18 Oct 2007 - Theory class

In todays theory class, I spent the lesson copying out notes from pages 214-216. The first section was about a fully normalised database, namely 1NF, 2NF and 3NF (NF = Normal form).
The second sections was about database locking; what it is and how it is caused. I got all this copied out in class, and our homework was to summarise section 4.1.7 on Page 216, and I got this done in class because I got all my classwork done on time. I spent some of my free lessons today watching Learn VWD videos (I watched another 15 minutes of the Lesson 2 video).

17/10/07

Today we were introduced to the Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition website. The website contains tutorials on how to use VWD 2005, and we were told to watch them. There are a total of 14 lessons available, and they aim to improve the users technique of using VWD. I believe these videos will be very useful for me , and they will really help me to improve my technique at using VWD.

From Lesson 1 I learned:

- How to create a website and a webpage in VWD

- How to add VB and HTML code to the website, and how they are both integrated into the package so that they carry out the same function

- How to add buttons and labels, and how to change the functions of buttons

- How to add aspx.net pages

System Development Quiz

Today in class we all did a System development quiz on the learningni.net website. In my first attempt, I got 17/36, and in my second attempt i got 24/36.

Homework for weekend 12/10/07

Homework for weekend: complete section 1 & 2 of normalisation booklet
summarise section 4.1 up to and including bottom of page 207

Website creation process

For the past few days, I have been working on developing my skills using Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2005. We have been building our own websites based on the 'Northwind Traders' sample database that has been provided as an example for our coursework. So far, we're learning the basic skills such as using tables as page template designs, learning how to add images, and learning how to link all the pages together. So far, my homepage looks like this:

It has a basic layout; it has an icon and a title along the top, a set of links down the left hand side, and a space in the middle to add text. I used this layout for all my other pages, for example this is my 'Products' page:

As you can see, the both pages have the exact same layout. I just copied and pasted the table into every page, and it saved a lot of time.

Linking the pages together was pretty easy. I simply created buttons along the side and added the names of the different pages onto the buttons. To add a hyperlink, you simply highlight the text and click on the small icon of a world along the toolbar, shown below.

Once that icon is clicked, a new box appears asking you which page you want the button to link to, and you simply select the page from the list and click 'Save', and the hyperlink is added. I did this for all the buttons on all my pages, so now you can get to any page from any page, for example if i was on the Customers page online i could get to the Orders page by simply clicking on the Orders link.

That's all I have done for my website atm, but in our next class we will be uploading the Northwind database onto the site, so that the site can be used as an online database.

Coursework planning

Today I will be planning how the practise website we are creating will be laid out, using Microsoft Word. It will include things such as what pages will be included, all the links between each page, and the contents of each indivudal page.

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This is a screenshot of the page sitemap i created in Microsoft Word for the Northwind Traders website. The mint-green page is the Homepage, and all the other pages are linked to the Homepage. The table in the top right hand corner represens the page template design which will be used on every page. The smaller boxes underneath the individual pages represent the different sub-pages which will be linked to those pages.