Week 10: Clear - Compatibility of Access

Among database management tools, Microsoft Access is hands down the easiest to use. Microsoft Access is a desktop database management tool, which comes bundled with some versions of Microsoft Office suite.  Access allows a fairly proficient computer user to create databases for just about anything.  The use cases of databases are endless. You can store data in a relational database, run queries on the data, create forms for data entry, and create stunning reports analysis of the data to be more understandable.  One limitation of Access is its availability for Mac users, because for some reason this software is not compatible with Mac computers.


Microsoft Access is a great database management solution for start-up companies, small businesses, and home offices.  With its wide range of abilities and features, its low cost of purchasing and ownership, and ease of use, Access is the software of choice for many.  Microsoft Office products are very user friendly and are well documented , so if you need help with making or managing your database, help is readily available.

At my previous employer, they relied on a self-made Access database program with forms for data entry and reporting.  The fields used calculations to reconcile companies' escrow bank sheets.  The owner of the company created the program using Access 2000 and used it in production for servicing their clients.  They soon grew out of the custom Access database program and had to transition to a more robust relational database.  At the time, it was superseded by creating and managing the companies relational databases using Microsoft Visual Fox Pro 8.

Week 3: Clear - Importance of Redundancy

In business and enterprise computing, availability of data and information is probably the most important criteria of information technology.  To ensure the availability of data and services, the hardware and configurations must be redundant in all aspects.  Redundancy can be accomplished in multiple ways.  There are redundant hard drives, power supplies, network interface cards (NIC), network switches and routers, just to name a few.  Unfortunately, there are components that cannot be redundant, which are motherboards, hard drive controllers, operating systems, and software.  To aid in non-redundant aspects, servers can be setup to do clustering, virtual machines, and network load balancing.  Hardware failures can occur without any warning and must be planned for based on the criticality of the host and data.

Hard drive redundancy is accomplished using a technology called Redundant Array of Independent Disks, also known as RAID.  RAID is a storage technology which utilizes multiple disks to create a virtual storage volume.  This storage volume provides fault tolerance and greater throughput or speed.  This can be accomplished via a hard drive RAID controller or using software RAID.  The two most used RAID configurations are RAID level 1, which is essentially mirroring, and RAID level 5, which utilizes block-level striping with dedicated parity.

The following URL provides several visuals for each RAID configuration. Reference URL: http://www.ecs.umass.edu/ece/koren/architecture/Raid/basicRAID.html

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