Posts

Week 3:

What are the two notations for ERDs?

The two notations for ERDs are Chen’s Database Notation and Crow’s Foot Database Notation. Chen’s Database Notation using different shapes that represent different aspects, while Crow’s Foot Database Notation uses symbols that look like crow’s feet.

Week 4:

Why is it important to have a good digital identity?

Having a good digital identity is important because all the data that is stored as part of your identity follows you everywhere you go. In our increasingly technologically advanced society, having a good digital identity is becoming more important as time goes on.

Personally, I am not very active on social media. I am mainly a consumer of content, not a creator. But, with technology advancing everyday and many things becoming digital, I recognize that becoming apart of the social media world is important in order to make essential business connections along with job recruiting possibilities. Having a professional digital identity allows us to be represented professionally. Managing your digital identity can be easy, but it can also be hard. You can try your hardest to have a professional identity online, however anyone can post something of you without your consent and you have to deal with the repercussions that come with it. We don’t have full control over how much of us is online. But we do have control of what we ourselves put online and how we react when things are out of our control. Since we do have at least some control, it’s important to only post things that you are okay with future employers seeing. For me, I only post something if I would be comfortable showing it to my grandma. I feel like it’s a pretty good scale to go off of and helps me dictate what part of myself I put online, and what I keep offline. 

An ERD is an entity relation diagram, it’s a data model. When first reading about it all, I was a bit confused because of the multiple ways to draw them, however, I soon began to understand. I think the first essential element of understand an ERD is to define what an entity is. An entity is an object or a concept. In our case, an entity is an object where information or data can be stored. What an ERD does is define the entities we use to store data along with its qualities and relationships. An ERD helps us visualize databases and their structures. We can employ ERDs when designing a database, debugging a database, patching or creating a database, etc.. An ERD, similar to a swim-lane, has some primary symbols. A rectangle defines an entity. A diamond defines an action. And an oval defines an attribute, attributes can include a name, an ID, an address…entities can have many attributes that help to define and identify them. ERD’s can also be illustrated through tables, the entity name goes on the top, and the attributes are underneath in the table, and arrows connect them to other entities, describing their relationship. I definitely prefer the ERD tables because I feel that they are much easier to follow and comprehend, plus fitting writing is much easier to do in a table than an oval. 

One’s digital identity is the information that can be found online about you. This can be things like your social media and profiles that you have online. This is how you can network and build a professional portfolio for yourself with information about your skills and what you want people to know about you. The purpose of creating a digital identity online is to create a reputation for yourself in the business world on a large scale and to stay connected with your network. You can also build your network by finding new people that are relevant to what you are trying to do or companies you are trying to connect with. To manage this identity, you must make a personal brand for yourself by promoting things like your skills, interests, projects you have done, previous work, etc. Cleaning up and making social media accounts can be a good place to start managing your identity.

ERD stands for Entity Relationship Diagram. What this diagram is used for is finding connection between data. ERD’s are visual representations of entities and how they are related. The three main things to know about ERD models, first is the entities which are nouns and are the data, people, buildings, orders, etc. Secondly, the attributes that are adjectives that describe or are involved in the entities. And lastly, the relationship or verbs that are used to connect the entities to one another, for example “created by”, “provides”, “contains”, etc. There are two notations for ERD models: Chen’s database notation or Crows Foot database notation. These ERD’s can be extremely useful in business to understand how things are connecting within the business and the most important entities that are in a database of a business. The goal of these diagrams are to show what logically is happening in the database.

When I first heard of the phrase “digital identity” I understood it as only being how you market yourself online. I thought of it as how you portray yourself on social media and how well kempt your LinkedIn page is. After doing some research, I learned that your digital identity is more than that. In the real world proving your identity is straightforward. If you want to make a withdrawal from your bank all you have to do is present them with your ID and bank card. This process is far more complicated in the digital world. This same bank now has to identify who you are without actually seeing you. Digital Identity is all of the available information that makes up a person on the internet. Two groups make up your DI: digital attributes and digital activities. DA’s is personal information accessible to private, public, and government entities. DA are online activities that identify your behavioral patterns. Examples of DI: medical history, birthday, SSN. Examples of DA: search history, shares on social media, purchase history.

An Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) is a type of structural diagram used in database design. An ERD contains entities, attributes, and relationships. The definition of an ERD entity is a definable thing or concept within a system.

This entity can be a person (teacher), object (invoice), concept (profile, or event (transaction). In ER models an entity is shown as a rounded rectangle with the title at top and its attributes listed in the body. 

An entity attribute is a property or characteristic of the entity that holds it. An attribute has a name that describes the property and a type that describes the type of attribute. An example of attributes below an entity is show below.

A relationship between two entities indicates that the two entities are associated with one another. For example, a customer may order a product. The entity customer is therefore related to the product. This relationship is presented as a connector between them. 

We are learning about salesforce in this course, because it is one of the most used pieces of software by companies globally. It helps connect companies and employees to gain new business and new partners in their respected fields. This course also allows us to put that we have salesforce experience on our resumes, which is huge in the eyes of employers.

Swim lanes are a useful resource when it comes to explaining a process. Swim lane diagrams take you step by step through a process and identify who is making each action. Because of its effective visualization, swim lanes are helpful when clarifying complex processes, pointing out what actors have what jobs, and overall increasing the understanding of the process.

To best understand swim lanes, one must know what each symbol means. A circle represents the start or end of an event in the process, a rectangle respresents an activity, a diamond signifies a decision that is to be made, a cylinder represents stored data, and finally the arrows indicate the flow of the process.

MIS is an important tool that is used to help better understand and analyze processes to aid in overall better decision making. MIS is made up of three major components: people, process, and technology. Technology is everywhere in today’s society and almost everyone encounters some sort of system in their everyday life. Online shopping, paying bills electronically, and participating in online schooling are just a few examples of systems that have strategic processes that have been analyzed and reworked in order to be as efficient as possible.