ASSIGNMENT-01

Name : Himanshu Pataria

Registration No : 521160439

Learning Center : Aakashline Institute of Professional Studies

Learning Center Code : 03293

Course : MBA

Subject : Research Methodology

Semester : Third

Module No : MB0050

Date of submission : ________________________________________

Marks awarded : ________________________________________

Directorate of Distance EducationSikkim Manipal UniversityII Floor, Syndicate House

Manipal – 576 104

_____________________ _________________ __________________

Signature of Coordinator Signature of Center Signature of Evaluator

Master of Business Administration - MBA Semester IIIMB0050- Research Methodology - 4 Credits

Assignment - Set- 1 (60 Marks)Answer all the questions.

Q1. Define Research. What are the features and types of Research? Answer Research simply means a search for facts – answers to questions and solutions to problems. It is a purposive investigation. It is an organized inquiry. It seeks to find explanations to unexplained phenomenon to clarify the doubtful facts and to correct the misconceived facts.Features

1. It is a systematic and critical investigation into a phenomenon. 2. It is a purposive investigation aiming at describing, interpreting and explaining a

phenomenon. 3. It adopts scientific method.4. It is objective and logical, applying possible test to validate the measuring tools and the

conclusions reached. 5. It is based upon observable experience or empirical evidence. 6. Research is directed towards finding answers to pertinent questions and solutions to

problems. 7. It emphasizes the development of generalization, principles or theories. 8. The purpose of research is not only to arrive at an answer but also to stand up the test of

criticism.

Types of Research - Although any typology of research is inevitably arbitrary, Research may be classified crudely according to its major intent or the methods. According to the intent, research may be classified as:

A. Pure Research - It is undertaken for the sake of knowledge without any intention to apply it in practice, e.g., Einstein’s theory of relativity, Newton’s contributions, Galileo’s contribution, etc. It is also known as basic or fundamental research. It is undertaken out of intellectual curiosity or inquisitiveness. It is not necessarily problem-oriented. It aims at extension of knowledge. It may lead to either discovery of a new theory or refinement of an existing theory. It lays foundation for applied research. It offers solutions to many practical problems. It helps to find the critical factors in a practical problem. It develops many alternative solutions and thus enables us to choose the best solution.

B. Applied Research - It is carried on to find solution to a real-life problem requiring an action or policy decision. It is thus problem-oriented and action-directed. It seeks an immediate and practical result, e.g., marketing research carried on for developing a new market or for studying the post-purchase experience of customers. Though the immediate purpose of an applied research is to find solutions to a practical problem, it may incidentally contribute to the development of theoretical knowledge by leading to the discovery of new facts or testing of theory or o conceptual clarity. It can put theory to the test. It may aid in conceptual clarification. It may integrate previously existing theories.

C. Exploratory Research - It is also known as formulative research. It is preliminary study of an unfamiliar problem about which the researcher has little or no knowledge. It is ill-structured and much less focused on pre-determined objectives. It usually takes the form of

a pilot study. The purpose of this research may be to generate new ideas, or to increase the researcher’s familiarity with the problem or to make a precise formulation of the problem or to gather information for clarifying concepts or to determine whether it is feasible to attempt the study. Katz conceptualizes two levels of exploratory studies. “At the first level is the discovery of the significant variable in the situations; at the second, the discovery of relationships between variables.”

D. Descriptive Study - It is a fact-finding investigation with adequate interpretation. It is the simplest type of research. It is more specific than an exploratory research. It aims at identifying the various characteristics of a community or institution or problem under study and also aims at a classification of the range of elements comprising the subject matter of study. It contributes to the development of a young science and useful in verifying focal concepts through empirical observation. It can highlight important methodological aspects of data collection and interpretation. The information obtained may be useful for prediction about areas of social life outside the boundaries of the research. They are valuable in providing facts needed for planning social action program.

E. Diagnostic Study - It is similar to descriptive study but with a different focus. It is directed towards discovering what is happening, why it is happening and what can be done about. It aims at identifying the causes of a problem and the possible solutions for it. It may also be concerned with discovering and testing whether certain variables are associated. This type of research requires prior knowledge of the problem, its thorough formulation, clear-cut definition of the given population, adequate methods for collecting accurate information, precise measurement of variables, statistical analysis and test of significance.

F. Evaluation Studies - It is a type of applied research. It is made for assessing the effectiveness of social or economic programmes implemented or for assessing the impact of developmental projects on the development of the project area. It is thus directed to assess or appraise the quality and quantity of an activity and its performance, and to specify its attributes and conditions required for its success. It is concerned with causal relationships and is more actively guided by hypothesis. It is concerned also with change over time.

G. Action Research - It is a type of evaluation study. It is a concurrent evaluation study of an action programme launched for solving a problem for improving an exiting situation. It includes six major steps: diagnosis, sharing of diagnostic information, planning, developing change programme, initiation of organizational change, implementation of participation and communication process, and post experimental evaluation.

Q2. How is a research problem formulated? What are the sources from which one may be able to identify research problems? Answer

The selection of one appropriate researchable problem out of the identified problems requires evaluation of those alternatives against certain criteria, which may be grouped into:

A. Internal Source -1. Researcher’s interest: - The problem should interest the researcher and be a challenge

to him. Without interest and curiosity, he may not develop sustained perseverance. Even a small difficulty may become an excuse for discontinuing the study. Interest in a

problem depends upon the researcher’s educational background, experience, outlook and sensitivity.

2. Researcher’s competence: - A mere interest in a problem will not do. The researcher must be competent to plan and carry out a study of the problem. He must have the ability to grasp and deal with int. he must possess adequate knowledge of the subject-matter, relevant methodology and statistical procedures.

3. Researcher’s own resource: - In the case of a research to be done by a researcher on his won, consideration of his own financial resource is pertinent. If it is beyond his means, he will not be able to complete the work, unless he gets some external financial support. Time resource is more important than finance. Research is a time-consuming process; hence it should be properly utilized.

B. External Source –1. Research-ability of the problem:- The problem should be researchable, i.e.,

amendable for finding answers to the questions involved in it through scientific method. To be researchable a question must be one for which observation or other data collection in the real world can provide the answer.

2. Importance and urgency:-Problems requiring investigation are unlimited, but available research efforts are very much limited. Therefore, in selecting problems for research, their relative importance and significance should be considered. An important and urgent problem should be given priority over an unimportant one.

3. Novelty of the problem:- The problem must have novelty. There is no use of wasting one’s time and energy on a problem already studied thoroughly by others. This does not mean that replication is always needless. In social sciences in some cases, it is appropriate to replicate (repeat) a study in order to verify the validity of its findings to a different situation.

4. Feasibility:-A problem may be a new one and also important, but if research on it is not feasible, it cannot be selected. Hence feasibility is a very important consideration

5. Facilities:- Research requires certain facilities such as well-equipped library facility, suitable and competent guidance, data analysis facility, etc. Hence the availability of the facilities relevant to the problem must be considered.

6. Usefulness and social relevance:-Above all, the study of the problem should make significant contribution to the concerned body of knowledge or to the solution of some significant practical problem. It should be socially relevant. This consideration is particularly important in the case of higher level academic research and sponsored research.

7. Research personnel:- Research undertaken by professors and by research organizations require the services of investigators and research officers. But in India and other developing countries, research has not yet become a prospective profession. Hence talent persons are not attracted to research projects.

Each identified problem must be evaluated in terms of the above internal and external criteria and the most appropriate one may be selected by a research scholar.The sources from which one may be able to identify research problems or develop problems awareness are: Review of literature

Academic experience Daily experience Exposure to field situations Consultations

Brain storming Research Intuition

Q3. What are the types of Observations? What is the utility of Observation in Business Research?AnswerObservations may be classified in different ways. With reference to investigator’s role, it may be classified into (a) participant observation and (b) non-participant observation. In terms of mode of observation, it may be classified into (c) direct observation. With reference to the rigor of the system adopted. Observation is classified into (e) controlled observation, and (f) uncontrolled observation Participant Observation - In this observation, the observer is a part of the phenomenon or group which is observed and he acts as both an observer and a participant. For example, a study of tribal customs by an anthropologist by taking part in tribal activities like folk dance. The persons who are observed should not be aware of the researcher’s purpose. Then only their behaviour will be ‘natural’. The concealment of research objective and researcher’s identity is justified on the ground that it makes it possible to study certain aspects of the group’s culture which are not revealed to outsiders. Advantages: -The advantages of participant observation are:

1. The observer can understand the emotional reactions of the observed group, and get a deeper insight of their experiences.

2. The observer will be able to record context which gives meaning to the observed behaviour and heard statements.

Disadvantages: Participant observation suffers from some demerits.

1. The participant observer narrows his range of observation. For example, if there is a hierarchy of power in the group/community under study, he comes to occupy one position within in, and thus other avenues of information are closed to him.

2. To the extent that the participant observer participates emotionally, the objectivity is lost.

3. Another limitation of this method is the dual demand made on the observer. Recording can interfere with participation, and participation can interfere with observation. Recording on the spot is not possible and it has to be postponed until the observer is alone. Such time lag results in some inaccuracy in recording

Non-participant observations -In this method, the observer stands apart and does not participate in the phenomenon observed. Naturally, there is no emotional involvement on the part of the observer. This method calls for skill in recording observations in an unnoticed manner. Direct observation -This means observation of an event personally by the observer when it takes place. This method is flexible and allows the observer to see and record subtle aspects of events and behaviour as they occur. He is also free to shift places, change the focus of the observation. A limitation of this method is that the observer’s perception circuit may not be able to cover all relevant events when the latter move quickly, resulting in the incompleteness of the observation. Indirect observation -This does not involve the physical presence of the observer, and the recording is done by mechanical, photographic or electronic devices, e.g. recording customer and employee movements by a special motion picture camera mounted in a department of a large store. This method is less flexible than direct observations, but it is less biasing and less

erratic in recording accuracy. It is also provides a permanent record for an analysis of different aspects of the event. Controlled observation - This involves standardization of observational techniques and exercises of maximum control over extrinsic and intrinsic variables by adopting experimental design and systematically recording observations. Controlled observation is carried out either in the laboratory or in the field. It is typified by clear and explicit decisions on what, how and when to observe. Uncontrolled observation This does not involve control over extrinsic and intrinsic variables. It is primary used for descriptive research. Participant observation is a typical uncontrolled one Observation is suitable for a variety of research purposes. It may be used for studying

(a) The behaviour of human beings in purchasing goods and services. :-life style, customs, and manner, interpersonal relations, group dynamics, crowd behaviour, leadership styles, managerial style, other behaviours and actions;

(b) The behaviour of other living creatures like birds, animals etc.

(c) Physical characteristics of inanimate things like stores, factories, residences etc.

(d) Flow of traffic and parking problems

(e) Movement of materials and products through a plant.

Q4. What is Research Design? What are the different types of Research Designs?

Answer

The research designer understandably cannot hold all his decisions in his head. Even if he could, he would have difficulty in understanding how these are inter-related. Therefore, he records his decisions on paper or record disc by using relevant symbols or concepts. Such a symbolic construction may be called the research design or model. A research design is a logical and systematic plan prepared for directing a research study. It specifies the objectives of the study, the methodology and techniques to be adopted for achieving the objectives. It constitutes the blue print for the collection, measurement and analysis of data. It is the plan, structure and strategy of investigation conceived so as to obtain answers to research questions. The plan is the overall scheme or program of research. A research design is the program that guides the investigator in the process of collecting, analyzing and interpreting observations. It provides a systematic plan of procedure for the researcher to follow elltiz, Jahoda and Destsch and Cook describe, “A research design is the arrangement of conditions for collection and analysis of data in a manner that aims to combine relevance to the research purpose with economy in procedure.”

The different types of Research Designs are:--There are a number of crucial research choices, various writers advance different classification schemes, some of which are:

1. Experimental, historical and inferential designs (American Marketing Association).

2. Exploratory, descriptive and causal designs (Selltiz, Jahoda, Deutsch and Cook).

3. Experimental, and expost fact (Kerlinger)

4. Historical method, and case and clinical studies (Goode and Scates)

5. Sample surveys, field studies, experiments in field settings, and laboratory experiments (Festinger and Katz)

6. Exploratory, descriptive and experimental studies (Body and Westfall)

7. Exploratory, descriptive and casual (Green and Tull)

8. Experimental, „quasi-experimental designs‟ (Nachmias and Nachmias)

9. True experimental, quasi-experimental and non-experimental designs (Smith).

10. Experimental, pre-experimental, quasi-experimental designs and Survey Research (Kidder and Judd).

These different categorizations exist, because „research design‟ is a complex concept. In fact, there are different perspectives from which any given study can be viewed. They are:

a. The degree of formulation of the problem (the study may be exploratory or formalized)b. The topical scope-breadth and depth-of the study(a case or a statistical study)c. The research environment: field setting or laboratory (survey, laboratory experiment)d. The time dimension(one-time or longitudinal)e. The mode of data collection (observational or survey)f. The manipulation of the variables under study (experimental or expost facto)g. The nature of the relationship among variables (descriptive or causal)

Q5. Explain the Sampling Process and briefly describe the methods of Sampling. AnswerDecision process of sampling is complicated one. The researcher has to first identify the limiting factor or factors and must judiciously balance the conflicting factors. The various criteria governing the choice of the sampling technique:

1. Purpose of the Survey: What does the researcher aim at? If he intends to generalize the findings based on the sample survey to the population, then an appropriate probability sampling method must be selected. The choice of a particular type of probability sampling depends on the geographical area of the survey and the size and the nature of the population under study.

2. Measurability: The application of statistical inference theory requires computation of the sampling error from the sample itself. Probability samples only allow such computation. Hence, where the research objective requires statistical inference, the sample should be drawn by applying simple random sampling method or stratified random sampling method, depending on whether the population is homogenous or heterogeneous.

3. Degree of Precision: Should the results of the survey be very precise, or even rough results could serve the purpose? The desired level of precision as one of the criteria of sampling method selection. Where a high degree of precision of results is desired, probability sampling should be used. Where even crude results would serve the purpose (E.g., marketing surveys, readership surveys etc) any convenient non-random sampling like quota sampling would be enough.

4. Information about Population: How much information is available about the population to be studied? Where no list of population and no information about its nature are available, it is difficult to apply a probability sampling method. Then exploratory study with non-probability sampling may be made to gain a better idea of population. After gaining sufficient knowledge about the population through the exploratory study, appropriate probability sampling design may be adopted.

5. The Nature of the Population: In terms of the variables to be studied, is the population homogenous or heterogeneous? In the case of a homogenous population, even a simple random sampling will give a representative sample. If the population is heterogeneous, stratified random sampling is appropriate.

6. Geographical Area of the Study and the Size of the Population: If the area covered by a survey is very large and the size of the population is quite large, multi-stage cluster sampling would be appropriate. But if the area and the size of the population are small, single stage probability sampling methods could be used.

7. Financial resources: If the available finance is limited, it may become necessary to choose a less costly sampling plan like multistage cluster sampling or even quota sampling as a compromise. However, if the objectives of the study and the desired level of precision cannot be attained within the stipulated budget, there is no alternative than to give up the proposed survey. Where the finance is not a constraint, a researcher can choose the most appropriate method of sampling that fits the research objective and the nature of population.

8. Time Limitation: The time limit within which the research project should be completed restricts the choice of a sampling method. Then, as a compromise, it may become necessary to choose less time consuming methods like simple random sampling instead of stratified sampling/sampling with probability proportional to size; multi-stage cluster sampling instead of single-stage sampling of elements. Of course, the precision has to be sacrificed to some extent.

9. Economy: It should be another criterion in choosing the sampling method. It means achieving the desired level of precision at minimum cost. A sample is economical if the precision per unit cost is high or the cost per unit of variance is low.

The above criteria frequently conflict and the researcher must balance and blend them to obtain to obtain a good sampling plan. The chosen plan thus represents an adaptation of the sampling theory to the available facilities and resources. That is, it represents a compromise between idealism and feasibility. One should use simple workable methods instead of unduly elaborate and complicated techniques

Sampling techniques or methods may be classified into two generic types:

Probability or Random SamplingProbability sampling is based on the theory of probability. It is also known as random sampling. It provides a known nonzero chance of selection for each population element. It is used when generalization is the objective of study, and a greater degree of accuracy of estimation of population parameters is required. The cost and time required is high hence the benefit derived from it should justify the costs.

The following are the types of probability sampling:

I. Simple Random Sampling: This sampling technique gives each element an equal and independent chance of being selected. An equal chance means equal probability of selection. An independent chance means that the draw of one element will not affect the chances of other elements being selected. The procedure of drawing a simple random sample consists of enumeration of all elements in the population.

a. Preparation of a List of all elements, giving them numbers in serial order 1, 2, B, and so on, and

b. Drawing sample numbers by using (i) lottery method, (ii) a table of random numbers or (iii) a computer.

Suitability: This type of sampling is suited for a small homogeneous population. Advantages: The advantage of this is that it is one of the easiest methods, all the elements in the population have an equal chance of being selected, simple to understand, does not require prior knowledge of the true composition of the population. Disadvantages: It is often impractical because of non-availability of population list or of difficulty in enumerating the population, does not ensure proportionate representation and it may be expensive in time and money. The amount of sampling error associated with any sample drawn can easily be computed. But it is greater than that in other probability samples of the same size, because it is less precise than other methods.

II. Stratified Random Sampling: This is an improved type of random or probability sampling. In this method, the population is sub-divided into homogenous groups or strata, and from each stratum, random sample is drawn. E.g., university students may be divided on the basis of discipline, and each discipline group may again be divided into juniors and seniors. Stratification is necessary for increasing a sample’s statistical efficiency, providing adequate data for analyzing the various sub-populations and applying different methods to different strata. The stratified random sampling is appropriate for a large heterogeneous population. Stratification process involves three major decisions. They are stratification base or bases, number of strata and strata sample sizes.

Stratified random sampling may be classified into:

a) Proportionate stratified sampling: This sampling involves drawing a sample from each stratum in proportion to the latter’s share in the total population. It gives proper representation to each stratum and its statistical efficiency is generally higher. This method is therefore very popular. E.g., if the Management Faculty of a University consists of the following specialization groups:

Specialization stream

No. of students Proportion of each stream

Production Finance Marketing Rural development

40 20 30 10

0.4 0.2 0.3 0.1

100 1.0

The research wants to draw an overall sample of 30. Then the strata sample sizes would be:

Strata Sample size Production Finance Marketing Rural development

30 x 0.4 30 x 0.2 30 x 0.3 30 x 0.1

12 6 9 3

30

Advantages: Stratified random sampling enhances the representativeness to each sample, gives higher statistical efficiency, easy to carry out, and gives a self-weighing sample. Disadvantages: A prior knowledge of the composition of the population and the distribution of the population, it is very expensive in time and money and identification of the strata may lead to classification of errors.

b) Disproportionate stratified random sampling: This method does not give proportionate representation to strata. It necessarily involves giving over-representation to some strata and under-representation to others. The desirability of disproportionate sampling is usually determined by three factors, viz, (a) the sizes of strata, (b) internal variances among strata, and (c) sampling costs.

Suitability: This method is used when the population contains some small but important subgroups, when certain groups are quite heterogeneous, while others are homogeneous and when it is expected that there will be appreciable differences in the response rates of the subgroups in the population.

Advantages: The advantages of this type is it is less time consuming and facilitates giving appropriate weighing to particular groups which are small but more important.

Disadvantages: The disadvantage is that it does not give each stratum proportionate representation, requires prior knowledge of composition of the population, is subject to classification errors and its practical feasibility is doubtful.

iii) Systematic Random Sampling: This method of sampling is an alternative to random selection. It consists of taking kth item in the population after a random start with an item form 1 to k. It is also known as fixed interval method. E.g., 1st, 11th, 21st ……… Strictly speaking, this method of sampling is not a probability sampling. It possesses characteristics of randomness and some non-probability traits.

Suitability: Systematic selection can be applied to various populations such as students in a class, houses in a street, telephone directory etc.

Advantages: The advantages are it is simpler than random sampling, easy to use, easy to instruct, requires less time, it’s cheaper, easier to check, sample is spread evenly over the population, and it is statistically more efficient.

Disadvantages: The disadvantages are it ignores all elements between two kth elements selected, each element does not have equal chance of being selected, and this method sometimes gives a biased sample. Cluster Sampling It means random selection of sampling units consisting of population elements. Each such sampling unit is a cluster of population elements. Then from each selected sampling unit, a sample of population elements is drawn by either simple random selection or stratified random selection. Where the element is not readily available, the use of simple or stratified random sampling method would be too expensive and time-consuming. In such cases cluster sampling is usually adopted. The cluster sampling process involves: identify clusters, examine the nature of clusters, and determine the number of stages. Suitability: The application of cluster sampling is extensive in farm management surveys, socio-economic surveys, rural credit surveys, demographic studies, ecological studies, public opinion polls, and large scale surveys of political and social behavior, attitude surveys and so on. Advantages: The advantages of this method is it is easier and more convenient, cost of this is much less, promotes the convenience of field work as it could be done in compact places, it does not require more time, units of study can be readily substituted for other units and it is more flexible. Disadvantages: The cluster sizes may vary and this variation could increase the bias of the resulting sample. The sampling error in this method of sampling is greater and the adjacent units of study tend to have more similar characteristics than do units distantly apart.

Area sampling This is an important form of cluster sampling. In larger field surveys cluster consisting of specific geographical areas like districts, talluks, villages or blocks in a city are randomly drawn. As the geographical areas are selected as sampling units in such cases, their sampling is called area sampling. It is not a separate method of sampling, but forms part of cluster sampling.

Multi-stage and sub-sampling In multi-stage sampling method, sampling is carried out in two or more stages. The population is regarded as being composed of a number of second stage units and so forth. That is, at each stage, a sampling unit is a cluster of the sampling units of the subsequent stage. First, a sample of the first stage sampling units is drawn, then from each of the selected first stage sampling unit, a sample of the second stage sampling units is drawn. The procedure continues down to the final sampling units or population elements. Appropriate random sampling method is adopted at each stage. It is appropriate where the population survey has to be made within a limited time and cost budget. The major disadvantage is that the procedure of estimating sampling error and cost advantage is complicated. Sub-sampling is a part of multi-stage sampling process. In a multi-stage sampling, the sampling in second and subsequent stage frames is called sub-sampling. Sub-sampling balances the two conflicting effects of clustering i.e., cost and sampling errors.

Random Sampling with Probability Proportional to Size The procedure of selecting clusters with probability Proportional to size (PPS) is widely used. If one primary cluster has twice as large a population as another, it is give twice the chance of being selected. If the same number of persons is then selected from each of the selected clusters, the overall probability of any person will be the same. Thus PPS is a better method for securing a representative sample of population elements in multi-stage cluster sampling. Advantages: The advantages are clusters of various sizes get proportionate representation, PPS leads to greater precision than would a simple random sample of clusters and a constant

sampling fraction at the second stage, equal-sized samples from each selected primary cluster are convenient for field work. Disadvantages: PPS cannot be used if the sizes of the primary sampling clusters are not known.

Double Sampling and Multiphase Sampling Double sampling refers to the subsection of the final sample form a pre-selected larger sample that provided information for improving the final selection. When the procedure is extended to more than two phases of selection, it is then, called multi-phase sampling. This is also known as sequential sampling, as sub-sampling is done from a main sample in phases. Double sampling or multiphase sampling is a compromise solution for a dilemma posed by undesirable extremes. “The statistics based on the sample of ‘n’ can be improved by using ancillary information from a wide base: but this is too costly to obtain from the entire population of N elements. Instead, information is obtained from a larger preliminary sample nL which includes the final sample n.

Replicated or Interpenetrating Sampling It involves selection of a certain number of sub-samples rather than one full sample from a population. All the sub-samples should be drawn using the same sampling technique and each is a self-contained and adequate sample of the population. Replicated sampling can be used with any basic sampling technique: simple or stratified, single or multi-stage or single or multiphase sampling. It provides a simple means of calculating the sampling error. It is practical. The replicated samples can throw light on variable non-sampling errors. But disadvantage is that it limits the amount of stratification that can be employed.

Non-probability or Non Random Sampling Non-probability sampling or non-random sampling is not based on the theory of probability. This sampling does not provide a chance of selection to each population element. Advantages: The only merits of this type of sampling are simplicity, convenience and low cost. Disadvantages: The demerits are it does not ensure a selection chance to each population unit. The selection probability sample may not be a representative one. The selection probability is unknown. It suffers from sampling bias which will distort results.

The reasons for usage of this sampling are when there is no other feasible alternative due to non-availability of a list of population, when the study does not aim at generalizing the findings to the population, when the costs required for probability sampling may be too large, when probability sampling required more time, but the time constraints and the time limit for completing the study do not permit it. It may be classified into:

Convenience or Accidental Sampling It means selecting sample units in a just ‘hit and miss’ fashion E.g., interviewing people whom we happen to meet. This sampling also means selecting whatever sampling units are conveniently available, e.g., a teacher may select students in his class. This method is also known as accidental sampling because the respondents whom the researcher meets accidentally are included in the sample. Suitability: Though this type of sampling has no status, it may be used for simple purposes such as testing ideas or gaining ideas or rough impression about a subject of interest. Advantage: It is the cheapest and simplest, it does not require a list of population and it does not require any statistical expertise. Disadvantage: The disadvantage is that it is highly biased because of researcher’s subjectivity, it is the least reliable sampling method and the findings cannot be generalized.

Purposive (or judgment) sampling This method means deliberate selection of sample units that conform to some pre-determined criteria. This is also known as judgment sampling. This involves selection of cases which we judge as the most appropriate ones for the given study. It is based on the judgement of the researcher or some expert. It does not aim at securing a cross section of a population. The chance that a particular case be selected for the sample depends on the subjective judgement of the researcher. Suitability: This is used when what is important is the typicality and specific relevance of the sampling units to the study and not their overall representativeness to the population. Advantage: It is less costly and more convenient and guarantees inclusion of relevant elements in the sample. Disadvantage: It is less efficient for generalizing, does not ensure the representativeness, requires more prior extensive information and does not lend itself for using inferential statistics.

Quota sampling This is a form of convenient sampling involving selection of quota groups of accessible sampling units by traits such as sex, age, social class, etc. it is a method of stratified sampling in which the selection within strata is non-random. It is this Non-random element that constitutes its greatest weakness.

Suitability: It is used in studies like marketing surveys, opinion polls, and readership surveys which do not aim at precision, but to get quickly some crude results. Advantage: It is less costly, takes less time, non need for a list of population, and field work can easily be organized.Disadvantage: It is impossible to estimate sampling error, strict control if field work is difficult, and subject to a higher degree of classification.

Snow-ball samplingThis is the colourful name for a technique of Building up a list or a sample of a special population by using an initial set of its members as informants. This sampling technique may also be used in socio-metric studies.Suitability: It is very useful in studying social groups, informal groups in a formal organization, and diffusion of information among professional of various kinds.Advantage: It is useful for smaller populations for which no frames are readily available.Disadvantage: The disadvantage is that it does not allow the use of probability statistical methods. It is difficult to apply when the population is large. It does not ensure the inclusion of all the elements in the list.

Q6. What is a Research Report? What are the contents of Research Report?Answer Research report is a means for communicating research experience to others. A research report is a formal statement of the research process and it results. It narrates the problem studied, methods used for studying it and the findings and conclusions of the study.Contents of the Research Report The outline of a research report is given below: I. Prefatory Items

Title page

Declaration

Certificates

Preface/acknowledgements

Table of contents

List of tables

List of graphs/figures/charts

Abstract or synopsis II. Body of the Report

Introduction

Theoretical background of the topic

Statement of the problem

Review of literature

The scope of the study

The objectives of the study

Hypothesis to be tested

Definition of the concepts

Models if any

Design of the study

Methodology

Method of data collection Sources of data Sampling plan Data collection instruments Field work Data processing and analysis plan Overview of the report Limitation of the study Results: findings and discussions Summary, conclusions and recommendations

III. Reference Material

Bibliography Appendix Copies of data collection instruments Technical details on sampling plan Complex tables Glossary of new terms used.

ASSIGNMENT-01

Name : Himanshu Pataria

Registration No : 521160439

Learning Center : Aakashline Institute of Professional Studies

Learning Center Code : 03293

Course : MBA

Subject : Legal Aspects of Business

Semester : Third

Module No : MB0051

Date of submission : ________________________________________

Marks awarded : ________________________________________

Directorate of Distance EducationSikkim Manipal UniversityII Floor, Syndicate House

Manipal – 576 104

_____________________ _________________ __________________

Signature of Coordinator Signature of Center Signature of Evaluator

Master of Business Administration - MBA Semester IIIMB0051- Legal Aspects of Business - 4 Credits

Assignment - Set- 1 (60 Marks)Answer all the questions.

Question 1-Discuss the nature and significance of business law?

Answer

Nature and Significance of Business Law-Business law consists of many different areas typically taught in law school curricula, including: Contracts, the law of Corporations and other Business Organizations, Securities Law, Intellectual Property, Antitrust, Secured Transactions, Commercial Paper, Income Tax, Pensions & Benefits, Trusts & Estates, Immigration Law, Labor Law, Employment Law and Bankruptcy. It is a branch of law that examines topics that impact the operation of a business.

Business Law may be defined as that branch of law which prescribes a set of rules for the governance of certain transactions and relations between: (i) business persons themselves, (ii) business persons and their customers, dealers, suppliers, etc., and (iii) business persons and the state. In the context of Indian business some of these transactions and relations concern the following:

Regulation of restrictive and unfair business practices, Foreign exchange management and regulation, Insolvency of business persons, Promotion of conciliation, and arbitration for settlement of business disputes, Regulation of companies incorporated under the Companies Act, 1956, Negotiable instruments, Patents, trademarks and copyrights, Actionable claims, factoring and forfeiting, Import and export regulation, Contracts, sale of goods, guarantee, indemnity, bailment, pledge, charge, mortgage,

partnerships, insurance, carriage of goods, Prevention of food adulteration, regulation of essential commodities, Regulation of stock exchange and financial securities, Regulation and development of industries, Economic offences, Conservation of foreign exchange and prevention of smuggling activities, Regulation of foreign contributions, foreign capital, Excise, import and export duties, tax on income, wealth, etc.

Question 2-Define contract of indemnity. Describe the rights of the indemnifier and the indemnity holder. AnswerContract of Indemnity Meaning of indemnity Secs.124 and 125 provide for a contract of indemnity. Sec.124 provides that a contract of indemnity is a contract whereby one party promises to save the other from loss caused to him (the promisee) by the conduct of the promisor himself or by the conduct of any other person. A

contract of insurance is a glaring example of such type of contracts. A contract of indemnity may arise either by (i) an express promise or (ii) operation of law, e.g., the duty of a principal to indemnify an agent from consequences of all lawful acts done by him as an agent. The contract of indemnity, like any other contract, must have all the essentials of a valid contract. These are two parties in a contraction of identity indemnifier and indemnified. The indemnifier promises to make good the loss of the indemnified (i.e., the promisee).Rights of the indemnifier The Act makes no mention of the rights of indemnifier. However, his rights, in such cases, are similar to the rights of a surety under Sec.141, viz., he becomes entitled to the benefit of all the securities which the creditor has against the principal debtor whether he was aware of them or not.Rights of the indemnified (i.e., the indemnity holder) He is entitled to recover from the promisor: (i) All damages which he may be compelled to pay in any suit in respect of any matter to which the promise to indemnify applies; (ii) All costs of suit which he may have to pay to such third party, provided in bringing or defending the suit (a) he acted under the authority of the indemnifier or (b) if he did not act in contravention of orders of the indemnifier and in such a way as a prudent man would act in his own case; (iii) All sums which may have been paid under the terms of any compromise of any such suit, if the compromise was not contrary to the orders of the indemnifier and was one which it would have been prudent for the promisee to make.

Question 3-What is Partnership? Briefly state special features of a partnership on the basis of which its existence can be determined under the Indian Partnership Act?

Answer

A partnership is defined as “the relationship between persons who have agreed to share profits

of a business carried on by all, or by any of them acting for all”. On analysis of the definition,

certain essential elements of partnership emerge. These elements must be present so as to

form a partnership and are discussed below.

1. Partnership is an association of two or more than two persons. There must be at least

two persons who should join together to constitute a partnership, because one person cannot

become a partner with himself. These persons must be natural persons having legal capacity to

contract. Thus, a company (which is an artificial person) cannot be a partner. Similarly, a

partnership firm cannot be a partner of another partnership firm. As regards maximum number

of partners in a partnership firm, Sec.11 of the Companies Act, 1956, puts the limit at 10 in case

of banking business and 20 in case of any other business.

2. Partnership must be the result of an agreement between two or more persons.

An agreement presupposes a minimum number of two persons. As mentioned above, a

partnership to arise, at least two persons must make an agreement. Partnership is the result of

an agreement between two or more persons (who are known as partners after the partnership

comes into existence).

3. The agreement must be to carry on some business. The term ‘business’ includes every

trade, occupation or profession [Sec.2(b)]. Though the word ‘business’ generally conveys the

idea of numerous transactions, a person may become a partner with another even in a

particular adventure or undertaking (Sec.8). Unless the person joins for the purpose of carrying

on a business, it will not amount to partnership.

4. The agreement must be to share profits of the business. The joint carrying on of a

business alone is not enough; there must be an agreement to share profits arising from the

business. Unless otherwise so agreed, sharing of profits also involves sharing of losses. But

whereas the sharing of profits is an essential element of partnership, sharing of losses is not.

Formation of partnerships

All the essential elements of a valid contract must be present in a partnership as it is based on

an agreement. Therefore, while constituting a partnership. The following points must be kept in

mind:

1. The Act provides that a minor may be admitted to be benefits of partnership.

2. No consideration is required to create partnership. A partnership is an extension of agency for

which no consideration is necessary.

3. The partnership agreement may be express (i.e., oral or writing) or implied and the latter may

be inferred from the conduct or the course of dealings of the parties or from the circumstances

of the case. However, it is always advisable to have the partnership agreement in writing.

4. An alien friend can enter into partnership, an alien enemy cannot.

5. A person of unsound mind is not competent to enter into a partnership.

6. A company, incorporated under the Companies Act, 1956 can enter into a contract of

partnership.

Duration of partnership

The duration of partnership may or may not be fixed. It may be constituted even for a particular

adventure.

Partnership at will

In accordance with Sec.7, a partnership is called a partnership at will where; (i) it is not

constituted for a fixed period of time and (ii) there is no provision made as to the determination

of partnership in any other way. Therefore such a partnership has no fixed or definite date of

termination. Accordingly death or retirement of a partner does not affect the continuance of such

a partnership.

Particular partnership

In accordance with Sec.8 a particular partnership is one which is formed for a particular

adventure or a particular undertaking. Such a partnership is usually dissolved on the completion

of the adventure or undertaking.

Limited partnership

In this type of partnership, the liability of certain partners is limited to the amount of capital which

they have agreed to contribute to the business. In a limited partnership, there will be at least one

general partner whose liability is unlimited and one or more special partners whose liability is

limited.

Question 4-What remedies are available to a seller for breach of contract of sale? AnswerRemedies for Breach of a Contract In addition to the rights of a seller against goods provided in Secs.47 to 54, the seller has the following remedies against the buyer personally. (i) suit for price (Sec.55); (ii) damages for non-acceptance of goods (Sec.56); (iii) suit for interest (Sec.56). Suit for price (Sec.55) Where under a contract of sale the property in the goods has passed to the buyer and the buyer wrongfully neglects or refuses to pay the price, the seller can sue the buyer for the price of the goods. Where the property in goods has not passed to the buyer, as a rule, the seller cannot file a suit for the price; his only remedy is to claim damages. Example: A sold certain goods to B for Rs 5,000 and the price was agreed to be paid before the expiry of ten days of the contract. B fails to pay the price within the stipulated time. A can file a suit for price against B even though the goods have not been delivered or the property in goods has not been passed to B.Suit for damages for non-acceptance (Sec.56) Where the buyer wrongfully neglects or refuses to accept and pay for the goods, the seller may sue him for damages for non-acceptance. Where the property in the goods has not passed to

the buyer and the price was not payable without passing of property, the seller can only sue for damages and not for the price. The amount of damages is to be determined in accordance with the provisions laid down in Sec.73 of the Indian Contract Act, 1872. Thus, where there is an available market for the goods prima facie, the difference between the market price and the contract price can be recovered. Suit for interest (Sec.61) When under a contract of sale, the seller tenders the goods to the buyer and the buyer wrongfully refuses or neglects to accept and pay the price, the seller has a further right to claim interest on the amount of the price. In the absence of a contract to the contrary, the court may award interest at such rate as it thinks fit on the amount of the price. The interest may be calculated from the date of the tender of the goods or from the date on which the price was payable. It is obvious that the unpaid seller can claim interest only when he can recover the price, i.e., if the seller’s remedy is to claim damages only, then he cannot claim interest. Buyer’s remedies against seller The buyer has the following rights against the seller for breach of contract: (i) damages for non-delivery (Sec.57); (ii) right of recovery of the price; (iii) specific performance (Sec.58); (iv) suit for breach of condition; (v) suit for breach of warranty (Sec.59); (vi) anticipatory breach (Sec.60); (vii) recovery of interest (Sec.61).

Question 5-Examine the rights of a consumer enshrined under the Consumer Protection Act, 1986.Answer

The salient features of the Act are:

(I) it covers all the sectors whether private, public, and cooperative or any person. The

provisions of the Act are compensatory as well as preventive and punitive in nature and the Act

applies to all goods covered by sale of goods Act and services unless specifically exempted by

the Central Government;

(II) It enshrines the following rights of consumers:

(a) right to be protected against the marketing of goods and services which are hazardous to life

and property; (b) right to be informed about the quality, quantity, potency, purity, standard and

price of goods or services so as to protect the consumers against unfair trade practices; (c) right

to be assured, wherever possible, access to a variety of goods and services at competitive

prices; (d) right to be heard and to be assured that consumers’ interests will receive due

consideration at the appropriate fora; (e) right to seek redressal against unfair trade practices or

unscrupulous exploitation of consumers; and (f) right to consumer education;

(III) The Act also envisages establishment of Consumer Protection Councils at the central, state

and district levels, whose main objectives are to promote and protect the rights of consumers;

(v) To provide a simple, speedy and inexpensive redressal of consumer grievances, the Act

envisages a three-tier quasi-judicial machinery at the national, state and district levels. These

are: National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission known as National Commission, State

Consumer Disputes Redressal Commissions known as State Commissions and District

Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum known as District Forum; and

(IV) the provisions of this Act are in addition to and not in derogation of the provisions of any

other law for the time being in force.

Definition of ‘Defect’ and ‘consumer’

Under the CPA, Consumer Forums at the District, State and National level have been

specifically constituted to adjudicate claims of consumers for any “defect” in goods. A “defect”

has been defined in Section 2(1) (f) of the Act as “any fault, imperfection or shortcoming in the

quality, quantity, potency, purity or standard which is required to maintained by or under any law

for the time being in force or under any contract, express or implied, or as is claimed by the

trader (which includes the manufacturer) in any manner whatsoever in relation to any goods.”

It is important to mention herein that by virtue of Section 2 (1)(d) persons/entities who had

purchased goods for ‘commercial purpose’ (other than those persons who have purchased

goods for using them to earn their livelihood by means of self employment) are excluded from

the scope of CPA; they cannot institute proceedings under the CPA even if there is any ‘defect’

in the goods purchased by them for using the goods for commercial purposes.

Purview of a ‘complaint’

According to the CPA, ‘Complaint’ means any of the following allegations made in writing by a

complainant-

i. any unfair trade practice or a restrictive trade practice has been adopted by a trader,

ii. the goods hired or bought suffer from one or more defects

iii. The goods hired or availed of are deficient in any respect

iv. A trader has charged price in excess of price fixed by law or displayed on the goods or any

package containing goods

v. Goods which will be hazardous to life and safety when used, are being offered for sale to the

public in contravention of the provisions of any law requiring traders to display information in

regard to the contents, manner and effect or use of such goods.

Grant of Reliefs under CPA

On arriving at a finding of defect in the goods according to Section 14 CPA, the jurisdictional

Consumer Forum may direct one or more of the following: (i) to remove the defect; (ii) to replace

the goods with new goods of similar description which shall be free from any defect; (iii) to

return to the complainant the price; (iv) to pay such amount as may be awarded as

compensation to the consumer for the loss or injury suffered by the consumer due to the

negligence of the opposite party; (v) to discontinue the unfair trade practice or the restrictive

trade practice or not to repeat them; (vi) to cease and desist manufacture of hazardous goods;

(vii) to pay such sums as orders if injury/loss is suffered by a large number of consumers not

identifiable conveniently; (viii) to issue corrective advertisement for neutralizing effect of

misleading advertisement; (ix) not to offer the hazardous goods for sale; (x) to withdraw the

hazardous goods from being offered for sale; (xi) to provide for adequate costs to parties (the

Complainant).

There exists no clear pronouncement of the Supreme Court (the apex court in India) till date on

whether the liability under the CPA is strict or fault based. However, failure to conform to the

standards required under any law, contract or representations of the trader are sufficient to

constitute a defect. Furthermore, under Section 14 of the CPA as explained hereinabove, it is

only the remedy of compensation that requires the claimant to necessarily prove negligence. In

the case of Abhaya Kumar Panda v. Bajaj Auto [(1991) 2 CPJ 644], the Orissa State

Commission directed repair of the goods, even though there was no intentional defect. Thus,

the defence of no negligence may not be accepted by Consumer forums.

Validity of Limitation of liability clauses

Contractual liability has a role to play in product liability claims under the CPA. Courts in India

have upheld limitation of liability clauses, which parties have specifically agreed to in the

contract as recognized by the Supreme Court in Bharathi Knitting Company v DHL Worldwide

Express Courier (1996) 4 SCC 704. However, such clauses may be struck down if found to be

unconscionable in nature. In Maruti Udyog v. Susheel Kumar Gabgotra, [(2006) 4 SCC 644], the

manufacturer of the vehicle had stipulated a warranty clause limiting its liability to merely repair

the defects found if any. In view of this clause, the Supreme Court reversed the findings of the

National Commission to replace the defective goods and held that the liability of the

manufacture was confined to repairing the defect. Compensation was, however, awarded for

travel charges to the complainant, which was incurred due to the fault of the car manufacturer.

Applicability of other laws

Section 3 of the CPA provides that the Act is in addition to and not in derogation of any other

law. The Supreme Court in Secretary, Thirumurugan Co-operative Agricultural Credit Society v.

M. Lalitha, [(2004) 1 SCC 305] has interpreted the above provision to mean that the remedies

provided under the CP Act are in addition to the remedies provided under other statutes. Hence,

the fact that a remedy is specifically provided for under another statute would not necessarily

oust the jurisdiction of the appropriate authority under the CP Act. It has been further held that if

forums under one statute and the CP Act are approached, then it is for the appropriate authority

to permit the parties to opt between the consumer forum and the other forum, depending on the

facts and circumstances of the case.

Establishment of Consumer forums

At present, there are 34 State Commissions, one in each State/UT and 571 district fora besides

the National Commission. The state governments are responsible to set up the district fora and

the State Commissions. States have been empowered to establish additional District Forum and

also additional members in the State Commission to facilitate constituting benches and also for

holding circuit benches. The Central Government is empowered to establish the National

Commission. It has been empowered to appoint additional members to facilitate creation of

more benches and holding of circuit benches. The second bench of the National Commission

started functioning from 24 September 2003. The government is monitoring the disposal of

cases by the consumer courts through National Commission. As per the current statistics, since

its inception and up to 5.9.2008 , 2559451 cases were filed out of which 2327035 cases were

disposed of by the District forums in various states of India .

Jurisdiction under Consumer Protection Act 1986

The District Forum has the jurisdiction to entertain complaints where the value of the goods or

services and the compensation , if any, claimed, is less than INR 50,000. A State Commission

has the jurisdiction to entertain complaints where the value of the goods or services and the

compensation , if any, claimed exceeds 500,000 rupees but does not exceed 2 million rupees. It

is also appellate forum for orders of the District forum. The National Commisssion has the

jurisdiction to entertain complaints where the value of goods and services and the compensation

exceeds two million rupees and also hears the appeals against the orders of the State

Commission.

Period of limitation

A complaint is only admitted by any of the competent forums under CPA if it is filed within two

years from the date on which the cause of action has arisen but it may be entertained after the

said period after recording its reasons for condoning such delay , if the complainant satisfies

that he had a sufficient cause for not filing the complaint within period of two years .

Procedure to file a complaint

A complaint can be filed in a District Forum or as per pecuniary jurisdiction in another forum

within local limits of whose jurisdiction the opposite party or any of the opposite parties resides

or carries on business, or has a branch office or personally works for gain.

Class actions

Under CPA Section 2 (1) (b) permits filing of a complaint by a consumer, any voluntary

consumer association registered under companies Act 1956 or under any other law, the State

government or Central Government, one or more consumers where number of consumers have

same interest, incase of death of a consumer , his legal representative may ,make a complaint.

Penalty under Section 27 CPA

According to CPA ,where a trader or the complainant fails to comply with an order made by the

relevant consumer forum , such person is liable to a punishment with imprisonment for a term

which is not less than one month but which may extend to three years or with fine of not less

than two thousand rupees but which may extend to ten thousand rupees or with both

Question 6-Write short notes on the following:

AnswerCopy right

The Indian Copyright Act, 1957 governs the system of copyrights in India. Copyright Law in

the country was governed by the Copyright Act of 1914, was essentially the extension of the

British Copyright Act, 1911 to India, and borrowed extensively from the new Copyright Act of the

United Kingdom of 1956. Now Indian Copyright is governed by the Indian Copyright Act, 1957.

The Indian Copyright Act today is compliant with most international conventions and treaties in the field of copyrights. India is a member of the Berne Convention of 1886 (as modified at Paris in 1971), the Universal Copyright Convention of 1951 and the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement of 1995.

Though India is not a member of the Rome Convention of 1961, WIPO Copyrights Treaty (WCT) and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty (WPPT),the Copyright Act is compliant with it.

Copyright

Copyright is a right given by the law to creators of literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works and producers of cinematograph films and sound recordings. In fact, it is a bundle of rights including, inter alia, rights of reproduction, communication to the public, adaptation and translation of the work. There could be slight variations in the composition of the rights depending on the work.

Indian work

"Indian work" means a literary, dramatic or musical work,

The author of which is a citizen of India; or Which is first published in India; or The author of which, in the case of an unpublished work is, at the time of the making of

the work, a citizen of India.

Descriptions of work

Artistic work - An artistic work means o A painting, a sculpture, a drawing (including a diagram, map, chart or plan), an

engraving or a photograph, whether or not any such work possesses artistic quality;

o A work of architecture; ando Any other work of artistic craftsmanship.

Musical work o "Musical work" means a work consisting of music and includes any graphical

notation of such work but does not include any words or any action intended to

be sung, spoken or performed with the music. A musical work need not be written down to enjoy copyright protection.

Sound recording o "Sound recording" means a recording of sounds from which sounds may be

produced regardless of the medium on which such recording is made or the method by which the sounds are produced. A phonogram and a CD-ROM are sound recordings.

Cinematograph film o "Cinematograph film" means any work of visual recording on any medium

produced through a process from which a moving image may be produced by any means and includes a sound recording accompanying such visual recording and "cinematograph" shall be construed as including any work produced by any process analogous to cinematography including video films.

Government work - "Government work" means a work which is made or published by or under the direction or control of

o The government or any department of the governmento Any legislature in India, ando Any court, tribunal or other judicial authority in India.

An author

In the case of a literary or dramatic work the author, i.e., the person who creates the work

In the case of a musical work, the composer. In the case of a cinematograph film, the producer. In the case of a sound recording, the producer. In the case of a photograph, the photographer. In the case of a computer generated work, the person who causes the work to be

created.

b. License

Answer

Licence by owners of copyright Sec.30 provides that the owner of the copyright in any existing work or the prospective owner of the copyright in any future work may grant any interest in the right by licence in writing signed by him or by his duly authorised agent. But in the case of a licence relating to copyright in any future work, the licence shall take effect only when the work comes into existence. Compulsory licence in works withheld from public Sec.31 provides that at any time during the term of copyright in any Indian work which has been published or performed in public a complaint may be made to the Copyright Board that the owner of copyright in the work (a) has refused to re-publish or allow the republication of the work or has refused to allow the performance in public of the work and by reason of such refusal the work is withheld from the public; or (b) has refused to allow communication to the public by broadcast of such work or in the case of a sound recording the work recorded in such sound recording, on terms which the complainant considers reasonable. Compulsory Licence in unpublished Indian works (Sec.31A) Where in the case of an Indian work, the author is dead or unknown or cannot be traced or the owner of the copyright in such work cannot be found, any person may apply to the Copyright

Board for a licence to publish such work or translation thereof in any language. Before making an application, the applicant shall publish his proposal in one issue of a daily newspaper in the English language having circulation in the major part of the country and where the application is for the publication of a translation inany language, also publish his proposal in one issue of any daily newspaper in that language. Licence to produce and publish translation (Sec.32) Any person may apply to the Copyright Board for a licence to produce and publish a translation of a literary or dramatic work in any language after a period of 7 years for the first publication of the work. Also, an application may be made for a licence to translate foreign literary or dramatic work, after three years from its publication. Every application shall state the proposed retail price of copy of the translation of the work.

ASSIGNMENT-01

Name : Himanshu Pataria

Registration No : 521160439

Learning Center : Aakashline Institute of Professional Studies

Learning Center Code : 03293

Course : MBA

Subject : Software Engineering

Semester : Third

Module No : MI0033

Date of submission : ________________________________________

Marks awarded : ________________________________________

Directorate of Distance Education

Sikkim Manipal UniversityII Floor, Syndicate House

Manipal – 576 104

_____________________ _________________ __________________

Signature of Coordinator Signature of Center Signature of Evaluator

Master of Business Administration - MBA Semester III MI0033 – Software Engineering - 4 Credits

Assignment - Set- 1 (60 Marks) Answer all the questions.

Q1. Quality and reliability are related concepts but are fundamentally different in a number of ways. Discuss them. AnswerQuality focuses on the software's conformance to explicit and implicit requirements. Reliability focuses on the ability of software to function correctly as a function of time or some other quantity. Safety considers the risks associated with failure of a computer-based system that is controlled by software. In most cases an assessment of quality considers many factors that are qualitative in nature. Assessment of reliability and to some extent safety is more quantitative, relying on statistical models of past events that are coupled with software characteristics in an attempt to predict future operation of a program.There is no doubt that the reliability of a computer program is an important element of its overall quality. If a program repeatedly and frequently fails to perform, it matters little whether other software quality factors are acceptable. Software reliability, unlike many other quality factors, can be measured directed and estimated using historical and developmental data. Software reliability is defined in statistical terms as "the probability of failure-free operation of a computer program in a specified environment for a specified time" [MUS87]. To illustrate, program X is estimated to have a reliability of 0.96 over eight elapsed processing hours. In other words, if program X were to be executed 100 times and require eight hours of elapsed processing time (execution time), it is likely to operate correctly (without failure) 96 times out of 100. Whenever software reliability is discussed, a pivotal question arises: What is meant by the term failure? In the context of any discussion of software quality and reliability, failure is nonconformance to software requirements. Yet, even within this definition, there are gradations. Failures can be only annoying or catastrophic. One failure can be corrected within seconds while another requires weeks or even months to correct. Complicating the issue even further, the correction of one failure may in fact result in the introduction of other errors that ultimately result in other failures.

Q2. Discuss the Objective & Principles Behind Software Testing.Answer Software testing is an investigation conducted to provide stakeholders with information about the quality of the product or service under test.[1] Software testing can also provide an

objective, independent view of the software to allow the business to appreciate and understand the risks of software implementation. Test techniques include, but are not limited to, the process of executing a program or application with the intent of finding software bugs (errors or other defects).

Software testing can be stated as the process of validating and verifying that a software program/application/product:

Meets the requirements that guided its design and development;

Works as expected; and

Can be implemented with the same characteristics:-

Software testing, depending on the testing method employed, can be implemented at any time in the development process. However, most of the test effort occurs after the requirements have been defined and the coding process has been completed. As such, the methodology of the test is governed by the software development methodology adopted.

Different software development models will focus the test effort at different points in the development process. Newer development models, such as Agile, often employ test driven development and place an increased portion of the testing in the hands of the developer, before it reaches a formal team of testers. In a more traditional model, most of the test execution occurs after the requirements have been defined and the coding process has been completed.

The following can be described as testing principals:

All tests should be traceable to customer requirements.

Tests should be planned long before testing begins.

The Pareto principal applies to testing.

Testing should begin "in small" and progress toward testing "in large".

Exhaustive testing is not possible.

To be most effective, an independent third party should conduct testing.

Q3. Discuss the CMM 5 Levels for Software Process. AnswerCapability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) is a process improvement approach whose goal is to help organizations improve their performance. CMMI can be used to guide process improvement across a project, a division, or an entire organization. Currently supported is CMMI Version 1.3.

CMMI in software engineering and organizational development is a process improvement approach that provides organizations with the essential elements for effective process

improvement. CMMI is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office by Carnegie Mellon University.

According to the Software Engineering Institute (SEI, 2008), CMMI helps "integrate traditionally separate organizational functions, set process improvement goals and priorities, provide guidance for quality processes, and provide a point of reference for appraising current processes.

CMMI currently addresses three areas of interest:

Product and service development — CMMI for Development (CMMI-DEV),

Service establishment, management, and delivery — CMMI for Services (CMMI-SVC), and

Product and service acquisition — CMMI for Acquisition (CMMI-ACQ).

CMMI was developed by a group of experts from industry, government, and the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon University. CMMI models provide guidance for developing or improving processes that meet the business goals of an organization. A CMMI model may also be used as a framework for appraising the process maturity of the organization.

CMMI originated in software engineering but has been highly generalized over the years to embrace other areas of interest, such as the development of hardware products, the delivery of all kinds of services, and the acquisition of products and services. The word "software" does not appear in definitions of CMMI. This generalization of improvement concepts makes CMMI extremely abstract. It is not as specific to software engineering as its predecessor, the Software CMM (CMM, see below).

Q4. Discuss the Water Fall model for Software Development.AnswerThe waterfall model is a sequential design process, often used in software development processes, in which progress is seen as flowing steadily downwards (like a waterfall) through the phases of Conception, Initiation, Analysis, Design, Construction, Testing, Production/Implementation and Maintenance.

The waterfall development model originates in the manufacturing and construction industries: highly structured physical environments in which after-the-fact changes are prohibitively costly, if not impossible. Since no formal software development methodologies existed at the time, this hardware-oriented model was simply adapted for software development. [Citation needed]

The first known presentation describing use of similar phases in software engineering was held by Herbert D. Benington at Symposium on advanced programming methods for digital computers on 29 June 1956. [1] This presentation was about the development of software for SAGE. In 1983 the paper was republished [2] with a foreword by Benington pointing out that the process was not in fact performed in strict top-down, but depended on a prototype.

The first formal description of the waterfall model is often cited as a 1970 article by Winston W. Royce, [3] though Royce did not use the term "waterfall" in this article. Royce presented this

model as an example of a flawed, non-working model.[4] This, in fact, is how the term is generally used in writing about software development—to describe a critical view of a commonly used software practice.[5]In Royce's original waterfall model, the following phases are followed in order:

Requirements specification

Design

Construction (AKA implementation or coding)

Integration

Testing and debugging (AKA Validation)

Installation

Maintenance

Thus the waterfall model maintains that one should move to a phase only when its preceding phase is completed and perfected. However, there are various modified waterfall models (including Royce's final model) that may include slight or major variations on this process.

Q5. Explain the Advantages of Prototype Model, & Spiral Model in Contrast to Water Fall model. AnswerAdvantages of prototyping

1 May provide the proof of concept necessary to attract funding

2 Early visibility of the prototype gives users an idea of what the final system looks like

3 Encourages active participation among users and producer

4 Enables a higher output for user

5 Cost effective (Development costs reduced).

6 Increases system development speed

7 Assists to identify any problems with the efficacy of earlier design, requirements analysis and coding activities

8 Helps to refine the potential risks associated with the delivery of the system being developed

9 Various aspects can be tested and quicker feedback can be got from the user

10 Helps to deliver the product in quality easily

11 User interactions available during development cycle of prototype

The spiral model is a software development process combining elements of both design and prototyping-in-stages, in an effort to combine advantages of top-down and bottom-up concepts. Also known as the spiral lifecycle model (or spiral development), it is a systems development method (SDM) used in information technology (IT). This model of development combines the features of the prototyping and the waterfall model. The spiral model is intended for large, expensive and complicated projects.

This should not be confused with the Helical model of modern systems architecture that uses a dynamic programming approach in order to optimize the system's architecture before design decisions are made by coders that would cause problems.

The spiral model combines the idea of iterative development (prototyping) with the systematic, controlled aspects of the waterfall model. It allows for incremental releases of the product, or incremental refinement through each time around the spiral. The spiral model also explicitly includes risk management within software development. Identifying major risks, both technical and managerial, and determining how to lessen the risk helps keep the software development process under control.[3]

The spiral model is based on continuous refinement of key products for requirements definition and analysis, system and software design, and implementation (the code). At each iteration around the cycle, the products are extensions of an earlier product. This model uses many of the same phases as the waterfall model, in essentially the same order, separated by planning, risk assessment, and the building of prototypes and simulations.

Documents are produced when they are required, and the content reflects the information necessary at that point in the process. All documents will not be created at the beginning of the process, nor all at the end (hopefully). Like the product they define, the documents are works in progress. The idea is to have a continuous stream of products produced and available for user review.

The spiral lifecycle model allows for elements of the product to be added in when they become available or known. This assures that there is no conflict with previous requirements and design. This method is consistent with approaches that have multiple software builds and releases and allows for making an orderly transition to a maintenance activity. Another positive aspect is that the spiral model forces early user involvement in the system development effort. For projects with heavy user interfacing, such as user application programs or instrument interface applications, such involvement is helpful.

Starting at the center, each turn around the spiral goes through several task regions

Determine the objectives, alternatives, and constraints on the new iteration.

Evaluate alternatives and identify and resolve risk issues.

Develop and verify the product for this iteration.

Plan the next iteration.

Note that the requirements activity takes place in multiple sections and in multiple iterations, just as planning and risk analysis occur in multiple places. Final design, implementation, integration, and test occur in iteration 4. The spiral can be repeated multiple times for multiple builds. Using this method of development, some functionality can be delivered to the user faster than the waterfall method. The spiral method also helps manage risk and uncertainty by allowing multiple decision points and by explicitly admitting that all of anything cannot be known before the subsequent activity starts

Q6. Explain the COCOMO Model & Software Estimation Technique.AnswerThe Constructive Cost Model (COCOMO) is an algorithmic software cost estimation model developed by Barry W. Boehm. The model uses a basic regression formula with parameters that are derived from historical project data and current project characteristics.

COCOMO was first published in Boehm's 1981 book Software Engineering Economics [1] as a model for estimating effort, cost, and schedule for software projects. It drew on a study of 63 projects at TRW Aerospace where Boehm was Director of Software Research and Technology. The study examined projects ranging in size from 2,000 to 100,000 lines of code, and programming languages ranging from assembly to PL/I. These projects were based on the waterfall model of software development which was the prevalent software development process in 1981.

References to this model typically call it COCOMO 81. In 1995 COCOMO II was developed and finally published in 2000 in the book Software Cost Estimation with COCOMO II.[2] COCOMO II is the successor of COCOMO 81 and is better suited for estimating modern software development projects. It provides more support for modern software development processes and an updated project database. The need for the new model came as software development technology moved from mainframe and overnight batch processing to desktop development, code reusability and the use of off-the-shelf software components. This article refers to COCOMO 81.

COCOMO consists of a hierarchy of three increasingly detailed and accurate forms. The first level, Basic COCOMO is good for quick, early, rough order of magnitude estimates of software costs, but its accuracy is limited due to its lack of factors to account for difference in project attributes (Cost Drivers). Intermediate COCOMO takes these Cost Drivers into account and Detailed COCOMO additionally accounts for the influence of individual project phases.

The ability to accurately estimate the time and/or cost taken for a project to come in to its successful conclusion is a serious problem for software engineers. The use of a repeatable, clearly defined and well understood software development process has, in recent years, shown itself to be the most effective method of gaining useful historical data that can be used for statistical estimation. In particular, the act of sampling more frequently, coupled with the loosening of constraints between parts of a project, has allowed more accurate estimation and more rapid development times.

Methods

Popular methods for estimation in software engineering include:

Analysis Effort method

COCOMO (This model is obsolete and should only be used for demonstration purposes.)

COCOMO™ II

COSYSMO

Evidence-based Scheduling Refinement of typical agile estimating techniques using minimal measurement and total time accounting.

Function Point Analysis

Parametric Estimating

PRICE Systems Founders of Commercial Parametric models that estimate the scope, cost, effort and schedule for software projects.

Proxy-based estimating (PROBE) (from the Personal Software Process)

Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT)

SEER-SEM Parametric Estimation of Effort, Schedule, Cost, Risk.Mimimum time and staffing concepts based on Brooks’ law

SLIM

The Planning Game (from Extreme Programming)

Weighted Micro Function Points (WMFP).

ASSIGNMENT-01

Name : Himanshu Pataria

Registration No : 521160439

Learning Center : Aakashline Institute of Professional Studies

Learning Center Code : 03293

Course : MBA

Subject : Database Management System (DBMS)

Semester : Third

Module No : MI0034

Date of submission : ________________________________________

Marks awarded : ________________________________________

Directorate of Distance EducationSikkim Manipal UniversityII Floor, Syndicate House

Manipal – 576 104

_____________________ _________________ __________________

Signature of Coordinator Signature of Center Signature of Evaluator

Master of Business Administration - MBA Semester III MI0034 –Database Management System (DBMS) - 4 Credits

Assignment - Set- 1 (60 Marks) Answer all the questions.

Q1. Differentiate between Traditional File System & Modern Database System? Describe the properties of Database & the Advantage of Database? AnswerTraditional File Systems Vs Modern Database Management Systems

Traditional File System Modern Database Management Systems

Traditional File system is the system that was

followed before the advent of DBMS i.e., it is the

older way.

This is the Modern way which has replaced

the older concept of File system.

In Traditional file processing, data definition is part

of the application program and works with only

specific application.

Data definition is part of the DBMS

Application is independent and can be used

with any application.

File systems are Design Driven; they require

design/coding change when new kind of data

occurs.

E.g.: In a traditional employee the master file has

Emp_name, Emp_id, Emp_addr, Emp_design,

Emp_dept, Emp_sal, if we want to insert one

more column Emp_Mob number then it requires a

complete restructuring of the file or redesign of

the application code, even though basically all the

data except that in one column is the same.

One extra column (Attribute) can be added

without any difficulty

Minor coding changes in the Application

program may be required.

Traditional File system keeps redundant

[duplicate] information in many locations. This

might result in the loss of Data Consistency.

For e.g.: Employee names might exist in separate

files like Payroll Master File and also in Employee

Benefit Master File etc. Now if an employee

changes his or her last name, the name might be

changed in the pay roll master file but not be

changed in Employee Benefit Master File etc.

This might result in the loss of Data Consistency.

Redundancy is eliminated to the maximum

extent in DBMS if properly defined.

In a File system data is scattered in various files,

and each of these files may be in different

formats, making it difficult to write new application

programs to retrieve the appropriate data.

This problem is completely solved here.

Security features are to be coded in the

Application Program itself.

Coding for security requirements is not

required as most of them have been taken

care by the DBMS.

Hence, a data base management system is the software that manages a database, and is

responsible for its storage, security, integrity, concurrency, recovery and access.

The DBMS has a data dictionary, referred to as system catalog, which stores data about

everything it holds, such as names, structure, locations and types. This data is also referred to

as Meta data.

Properties of Database

The following are the important properties of Database:

1. A database is a logical collection of data having some implicit meaning. If the data are not

related then it is not called as proper database.

E.g. Student studying in class II got 5th rank.

Stud_name Class Rank obtained

Vijetha Class II 5th

2. A database consists of both data as well as the description of the database structure and

constraints.

E.g.

Field Name Type Description

Stud_name Character It is the students name

Class Alpha numeric It is the class of the student

3. A database can have any size and of various complexity. If we consider the above example

of employee database the name and address of the employee may consists of very few records

each with simple structure. E.g.

Emp_name Emp_id Emp_addr Emp_desig Emp_Sal

Prasad 100 Shubhodaya, Near Katariguppe

Big Bazaar, BSK II stage,

Bangalore

Project Leader 40000

Usha 101 #165, 4th main Chamrajpet,

Bangalore

Software

engineer

10000

Nupur 102 #12, Manipal Towers, Bangalore Lecturer 30000

Peter 103 Syndicate house, Manipal IT executive 15000

Like this there may be n number of records.

4. The DBMS is considered as general-purpose software system that facilitates the process of

defining, constructing and manipulating databases for various applications.

5. A database provides insulation between programs, data and data abstraction. Data

abstraction is a feature that provides the integration of the data source of interest and helps to

leverage the physical data however the structure is.

6. The data in the database is used by variety of users for variety of purposes. For E.g. when

you consider a hospital database management system the view of usage of patient database is

different from the same used by the doctor. In this case the data are stored separately for the

different users. In fact it is stored in a single database. This property is nothing but multiple

views of the database.

7. Multiple user DBMS must allow the data to be shared by multiple users simultaneously. For

this purpose the DBMS includes concurrency control software to ensure that the updating done

to the database by variety of users at single time must get updated correctly. This property

explains the multiuser transaction processing.

Advantages of using DBMS

1. Redundancy is reduced

2. Data located on a server can be shared by clients

3. Integrity (accuracy) can be maintained

4. Security features protect the Data from unauthorized access

5. Modern DBMS support internet based application.

6. In DBMS the application program and structure of data are independent.

7. Consistency of Data is maintained

8. DBMS supports multiple views. As DBMS has many users and each one of them might use it

for different purposes, and may require viewing and manipulating only on a portion of the

database, depending on requirement.

Q2. What is the disadvantage of sequential file organization? How do you overcome it? What are the advantages & disadvantages of Dynamic Hashing? Answer In this file organization, the records of the file are stored one after another both physically and logically. That is, record with sequence number 16 is located just after the 15th record. A record of a sequential file can only be accessed by reading all the previous records.

The records are discriminated from one another using the record length declared in the associated FD statement of the FILE-SECTION. For example, If the record structure that the programmer has declared is 52 bytes, blocks of 52 byte data (records) are assumed to placed one after another in the file. If the programmer is reading the data in a sequential file, every READ statement brings 52 bytes into the memory.

If the file contains, say, 52 byte records; but the programmer tries to read this file with a program which has declared 40 byte records (i.e. the total length of the FD structure is 40 bytes), the program will certainly read some pieces of information into the memory but the after the first READ statement, some meaningless pieces of records will be brought into memory and the program will start processing some physical records which contain logically meaningless data.

It is the programmer's responsibility to take care of the record sizes in files. You must be careful when declaring record structures for files. Any mistake you make in record sizes will cause your program to read/write erroneous information. This is especially dangerous if the file contents are being altered (changed, updated).

Since the records are simply appended to each other when building SEQUENTIAL files, you simply end up with a STREAM of byte. If this string does not contain any "Carriage Return/Line Feed" control characters in it, the whole file will appear as a single LINE of character and would be impossible to process with regular text editors. As you should know by now, text editors are good in reading/writing/modifying text files. These programs will assume that the file consists of LINES and expect the lines to separate from each other by a pair of control characters called "Carriage Return/Line Feed" (or CR/LF).

COBOL has a special type of sequential file organization, which is called the LINE SEQUENTIAL ORGANIZATION which places a CR/LF pair at the end of each record while adding records to a file and expects such a pair while reading. LINE SEQUENTIAL files are much easier to use while developing programs because you can always use a simple text editor to see the contents of your sequential file and trace/debug your program.

Please note that LINE SEQUENTIAL files have two extra characters for each record. For files, which have millions of records, this might use up a significant amount of disk space.

SEQUENTIAL files have only one ACCESS MODE and that is "sequential access". Therefore you need not specify an ACCESS MODE in the SELECT statement. Typical SELECT statements for SEQUENTIAL files are :

SELECT MYFILE ASSIGN TO DISK "MYFILE.DAT" ORGANIZATION IS SEQUENTIAL. SELECT MYFILE-2 ASSIGN TO DISK "C:\DATADIR\MYFILE2.TXT" ORGANIZATION IS LINE SEQUENTIAL.

In the FILE-SECTION, you must provide FD blocks for each file; hence for a sequential file you could have something like:

FD MYFILE. 01 MYFILE-REC. 02 M-NAME PIC X(16). 02 M-SURNAME PIC X(16). 02 M-BIRTHDATE. 03 M-BD-YEAR PIC 9999. 03 M-BD-MONTH PIC 99. 03 M-BD-DAY PIC 99.

Note: You must NOT provide record fields for the extra two CR/LF bytes in record descriptions of LINE SEQ files. Once you declare the file to be a LINE SEQ file, these two extra bytes are automatically taken in consideration and added for all new records that are added to a file.

It is NOT possible to delete records of a seq file. If you do not want a specific record to be kept in a seq file any more, all you can do is to modify the contents of the record so that it contains some special values that your program will recognize as deleted (remember to open the file in I-O mode and REWRITE a new record).

Can be only processed sequentially. If you need to read record number N, you must first read the previous N-1 records. Especially no good for programs that make frequent searches in the file.To overcome these disadvantages some of the following hashing techniques are in use:

One disadvantage of sequential file organization is that we must use linear search or binary

search to locate the desired record and that results in more I/O operations. In this there are a

number of unnecessary comparisons. In hashing technique or direct file organization, the key

value is converted into an address by performing some arithmetic manipulation on the key

value, which provides very fast access to records.

Let us consider a hash function h that maps the key value k to the value h(k). The VALUE h(k)

is used as an address.

The basic terms associated with the hashing techniques are:

1) Hash table: It is simply an array that is having address of records.

2) Hash function: It is the transformation of a key into the corresponding location or address in

the hash table (it can be defined as a function that takes key as input and transforms it into a

hash table index).

3) Hash key: Let 'R' be a record and its key hashes into a key value called hash key.

The different hashing techniques are:

Internal Hashing

Dynamic hashing Extendable hashing

Dynamic Hashing Technique

A major drawback of the static hashing is that address space is fixed. Hence it is difficult to

expand or shrink the file dynamically.

In dynamic hashing, the access structure is built on the binary representation of the hash value.

In this, the number of buckets is not fixed [as in regular hashing] but grows or diminishes as

needed. The file can start with a single bucket, once that bucket is full, and a new record is

inserted, the bucket overflows and is slit into two buckets. The records are distributed among

the two buckets based on the value of the first [leftmost] bit of their hash values. Records whose

hash values start with a 0 bit are stored in one bucket, and those whose hash values start with a

1 bit are stored in another bucket. At this point, a binary tree structure called a directory is built.

The directory has two types of nodes.

1. Internal nodes: Guide the search, each has a left pointer corresponding to a 0 bit, and a right

pointer corresponding to a 1 bit.

2. Leaf nodes: It holds a pointer to a bucket a bucket address.

Each leaf node holds a bucket address. If a bucket overflows, for example: a new record is

inserted into the bucket for records whose hash values start with 10 and causes overflow, then

all records whose hash value starts with 100 are placed in the first split bucket, and the second

bucket contains those whose hash value starts with 101. The levels of a binary tree can be

expanded dynamically.

Advantages of dynamic hashing:

1. The main advantage is that splitting causes minor reorganization, since only the records in

one bucket are redistributed to the two new buckets.

2. The space overhead of the directory table is negligible.

3. The main advantage of extendable hashing is that performance does not degrade as the file

grows. The main space saving of hashing is that no buckets need to be reserved for future

growth; rather buckets can be allocated dynamically.

Disadvantages:

1. The index tables grow rapidly and too large to fit in main memory. When part of the index

table is stored on secondary storage, it requires extra access.

2. The directory must be searched before accessing the bucket, resulting in two-block access

instead of one in static hashing.

3. A disadvantage of extendable hashing is that it involves an additional level of indirection.

Q3. What is relationship type? Explain the difference among a relationship instance, relationship type & a relation set? AnswerIn the real world, items have relationships to one another. E.g.: A book is published by a particular publisher. The association or relationship that exists between the entities relates data items to each other in a meaningful way. A relationship is an association between entities. A collection of relationships of the same type is called a relationship set. A relationship type R is a set of associations between E, E2…..En entity types mathematically, R is a set of relationship instances ri. E.g.: Consider a relationship type WORKS_FOR between two entity types – employee and department, which associates each employee with the department the employee works for. Each relationship instance in WORKS_FOR associates one employee entity and one department entity, where each relationship instance is ri which connects employee and department entities that participate in ri. Employee el, e3 and e6 work for department d1, e2 and e4 work for d2 and e5 and e7 work for d3. Relationship type R is a set of all relationship instances. Working for Department Employee

Figure 5.4: Some instances of the WORKS_FOR relationship Degree of relationship type: The number of entity sets that participate in a relationship set.A unary relationship exists when an association is maintained with a single entity.

A binary relationship exists when two entities are associated.

A tertiary relationship exists when there are three entities associated.

Figure 5.5: Degree of relationship type Role Names and Recursive Relationship Each entry type to participate in a relationship type plays a particular role in the relationship. The role name signifies the role that a participating entity from the entity type plays in each relationship instance, e.g.: In the WORKS FOR relationship type, the employee plays the role of employee or worker and the department plays the role of department or employer. However in some cases the same entity type participates more than once in a relationship type in different roles. Such relationship types are called recursive. E.g.: Employee entity type participates twice in SUPERVISION once in the role of supervisor and once in the role of supervisee.

Q4. What is SQL? Discuss.Answer Structured Query language is used for programming the database. It is a non-procedural language, meaning that SQL describes what data to retrieve delete or insert, rather than how to perform the operation. It is the standard command set used to communicate with the RDBMS.

The SQL statement can be grouped into following categories.1. DDL (Data Definition Language) 2. DML (Data Manipulation Language) 3. DCL (Data Control Language) 4. TCL (Transaction Control Language)

DDL: Data Definition LanguageThe DDL statement provides commands for defining relation schema i.e for creating tables, indexes, sequences etc. and commands for dropping, altering, renaming objects.

DML: (Data Manipulation Language)The DML statements are used to alter the database tables in some way. The UPDATE, INSERT and DELETE statements alter existing rows in a database tables, insert new records into a database table, or remove one or more records from the database table.

DCL: (Data Control Language)The Data Control Language Statements are used to Grant permission to the user and Revoke permission from the user, Lock certain Permission for the user.

TCL: (Transaction Control Language)It is used to control transactions.E.g.: CommitRollback: Discard/Cancel the changes up to the previous commit point.

Q5. What is Normalization? Discuss various types of Normal Forms? AnswerNormalization is the process of efficiently organizing data in a database.There are two goals of the normalization process:

1. Eliminating redundant data (for example, storing the same data in morethan one table) 2. Ensuring data dependencies make sense (only storing related data in a table).

Both of these are worthy goals as they reduce the amount of space a database consumes and ensure that data is logically stored.The Normal FormsThe database community has developed a series of guidelines for ensuring that databases are normalized. These are referred to as normal forms and are numbered from one (the lowest form ofNormalization, referred to as first normal form or 1NF) through five (fifth normal form or 5NF). In practical applications, you'll often see 1NF, 2NF, and 3NF along with the occasional 4NF. Fifth normal form is very rarely seen.

First Normal Form (1NF)First normal form (1NF) sets the very basic rules for an organized database:

Eliminate duplicative columns from the same table. Create separate tables for each group of related data and identify each row with a unique column

or set of columns (the primary key).

Second Normal Form (2NF)Second normal form (2NF) further addresses the concept of removing duplicative data:• Meet all the requirements of the first normal form.• Remove subsets of data that apply to multiple rows of a table and place them in separate tables.• Create relationships between these new tables and their predecessors through the use of foreign keys.

Third Normal Form (3NF)Third normal form (3NF) goes one large step further:• Meet all the requirements of the second normal form. • Remove columns that are not dependent upon the primary key.

Fourth Normal Form (4NF)Finally, fourth normal form (4NF) has one additional requirement:• Meet all the requirements of the third normal form. • A relation is in 4NF if it has no multi-valued dependencies. Q6. What do you mean by Shared Lock & Exclusive lock? Describe briefly two phase locking protocol? Answer

Shared Lock: It is used for read only operations, i.e., used for operations that do not change or update the data. E.G., SELECT statement:

Shared locks allow concurrent transaction to read (SELECT) a data. No other transactions can modify the data while shared locks exist. Shared locks are released as soon as the data has been read.

Exclusive Locks:

Exclusive locks are used for data modification operations, such as UPDATE, DELETE and INSERT. It ensures that multiple updates cannot be made to the same resource simultaneously. No other transaction can read or modify data when locked by an exclusive lock.Exclusive locks are held until transaction commits or rolls back since those are used for write operations.There are three locking operations: read_lock(X), write_lock(X), and unlock(X). A lock associated with an item X, LOCK(X), now has three possible states: "read locked", "write-locked", or "unlocked". A read-locked item is also called share-locked, because other transactions are allowed to read the item, whereas a write-locked item is called exclusive-locked, because a single transaction exclusive holds the lock on the item.

The Two- Phase locking protocol is a process to access the shared resources as their own without creating deadlocks. This includes two phases:

1. Growing Phase: In this phase a transaction may acquire lock, but may not release any locks. Thus this is also known as resource acquisition activity.

2. Shrinking Phase: In this a transaction may release locks but may not acquire any new locks.

There is also a concept called strict two phase locking in which the acquired by transaction are kept on hold until the transaction commits.

ASSIGNMENT-01

Name : Himanshu Pataria

Registration No : 521160439

Learning Center : Aakashline Institute of Professional Studies

Learning Center Code : 03293

Course : MBA

Subject : Computer Networks

Semester : Third

Module No : MI0035

Date of submission : ________________________________________

Marks awarded : ________________________________________

Directorate of Distance EducationSikkim Manipal UniversityII Floor, Syndicate House

Manipal – 576 104

_____________________ _________________ __________________

Signature of Coordinator Signature of Center Signature of Evaluator

Master of Business Administration - MBA Semester III MI0035 –Computer Networks- 4 Credits

Assignment - Set- 1 (60 Marks) Answer all the questions.

Q.1 Explain all design issues for several layers in Computer. What is connection – oriented and connectionless service?

AnswerDesign issues for the layers:The various key design issues are present in several layers in computer networks. The important design issues are:1. Addressing:

Mechanism for identifying senders and receivers, on the network need some form of addressing. There are multiple processes running on one machine. Some means is needed for a process on one machine to specify with whom it wants to communicate.

2. Error Control:There may be erroneous transmission due to several problems during communication. These are due to problem in communication circuits, physical medium, due to thermal noise and interference. Many error detecting and error correcting codes are known, but both ends of the connection must agree on which one being used. In addition, the receiver must have some mechanism of telling the sender which messages have been received correctly and which has not.

3. Flow control:If there is a fast sender at one end sending data to a slow receiver, then there must be flow control mechanism to control the loss of data by slow receivers. There are several mechanisms used for flow control such as increasing buffer size at receivers, slowdown the fast sender, and so on. Some process will not be in position to accept arbitrarily long

messages. Then, there must be some mechanism to disassembling, transmitting and then reassembling messages.

4. Multiplexing / de-multiplexing:If the data has to be transmitted on transmission media separately, it is inconvenient or expensive to setup separate connection for each pair of communicating processes. So, multiplexing is needed in the physical layer at sender end and demultiplexing is need at the receiver end.

5. Routing:When data has to be transmitted from source to destination, there may be multiple paths between them. An optimized (shortest) route must be chosen. This decision is made on the basis of several routing algorithms, which chooses optimized route to the destination.

Connection Oriented and Connectionless Services:Layers can offer two types of services namely connection oriented service and connectionless service.Connection oriented service:

The service user first establishes a connection, uses the connection and then releases the connection. Once the connection is established between source and destination, the path is fixed. The data transmission takes place through this path established. The order of the messages sent will be same at the receiver end. Services are reliable and there is no loss of data. Most of the time, reliable service provides acknowledgement is an overhead and adds delay.

Connectionless Services:In this type of services, no connection is established between source and destination. Here there is no fixed path. Therefore, the messages must carry full destination address and each one of these messages is sent independent of each other. Messages sent will not be delivered at the destination in the same order. Thus, grouping and ordering is required at the receiver end, and the services are not reliable. There is no acknowledgement confirmation from the receiver. Unreliable connectionless service is often called datagram service, which does not return an acknowledgement to the sender. In some cases, establishing a connection to send one short messages is needed. But reliability is required, and then acknowledgement datagram service can be used for these applications. Another service is the request-reply service. In this type of service, the sender transmits a single datagram containing a request from the client side. Then at the other end, server reply will contain the answer. Request-reply is commonly used to implement communication in the client-server model.

Q.2 Discuss OSI Reference model.AnswerThe OSI model is based on a proposal developed by the International Standards Organization as a first step towards international standardization of the protocols used in the various layers. The model is called the ISO – (International Standard Organization – Open Systems Interconnection) Reference Model because it deals with connecting open systems – that is, systems that follow the standard are open for communication with other systems, irrespective of a manufacturer. Its main objectives were to:

1. Allow manufacturers of different systems to interconnect equipment through a standard interfaces.

2. Allow software and hardware to integrate well and be portable on different systems. The principles that were applied to arrive at the seven layers are as follows:1. Each layer should perform a well-defined function. 2. The function of each layer should be chosen with an eye toward defining internationally

standardized protocols.

3. The layer boundaries should be chosen to minimize the information flow across the interfaces.

The Physical LayerThe Physical layer coordinates the function required to carry a bit (0s and 1s) stream over a physical medium. It defines electrical and mechanical specifications of cables, connector sand signaling options that physically link two nodes on a network.

The Data Link LayerThe main task of the data link layer is to provide error free transmission. It accomplishes this task by having the sender configure the input data into data frames, transmit the frames sequentially, between network devices and process the acknowledgement frames sent back by the intermediate receiver. The data link layer creates and recognizes frame boundaries. This can be accomplished by attaching special bit pattern to the beginning and end of the frame. Since these bit patterns can accidentally occur in the data, special care must be taken to make sure these patterns are not incorrectly interpreted as frame boundaries.

The Network LayerWhereas the data link layer is responsible for delivery on a hop, the network layer ensures that each packet travels from its sources and destination successfully and efficiently. A key design issue is determining how packets are routed from source to destination. Routes can be based on static tables that are “wired into” the network and rarely changed. They can also be determined at the start of each conversation, for example, a terminal session. Finally, they can be highly dynamic, being determined a new for each packet, to reflect the current network load. When a packet has to travel from one network to another to get its destination, many problems can arise. The addressing used by the second network may be different from the first one. The second network may not accept the packet at all because it is too large. The protocols may differ, and so on. It is up to the network layer to overcome all these problems to allow heterogeneous networks to be interconnected.

The Transport LayerThe basic function of the transport layer is to accept data from the session layer, split it up into smaller units if need be, pass these to the network layer, and ensure that the pieces all arrive correctly at other end. Furthermore, all this must be done efficiently, and in a way that isolates the upper layers from the inevitable changes in the hardware technology. Transport layer provides location and media independent end-to-end data transfer service to session and upper layers.

The Session LayerThe session layer allows users on different machines to establish sessions between them. A session allows ordinary data transport, as does the transport layer, but it also provides enhanced services useful in some applications. A session might by used to allow a user to log into a remote timesharing systems or to transfer a file between two machines. One of the services of the session layer is to manage dialogue control. Sessions can allow traffic to go in both directions at the same time, or in only one direction at a time. If traffic cans only way at a time (analogous to a single railroad track), the session layer can help keep track of whose turn it is. A related session service is token management.For some protocols, it is essential that both sides do not attempt the same operation at the same time. To manage these activities, the session layer provides tokens that can be exchanged. Only the side holding the token may perform the desired operation. Another session service is synchronization. Consider the problem that might occur when trying to do a 2 hour file transfer between two machines with a one hour mean time between crashes. After each transfer was aborted, the whole transfer would have to start over again and would

probably fail again the next time as well. To eliminate this problem, the session layer provides a way to insert markers after the appropriate checkpoints.

The Presentation LayerUnlike all the lower layers, which are just interested in moving bits reliably from here to there, the presentation layer is concerned with the syntax and semantics of the information transmitted. A typical example of a presentation service is encoding data in standard agreed upon way. Most user programs do not exchange random binary bit strings, they exchange things such as people’s names, dates, amounts of money and invoices. These items are represented as character strings, integers, floating-point number, and data structures composed of several simpler items. Different computers have different codes for representing character strings (e.g., ASCII and Unicode), integers (e.g., one’s complement and two’s complement), and soon. In order to make it possible for computers with different representations to communicate, the data structure to be exchanged can be defined in an abstract way, along with a standard encoding to be used “on the wire”. The presentation layer manages these abstract data structures and converts from the representation used inside the computer to the network standard representation and back.

The Application LayerApplication layer supports functions that control and supervise OSI application processes such as start/maintain/stop application, allocate/ de allocate OSI resources, accounting, and check point and recovering. It also supports remote job execution, file transfer protocol, message transfer and virtual terminal.

Q.3 Describe different types of Data transmission modes.AnswerSerial and Parallel :

Serial TransmissionIn serial transmission one bit follows another, so we need only one communication channel rather than n to transmit data between two communicating devices. The advantage of serial over parallel transmission is that with only one communication channel, serial transmission reduces cost of transmission over parallel by roughly a factor of n. Since communication within devices is parallel, conversion devices are required at the interface between the sender and the line (parallel-to-serial) and between the line and the receiver (serial-to-parallel). Serial transmission occurs in one of three ways: asynchronous, synchronous, and isochronous.

Parallel TransmissionBinary data, consisting of 1 s and 0 s, may be organized into groups of n bits each. Computers produce and consume data in groups of bits much as we conceive of and use spoken language in the form of words rather than letters. By grouping, we can send data n bits at a time instead of 1. This is called parallel transmission. The mechanism for parallel transmission is a simple one: Use n wires to send n bits at one time. That way each bit has its own wire, and all n bits of one group can be transmitted with each clock tick from one device to another. The advantage of parallel transmission is speed. All else being equal, parallel transmission can increase the transfer speed by a factor on n over serial transmission. But there is a significant disadvantage: cost. Parallel transmission requires n communication lines just to transmit the data stream. Because this is expensive, parallel transmission is usually limited to short distances.

Simplex, Half duplex and Full duplexThere are three modes of data transmission that correspond to the three types of circuits available. These are:

a) Simplex b) Half-duplex c) Full-duplex

SimplexSimplex communications imply a simple method of communicating, which they are. In simplex communication mode, there is a one-way communication transmission. Television transmission is a good example of simplex communications. The main transmitter sends out a signal (broadcast), but it does not expect a reply as the receiving units cannot issue a reply back to the transmitter. A data collection terminal on a factory floor or a line printer (receive only). Another example of simplex communication is a keyboard attached to a computer because the keyboard can only send data to the computer. At first thought it might appear adequate for many types of application in which flow of information is unidirectional.However, in almost all data processing applications, communication in both directions is required. Even for a “one-way” flow of information from a terminal to computer, the system will be designed to allow the computer to signal the terminal that data has been received. Without this capability, the remote used might enter data and never know that it was not received by the other terminal. Hence, simplex circuits are seldom used because a return path is generally needed to send acknowledgement, control or error signals.

Half-duplexIn half-duplex mode, both units communicate over the same medium, but only one unit can send at a time. While one is in send mode, the other unit is in receiving mode. It is like two polite people talking to each other – one talks, the other listens, but neither one talks at the same time. Thus, a half duplex line can alternately send and receive data. It requires two wires. This is the most common type of transmission for voice communications because only one person is supposed to speak at a time. It is also used to connect a terminal with a computer. The terminal might transmit data and then the computer responds with an acknowledgement. The transmission of data to and from a hard disk is also done in half duplex mode.

Full – duplexIn a half-duplex system, the line must be “turned around” each time the direction is reversed. This involves a special switching circuit and requires a small amount of time (approximately150 milliseconds). With high speed capabilities of the computer, this turn-around time is unacceptable in many instances. Also, some applications require simultaneous transmission in both directions. In such cases, a full-duplex system is used that allows information to flow simultaneously in both directions on the transmission path. Use of a full-duplex line improves efficiency as the line turn-around time required in a half-duplex arrangement is eliminated. It requires four wires.

Synchronous and Asynchronous transmissionSynchronous TransmissionIn synchronous transmission, the bit stream is combined into longer “frames”, which may contain multiple bytes. Each byte, however, is introduced onto the transmission link without a gap between it and the next one. It is left to the receiver to separate the bit stream into bytes for decoding purpose. In other words, data are transmitted as an unbroken sting of 1s and 0s, and the receiver separates that string into the bytes, or characters, it needs to reconstruct the information. Without gaps and start and stop bits, there is no built-in mechanism to help the receiving device adjust its bits synchronization midstream. Timing becomes very important, therefore, because the accuracy of the received information is completely dependent on the ability of the receiving device to keep an accurate count of the bits as they come in. The

advantage of synchronous transmission is speed. With no extra bits or gaps to introduce eat the sending end and remove at the receiving end, and, by extension, with fewer bits to move across the link, synchronous transmission is faster than asynchronous transmission of data from one computer to another. Byte synchronization is accomplished in the data link layer.Isochronous TransmissionIn real-time audio and video, in which uneven delays between frames are not acceptable, synchronous transmission fails. For example, TV images are broadcast at the rate of 30images per second; they must be viewed at the same rate. If each image is send by using one or more frames, there should be no delays between frames. For this type of application, synchronization between characters is not enough; the entire stream of bits must be synchronized. The isochronous transmission guarantees that the data arrive at a fixed rate.

Q.4 Define Switching. What is the difference between circuit switching and Packet Switching?AnswerA network is a set of connected devices. Whenever we have multiple devices, we have the problem of how to connect them to make one-to-one communication possible. One of the better solutions is switching. A switch is network consists of a series of interlinked nodes, called switches. Switches are devices capable of creating temporary connections between two or more devices linked to the switch. In a switched network, some of these nodes are connected to the end systems (computers or telephones). Others are used only for routing. Switched networks are divided, as shown in the figure.

Circuit switchingA circuit switched network consists of a set of switches connected by physical links. A connection between two stations is a dedicated path made of one or more links. It is mainly used for telephones to call from one to one.

Packet switchingIn packet switching, we transfer the messages in terms of small block fixed sizes called packets. In packet switching, there is no path; packets are routed independently by sharing the network at time to time, by following the best path to the destination. Packets can be in order to the destination. Packet switching is more fault tolerant than circuit switching. The store-and-forward transmission is used to route to the destination, while storing the packet in the routers main memory. Congestion may occur when more packets are sending from the various hosts.

Q.5 Classify Guided medium (wired).Compare fiber optics and copper wire.AnswerGuided Transmission MediumGuided media, which are those that provide a conduit form one device to another, include twisted-pair cable, coaxial cable, and fiber-optic cable. A single traveling along any of these media is directed and contained by the physical limits of the medium. Twisted-pair and coaxial cable use metallic (copper) conductors that accept and transport signals on the form of electric current. Optical fiber is a cable that accepts and transports signals in the form of light.

Comparison of fiber optics and copper wireFiber has many advantages over copper wire as a transmission media. These are:

It can handle much higher band widths than copper. Due to the low attenuation, repeaters are needed only about every 30 km on long lines, versus about every 5 km for copper.

Fiber is not being affected by the power surges, electromagnetic interference, or power

failures. Nor it is affected by corrosive chemicals in the air, making it ideal for harsh factory environment.

Fiber is lighter than copper. One thousand twisted pairs copper cables of 1 km long weight8000 kg. But two fibers have more capacity and weigh only 100 kg, which greatly reduces the need for expensive mechanical support systems that must be maintained.

Fibers do not leak light and are quite difficult to tap. This gives them excellent security against potential wire tappers.

If new routes designed, the fiber is the first choice because of lower installation cost.

Fibers have the following disadvantages over copper wire: Fiber is an unfamiliar technology requiring skills most engineers do not have. Since optical transmission is inherently unidirectional, two-way communication requires

either two fibers or two frequency bands on one fiber. Fiber interfaces cost more than electrical interfaces.

Fibers can be damaged easily by being bent too much.

Q.6 What are different types of satellites?Answer

Four different types of satellite orbits can be identified depending on the shape and diameter of the orbit:

GEO (Geostationary orbit) LEO (Low Earth Orbit) MEO (Medium Earth Orbit) or ICO (Intermediate Circular Orbit) HEO (Highly Elliptical Orbit) elliptical orbits

Geostationary orbit:Altitude:ca. 36000 km above earth surface Coverage:Ideally suited for continuous, regional coverage using a single satellite. It can also be used equally effectively for global coverage using a minimum of three satellites.Visibility:Mobile to satellite visibility decreases with increased latitude of the user. Poor Visibility in built-up, urban regions.

Low Earth orbit:Altitude:ca. 500 - 1500 kmCoverage:Multi-satellite constellations of upwards of 30-50 satellites are required for global, continuous coverage. Single satellites can be used in store and forward mode for localized coverage but only appears for short periods of time.Visibility:The use of satellite diversity, by which more than one satellite is visible at any given time, can be used to optimize the link. This can be achieved by either selecting the optimum link or combining the reception of two or more links. The higher the guaranteed minimum elevation angle to the user, the more satellites is needed in the constellation.

Medium Earth orbit:Altitude:ca. 6000 - 20000 km

Coverage:Multi-satellite constellations of between 10 and 20 satellites are required for global coverage Visibility:Good to excellent global visibility, augmented by the use of satellite diversity techniques

Highly elliptical orbit:Altitude:Apogee: 40 000–50 000 km, Perigee: 1000–20 000 km. Coverage:Three or four satellites are needed to provide continuous coverage to a region Visibility:Particularly designed to provide high guaranteed elevation angle to satellite for Northern and Southern temperate latitudes.

Geostationary Satellites:Features of GEO:

Orbit ca. 36000 km distance to earth surface, orbit in equatorial plane (inclination 0°). Complete rotation takes exactly one day; satellite is synchronous to earth rotation. Fixed antenna positions, adjusting is not necessary. High transmit power is needed. High latency due to long distance (ca. 275 ms). Not useful for global coverage for small mobile phones and data transmission, typically

used for radio and TV transmission. Advantage:

Three GEO satellites are enough for complete coverage of almost any spot on earth. Senders and receivers can use fixed antenna positions.

Disadvantage: Northern/Southern regions of the earth have more problems receiving these satellites due

to low elevation above latitude .ie. Larger antennas are needed. transferring a GEO into orbit is very expensive.

Medium-Earth Orbit SatellitesFeatures of MEO:

Orbit ca. 6000 - 20000 km above earth surface. Slower moving satellites. Fewer satellites are needed. Simpler system design. For many connections no hand-over needed. Higher latency, ca. 70 - 80 ms. Higher sending power needed. Special antennas for small footprints needed.

Example: ICO (Intermediate Circular Orbit,

Inmarsat) start ca. 2000 Advantage: Depending on the inclination, a MEO can cover larger population, so requires few

handovers. Simpler system design.

Requires fewer satellites when compared to LEO. Disadvantage:

Delay is more. Needs high transmit power. Special antennas are needed for smaller foot prints.

Low Earth Orbit Satellites:Features of LEO:

Orbit : ca. 500 - 1500 km above earth surface Global radio coverage is possible. Latency comparable with terrestrial long distance connections, ca. 5-10 ms. Many satellites necessary for global coverage. More complex systems due to moving satellites.

Examples: Iridium (start 1998, 66 satellites) Global star (start

1999, 48 satellites) Advantage:

Using advanced compression schemes, transmission rates of about 2,400 bps is enough for voice communication.

LEO‟s provides much higher elevation in Polar Regions and so better global coverage. Disadvantage:

Concept of LEO needs many satellites if global coverage is to be reached. Life time of LEO is short for about 5-8 years.

ASSIGNMENT-01

Name : Himanshu Pataria

Registration No : 521160439

Learning Center : Aakashline Institute of Professional Studies

Learning Center Code : 03293

Course : MBA

Subject : Business Intelligence and Tools

Semester : Third

Module No : MI0036

Date of submission : ________________________________________

Marks awarded : ________________________________________

Directorate of Distance EducationSikkim Manipal UniversityII Floor, Syndicate House

Manipal – 576 104

_____________________ _________________ __________________

Signature of Coordinator Signature of Center Signature of Evaluator

Master of Business Administration - MBA Semester IIIMI0036-Business Intelligence &Tools - 4 Credits

Assignment - Set- 1 (60 Marks)Answer all the questions.

Q.1 Define the term business intelligence tools? Briefly explain how the data from one end gets transformed into information at the other end?

AnswerBusiness intelligence tools: The various tools of this suite are:Data Integration Tools:These tools extract, transform and load the data from the source databases to the target database. There are two categories; Data Integrator and Rapid Marts. Data Integrator is an ETL tool with a GUI. Rapid Marts is a packaged ETL with pre-built data models for reporting and query analysis that makes initial prototype development easy and fast for ERP applications.

The important components of Data Integrator include; Graphical designer :

This is a GUI used to build and test ETL jobs for data cleansing, validation and auditing.

Data integration server : This integrates data from different source databases.

Metadata repository : This repository keeps source and target metadata and the transformation rules.

Administrator : This is a web-based tool that can be used to start, stop, schedule and monitor ETL jobs.

BI Platform: This platform provides a set of common services to deploy, use and manage the tools and applications. These services include providing the security, broadcasting, collaboration, and metadata and developer services.

Reporting Tools and Query & Analysis Tools: These tools provide the facility for standard reports generation, ad hoc queries and data analysis.

Performance Management Tools: These tools help in managing the performance of a business by analyzing and tracking key metrics and goals.

Business intelligence tools: these are a type of application software designed to help in making better business decisions. These tools aid in the analysis and presentation of data in a more meaningful way and so play a key role in the strategic planning process of an organization. They illustrate business intelligence in the areas of market research and segmentation, customer profiling, customer support, profitability, and inventory and distribution analysis to name a few.

Various types of BI systems viz. Decision Support Systems, Executive Information Systems (EIS), Multidimensional Analysis software or OLAP (On-Line Analytical Processing) tools, data mining tools are discussed further. Whatever is the type, the Business Intelligence capabilities of the system is to let its users slice and dice the information from their organization’s numerous databases without having to wait for their IT departments to develop complex queries and elicit answers.

Although it is possible to build BI systems without the benefit of a data warehouse, most of the systems are an integral part of the user-facing end of the data warehouse in practice. In fact, we can never think of building a data warehouse without BI Systems. That is the reason; sometimes, the words, data warehousing and business intelligence are being used interchangeably.

Q. 2 what do you mean by data ware house? What are the major concepts and terminology used in the study of data warehouse?AnswerIn simple terms, a data warehouse is the repository of an organization’s historical data (also termed as the corporate memory). For example, an organization would get the information that is stored in its data warehouse to find out what day of the week they sold the most number of gadgets in May 2002, or how employees were on sick leave for a specific week.

A data warehouse is a database designed to support decision making in an organization. Here, the data from various production databases are copied to the data warehouse so that queries can be forwarded without disturbing the stability or performance of the production systems. So the main factor that leads to the use of a data warehouse is that complex queriesand analysis can be obtained over the information without slowing down the operational systems. While operational systems are optimized for simplicity and speed of modification (online transaction processing, or OLTP), the data warehouse is optimized for reporting and analysis (online analytical processing, or OLAP).

Apart from traditional query and reporting, a data warehouse provides the base for the powerful data analysis techniques such as data mining and multidimensional analysis(discussed in detail in later Units). Making use of these techniques will result in easier access to the information you need for informed decision making.Characteristics of a Data Warehouse:According to Bill Inmon, who is considered to be the Father of Data warehousing, the data ina Data Warehouse consists of the following characteristics:Subject orientedThe first feature of DW is its orientation toward the major subjects of the organization instead of applications. The subjects are categorized in such a way that the subject-wise collection of information helps in decision-making. For example, the data in the data warehouse of an insurance company can be organized as customer ID, customer name, premium, payment period, etc. rather auto insurance, life insurance, fire insurance, etc.IntegratedThe data contained within the boundaries of the warehouse are integrated. This means that all inconsistencies regarding naming convention and value representations need to be removed in a data warehouse. For example, one of the applications of an organization might code gender as „m‟ and „f‟ and the other application might code the same functionality as „0′ and„1′. When the data is moved from the operational environment to the data warehouse environment, this will result in conflict.Time variantThe data stored in a data warehouse is not the current data. The data is a time series data as the data warehouse is a place where the data is accumulated periodically. This is in contrast to the data in an operational system where the data in the databases are accurate as of the moment of access.Non-volatility of the dataThe data in the data warehouse is non-volatile which means the data is stored in a read-only format and it does not change over a period of time. This is the reason the data in a data ware house forms as a single source for all decision system support processing.Keeping the above characteristics in view data warehouse can be defined as a subject-oriented, integrated, non-volatile, time-variant collection of data designed to support the decision-making requirements of an organization.

Q.3 What are the data modeling techniques used in data warehousing environment?AnswerThere are two data modeling techniques that are relevant in a data warehousing environment.

They are Entity Relationship modeling (ER modeling) and dimensional modeling. ER modeling produces a data model of the specific area of interest, using two basic

concepts: Entities and the Relationships between them. A detailed ER model may also contain attributes, which can be properties of either the entities or the relationships. The ER model is an abstraction tool as it can be used to simplify, understand and analyze the ambiguous data relationships in the real business world.

Dimensional modeling uses three basic concepts: Facts, Dimensions and Measures. Dimensional modeling is powerful in representing the requirements of the business user in the context of database tables and also in the area of data warehousing.

Entity- Relationship (E-R) ModelingBasic Concepts:An ER model is represented by an ER diagram, which uses three basic graphic symbols to conceptualize the data: entity, relationship, and attribute.Entity:An entity is defined to be a person, place, thing, or event of interest to the business or the organization. It represents a class of objects, which are things in the real business world that can be observed and classified by their properties and characteristics.Relationship:Relationships represent the structural interaction and association among the entities in amodel and they are represented with lines drawn between the two specific entities. Generally,a relationship is named grammatically by a verb (such as owns, belongs, and has) and the relationship between the entities can be defined in terms of the cardinality. Cardinality represents the maximum number of instances of one entity that are related to a single instance in another table and vice versa. Thus the possible cardinalities include one-to-one (1:1), one-to-many (1:M), and many-to-many (M:M). In a detailed normalized ER model, any M: M relationship is not shown because it is resolved to an associative entity.Attributes:Attributes describe the characteristics of properties of the entities. The Product ID, Description, and Picture are attributes of the PRODUCT entity in Figure 4.1. The name of an attribute has to be unique in an entity and should be self-explanatory to ensure clarity. For example, rather naming date1 and date2, you may use the names; order date and delivery date. When an instance has no value for an attribute, the minimum cardinality of the attribute is zero, which means either null able or optional.

Dimensional ModelingDimensional modeling is a relatively new concept compared to ER modeling. This method is simpler, more expressive, and easier to understand. This technique is mainly aimed at conceptualizing and visualizing data models as a set of measures that are described by common aspects of the business. It is useful for summarizing and rearranging the data and presenting views of the data to support data analysis. Also, the technique focuses on numeric data, such as values, counts, and weights.

Q.4 Discuss the categories in which data is divided before structuring it into data ware house?AnswerThe Data Warehouses can be divided into two types:

Enterprise Data Warehouse Data Mart

Enterprise Data WarehouseThe Enterprise data warehouse consists of the data drawn from multiple operational systems of

an organization. This data warehouse supports time-series and trend analysis across different business areas of an organization and so can be used for strategic decision-making. Also, this data warehouse is used to populate various data marts.

Data MartAs data warehouses contain larger amounts of data, organizations often create „data marts‟ that are precise, specific to a department or product line. Thus data mart is a physical and logical subset of an Enterprise data warehouse and is also termed as a department-specific data warehouse. Generally, data marts are organized around a single business process. There are two types of data marts; independent and dependant. The data is fed directly from the legacy systems in case of an independent data mart and the data is fed from the enterprise data warehouse in case of a dependent data mart. In the long run, the dependent data marts are much more stable architecturally than the independent data marts.

Advantages and Limitations of a DW SystemUse of a data warehouse brings in the following advantages for an organization:

End-users can access a wide variety of data. Management can obtain various kinds of trends and patterns of data. A warehouse provides competitive advantage to the company by providing the data

andtimely information. A warehouse acts as a significant enabler of commercial business applications viz.,

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications.

However, following are the concerns that one has to keep in mind while using a dataware house:

The scope of a Data warehousing project is to be managed carefully to attain the defined content and value.

The process of extracting, cleaning and loading the data and finally storing it into a dataware house is a time-consuming process.

The problems of compatibility with the existing systems need to be resolved before building a data warehouse.

Security of the data may become a serious issue, especially if the warehouse is web accessible.

Building and maintenance of the data warehouse can be handled only through skilled resources and requires huge investment.

Q.5 Discuss the purpose of executive information system in an organization?AnswerAn Executive Information System (EIS) is a set of management tools supporting the information and decision-making needs of management by combining information available within the organization with external information in an analytical framework. EIS are targeted at management needs to quickly assess the status of a business or section of business. These packages are aimed firmly at the type of business user who needs instant and up to date understanding of critical business information to aid decision making.

The idea behind an EIS is that information can be collated and displayed to the user without manipulation or further processing. The user can then quickly see the status of his chosen department or function, enabling them to concentrate on decision making. Generally an EIS is configured to display data such as order backlogs, open sales, purchase order backlogs, shipments, receipts and pending orders. This information can then be used to make executive decisions at a strategic level.

The emphasis of the system as a whole is the easy to use interface and the integration with a variety of data sources. It offers strong reporting and data mining capabilities which can provide all the data the executive is likely to need. Traditionally the interface was menu driven with either reports, or text presentation. Newer systems, and especially the newer Business Intelligence systems, which are replacing EIS, have a dashboard or scorecard type display.

Before these systems became available, decision makers had to rely on disparate spreadsheets and reports which slowed down the decision making process. Now massive amounts of relevant information can be accessed in seconds. The two main aspects of an EIS system are integration and visualization. The newest method of visualization is the Dashboard and Scorecard. The Dashboard is one screen that presents key data and organizational information on an almost real time and integrated basis. The Scorecard is another one screen display with measurement metrics which can give a percentile view of whatever criteria the executive chooses.

Behind these two front end screens can be an immense data processing infrastructure, or a couple of integrated databases, depending entirely on the organization that is using the system. The backbone of the system is traditional server hardware and a fast network. The EIS software itself is run from here and presented to the executive over this network. The databases need to be fully integrated into the system and have real-time connections both in and out. This information then needs to be collated, verified, processed and presented to the end user, so a real-time connection into the EIS core is necessary.

Executive Information Systems come in two distinct types: ones that are data driven, and ones

that are model driven. Data driven systems interface with databases and data ware houses.

They collate information from different sources and present them to the user in an integrated

dashboard style screen. Model driven systems use forecasting, simulations and decision tree

like processes to present the data.As with any emerging and progressive market, service providers are continually improving their products and offering new ways of doing business. Modern EIS systems can also present industry trend information and competitor behavior trends if needed. They can filter and analyze data; create graphs, charts and scenario generations; and offer many other options for presenting data.

There are a number of ways to link decision making to organizational performance. From a

decision maker's perspective these tools provide an excellent way of viewing data. Outcomes

displayed include single metrics, trend analyses, demographics, market shares and a myriad of

other options. The simple interface makes it quick and easy to navigate and call the information

required.

For a system that seems to offer business so much, it is used by relatively few organizations. Current estimates indicate that as few as 10% of businesses use EIS systems. One of the reasons for this is the complexity of the system and support infrastructure. It is difficult to create such a system and populate it effectively. Combining all the necessary systems and data sources can be a daunting task, and seems to put many businesses off implementing it. The system vendors have addressed this issue by offering turnkey solutions for potential clients. Companies like Actuate and Oracle are both offering complete out of the box Executive Information Systems, and these aren't the only ones. Expense is also an issue. Once the initial

cost is calculated, there is the additional cost of support infrastructure, training, and the means of making the company data meaningful to the system.

Q.6 Discuss the challenges involved in data integration and coordination process?AnswerIn general, most of the data that the warehouse gets is the data extracted from a combination of legacy mainframe systems, old minicomputer applications, and some client/server systems. But these source systems do not conform to the same set of business rules. Thus they may often follow different naming conventions and varied standards for data representation. Thus the process of data integration and consolidation plays a vital role. Here, the data integration includes combining of all relevant operational data into coherent data structures so as to make them ready for loading into data warehouse. It standardizes the names and data representations and resolves the discrepancies. Some of the challenges involved in the data integration and consolidation process are as follows.

Identification of an Entity:Suppose there are three legacy applications that are in use in your organization; one is the order entry system, second is customer service support system, and the third is the marketing system. Each of these systems might have their own customer file to support the system. Even most of the customers will be common to all these three files, the same customer on each of these files have a different unique identification number.As you need to keep a single record for each customer in a data warehouse, you need to get the transactions of each customer from various source systems and then match them up to load into the data warehouse. This is an entity identification problem in which you do not know which of the customer records relate to the same customer. This problem is prevalent where multiple sources exist for the same entities and the other entities that are prone to this type of problem include vendors, suppliers, employees, and various products manufactured by a company. In case of three customer files, you have to design complex algorithms to match records from all the three files and groups of matching records. But this is a difficult exercise. If the matching criterion is too tight, then some records might escape the groups. Similarly, a particular group may include records of more than one customer if the matching criterion designed is too loose. Also, you might have to involve your users or the respective stakeholders to understand the transaction accurately. Some of the companies attempt this problem in two phases. In the first phase, the entire records, irrespective whether they are duplicates or not, are assigned unique identifiers and in the second phase, the duplicates are reconciled periodically ether through automatic algorithms or manually.

Existence of Multiple SourcesAnother major challenge in the area of data integration and consolidation results from a single data element having more than one source. For instance, cost values are calculated and updated at specific intervals in the standard costing application. Similarly, your order processing application also carries the unit costs for all products. Thus there are two sources available to obtain the unit cost of a product and so there could be a slight variation in their values. Which of these systems needs to be considered to store the unit cost in the data ware house becomes an important question. One easy way of handling this situation is to prioritize the two sources, or you may select the source on the basis of the last update date.

Implementation of Transformation:The implementation of data transformation is a complex exercise. You may have to go beyond the manual methods, usual methods of writing conversion programs while deploying the operational systems. You need to consider several other factors to decide the methods to be adopted. Suppose you are considering automating the data transformation functions, you have

to identify, configure and install the tools, train the team on these tools, and integrate them into the data warehouse environment. But a combination of both methods proves to be effective. The issues you may face in using manual methods and transformation tools are discussed below.

Manual MethodsThese are the traditional methods that are in practice in the recent past. These methods are adequate in case of smaller data warehouses. These methods include manually coded programs and scripts that are mainly executed in the data staging area. Since these methods call for elaborate coding and testing and programmers and analysts who possess the specialized knowledge in this area only can produce the programs and scripts. Although the initial cost may be reasonable, ongoing maintenance may escalate the cost while implementing these methods. Moreover these methods are always prone to errors. Another disadvantage of these methods is about the creation of metadata. Even if the in-house programs record the metadata initially, the metadata needs to be updated every time the changes occur in the transformation rules.

Transformation ToolsThe difficulties involved in using the manual methods can be eliminated using the sophisticated and comprehensive set of transformation tools that are now available. Use of these automated tools certainly improves efficiency and accuracy. If the inputs provided into the tools are accurate, then the rest of the work is performed efficiently by the tool. So you have to carefully specify the required parameters, the data definitions and the rules to the transformation tool. Also, the transformation tools enable the recording of metadata. When you specify the transformation parameters and rules, these values are stored as metadata by the tool and this metadata becomes a part of the overall metadata component of the data warehouse. When changes occur to business rules or data definitions, you just have to enter the changes into the tool and the metadata for the transformations get adjusted automatically. But relying on the transformation tools alone without using the manual methods is also not practically possible.

Transformation for Dimension AttributesNow we consider the updating of the dimension tables. The dimension tables are more stable in nature and so they are less volatile compared to the fact tables. The fact tables change through an increase in the number of rows, but the dimension tables change through the changes to the attributes. For instance, we consider a product dimension table. Every year, rows are added as new models become available. But what about the attributes that is within the dimension table. You might face a situation where there is a change in the product dimension table because a particular product was moved into a different product category. So the corresponding values must be changed in the product dimension table. Though most of the dimensions are generally constant over a period of time, they may change slowly.