Reading Computerworld this morning, the common theme of two headlines struck me most …

UConn server breached; data on 72,000 people exposed

Kaiser Permanente Fined $200k for Patient Data Breach

A few weeks back, Citigroup lost computer tapes that had customer data including Social Security numbers.

According to the February 1, 2005 report published by the Federal Trade Commission, National and State Trends in Fraud and Identity Theft January - December 2004, “Between January and December 2004, Consumer Sentinel, the complaint database developed and maintained by the FTC, received over 635,000 consumer fraud and identity theft complaints. Consumers reported losses from fraud of more than $547 million.”

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Source of Picture:
National and State Trends in Fraud and Identity Theft January - December 2004

Are there stricter government policies governing how banks, creditors, insurance companies and other groups, store and transport information?

I was reading a post by Doug Laney on his blog Incredible Credibility Variances. I really thought the graph, shown below,

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that showed the credibility index of vendors in the data warehousing space was very interesting. Thanks, Doug Laney, for sharing the graph.

Vendor credibility is not only about expectation setting. It is also delivering what has been promised to the customer. Perception and opinions of vendors are formed in every customer interaction, from sales cycle to delivery of product and service. In the era of corporate cost cutting, it is not only about delivering a good product. Customer service and support are still important. Vendors must not neglect their installed base even if they don't bring in additional license revenues.

Today, June 21, if I am not mistaken is summer solstice in the USA. For people living in the Northern Hemisphere, it is the longest day, i.e., most daylight hours. Most daylight hours, more work can be done

If one of my younger nieces or nephews asks what the astronomical term Summer Solstice actually mean, I can point them to the Summer Solstice Wikipedia Entry and yes, maybe show them the cool picture below ....

Source of Picture: The Summer Solstice

In my years of project management, I have noted key factors that led to successful projects:

1. Executive Sponsorship
2. Commitment of project team
3. Capabilities (knowledge and skills) of project team
4. Funding availabiity throughout project duration
5. Effective planning and control techniques
6. Team work of project team
7. Clearly established project objectives
8. Effective uses of project management process
9. Good Communication

It is important to realize that things that happen during a project life cycle don't happen in a vacuum. Changes that occur affect the whole project. Hence, when a scope is changed, time and cost are also affected. I have seen projects that have failed because budget was cut and the schedule and scope were not revisited. In this case, risk increased and customer satisfaction was affected.

Looking at the stats of Yackity Blog Blog, I noticed that First 3 Rules of Data Normalization for Newbies gets a lot of hits. So, I thought today I would write about a very basic concept - the Basic Constructs of Entity Relationship Diagrams (ERD).

The three basic constructs are:

1. Entity: A significant thing (place, person, concept, event) which information needs to be known or held
2. Attribute: A characteristic that serves to identify, quantify, classify or qualify an entity
3. Relationship: The way in which two entities are related

In ERD,
Entity is mapped to Table

Attribute is mapped to Column

Relationship is mapped to Foreign Key

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