used to manage requirements during the lifetime of the proj


Reference:
http://www.bridging-the-gap.com/expanding-the-business-analyst-role-good-or-bad/

preparation

Top 5 Job Interview Tips
http://career-advice.monster.co.uk/job-interview/preparing-for-job-interviews/top-5-job-interview-tips/article.aspx


Marketing Yourself Successfully - Video Advice
http://career-advice.monster.co.uk/job-interview/job-interview-behaviour/marketing-yourself-successfully-video/article.aspx

What is the difference between an incremental backup and a differential backup?

An Incremental backup backs up only the selected files that have their archive bit set to ON, setting them back to OFF.
a backup of all files that are new or changed since the last backup whether it was a full or an incremental.
The advantage of an Incremental is that it takes the least amount of time and media of all the backup methods.
In the case of restoring with Incremental backups, all the Incremental backups since the last full backup plus the last full backup would be necessary.




A Differential backup backs up only the selected files that have their archive bit set to ON but does not set the archive bit back to OFF.
A Differential backup will back up all selected files that are new and changed since the last full backup.
at restore time; you'll need only the last full backup and the last differential to get a complete restore

Reference:
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_difference_between_an_incremental_backup_and_a_differential_backup


  • Continuous data protection (CDP), also called continuous backup or real-time backup, refers to backup of computer data by automatically saving a copy of every change made to that data, essentially capturing every version of the data that the user saves. In its true form it allows the user or administrator to restore data to any point in time

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_Data_Protection


Simply stated, continuous data protection (CDP), also called continuous backup, is a storage system that backs up data whenever any change is made in it. In effect, CDP creates an electronic journal of complete storage snapshots, one for every instant in time that data modification occurs.

Why continuous data protection?
IT complexity: Continuous data protection helps ensure continuous availability of the varied, cross-platform environments.
Administrative capability:
Cost factor:Continuous data protection may prove to be a cheaper solution than traditional backup and recovery solutions. Software-based continuous data protection solutions today are easy to deploy and manage,
Data growth:  Remote users in geographically dispersed locations have access to email, core systems and other mission-critical applications. In such cases, continuous data protection makes perfect sense for enterprises with locations in multiple geographies.
Criticality of data:Continuous data protection technologies enable seamless backup and restore at the backend without affecting end users. Many continuous data protection solutions can recover data from any point in time within less than a minute.

Most of the challenges with continuous data protection emanate from the environment being targeted. A true continuous data protection solution will support real-time protection rather than scheduled snapshots. The change rate of the data sets that are being protected could pose challenges to the continuous data protection solution.
https://www.computerweekly.com/tip/Continuous-data-protection-Do-you-need-it

SQL JOIN

The SQL JOIN clause is used whenever we have to select data from 2 or more tables.

There are 2 types of SQL JOINS – INNER JOINS and OUTER JOINS.

The INNER JOIN will select all rows from both tables as long as there is a match between the columns we are matching on.

SQL OUTER JOIN and it has 2 sub-types called LEFT OUTER JOIN and RIGHT OUTER JOIN.


The LEFT OUTER JOIN or simply LEFT JOIN (you can omit the OUTER keyword in most databases),
selects all the rows from the first table listed after the FROM clause, no matter if they have matches in the second table.

The RIGHT OUTER JOIN or just RIGHT JOIN behaves exactly as SQL LEFT JOIN, except that it returns all rows from the second table (the right table in our SQL JOIN statement).



References:
http://www.sql-tutorial.net/SQL-JOIN.asp
http://www.quackit.com/sql/tutorial/sql_outer_join.cfm
http://www.tizag.com/sqlTutorial/sqljoin.php
http://www.sqltutorial.org/sqljoin-innerjoin.aspx




  • INNER JOIN
Inner join shows matches only when they exist in both tables.this SQL will only give you result with customers who have orders. If the customer does not have order, it will not display that record
SELECT Customers.*, Orders.* FROM Customers INNER JOIN Orders ON Customers.CustomerID =Orders.CustomerID

There is another way to visualize the SQL INNER JOIN by using the Venn diagrams

  • LEFT OUTER JOIN
Left join will display all records in left table of the SQL statement. In SQL below customers with or without orders will be displayed. Order data for customers without orders appears as NULL values
SELECT Customers.*, Orders.* FROM Customers LEFT OUTER JOIN Orders ON Customers.CustomerID =Orders.CustomerID

There is another way to visualize the SQL INNER JOIN by using the Venn diagrams

  • RIGHT OUTER JOIN
Right join will display all records in right table of the SQL statement. In SQL below all orders with or without matching customer records will be displayed. Customer data for orders without customers appears as NULL values
SELECT Customers.*, Orders.* FROM Customers RIGHT OUTER JOIN Orders ON Customers.CustomerID =Orders.CustomerID

There is another way to visualize the SQL INNER JOIN by using the Venn diagrams

  • FULL OUTER JOIN
Full outer join it will return all records from left table and from right table.
There is another way to visualize the SQL INNER JOIN by using the Venn diagrams




  • JOIN SCHEMA



  • Using Cross Joins

A cross join that does not have a WHERE clause produces the Cartesian product of the tables involved in the join. The size of a Cartesian product result set is the number of rows in the first table multiplied by the number of rows in the second table.

The result set contains 170 rows (SalesPerson has 17 rows and SalesTerritory has 10; 17 multiplied by 10 equals 170).

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms190690%28v=sql.105%29.aspx


The SQL CROSS JOIN produces a result set which is the number of rows in the first table multiplied by the number of rows in the second table, if no WHERE clause is used along with CROSS JOIN. This kind of result is called as Cartesian Product
http://www.w3resource.com/sql/joins/cross-join.php




  • Cross join

CROSS JOIN returns the Cartesian product of rows from tables in the join. In other words, it will produce rows which combine each row from the first table with each row from the second table



CREATE TABLE department
(
 DepartmentID INT,
 DepartmentName VARCHAR(20)
);

CREATE TABLE employee
(
 LastName VARCHAR(20),
 DepartmentID INT
);



INSERT INTO department(DepartmentID, DepartmentName) VALUES(31, 'Sales');
INSERT INTO department(DepartmentID, DepartmentName) VALUES(33, 'Engineering');
INSERT INTO department(DepartmentID, DepartmentName) VALUES(34, 'Clerical');
INSERT INTO department(DepartmentID, DepartmentName) VALUES(35, 'Marketing');

INSERT INTO employee(LastName, DepartmentID) VALUES('Rafferty', 31);
INSERT INTO employee(LastName, DepartmentID) VALUES('Jones', 33);
INSERT INTO employee(LastName, DepartmentID) VALUES('Steinberg', 33);
INSERT INTO employee(LastName, DepartmentID) VALUES('Robinson', 34);
INSERT INTO employee(LastName, DepartmentID) VALUES('Smith', 34);
INSERT INTO employee(LastName, DepartmentID) VALUES('John', NULL);

Example of an explicit cross join:

SELECT *
FROM employee
CROSS JOIN department;

Example of an implicit cross join:

SELECT *
FROM employee, department;


Inner join

SELECT *
FROM employee
INNER JOIN department ON employee.DepartmentID = department.DepartmentID;

The following example is equivalent to the previous one, but this time using implicit join notation:

SELECT *
FROM employee, department
WHERE employee.DepartmentID = department.DepartmentID;


Left outer join

SELECT *
FROM employee
LEFT OUTER JOIN department ON employee.DepartmentID = department.DepartmentID;


Right outer join

SELECT *
FROM employee
RIGHT OUTER JOIN department ON employee.DepartmentID = department.DepartmentID;


Full outer join

SELECT *
FROM employee
FULL OUTER JOIN department ON employee.DepartmentID = department.DepartmentID;


Self-join
A self-join is joining a table to itself

SELECT F.EmployeeID, F.LastName, S.EmployeeID, S.LastName, F.Country
FROM Employee F
INNER JOIN Employee S ON F.Country = S.Country
WHERE F.EmployeeID < S.EmployeeID
ORDER BY F.EmployeeID, S.EmployeeID;


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Join_%28SQL%29

  • JOIN Three Tables

method 1

SELECT Orders.OrderID, Customers.CustomerName, Shippers.ShipperName
FROM ((Orders
INNER JOIN Customers ON Orders.CustomerID = Customers.CustomerID)
INNER JOIN Shippers ON Orders.ShipperID = Shippers.ShipperID);

method 2
SELECT tablo1.OrderID, tablo1.CustomerName, Shippers.ShipperName
FROM (select * from Orders INNER JOIN Customers ON Orders.CustomerID = Customers.CustomerID) 
as tablo1
INNER JOIN Shippers ON tablo1.ShipperID = Shippers.ShipperID;

https://www.w3schools.com/sql/sql_join_inner.asp