NFORMATION
ECHNOLOGY
Kuppusamy K S
Lecturer
Department of Computer Science
Ramanujan School of Mathematics and Computer Science
Pondicherry University
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Information Technology
Contents
UNIT I
Lesson 1: Introduction to Information Technology
1.1 Information Technology The definition
1.2 Data Vs Information
1.3 Information Technology - Scope
1.3.1 Computer Science
1.3.2 Communications
1.4 Introduction to the World of Computers
1.4.1 The Hardware and Software
1.4.2 Operations of a Computer
1.4.2.1 Input
1.4.2.2 Processing
1.4.2.3 Output
1.4.2.4 Storage
1.4.3 Common terms in Computers
1.4.4 Making your computer faster
1.4.5 Computer Trends
1.4.5.1 Smaller
1.4.5.2 Faster
1.4.5.3 Cheaper
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2.3.3 Designing
2.3.3.1 Preliminary Design
2.3.3.2 Detailed Design
2.3.4 Development
2.3.5 Implementation
2.3.6 Maintenance
UNIT II
Lesson 3: The Hardware
3.1 Different architectures of Computers
3.1.1 Getting familiar with terminology
3.1.2 Personal Computer
3.1.3 Workstations
3.1.4 Minicomputers
3.1.5 Mainframes
3.1.6 Supercomputers
3.2 Real Time Systems
3.3 Transaction Processing Systems
3.4 Laptop
3.5 Palmtop
3.6 Client Server and multi-tier Architecture
3.7 Input Devices
3.7.1 Character Input Devices
3.7.2 Pointing Devices
3.7.3 Multimedia Input Devices
3.8 Secondary Storage
3.8.1 Floppy Disks
3.8.2 Hard disks
3.8.3 Compact Disks
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UNIT III
Lesson 5 : The Software
5.1 Characteristics of Software
5.2 Classification
5.2.1 Application Software
5.2.1.1 Classification of Application Software
5.2.1.1.1 Horizontal Market Applications
5.2.1.1.2 Vertical Market Applications
5.2.1.1.3 Custom Applications
5.2.1.1.4 Shareware and freeware
5.2.2 System Software
5.2.3 Utilities
5.3 Operating System
5.3.1 Basic Functions of operating system
5.3.1.1 Process Management
5.3.1.2 Memory Management
5.3.1.3 Input / Output Management
5.3.1.4 Disk and File System Management
5.3.1.5 Security
5.3.2 Classifications of Operating Systems
5.3.2.1 Task Count
5.3.2.1.1 Single Tasked Operating system
5.3.2.1.2 Multi Tasked Operating System
5.3.2.2 User Count
5.3.2.2.1 Single User operating systems
5.3.2.2.2 Multi User operating systems
5.3.2.3 Portability
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UNIT IV
Lesson 7 : Introduction to Internet
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Lesson 8: Multimedia
8.1 Multimedia - definition
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UNIT V
Lesson 9: Object Oriented Systems
9.1 History of Object Oriented Systems
9.2 Object Oriented Vs Object based languages
9.3 Object Oriented programming concepts
9.3.1 Objects
9.3.2 Classes
9.3.3 Encapsulation
9.3.4 Inheritance
9.3.4.1 Single level inheritance or simple inheritance
9.3.4.2 Multi level inheritance
9.3.4.3 Hierarchical inheritance
9.3.4.4 Multiple inheritance
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Objectives
The objectives of this lesson are as listed below:
1. Defining the term information technology
2. Differentiating Data and Information
3. Providing an insight in to scope of Information technology.
4. Introducing two important components of computers (software,
hardware)
5. Explaining various operations of computer (input, processing,
output, storage )
6. Proving some useful tips to make your computer faster.
7. Explaining various trends in design of computers
8. Providing an insight into the various types of communications
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works of life.
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Data is a raw fact. Data doesn't associate any specific meaning with it.
For example New Delhi may be considered as data by which you
dont get any meaning.
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Computers
Communications
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Computers are general purpose machines which can be adopted for your
usage by installing specialized hardware and software. Computers are based on
digital technologies.
This section would highlight on the important concepts in computer
science.
1.4.1 The Hardware and Software
The two important components of computers are hardware and software.
To make the computers efficient, proper hardware and software has to be
identified and installed.
The electrical, mechanical, electronic components of computer is called
hardware i.e. all the hardware are physical entities. Examples for hardware are
as listed below:
Keyboard
Mouse
Microprocessor
Motherboard etc
Operating systems
Packages
In the case of software there exist different types of it. The general
classification is as listed below:
Application Software
System Software
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Input
Processing
Output
Storage
1.4.2.1 Input
Input is the operation of feeding data in to a computer. Input is the
starting point in operations of computers. There exist various kinds of devices
used to provide input. They are
Keyboard
Mouse
Scanner
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Webcam etc
Input can be text, image, audio, video etc. For example Keyboard is the
device used to provide text input. Similarly scanner is a device for image input.
These input devices are discussed (in terms of their usage, working
principle etc) in detail in later portions of this text.
Generally input devices are called peripheral devices because they are
connected to the computer through various ports like serial port, USB etc.
1.4.2.2 Processing
The core part of computing is the processing. To perform this processing
task you have the Microprocessors. Microprocessor is a smaller sized chip
containing large number of electronic circuitry inside.
In fact the microprocessor is the Central Processing Unit (CPU). At
times the cabinet is mistakenly called as CPU but it is not.
The speed of CPU is measured in terms of Hertz. As of today (October
2008), the commonly used processors have a speed of 3 GHz (Giga Hertz) or
similar.
Using multiple CPUs for a desktop computer is becoming popular
nowadays. You would have heard of CPUs with label Dual core, Quad Core etc.
Dual core has two processors in them where as Quad core has four processors.
Usage of more number of processors would definitely speed up the computers
because of the fact that tasks can be shared among those processors. (Another
point to remember here is speed of computer does not only depend upon the
speed of microprocessor but upon various factors like amount of main memory
etc).
There is a component in computer which is called the Motherboard. It
is the motherboard which is holding the entire components together. The CPU,
the main memory and all other components are installed on mother board. The
mother board can be compared with the central nervous system of the human
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Impact Printers
Non-impact printers
1.4.2.4 Storage
Another important component of a computer is the storage. Primarily
there are two types of storage. They are
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Non-Volatile
power
supply is
8 bits
- 1 Byte
1024 bytes
1024 KB
1024 MB
1024 GB
The above list is not complete. The unit goes beyond TB also. But those
are not commonly used in general purpose computers.
In the case of non-volatile storage, there exist various types of
technologies as listed below:
Hard Disks
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BIOS: The Basic Input Output System is called BIOS. It is the BIOS
which holds the all the settings associated with the computer
components. BIOS is the fundamental unit of a computer (IBM PC
and clones). Through BIOS you can make certain crucial changes
which would improve the system performance. At the same time
care should be taken while interacting with BIOS because wrong
settings would create some critical flaws.
Ports: To connect any peripheral devices the ports are used. There
exist many types of ports as listed below:
Serial Port
Parallel port
USB port.
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Higher rpm disks would be faster. For example the speed of 7200
rpm (revolutions per minute) would be far better than the 3000 rpm
disk. So choose a disk with higher rpm.
Protect the system from virus attacks. Though the antivirus program
can make your system little bit slower but the benefits you get from
those programs are huge.
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By keeping the above factors in mind you can certainly make your
computer faster. From the above list you would have understood a fact that the
speed depends upon both hardware as well as software. While trying to make
your computer faster equal attention has to be given to both the components.
A computer with a good hardware configuration can also be slower due
to the above mentioned software reason. The vice-versa is also true i.e., a
properly built software would also work slower if optimal hardware is not used.
The speed of microprocessor is many folds faster than the peripheral
devices like disk. So the bottleneck is at the place of disk access. This disk
access bottleneck can be addressed by following the points mentioned above
(using a higher rpm disk, increasing the amount of RAM (main memory))
Turning on all the graphical features (like animation options, shadows
etc) can make your system slower if adequate amount of main memory is not
there. So never turn-on this features when your system configuration is lesser to
support that.
1.4.5 Computer Trends
In designing the computers the trend that is adopted is three fold. They
are
Smaller
Faster
Cheaper
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1.4.5.1 Smaller
Computers were very huge in size in the past. The first generation
computers were largest in size. With each generation the size of the computer is
getting reduced. The reason for this is the improvements in the electronics field.
Many advanced technologies were developed to fabricate huge electronic
circuits in smaller size.
Nowadays the concept of invisible computers (!) is also getting popular.
Invisible in the sense they are hidden within other equipments. For example the
washing machines that you use may have microprocessors inside. The smaller
size of computers is a factor which has made this possible to implant them inside
other equipments.
1.4.5.2 Faster
In contrasting with the size the speed is constantly increasing with each
generation. Nowadays the speed is measured in Giga Hertz (GHz). Even the
desktop PCs today are comparatively faster. Indeed the boundary between the
PCs and workstations is blurred nowadays.
1.4.5.3 Cheaper
One of the critical factors that have made computers so popular is the
reduction in their cost. When the computers were introduced no one thought of
using computers to this level of personal purposes. The reduction of cost factor
has made the computers to reach every corner of the globe. Constant efforts are
going on to make them even cheaper so that everyone can afford to use the
computes personally.
The above given paragraphs characterizes the trend in the computer
world.
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Wired Communication
Wireless Communication
Simplex Communication
Half-duplex Communication
Full-duplex Communication
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Mobility
Customization
Integrated Services
1.6.1 Mobility
Mobile plays a key role in the success of information technology. The
ability to access the services on the move is an important development. The
mobility has become a reality because of the developments in both computer
industry and communication field. The size of the computers becoming smaller
has encouraged mobility. With respect to communication, the advancement in
wireless communication like cellular networks has contributed largely to this.
1.6.2 Customization
The services provided have become customizable. You can select the
services according to your needs. For example in the mobile phone industry,
various providers are providing services that you can select according to your
need. There would be various packages among which you can select one
suitable to your needs.
1.6.3 Integrated Services
Another important development is the integrated services. Many services
are available on a single channel. For example the devices like PDA (Personal
Digital Assistants) have the capability to act as a computer, mobile phone etc.
So by using such a single device you can compute, access internet, make calls as
you wish.
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Mobile banking
Net banking
In the case of mobile banking you would be able to access your account
from your mobile device. To provide security passwords would be provided.
Almost all the banks provide the facility to access your account over
World Wide Web. By using this facility the account holder can operate his/her
account from anywhere in the world.
Using the net banking facility you can provide payment to many other
services.
One of the crucial things that you have to take care while using the
facilities like mobile banking, net banking etc is that you should keep the
password to access these services safer.
It is a good practice to change the passwords at regular intervals of time
so that the possibility of the password breaking would be reduced.
1.7.2 E-learning
E-learning is another massive application of Information technology.
Most of the institutions provide e-learning facility nowadays. There exist many
advantages of e-learning.
E-learning is the process of using information technology to make the
teaching-learning process an effective one.
E-learning can provide a web based interface. In such a case the scope or
area of coverage becomes huge. Because using such a web based interface has
very minimal requirement on the client side.
The advantages of e-learning are as listed:
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While you pay the money through the net banking facility the bank
would be contacted before making you the allocation. The credit card processing
also involves very similar techniques.
These on-line reservation systems are very effective to plan your
activities earlier itself.
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1.7.4 E-governance
In a country like ours where the population is huge, the government
offices would be accessed by large number of people. To make the services
easily available the e-governance concept can be used.
E-governance is the process of using information technology to provide
the services rendered by a government to the citizens effectively. There are
many areas which the e-governance covers. Below given is the list of few
services:
During the purchase of a property like land, the details can be easily
accessed if they are computerized.
The services are not time bound. (You can access the services at any
time provided the server in which the service is hosted is up and
running)
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The above given are the advantages of services provided by egovernance. At the same time there are certain challenges also. The services
which are sensitive in nature have to be made much secure.
1.7.5 E-Commerce
E-commerce has changed the way in which people purchase and sell
items. The customer can access the e-commerce service with the help of a web
browser and internet connectivity.
E-commerce is the process of using information technology to carry out
commercial activities. E-commerce provides various advantages as listed below:
You can directly purchase items from world class sellers. For
example in case of book and other materials there are various
popular e-commerce services exist. So whenever a particular book or
material is not available in your geographical location you can use
these e-commerce services to get them from any part of the world.
You can easily track your orders. Many e-commerce sites provide
this option of tracking your order i.e. you can easily find out the
current stage of your order.
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World Wide Web which is one of the important reasons for such a mammoth
growth of World Wide Web.
1.7.6 Videoconferencing
With the help of videoconferencing you can communicate with a person
independent of his/her geographical location, as if he/she is sitting in front of
you.
Videoconferencing involves multiple media of data like audio, video etc.
The videoconferencing is also called teleconferencing. There exist many
advantages of videoconferencing. Some of them are listed below
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(webminar) participants can be from any part of the globe provided they have a
system with internet connectivity.
1.7.7 Usage of Information technology in Entertainment
Apart from the serious usages of information technology, it has got of
many applications in the entertainment fields also.
Usage of Information technology in movies is well-known. In movies
many special effects are made by the application of information technology
concepts like graphics and animation.
Apart from these special effects there are movies which are totally
created with the help of animation features. To perform these kinds of tasks
there are specialized software. That software would have options for drawing,
adding effects etc.
Not only the visual effects, there are applications associated with music
or sound also. There are many music synthesizers and other concepts to add
special effects to music.
Other than movies the application of information technology in sports is
also tremendous. For example in sports like cricket there are multi-folded
applications of Information technology. Some of them are as follows: tracking
the movement of balls, complete analysis through statistics, ball speed
measurements etc are well-known examples of information technology in
cricket.
It is not only cricket but there exist many other sports like tennis,
football, baseball etc where the information technology has introduced many
techniques which has made those sports more attractive and entertaining.
Information technology is also be used in many sports training sessions.
It is used to analyze the actions of players so that the problems identified can be
rectified in the later games.
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Information technology has really raised the quality of the final product
both in movies as well as in sports. Information technology has introduced many
new concepts in those fields as well as enriched many existing processes. For
example many of the existing processes which were time consuming have
become faster with the application of information technology.
1.7.8 Global Positioning Systems
Global positioning system (GPS) is one of the popular applications of
information technology. GPS has got its application in various fields. Popular
among them are listed below:
GPS can be used to track vehicles. Their position can be tracked from a
central location. This vehicle tracking facility has got application in
ambulance tracking, fire engine tracking etc.
Satellite imaging facility is used in locating the areas where fishes are
available in abundance. This information would be very much helpful
for fisherman.
this text. But in an outline, GPS requires number of satellites and many ground
stations. These satellites and ground stations will communicate with each other
so that the required information is tracked.
The above list of applications of GPS is not complete. Apart from the
above given applications there are many applications of GPS in various fields.
Though the fields change the fundamental technology remains the same.
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Summary
Computers are general purchase machines that are used in all the fields.
The trends of computer design are three folds: smaller, faster and
cheaper
example
banking,
e-learning,
e-commerce,
e-governance,
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Self-assessment Questions
Part I (Multiple Choice Questions)
1. Processing of data gives
(a) database
(b) information
(c) security
(d)All of the above
(e) None of the above
2. Which of the following is used in first generation computers?
(a) Flash memory
(b) USB ports
(c) Vacuum tubes
(d)All of the above
(e) None of the above
3. Which of the following is not a wireless communication technique?
(a) Bluetooth
(b) Infrared
(c) Wi-Fi
(d) Blue rays
(e) None of the above
4. The characteristics of mobile computers includes
(a) battery mode operations
(b) Wireless communication technology
(c) hand-held devices
(d) all of the above
(e) none of the above
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12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
technologies?
20.
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Answer Key
Part I
1. b
2. c
3. d
4. d
5. a
6. c
7. d
8. c
9.a
10. d
Part II
11.
Data is simple fact. Data doesn't possess any meaning. The processed
There exist many inputs devices. Four of them are listed here:
a) Keyboard
b) Mouse
c) Webcam
d) Touchpad
14.
The rpm (revolutions per minute) of the hard disk decides how fast the
hard disk will work. Since the hard disks are considerably slower than the
CPU, an higher rpm hard disk can make the speed of the computer faster.
15.
together you can get various benefits. One of those benefits is the integrated
services. Many services can be accessed using a single channel or device.
This process is referred as integrated services. For example the mobile
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phones can be used for voice communication as well as for surfing the
internet.
16.
Core banking refers to the ability to access bank account from any of the
branches of that bank. Core banking is one of the major advantages that
banking industry has got from information technology.
17.
18.
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Objectives
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need any complex processing to obtain. At the same time the volume
of operational information would be larger in nature because they
are collected in a day-to-day basis.
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EIS would normally receive input from both inside and outside of
the organization.
EIS would provide options for viewing the same data from different
dimensions which the top level management prefers to have.
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productivity of the organization by reducing the time taken to carry out repeated
tasks as explained above.
Planning
Analysis
Designing
Development
Implementation
Maintenance
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After all the above mentioned steps are carried out a report has to be
prepared. This report would include various factors that you have identified so
far. This report has to be submitted to the top level management. The top-level
management would decide upon the further actions to be carried out based on
the report that you have prepared.
2.3.2 Analysis
After going through the report that you have submitted in planning phase
the management would provide you the directions in which you have to
progress. At the worst case the management can even decide to the wrap up the
development process by looking at the cost benefit analysis.
A thorough study of the existing system has to be carried out in the
analysis phase. This is crucial because it is only to rectify the problems in the
existing system a new system is developed. In order to rectify problem, first you
have to understand clearly what the problems are. Then only you can think of
solving those problems.
The analysis stage would also indicate about the nature of changes that
would be introduced in to the organization by the implementation of the
proposed system.
Analysis phase involves various steps. These activities are as listed
below:
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there are various other techniques that can be used. One such
technique is called CASE (Computer Aided Software Engineering).
Using these tools you can analyze various parameters of the system
so that they can be tweaked for better performance.
Analysis phase is where you exactly find out what is the flaw in the
existing system. So the most important point that has to be remembered here is
that the proposed system should not have these flaws again. The proposed
system should ensure better performance than the existing system.
There is one more point worth noting here which is called Paralysis by
analysis. Though analysis is important you should not stuck-up with too much
of analysis. The boundary and scope of analysis has to be clearly defined.
2.3.3 Designing
It is only in the designing stage the proposed system's creation starts. The
designing phase itself can be divided in to two more sub-phases. They are called
Preliminary design
Detailed Design
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Backup specifications
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After all these tasks have been carried out a report has to be prepared.
This report would include all the above mentioned specifications. It is the design
phase where the proposed system's behaviors are clearly explained.
2.3.4 Development
After the designing stage the next step is development. In the
development stage the actual system development takes place. Appropriate
techniques should be used during system development so that the delays can be
avoided to a maximum level.
The development stage has to clearly adopt the specifications given by
the planning phase. Any unnecessary deviations from the specifications would
give rise to conflicts. So these deviations have to be avoided.
Since the development includes a team of programmers, proper
arrangements like code version management, coding standards etc have to be
made. This would result in better and faster system development.
An unplanned development stage would make the implementation and
maintenance phase hectic. So it is the development phase where the actual
system is built.
During this development it is not necessary that all components have to
be developed from scratch. Where-ever feasible, the necessary third party
components can also be used. The choice of selection of third party component
can be based on various factors as listed below:
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Quality: The component that you acquire from third party has to be
well tested one. Otherwise it can cause some serious problems during
the maintenance phase.
In addition to software, the hardware that is needed for the system has to
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In the case of load testing the system would be tested for the amount of
load it is capable of handling. In load testing large amount of data would be
supplied and the behavior of the system would be tracked in response to this
load. The system has to cross a particular load level. If the system breaks within
such a load level then there is some flaw in the system development. Those
flaws have to be identified and they have to be rectified.
Once the system is well tested and certified for no major bugs it becomes
ready for the actual implementation process.
2.3.5 Implementation
After the testing process the system has to be implemented for the actual
use. Since the system that is going to be implemented is relatively newer, the
users of this system have to be trained.
Proper level of training has to be given to the users who are going to use
this newly developed system. If the training is not proper even the best systems
can get negative reactions from the users. So it becomes the responsibility of the
training team to make the users feel comfortable with the system.
There exist different types of implementation. Few of the popular
implementation types are as listed below:
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You can ask the users to enter data in both new and old
systems manually. This would raise objections because it
increases the work load drastically.
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particular day onwards the organization stops using the old system
and it totally shifts to the new system. If the new system behaves as
planned then there will not be any problem. But if the new system
fails then the entire functioning of the organization would become
risky.
So the proper implementation method has to be identified after detailed
discussion with both top level management and various levels of users who are
going to use the system.
2.3.6 Maintenance
Not only the information systems but any product requires maintenance.
Maintenance involves two important components. They are as listed below:
The first component would involve activities like backup etc. If the
system requires networking then the network should also be maintained for
proper functioning.
The second component involves additions or modifications in to the
actual code. When incorporating any new requirement or modifying an existing
option, it has to be made sure that it will not affect other components of the
system.
At one point in time the cost of maintaining the system would go beyond
a particular level. At that time again the System Development Life cycle has to
start. Other reasons for starting it again may be like shifting to latest
technologies etc.
An information system which has been developed by properly following
the instructions given above would be beneficial for the organization.
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Summary
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IS stands for
Information Submission
Information Selection
Information Systems
CASE is
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Answer Key
Part I
1. c
2. d
3. a
4. b
5. d
Part II
Parallel Implementation
Phased Implementation
Direct implementation
Pilot Implementation
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Planning
Analysis
Designing
Development
Implementation
Maintenance
There exist two sub phases in designing. They are preliminary design and
detailed design.
There exist two major activities in maintenance. One is to keep the system
working smoother. Another is to incorporate any new changes given by the
user. While incorporating changes the integrity of the system should be given
importance.
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Objectives
Discussing the details about various storage devices like hard disk,
compact disk etc.
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Vacuum tubes: These were the units that constituted the first generation
of computers. Vacuum tubes are nothing electronic tubes with a glowing
filament in them. A good example for computer that used these vacuum
tubes is ENIAC. The primary problem with vacuum tubes is their failure
rate. Another problem is their big size.
All the elements of the above lists reduced the size and increased the power
of computers to a greater extent. There is a famous law in computer science
related to this which is called Moores Law. It states that
The density of transistors on chip would double once every eighteen
months
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The Moores law was developed by Gordon Moore in the year 1965.
Moores law is true till date. This is to say that the size of transistors is reducing
according to above specified Moores Law.
There exist different types of computers. They are as listed below:
Personal Computers
Workstations
Mini Computers
Mainframe Computers
Super Computers
Personal computers were introduced during the year 1977 by Apple. This
personal computer was called Apple II. This became very much popular during
those days.
During the early 1980s IBM launched their version of personal computer
called IBM-PC. Later to this, the term PC was used to refer IBM-PC. IBM-PC
changed the attitude of users towards computers. After the advent of IBM-PC
computers were getting more popularity among the general public.
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Desktop Model: In desktop model PCs the monitor would sit on top of
the CPU. This model would require only very small space because there
is no need for additional space for CPU.
Tower Model: Tower model PCs are also called Mini Tower PC. In the
case of tower type the components inside the cabinet would be stacked
on top of each other i.e. Hard disk, Floppy disk drive, CD Drive and
other components would be placed on top of one another. The advantage
of tower model is that if you want to add any more components like
additional storage etc it would be relatively easy comparing to Desktop
model.
One more point worth noting here is that recently the gap between the highend PC and the workstation is blurred. In other words nowadays you can find
PCs that has advanced computing facilities like more than one microprocessor,
good amount of main memory etc.
3.1.3 Workstations
Workstations are more powerful comparing to personal computers.
Workstations have got powerful microprocessors. The display associated with
workstation will also be powerful than that of personal computers.
Since the power of workstations is more they are used for applications
like CAD / CAM, complicated software development process etc. Workstations
would generally have built in network support i.e. they can be easily connected
to a network. (Sometimes any computer connected to a network is called
workstation though they may be personal computers)
Workstations are ideal choice for graphical applications like Digital
Image Processing etc because this task requires higher computing power and
increased amount of RAM.
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Hard Real Time System: In hard real time system the fixed deadline
is very important. Output delivered after this limit would be useless.
There are plenty of examples for hard real time systems. A system
that is controlling the airplane is an example for hard real time
system. If such a system doesnt deliver the output with in the
deadline it would have certain chaotic effects.
Soft Real Time System: In soft real time system if the deadline is
missed then the output can still be usable but the quality would be
affected. A system that is controlling a game can be considered as
soft real time systems. At the same time the difference between the
expected time and actual time should not become very high. In such
a case the output would become lower in terms of quality and would
become useless.
Real Time Systems are not same as high performance systems. It is not
necessary that real time system should be produce output immediately but they
have to produce the output within the fixed time limit.
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For example consider the following scenario: You have to transfer some
amount from account A to B. You would encounter following steps:
If the system fails after the first step then the amount would have been
subtracted from As account. At the same time Bs balance would not have
updated. In this scenario all the above mentioned steps has to be carried out in
full or no step should be carried out.
These transaction processing systems should follow the atomicity
principle i.e. each transaction has to be considered as a single unit. It should not
be divided further.
If these systems dont follow atomicity principle then the integrity of the
system would become a question mark.
3.4 Laptop
Laptop computers are portable computers. They are now becoming
equivalent to their personal computer counterparts in their processing speed and
memory capacity.
Being portable requires many features:
Laptops are less in weight. This makes porting from one place to another
easier.
Laptops are nowadays called notebook computers. Since they have become
ultra slim and looks like a notebook (even you can carry it like a notebook) this
name is used.
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Since the notebook computer uses advanced technologies to assemble all the
components in much lesser space the cost of note book computers are higher. (If
you consider a desktop PC and note book with similar processing capacities the
cost of later would be much higher).
3.5 Palmtop
Hand-held computers are called palmtop. The name palmtop is given
because it can sit easily with in your palms. These palmtops are ultra portable
than the notebook computers.
The purpose of notebook computer and palmtop varies. Notebook
computer can hold majority of the applications that is possible in desktop PCs.
But in the case of palmtop application types would be limited.
Palmtops are otherwise called PDA (Personal Digital Assistant). They
are a combination of mobile phone + portable computers. These palmtop
computers would have wireless networking features. They can be easily linked
with a Wi-Fi network.
PDA has got certain advanced features like voice recognition, hand
writing recognition etc. If voice recognition feature is there in a PDA then you
can control such a PDA through voice commands.
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There is a possibility that client and server can reside even on the same
machine (if both of them are software programs). The power of client server
computing can be understood by the fact that the internet works on the client
server architecture.
The web browser that you use in your machine is the client program.
These client programs communicates with server i.e. web servers to get the
required web page or web service. In order to communicate they follow certain
standard protocols.
There are basically two types of clients. They are thin client and rich
client. In the case of thin client everything has to be carried out at the server
side. The client machine would only receive input from the user and display the
output back to the user.
In the case of rich client some of the processing would be carried out in
client side itself. If the client machine is having reasonably good hardware
configuration then the resources at client can be harnessed. By this the load on
the server would be reduced. One thing to remember is that to implement rich
client architecture the client machine should have reasonably good hardware
configuration.
The general client server architecture can be as simple as two tire
architecture i.e. client is one layer (tier) and server is another layer. In the case
of n-tier architecture multiple layers are introduced in between.
For example a separate database server can be introduced for taking care
of database related operations. In general many applications are designed in
three tier architecture. One tier for presentation, another for business logic and
another would be for data or storage.
The n-tier architecture makes the maintenance of the applications easier
because the bugs (errors) can be easily identified and rectified. It also provides
modularity i.e. if the performance at one layer is not good you can even think of
totally replacing it with new one without making modifications in other layers.
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ATMs and POS terminals: These are specially designed for a particular
purpose. The ATM key pads would have only the required keys that are
necessary to perform your transactions. Same is the case with POS (Point
Of Sale) Keyboards.
Another important thing that you would notice with respect to keyboards is
the key count. The number of keys may vary depending on the model and
manufacture of the keyboard. Generally you would find 104 or 108 keys in the
desktop machines. In the case of laptops the number of key would be little bit
lesser (85 approx). As said above the number of keys may vary based on various
factors.
In one word we can say that, keyboards are the most used peripheral device
associated with a computer system.
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pointing devices. Pointing devices are used to locate the cursor on a particular
location on the screen and execute the command by clicking etc. There exists an
array of pointing devices available today.
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Joystick: Joysticks are specialized input devices which are mostly used
with computer games. But apart from computer games it has its uses in
other domains like wheel chair controlling etc. In larger cranes and
trucks also joysticks are used to achieve finer control.
Touch screen: Touch screens acts as both output as well as input devices.
Touch screens are sensitive to pressing. The advantage of touch screen is
that you can directly touch on the displayed item for selection. This
would be very much useful in places like kiosks, information rendering
terminals and ATM etc. Touch screens are very much user friendly i.e.
they are self-explanatory.
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Barcode Readers: These devices are used to convert the barcodes printed
on a physical object to electronic form. Barcode readers extract data
from the barcode.
Video input devices: To capture the video into the computer you can use
the video input devices. Webcam (Web camera) is one of the popularly
used to video input device. These cameras can be attached to the USB
port of the computer. The quality of the video again depends on the
resolution that your camera supports. Higher the resolution larger the
video size. In addition to webcams the digital cameras can also be
connected to the computer system to transfer the captured videos.
Apart from the above mentioned input devices there exist certain bio-metric
devices. For example the finger print reader is one such example for bio-metric
readers. Nowadays there are finger print readers are available in laptops itself
for additional security. Iris pattern recognition systems are used to recognize
particular person by scanning patterns inside the eyes.
Recent developments into these kinds of recognition devices are RFID
(Radio Frequency Identification). Small RFID tags can be attached to objects
which can be recognized later. The RFID is getting highly popular in retail
shops industry and Library domain.
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Floppy disk
Hard disk
Compact Disk
Magnetic Tapes
Flash memory
8 Inches
5.25 Inches
3.5 Inches
In fact 8 and 5.25 inch disks are not in use today. Normally used ones are
3.25 inches disk.
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Data are stored into floppy disk by magnetic principles (in a circular plate
which is located inside the floppy disk). To read the data from floppy disk you
should have floppy disk drives. In line with the size of the floppy disk there are
different kinds of floppy disk drives also exists.
The floppy disk drives are normally located in the cabinet itself. There
exist external floppy disk drives also. You can find these with very compact
laptops where there is no space to place the floppy disk drives. In such case you
can connect the floppy disk drive through USB port or similar.
Floppy disks drives have the capacity to read and write the data into a floppy
disk. At the same time a floppy disk can be made read-only by using the writeprotect notch. The write protection mechanism is not the same in 5.25 and 3.5
inches floppy disks. In 3.5 inch floppy write protection would be enabled if the
write protection window is open. In the case of 5.25 inches when the opening for
write protection is closed write protection would be enabled.
Storage area of floppy disk is logically divided into tracks and sectors.
Tracks are the concentric circular areas of the disk. Each track is divided into
many sectors. Sectors are wedge-shaped. These sectors are invisible in nature.
Inside the floppy disk drive there is a mechanism called head. The head is
responsible for reading and writing data to and from the disk. The circular plate
inside the floppy disk which holds the data would rotate and the head would also
make movements so that the specified track and sector can be located.
The size of the 3.5 inches floppy disk is 1.44 MB. Before using any floppy
disk it has to be formatted. Generally formatting is a process which is applicable
to all the secondary storage devices so that these devices would become usable.
Apart from the traditional floppy disks there are certain specialized floppy
disk called Zip disks and super disk etc. Zip disk would be in capacity of 100 or
250 Mega Bytes (Iomega Zip disks). The super disks are of size 120 Mega
Bytes. This is called LS-120 diskette.
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Though the floppy disk has the advantage of portability they have few
disadvantages. They are as follows: The data stored in the floppy disk are
sensitive to magnetic materials. So there is a possibility that the data would get
corrupted easily if it comes in contact with magnetic substances.
After the advent of other storage devices like CD and Thumb drives the
usage of floppy disks are getting reduced. The reason is the increased storage
space in the later devices. Roughly if you compare the amount of storage in
Floppy (1.44 MB) and a typical compact disk (700 MB) then you can realize
how much the later devices are huge in capacity. This is the primary reason for
diminishing popularity of floppy disk these days.
SCSI
IDE
EIDE
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With the help of SCSI up to 8 HDD can be controlled where as in the case of
ATA the maximum is 4. So the selection of SCSI or ATA depends on the usage
of the hard disk.
A typical hard disk is packaged with many platters inside. These platters are
made up of glass ceramic or aluminum disks. These platters are coated with
magnetic materials. As specified for floppy disks, hard disks too have tracks and
sectors. Hard disk additionally has a unit called cylinder. Data would be stored
on these platters as magnetized spots.
In hard disk there would be read/write head. This read/write head doesnt
make physical contact with the platters. There would be micro gap between the
actual head and the platters. If the head touches the platters then it could cause
some damage to the data on the hard disk. Even micro sized dust can cause this
damage. In order to avoid this, hard disks are packaged in an air tight manner.
So it advised not to open the external box or cover of hard disk because it can
cause the above mentioned damage.
Another factor to consider with hard disk is rpm. It stands for
revolutions per minute. Higher the revolution of the hard disk more the speed of
data retrieval. A typical hard disk today has an rpm of 7200 i.e. the platters
rotates 7200 times per minute.
As you have already understood the fact that capacity of the hard disks
are very huge, they are partitioned into many logical drives. This is for the
following purpose:
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Though it has been mentioned that hard disks are fixed storage devices,
there exist removable hard disks also. These devices are called External hard
disks; these external hard disks are connected to the computer through USB
ports.
Another category of hard disk exist which are called RAID (Redundant
Array Independent Disks). RAID is sometimes called Redundant Array of
Inexpensive Disks. In RAID there exist multiple hard disks connected together.
This combination may provide many benefits like security of data, improved
performance in terms of speed. There exist many levels of RAID exists called
RAID 0, RAID 1 etc.
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CD-R: These CDs follow the Write Once Read Many time principle.
CD-R stands for Compact Disk Recordable.
There is another type of optical disk which is called DVD. DVD stands for
Digital Versatile Disks. The size of a DVD is in terms of GB. Normally it ranges
from 4.7 GB (Giga Bytes) to 17 GB. So DVDs have much larger storage space
then CD-ROM. The reason for increased size of DVD is that, here the pits
created are off much smaller size than the CD. In addition to this, there exist
more layers on which pits can be created. This also provides increased space for
data storage. Another important fact is that the wavelength of laser used in DVD
is lesser than that of laser used with CD.
To read DVD you have to use DVD drives. Now there exist drives which
can read both DVD and CD. These drives are called combo drives. Generally
combo drives can perform read operation on DVD and Read/Write operation on
CD.
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Access speed of these magnetic tapes is very slow. So they can be used
in places where the speed of data retrieval is not a primary concern. As specified
earlier primary purpose of these tape drives are archival.
The magnetic tapes resemble the audio cassette. These are called tape
cartridges. Normally used types of tape drives are DAT. DAT stands for Digital
Audio tapes.
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emphasizes the importance of output devices. Like the input devices which have
direct communication with the user, output devices also has close contact with
the user.
The computers dont know anything more than 0 and 1. Imagine the
output as simply a sequence of 0s and 1s. This would make the computers
almost unusable. The output devices provide a solution this problem. These
devices provide the output in the human readable form.
Generally the output devices can be broadly categorized into two types.
They are depicted in the following figure 3.2.
Figure 3.2 Output Device Categories
This section would elaborate on both of the above mentioned types output
devices. Their usage, functionality is described in this section.
Before explaining the output devices in detail it would be better to
understand few fundamental concepts of output. Any output device has got an
attribute called resolution. Resolution refers to the quality of the output.
Resolution of the output device is generally specified like 800 x 600, 1024 x 768
etc. This indicates the number of pixels across both X and Y axes. The
multiplication of these two values would give the total number of pixels in that
output device.
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You would come across one more term related to output devices which is
called pixel. Pixels are relevant to softcopy output devices. Pixel is the
smallest individual addressing element of an output device.
In the case of hardcopy output devices the same is measured in terms of
dpi. It refers to dots per inch.
CRT displays
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CRT displays are not easily portable. They are very heavy in nature.
They occupy much larger space.
CRT displays are not power conscious i.e. they consume much higher
power.
Liquid Crystal Display: The types of display devices are most popular in
nature. Here liquid crystals are used in between LCD panels. In LCD
devices there would be grid on which you can apply voltage to activate
particular intersection positions. In LCD device there are again two
categories. They are :
Active matrix LCD: This active matrix LCD uses TFT. TFT
stands for Thin Film Transistor. TFT displays can be viewed
from any angle.
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Refresh Rate: The number of times the display is redrawn per second
indicates the refresh rate of the device. If the refresh rate is very less then
you would find the display flicker. The refresh rate of a display device is
measured in terms of a unit called Hertz. Most of the display devices
provide the choice to adjust the refresh rate to the user.
Dot pitch: Dot pitch refers to the space between pixels. If the space is
much lesser then the display would look good. The dot pitch is generally
referred as dp.
The quality of the display doesnt only depend on the actual display device
but it also depends on another important unit called display adapters. There
exist various types of display adapters. This display adapter acts as the interface
between the system and the display device. This is shown in the Figure 3.3. So
these display adapters provides input to the display devices. There exist many
types of display adapters like SVGA, XGA etc. The resolution of the display
device is also dependent on the kind of adapter that is used.
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Figure 3.3: Display Card as Interface between CPU and Display device
- 93 -
Many other printers can print only on good quality paper where as dotmatrix printers may even print on low quality papers.
Dot-matrix printers can print on more than one paper at the same time
by using carbons.
The demerits of dot-matrix printers are as listed below:
Ink-Jet Printer
Laser Pinter
Thermal Printer
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Ink-jet printers dont produce any noise during printing (In the case of
dot-matrix printers noise would be generated during printing)
On the other hand ink-jet printers do have certain drawbacks. They are as
listed below:
2. Recurring cost of ink-jet printers are higher. (i.e. cost per page for
printing would be higher)
3. Hence the ink-jet printer consists of micro sized nozzles they are very
sensitive to dust. The dust on these nozzles can easily make the output
quality to very low.
Laser printer can produce both good quality image and text output.
Laser printers print much faster. (A typical laser printer can print 8-10
pages per minute)
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The output can be printed on materials other than paper like polymer
sheets. This polymer sheet printing is widely in the Desktop Publishing
industry.
Laser printers have become optimal choice for home and office uses. There
exists an array of laser printers available in the market today. Based on the
requirements a proper model can be easily selected.
In the case of color laser printers the cost of printing is still higher. One of
the problems that you would encounter with laser printer is that, by some how if
a scratch is formed on the cylinder then it would have impact on all the
consequent pages to be printed.
Among the types of printers that exist today you can easily say that the laser
printers are certainly better than other types of printers.
3.9.3.2.3 Thermal Printers
Thermal printers are one of the rarely used types of printers. In thermal
printers waxes are used to print. Head would be applied on these waxes to create
the actual output. Thermal printers are costlier in nature. You can select thermal
printer if you want to have highest quality of output.
Apart from these printers there are certain special category printers as
listed below:
11. Multifunction printers: These devices perform more tasks than printing
like fax, scan, photocopying etc.
12. Label printers: These printers are designed to print only the labels. They
are inexpensive in nature.
3.9.3.3 Plotters
Plotters are specialized hardcopy output devices. Plotters are generally
used to plot architectural drawings or engineering designs. The dimensions of
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output generated on plotters in terms of feet. Generally plotters are used in those
circumstances when the size of the output is very large so that they can not be
printed on normal printers effectively.
There are many types of plotters. The following list illustrates various
types of plotters:
19. Pen plotter: The pen plotters create output by using many colored pens.
The number of colors may go up to eight. These pens can draw on the
paper or any other suitable medium. The output here is formed by
combination of lines not by the combination of dots as in other printing
devices.
20. Electrostatic plotter: Electrostatic plotters work similar to photocopiers.
In electrostatic plotters toners are used (similar to laser printers). These
electrostatic plotters are costlier and require regular maintenance to
ensure proper functioning.
21. Ink-jet plotters: Ink-jet plotters are comparatively cheaper. They
consume large quantities of ink. You have to wait until this ink dries.
Otherwise there is a possibility of smear.
22. Thermal Plotters: Thermal plotters require special paper. They can print
only with two colors. At the same time thermal plotters are faster.
Summary
1. There exist various types of hardware architecture like personal
computers, workstations, mainframe, supercomputers etc.
2. Mainframe computers utilize their power in handling many users at a
time.
3. Supercomputers utilize their power in solving a particular problem
in a faster manner.
4. There exist portable computers like laptop, palmtop etc. They all
have the capability to work on battery power.
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The mouse is a pointing device. The two types of mouse are ball
mouse and optical mouse. The number of buttons on the mouse may
vary. A scroll wheel can also be there in mouse.
11.
laptop computers.
12.
Track ball is the upside down version of mouse. The ball can be
Storage devices are of two types. They are primary storage and
secondary storage.
14.
non-volatile in nature)
16.
Inside the hard disk there is a unit called head which is used to
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20.
You need to install a file system before using the storage device.
There exist many types of file systems like FAT32, NTFS, EXT 3
etc.
21.
22.
inches floppy disk is 1.44 MB. (Only the 3.5 inches floppy disks are
used today. Generally the usage of floppy disk is diminished).
23.
In the case of compact disk laser light is used to read and write
the contents.
24.
26.
memory today.
27.
There exist two types of display devices like Cathode Ray Tubes
Cathode Ray Tube consumes higher power than the flat panel
displays.
29.
In flat panel display, there are various types like LCD, plasma
display etc.
30.
Printers are the hardcopy output devices. There are two types of
printers etc.
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20.
21.
22.
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23.
24.
25.
26.
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27.
28.
20.
21.
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Answer Key
Part I
1. a
2. b
3. a
4. c
5. d
6. a
7. a
8. b
9. c
10. c
Part II
11.
Hard real-time system is a type of real-time system where the task must
be finished within the deadline. If the deadline is not adhered the output
would have no meaning. For example a system controlling the air traffic.
Here the deadline is vital.
12.
Palmtops are portable computers. They are smaller than the laptops. As
the name indicates you can have them in your palm to operate. Palmtops can
connect to internet in Wi-Fi mode. (Since a wired connection is not helpful in
palmtops)
13.
Track balls are upside down versions of mouse. They are pointing
devices. Track balls used to situation where the finer control is required.
14.
15.
matrix printers are very less (The cost per page is less). Dot-matrix printers
are comparatively slower.
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16.
CRT stands for Cathode Ray Tube. CRT consumes higher power than
other devices like flat panel. At the same time the image quality of the CRT
display is finer.
17.
There exist many types of plotters. They are thermal plotters, electro-
Flash memory is used with many devices today like mobile phones,
digital camera etc. Flash memory belongs to EEPROM type. The flash
memory is a semiconductor based memory.
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Objectives
- 105 -
Easier communication
Software sharing
Search-ability of data
Protection of data
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desired information or data. The networks provide an avenue using which you
can easily search the data. Though the network itself doesnt has the facility to
search data but it certainly acts as the platform on which search applications can
be easily developed. In other words if there is no network then search engines
would not make any sense. So this Search-ability (search + capability) of
networks is another important benefit of networks.
4.1.5 Protection of Data
Without networks the data would reside on individual systems or
desktops. The data residing in these types of machines have only limited
protection. If you have business sensitive data then you cant afford to take the
risk of simply putting them on a desktop PC with limited security.
If you introduce network in this scenario then you can place the business
critical data in to servers which have enriched security mechanisms. By this
your data becomes protected.
One more advantage of having network is the ability to take backups
easily. Another factor is that you can place critical information in more than one
server which may be located geographically faraway. The advantage of this is
the protection from natural calamities like flood, fire, earthquake etc.
4.1.6 Remote and Grid Computing features
If you have a task which requires high speed computing and if you dont
have computer with matching capacity then you can rely upon the technologies
like remote computing and grid computing etc. Using these technologies the
powerful computing facilities located faraway can be harnessed for executing
your tasks. Of course for this you should come to an agreement with the owner
of that remote machine. These facilities have become possible only because of
networks. If no computer network exists then you cant even think of these
features.
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For example grid computing brings the ideas of how the electricity is
been distributed with the help of power grids, to the computer science paradigm.
Here you may not be aware of the fact that from where the computing power is
coming from, very similar to the fact that you normally dont care from which
resource the electricity is coming from. In coming years this grid computing can
really the change the way in which the computer resources are perceived today.
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Normally the LAN connections are faster. The reason for this is the
usage of private cabling system to interconnect computers in a LAN. If a public
telecommunication line is used there is possibility of disturbances in the line
which is not there in the case of LAN.
When a LAN is very small in size, simply connecting two machines and
a printer for example, it would be called Tiny Area Network (TAN). These
TANs would be very much helpful in the case of home networking where the
number of computers and peripheral are normally very less in number.
4.2.2 Metropolitan Area Network (MAN)
Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) spans across a city. Consider the
following scenario: An organization is having ten branches across a city and it
wants to connect all the branches together. In this case you cannot use LAN
because of the larger geographical coverage but to use MAN.
MAN would normally use Fiber-optic for its communication. Another
mode of communication is the wireless communication in MAN. The fiber-optic
communication would be reliable than the wireless communication. But it would
be a tedious process to setup the fiber-optic cables initially. Once the initial
setup is over fiber-optic communication can be very effective.
If you plan to use Wireless communication in MAN then you cannot use
similar technologies which are used in LAN like Bluetooth etc because of the
larger geographical coverage. In this situation you can go for the microwave or
radio communication across various units of MAN.
4.2.3 Wide Area Network
Wide Area Network (WAN) covers a larger geographical area such as a
country or the world. In the case of WAN the primary mode of communication
would be Satellite communication. Since the coverage may span across many
countries if not continents, satellite mode of communication seems to be very
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effective with the Wide Area Networks. WAN normally uses the combination of
more than one communication technique like fiber-optics and satellite etc.
In the case of WAN the public telecommunication systems are used
because it would become much costlier to establish a private communication
link across the country.
Routing plays a crucial role in WAN. Since the geographical area is
much larger it requires specialized techniques to transmit a packet (a data unit)
from the source computer to the destination computer.
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- 112 -
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TCP
IP
- Internet Protocol
SNMP
SMTP
FTP
IMAP
HTTP
From the name of the protocol itself you can get an idea about the role of
that protocol. Apart from the protocols given in the above list there exist various
other protocols.
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Summary
LAN stands for Local Area Network. The scope is limited to within
a building. Generally the coverage is shorter.
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Sharing of devices
Easier communication
If the network has to cover an entire country then which of the following
is/are the correct choice(s)
The topology where all the nodes would be connected to a central computer
is called
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Ring topology
Centre topology
Star topology
HTTP
FTP
SMTP
A topology in which direct connection between any two nodes exist is called
Mesh Topology
Star Topology
Bus Topology
Internet is
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network of networks
1. d
2. a
3. b
4. c
5. d
6. a
7. c
8. d
Part II
LAN stands for Local Area Network. LAN boundary is limited to a smaller
geographical area. It is within only a building or an organization.
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Star topology is an arrangement where all the nodes are linked to a central
computer. All the nodes would have the direct connection with the central
computer.
NIC stands for Network Interface Card. If you have to connect your system
to a wired network then your system should have NIC. The network cable
would be inserted in to the port provided in NIC.
WAN stands for Wide Area Network. WAN can covers a large geographical
area like a country or continent. WAN network generally uses the existing
telecommunication lines for connectivity.
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Lesson 5: Software
Introduction:
Without the software a computer cannot serve any useful purpose for
which it is been intended for.
Objectives
Unambiguous in nature
Able to perform only the tasks for which they are intended for.
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5.2 Classification
Software is generally classified in to two types. They are
Application software
System software
Utility programs
Let it be any kind of software, it posses the characteristics explained in
the earlier section. In this section we will elaborate in to the details of all these
classes of software.
5.2.1 Application Software:
Application software is a class of software which is used to solve the
problems specific to a particular domain. In other words these are the software
that are developed to accomplish certain kind of activities like mathematical
calculations, drawing graphics, document drafting and printing etc., We can
define application software as follows:
Application software is a class of software that is used to accomplish
specific tasks not related to the computer itself.
To elaborate more, this software is used to perform a task that is specific
to a particular domain.
5.2.1.1 Classification of Application Software
Application software is classified in to following categories. They are
Custom Applications
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Cost effective
- 122 -
system which is very specific to the railways. It is one of the applications which
is been used widely in our country today.
5.2.1.1.4 Shareware and freeware
Shareware are software that you can try before you buy. The shareware
are initially distributed freely. If the users who are using it are satisfied with this
they have to pay. Normally in many shareware applications certain features are
either not available or available only for a limited duration of time. After that
particular duration (or number of uses) it becomes unusable fully or partly.
Freeware is the short form of free software. Freeware are
software that is completely free of cost to use. In contrast to shareware, freeware
are absolutely free.
5.2.2 System Software
The next class of software is System software. In contrast to application
software, system software is mainly used as an intermediate layer between the
application programs whatever we install and the hardware of the computer. One
of the well known examples for system software is Operating system which
would be discussed in detail in the later section. System software can be defined
as follows:
System software is a class of software that is used to accomplish specific
tasks related to the computer itself. System software manages and controls the
hardware so that application software can perform their designated task.
In other words system software can be characterized as application
independent software i.e. system software is not specific to any of the
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Process Management
Memory Management
I/O Management
Security
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Networking services
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before being used. Many operating systems provide utilities to perform this
formatting task (otherwise third-party tools have to be used).
Operating system also needs to manage the free space in the disk so that
while allocating storage for future request it can choose the best available
locations. There exists a wide variety of algorithms for this like first fit, best fit
etc.
To handle the disks operating systems maintains the file allocation table
normally called FAT. The operating systems provide support for variety of file
systems like FAT32, NTFS, and HFS+ etc.
Since the disks are very slower when compared to the speed of
processor, the operating system needs to manage these disks in an efficient
manner so that delays can be reduced to a maximum possible extent.
5.3.1.5 Security
Security is the buzzword in todays IT industry. Security gets more focus
because security and accessibility are inversely proportional. A computers
primary task is to provide access but only to the authenticated persons.
Many operating systems provide security in one form or other. The
resources need to be secured from both the internal as well as external access.
A process which is executing inside the system itself is restricted only to
access certain resources and not to all. For example no process is permitted to
overlap the memory where operating system resides. This is also a form of
security.
Similarly, operating system also provides some security mechanism to
protect the unauthorized access of resources from outside the computer system.
Many of the modern days operating systems include specially designated
software for this purpose called Firewall (in a network scenario).
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Task count
User count
Portability
Machine Type
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processes running in the system at the same time. Many of the modern days
operating systems belong to the multi tasked category.
In multitasking we have further sub-categories. They are
1. Preemptive Multi tasking
2. Cooperative Multi tasking
In the case of preemptive multitasking operating system slices the
processor time to each of the processes running in the system. In this case it is
possible that the operating system can forcefully pause (even stop permanently)
a process before it completes its execution Examples for this type of operating
systems are OS/2, Windows 95 etc.
In the case of cooperative multitasking, each program can control the
CPU as long as it wishes. At the same time if the process is not using the CPU
then it can allow some other process to utilize the processor. Examples for this
kind of operating system are Windows 3.x and MultiFinder for Macintosh
computers.
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5.3.2.3 Portability
An operating system is said to be portable if it is independent of the
hardware. There are certain operating systems which are hardware dependent
and they are called non-portable operating system.
For example the MVS of IBM is an example for non-portable operating
system.
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There are certain operating systems which are totally designed for
personal computers. These Desktop operating systems are normally used in
many of the machines where we dont need a greater extent of security.
Microsofts PC DOS is an example for one such system.
5.3.2.4.2 Server Operating Systems
On the other hand we cant deploy desktop operating systems in a
powerful server where we would require greater amount of security and
enhanced process management techniques. There exist certain operating systems
specially designated for such a purpose. Windows NT (NT is not network
technology but New Technology) is one such server operating system. We have
many variations of Linux which are widely used with servers.
5.3.2.4.3 Mainframe Operating Systems
As the name indicates these operating system are used to work with main
frame computers. Popular example for this kind of operating system was MVS
which is used in IBM main frame computers. These main frame operating
systems are comparatively secure and powerful.
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Summary
In the case of multi tasked operating systems there are two types.
They are preemptive multitasking, cooperative multitasking.
Operating systems used with hand held devices are called embedded
operating systems. There exist many embedded operating systems.
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System software
Application software
Tech software
Banking software
Operating system
The software which you can access for limited time period or with
limited features without paying any money is called
Shareware
Partware
Miniware
System software
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Utility software
Ambiguous software
Miniware
The system software that acts as an interface between user and computer
is called
Linker
Loader
Operating system
Embedded OS
Multi user OS
Set OS
Embedded OS
Port OS
Micro OS
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Open Source
FAT 32
NTFS
EXT 3
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1. c
2. c
3. a
4. c
5. a
6. c
7. c
8. a
9. b
10. e
Part II (Short Questions)
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15. On the basis of task count, operating system can be classified into two types.
They are single tasked and multi tasked. Multi tasking itself can be further
classified into cooperative and preemptive multitasking.
16. Freeware refers to the class of software which can be used with out paying
any money. Shareware can be used freely but for a limited period of time or with
limited set of features.
17. Operating system has to manage the memory among the processes running
in the system. To manage memory there are many techniques like virtual
memory etc.
18. Multitasking refers the capability of handling multiple processes at the same
time. There are two types of multi tasking. They are preemptive and cooperative
multitasking.
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We, human beings use the natural languages like English, Hindi etc
to communicate with others.
Objectives
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language. We would also look through the advancement that had been made in
each generation of language.
6.2.1 First Generation Language (1 GL)
First generation language was very closest to the computer. They are
called machine language. Machine language consisted of only two symbols.
They are 0 and 1. So the programs written using machine language would have
only these two symbols at the maximum.
The most important advantage of machine language is that the programs
written in machine language would execute fastest. The primary reason for this
is that the processor can understand the language directly.
At the same time the problem with first generation language is that
human understanding of these languages is next to nothing. It would be easy to
solve the most complex puzzle than understanding the program written in this
language.
For example let us have a sample program to add two numbers. If we
want to write the program performing this task in machine language then we
have to do the following things:
Step 1: Identify the instructions available to load two numbers
Step 2: Identify the instructions for addition
Step 3: Find out the binary equivalent for these instructions
The entity that makes the machine language hard to handle is the
italicized term binary equivalent. Yes, we have to find out the binary equivalent
of these instructions.
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Even today certain programs are coded into ALP when speed is the
primary criterion. Even some of the high level languages like C have provisions
for inclusion of Assembly language instructions inside their own program.
As we have already specified the computers can still understand only the
machine language we should use a translator to convert from assembly language
to machine language. For this purpose we have a translator called assembler.
So an assembler can be defined as follows:
An assembler is a translator which would translate the assembly
language programs in to machine language programs.
This procedure is depicted in the following figure 6.1.
Fig 6.1: Role of Assembler
We can do the ALP coding in more than one ways. One is through the
microprocessor kits where we have to supply the hexadecimal op-codes for each
instruction. Another way to perform this is through the debug mode in the
command prompt of MS DOS. There we can directly type the ALP coding.
Today we have some of the simulators available to work with the ALP. These
simulators would provide a better editor and an inbuilt assembler simulation
tools.
Apart from machine dependence assembly language programs are quite
handy in situation where we can not directly apply any high level language.
6.2.3 Third Generation Language
Even though the ALP is much better than the machine language we
cannot use them directly in all commercial application development. Primary
reasons are machine dependence and the development time. It is practically
impossible to develop the different source codes for different hardware.
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Purpose
ForTran
Engineering applications
COBOL
Pascal
BASIC
System programming
C++
Object orientation
Delphi
Visual Basic
Java
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Apart from the languages given in the above table there exist a wide
collection of languages which are used for plenty of other purposes.
Hence the machines cannot understand any of the languages other than
machine language; we need some translators to translate from high level
language to a form that can be used for execution.
We have two different types of translators available for this purpose.
They are
Compiler
Interpreter
A compiler is a translator that would scan the complete source program
written in a high level language and produce the object code output which would
be stored for later execution. This is depicted in the following figure 6.2.
Fig 6.2 : Role of compiler
Well known examples for compiler oriented languages are C, C++, and
COBOL etc.
An interpreter would scan the program line by line and translate it for
execution. The primary difference between compiler and interpreter is that,
compiler stores its output file in the disk, where interpreter doesnt produce any
intermediate files at all.
The interpreters mode of operation is depicted in the following figure
6.3.
Fig 6.3 : Role of interpreter
Well known example for interpreter oriented language is BASIC. The
important point to note about interpreter is that it does not produce any
intermediate file. Its output is direct execution of the high level program.
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Well known example for fifth generation languages are Prolog, OPS5
and Mercury.
When the development of fifth generation languages started there were
much expectations regarding this. Still the development in these areas is in
progress. May be in the near future we can expect some awesome results from
these fifth generation languages.
6.3 Packages
Package is defined as software that performs some well defined
functions. In order to use the package the user need not be a programmer. So the
target audience of the package is generally non-programming users.
Most percentage of the users of computers is non-programmers. They
have plenty of tasks to perform. Some tasks may be common across a wide
group of users. In such cases the software companies releases their software in a
package. Package would be accompanied with a well defined documentation.
The common benefits of using packages are plenty. Normally any
package would be well tested before their actual release. So the probability of
bugs (errors in the software) would be lesser.
Because the documentation is provided with any package it would be
easy for the user of these packages to get fair idea about working procedure with
these packages.
Moreover sometimes these packages are bundled together. In such cases
they are called package suite or application suite.
In this section we would explore many of commonly used package types.
The structure of these packages and also their commercial usages would be
described.
The following are some of the commonly used types of packages
Spreadsheets
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Presentation tools
Let us explore each of these in detail.
6.3.1 Spreadsheets
Almost every user of the computer would have known about this
spreadsheet applications. We can easily say that spreadsheets are one of the
most popular applications in the industry.
In this section we would explore about the principles of spreadsheet and
their applications.
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Format Conditionally
Unlike the normal word processing applications, in spreadsheets we can
format the cells according a particular condition. For example we can make the
contents bold if the value is greater than 6500. This is depicted in the following
figure 6.7.
In this example the cells having the value greater than 6500 are made
bold. If we change the cell contents then the formats would be applied according
to the condition. No additional effort is needed to make the formats to be applied
accordingly
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Tools
To perform the above mentioned operations there are plenty of tools
available in the industry. An enhanced survey of these tools is out of scope for
this text. So what we have listed here is a sample collection of tools. The reader
is encouraged to find out similar tools.
To perform document layout and design, tools like PageMaker are used.
To handle images, tools like CorelDraw or Photoshop comes handy. For
animation related tasks tools like Flash are used.
6.3.3 Presentation Tools
There are plenty of places where presentations are used like business
project presentations, academic presentations etc. In the early days these
presentations were done only through some special printed documents like OHP
etc., But after the development of electronic presentation tools the scope of these
presentations have become huge.
Components
Normally a presentation consists of number of slides. Each slide may
consist of number of elements. There is a primary difference between a normal
document and presentation.
A good feature of a presentation is that we should not have clumsy text
in the slide. Usually slides are prepared as bullet points.
Presentation tools support animations also. The slide animations and the
animations of components in the slide are also used to make the slide powerful.
Tools
There exist lots of presentation tools available in the industry. For
example PowerPoint from Microsoft, Impress from OpenOffice etc.,
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All these tools have some basic features like slide insertion, Component
insertion, Formatting, Adding animations etc. The features of these tools are
very easy to understand.
All these presentation tools have many of the features of word
processing tools like fonts, coloring and themes etc. Covering all the features of
a presentation tool itself is topic of a complete text. So here you would find the
important features of a typical presentation tool.
The screenshots shown in this section are taken with Microsoft
PowerPoint tool. The following screenshot shows the startup screen of
Microsoft PowerPoint tool.
There you can notice three panes in the screen. The first pane shows you
the thumbnail images of all the slides in the current presentation. The middle
pane is the work area where you can actually place your contents. The last pane
indicates various slide layout options. Using these options you can change the
location and types of contents that you are going to place in your presentation.
Figure 6.11: Initial Screen in PowerPoint Presentation
Figure 6.12 : Procedure to insert a new Slide
PowerPoint gives you options to change the design of your slides easily.
There exist many pre-defined designs which you can easily apply by clicking on
them.
Normally a presentation would contain more than one slide. The
procedure to insert a new slide is to right click on the Left pane and select the
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Using a Viewer in the target system where you would use your
presentation. This method is little-bit difficult because of the fact
that it requires the presence of viewer in target system which you
cannot assure. So it would be better to go with the first option.
Normally all the presentation tools are designed by keeping the Look
And Feel concept in mind i.e. you may not require an extensive training to
work these presentation tools. If you have fundamental know-how of computers
then you will feel very comfortable with presentation tools with very little
training, if not nothing.
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Scientific Applications
Commercial Applications
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- 160 -
Bio-Informatics advancements
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you have to start from the scratch where as software application has
drastically reduced the time taken for this process. There exist many
CAD tools available today in the market. To name a few: OpenCAD,
AutoCAD from Autodesk etc.
Geographical Information Systems (GIS): GIS are very much helpful for
navigation purposes. GIS in mobile phones has totally modified the
approach towards travel to a new place. In GIS satellite controlled
information would be provided to the user so that he/she would get a
complete picture about the particular geographical location.
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Others:
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data to be secure in nature i.e. only the authorized people should access
these data. Software has provided solutions to this security problems aswell. The popular usage of ATM all across the globe is the gift of
Information Technology to the humanity.
Sales and Marketing: Sales and marketing are the two areas where the
right information at right time to right people can directly be translated in
to money. Sales and marketing usually includes huge data. Finding the
patterns across these data is a challenging task. There is a detailed study
in the computer science field which is called Data Mining and
Warehousing. Roughly this data mining and warehousing is application
of software to a huge collection of data to find out some patterns across
these data. Once you find out these patterns they can be effectively used
to promote the sales and marketing.
Stocks: Stocks trading is now performed largely with the help of internet
and World Wide Web. This facilitates the quick transactions and recent
information.
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Air traffic control: Air traffic control is a time sensitive application. The
software has to provide the information within the exact time boundary.
If the information is not delivered within the specified boundary it can
result chaotic sequences of events.
First generation language was very close the computer. They were hard
to understand for the humans.
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Desktop publishing includes tools for designing. DTP tools are used in
the printing industry prominently.
application,
commercial
applications
and
real
time
applications.
Real time applications have to follow the deadline factor. For example
software controlling the movements of a vehicle has to strictly adhere
the time boundary.
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System programming
Internet programming
Java
COBOL
Packages are
Predefined tools
Well tested
pages
cells
lines
Pagemaker
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Coreldraw
Photoshop
Cells
Slides
Documents
Assembler
Compiler
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Interpreter
Answer Key
1. b
2. c
3. d
4. d
5. b
6. d
7. a
8. d
9. b
10. d
Part II
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Third generation languages are called high level languages. The program
written in third generation languages is portable in nature. They are more
readable also.
Applications where time is the critical factor are called real-time applications.
There exist two types of real-time applications. They are soft real-time and
hard-real time applications.
Presentation tools are helpful to convey concepts. They are used for
demonstrations purposes also. There exist many presentation tools exists.
One of the popular examples is Microsoft PowerPoint. There exist
opensource presentation tools also. One of the examples is the presentation
tools used with OpenOffice.
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Internet has totally modified the way people communicate and share
information to a greater extent.
Objectives
1. Providing the brief history of internet
2. Explaining the internet communication methodology
3. Providing information about Internet Service Providers
4. Explaining the concept of IP addresses
5. Discussing about the functionalities of Domain Name Systems
6. Introducing various web browsers and explaining their merits and
demerits
7. Elaborating about the e-mails
8. Discussing about the file transfer protocols
9. Outlining the purpose of HTML and introducing simple tags in
HTML.
10.
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There are various ways of connecting to internet. Most popular among them are
listed below:
Dial-up Connection: For dial-up you would be using your telephone in your
home for dialing a particular number to contact the Internet Service Provider.
Dial-up connections are slow in nature. Their speed of communication would
be very few kbps (kilo bits per second, 4 kbps refers 4000 bits per second)
Broad band connection: Broad band connections are faster. They are faster
than dial-up by many folds. You can use broad band connection if your
internet access involves multiple media of data. The speed of broadband
connection would be in terms of Mbps (Mega bits per second, for example
eight Mbps refers to eight million bits per second)
Apart from these two there are other techniques like ISDN (Integrated
Services Digital Network), Satellite way of communication etc. But only the
dial-up and broad band are used in a massive scale for connecting to internet.
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In our country there exist many Internet Service Providers. For example
BSNL (Bharath Sanchar Nigam Limited) is public sector ISP providing internet
connectivity all across the country.
Each ISP would provide various different packages for internet
connectivity just like your telephone connections. You can choose one
according to your needs and usage. The billing for internet would be generally
on the basis of time in case of dial-up connections. And in the case of broadband
the amount of data transferred would be taken into consideration for billing. In
case of dial-up apart from the internet time charges you may also required to pay
the billing for telephone separately.
Nowadays ISPs are providing attractive plans like pay a constant amount
and use unlimited internet. Again the choice of particular scheme selection and
for that matter ISP selection also purely depends on your usage.
Apart from wired internet connectivity nowadays ISPs provide wireless
internet also. To access wireless internet, ISPs provide a device which you can
attach to your USB port. By using this device you can easily access internet on
the move.
The local access point that ISPs provide for you is called POP or Point of
Presence. The connection from your system would first lead to this POP. Then
from this POP, Network Access Points (NAP) are used to further travel through
the network.
Nowadays many ISPs networks are not copper wire networks. They are
all optical-fiber networks. By using optical-fiber the speed of connectivity again
increases and also the loss of data is reduced.
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Then you may ask the question that what is the difference between
internet and World Wide Web? The answer for this question is as follows:
Internet is actually the underlying network and World Wide Web is one of the
services running on internet.
What does this actually means? Internet refers to the physical network.
On top this physical network many services are running like e-mail, ftp (file
transfer protocol) etc. World Wide Web is simply another service running on
internet. Since World Wide Web is used in massive scale many people
interchangeably use the terms World Wide Web and Internet. Ideally speaking
they cannot be interchanged for one another.
7.5 IP Address
The World Wide Web primarily uses two protocols. They are
Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP). These two
protocols make the WWW access easier and efficient.
IP address refers to Internet Protocol Address. Any computer linked to
the internet has an IP address. A typical IP address would have four components
or four octets. For example it would look like 172.16.0.25. There are two types
of IP address assigning. They are
Dynamic IP address: This type of IP addresses would change every time you
connect to the internet. So they are called dynamic. For example if you are
using a dial-up connection for accessing internet, every time you connect to
the internet you would be given an IP address. This IP address is only for that
session. If you connect at a later point you can notice that the IP address has
changed.
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become impossible to locate a web server. (Web servers hold the web pages
in them. A single web server can host multiple web pages).
At this point in time you may have a question in your mind that how to
identify the IP address. There is a simple way to do this. If you are using
Windows operating system go to the command prompt and execute the
command ipconfig. The result would give the IP details of your computer.
If you are using a Linux based machine then go to the terminal and type the
command ifconfig and press enter. It will give you the IP address details. (In
Linux there are certain permission issues to execute this ifconfig command).
This IP addresses are not only used in internet connectivity but they can be
used with in your organization network also. If your organization is having
hundred computers networked together then you can identify each single
computer by using the IP address. More over you can organize computer into
different groups by providing a particular range of IP address. For doing this
concepts like subnet masks are used.
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The number of IP addresses is very huge. So DNS conversion can not happen
at a single machine for the whole World Wide Web. This makes the DNS
distributed. Actually DNS is the largest distributed database.
There are millions of changes happening each day. So the DNS has to
accommodate all these changes.
The DNS has to perform this conversion in real time i.e. the conversion
should happen within the specified time limit. (In fact DNS is a good
example for soft real time system which is explained previously in this text)
- Protocol
pondiuni.edu.in
- Domain Name
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departments
computerscience.php
So when you type the above mentioned URL in a browser following list
of events happens
pondiuni
edu
in
All the countries are assigned a two letter short form to make it easy to
include in the URL. For example (in for India, sg for Singapore etc)
Generally there are certain top level domains. They are as listed below:
.com
- Commercial Purpose
.mil
- Military purpose
.org
.gov
- Government
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.net
- Network
.edu
- educational
Immediately by looking at a URL you can find out the location (country) of
the organization and purpose of the organization.
In a particular domain no two URLs can be same. But if the top level domain
changes then you can have the same name. For example it is valid to have the
following two URLs:
www.pondiuni.org
www.pondiuni.edu.in
These URLs are valid because the top level domain in first URL is org
whereas in second URL it is edu.in. You may notice that in the first URL no
country name component present. It is not mandatory to have the country name
component. But if the URL includes country name component then you can
easily identify the location. Two URLs can differ in country name component
also. For example:
www.google.co.in
www.google.co.fr
The above two URLs are valid because they differ in the country name
component. Another point that you would have noted is that here the protocol
name http is not used. Most of the time even you miss the http:// you would be
able to access that web site.
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The secure variation of http is called https. https stands for Hyper
Text Transfer Protocol Secure. You could have noticed the presence of https in
sites providing facilities like net banking etc.
If you enter a URL which is using https protocol then your browser itself
indicates this by changing the address bar background to yellowish color. (This
happens in browsers like Mozilla Firefox)
https is not only for financial transaction sites but it can be used for
any URL that need to be secure. For example the mail service provided by
Google i.e GMail normally uses the https version. This indicates that the
particular page is more secure and you can rely on that service.
7.7 Browsers
The tools that enable you to access World Wide Web are the browsers.
Today you have lot of options to choose the browser of your interest. This
section would describe about various popular browsers and their specialty and
drawbacks. A web browser can be defined as follows:
Web browser is software that enables you to access the World Wide
Web
Browsers have the following attributes:
All the web browsers primarily use the HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol)
Web browsers have the capability to handle multiple forms of data like text,
images, audio, video etc.
Internet Explorer
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Mozilla Firefox
Opera
Safari
Netscape Navigator
Chrome
(The elements in the above list are not sorted in terms of their popularity)
Let us look in detail about each of the above browsers in the above list
Trident
Gecko
Webkit
Presto etc
A deeper study of these rendering engines would be out of scope of our
current text.
7.7.3 Internet Explorer
Internet explorer is the default web browser in Microsoft Windows
operating systems. Details about IE are listed below:
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Firefox is a cross platform Web browser. Firefox versions are available for all
the major operating systems.
One of the major advantages of Firefox is the ability to extend. There exist
many Firefox extensions available. Recently there is huge interest in
developing extensions for Firefox among the developer community all over.
Major criticism about Firefox is the delay in loading the browser. It takes few
seconds to make the browser up. It also takes up a considerable amount of
memory.
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7.7.5 Safari
Safari is the default browser with Macintosh operating system (i.e. Apple
computers). Facts about Safari are as listed below:
Complete support for CSS (Cascaded Style Sheets) is the important feature of
Safari browser.
7.7.6 Opera
Opera is another popularly used browser among the web users. Facts
about Opera are as listed below:
Opera is a cross platform Web browser. (Versions exist for all the major
operating systems)
Opera versions exist for mobile phones and PDA. Miniature version of Opera
is called Opera Mini.
Opera also supports mouse gestures i.e. apart from click, double click, drag
you can perform events by moving your mouse in a specified patterns.
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Criticism about Netscape Navigator is the poor support for CSS and XML.
(Many of the above specified browsers have got a good support in handling
XML).
Chrome is based on Webkit rendering engine (same engine is used with safari
also).
Chrome supports tabbed browsing. Here the advantage is that each tab would
be considered as a separate process so problem in one tab would not affect
others.
Since Chrome is still in beta few of the web pages seems to be rendered in
chrome with broken manner. There is a good chance that these errors would
be rectified in the complete release.
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The hardware that you use is an important factor. For example if you
are using a mobile phone or PDA then Opera is a good choice.
The platform in which you work also has the major role to play in
browser selection. For example Safari being the default browser in Mac OS
(Of course here you can go for other browsers also but the default browser
would have been tailor made for that particular Operating System).
The type of content or type of web application that you use is also a
factor in selecting an ideal browser for your purpose.
Since browser is the interface through which you are accessing the
World Wide Web, a proper browser should be selected for your purpose based
on the above listed factors.
Apart from text other media of data like image, audio etc can be attached
with e-mail.
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Internet connectivity
An e-mail account
An e-mail client. (e-mail client is optional because there exist many web
based interfaces for e-mail like Gmail or Yahoo etc).
There are many popular e-mail clients like Mozilla Thunderbird, Microsoft
Outlook express etc. Some of them are open source and others are proprietary.
Similar to web browser, selection of e-mail client selection should also be done
with great care by taking your hardware and usage into consideration.
7.8.2 E-mail Services
Nowadays you have plenty of choices in selecting the e-mail services.
Many free services also exist. Popular among the e-mail services are as listed
below:
Gmail
Yahoo mail
hotmail
rediffmail etc
All the above specified e-mail services are free. You can create an
account with them freely. Some of the e-mail services provide multiple types
services like free services and the premium services.
7.8.3 Your e-mail address
A typical e-mail address has the following format:
user_id@provider_domain
For example
pucsc@gmail.com
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Where
Pucsc
User
Id
(Pondicherry
- Computer Science
pondiuni
- Pondicherry University
edu
- Educational institutions
in
communication purposes.
7.8.4 An e-mail account for you
To proceed with e-mail first of all you should have an e-mail address.
This section would elaborate on the process of creation of an e-mail account.
The procedure is as listed below:
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By typing the e-mail service providers address in to a browser you can land
on the home page of that e-mail service. For example mail.google.com is the
address for launching the Google Mail (Gmail)
At this point there are two choices. If you have an e-mail address you can
enter there and login. If you don't have the e-mail id click on the sign up
now or similar option.
This would lead you to a page where you have to enter certain data. First of
them would be your e-mail id.
Apart from the user-id it would ask details like your name, contact address,
other e-mails (if you have any) and your preferences etc.
After entering all these information you can submit the form to create an email account for you.
Other than this mode of creation there exists other ways also. For
example if you are working in an organization then the organization itself may
provide you an e-mail id.
One more method of getting e-mail id is from the ISPs (Internet Service
Providers) itself. Some of the ISPs would provide you an e-mail address when
you purchase an internet account from them.
7.8.5 How to send an e-mail?
Let us assume that you are using web based e-mail. You have to follow
the steps given below to send an e-mail:
Login into the e-mail site. While creating an e-mail account they would ask
for an e-mail id and password. By typing this e-mail id and password you can
log-in into your e-mail account.
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After login by default most of the e-mail services would display your inbox
where you can find your incoming mails.
After clicking compose option you would get a screen where you have to
enter the to address. This indicates the user to whom you wish to send the
e-mail.
Apart from to address you can also enter cc. It indicates the carbon copy.
Same mail would be sent to these users also.
One more type of address that you can enter is called bcc. It denotes blind
carbon copy. The mail would be sent to these recipients also without the
knowledge of other recipients.
In the above specified addresses it is not mandatory to enter all of them. All
other addresses are optional.
After entering these addresses you have to enter the actual message body in
the message area.
Once you have entered the message then click on the send option to send
the message.
If the message is successfully sent then you would be given a message similar
to Your e-mail sent etc. If the message is failed because of address error or
any other error you would receive an e-mail from the provider indicating the
failure of message. In such cases you can check the e-mail address for proper
spelling.
Apart from the above specified steps there is another option called
attachments. Attachments are very much useful in case you want to send some
additional files along with your e-mail. In such a case you can choose the file
that is to be sent as attachment before clicking the send button.
While selecting the attachments you have to consider the following facts.
The size of the file should not be big. Optimal size is in terms of KB or one
or two MB.
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The files that you attach would be scanned for virus. In cases where your file
is infected with virus many providers deny the attachments.
The number of attachments can be more than one also. In case where you are
sending a big file it is better that you can split that file into two to three pieces
and then send them as individual attachment. This becomes helpful in
scenarios where the internet speeds in very less. A big file can fail to upload
or download. In such cases these small files can help you.
Most of the viruses send with e-mail are sent as attachments. So it is a
good practice that not to open the attachments from unidentified sources.
7.8.6 Security with e-mail
One of the major problems among the e-mail users today is the security.
There is a category of e-mail called spam mail. These mails are product of
malicious users. service. These mails are unsolicited in nature. These mails
would greatly disturb in accessing your regular mails.
At times these mails can have viruses also. Your computer would get
affected by these viruses if you simply view or download these mails. The
question that you can ask now is how can I protect my system from these
viruses? It can be done if you follow the below given steps:
Never open an e-mail which you believe as a spam. Otherwise if you have
got an e-mail from unidentified sources never open them. Simply delete those
mails without carrying out any further action.
You can also use spam filter options provided by many email services. For
that matter many e-mail services provide free spam filters. For example
Spaminator.
Once you identify an email as spams do not reply to that mail. By replying to
the spam mail you are actually increasing the possibility of further attacks.
Because now the spam sender has got the information that your e-mail is
active.
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Apart from the above mentioned step you can also take a precautionary
action. Never enter your email id in forms where you feel the authenticity of
the site is not genuine. Because from these sites all the collected e-mails may
be provided to persons or organizations who/which are sending the spam.
You have to think twice before entering your e-mail password in any other
site. Because by providing both your Id and password you are giving the
complete control of your e-mail account to a third person which may lead to
critical problems.
Gmail Chat (A chat option available within your mail page itself)
Yahoo Messenger
MSN Messenger
AOL Messenger
Many of the messengers provide you a client side tool which you can
download to your system. Then you can install and configure with your e-mail
id according to your need. You can use this chat facility when the person with
whom you want to chat is also online.
All the e-mail services have the facility of address book. In this address
book you can store the e-mail details about persons with whom you have regular
contact.
The primary advantage of this address book is that you don't need to
remember the e-mail address. Another advantage is that it helps to avoid spell
mistakes i.e., when you type the e-mail address yourself there is a possibility of
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typing it with spell mistakes. But when you select from address book where it is
stored correctly there is no possibility of spell mistakes.
Another point in organizing your e-mails is to properly store them in
folders. Instead of keeping all the mails in the Inbox you can create many
folders according to your choice and move the mails to corresponding folders.
Apart from Individual e-mails there exits group mails also which are
primarily used to share information among people with a common interest.
There exist many such popular e-mail discussion groups are available in
internet.
FTP removes the file systems barriers i.e., the user need not worry about the
kind of file system that the server is using.
To establish connections in FTP you need two programs. They are called
FTP client and FTP server. FTP client program would communicate the FTP
server program to perform operations like reading the file content, writing,
renaming etc.
There are three modes of in FTP. They are active mode, passive mode,
extended passive mode. Each mode has got its own method of operation.
FTP can be used in cases where ever there is a need to transfer files from
one location to another. It is been widely used to share some content over
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internet. You share files through e-mail as attachments but there is a restriction
to that, in terms of file size. If the size of the file to be transferred is high then
FTP can be used instead of e-mails. FTP allows to you to transfer files of bigger
sizes also over internet.
There are many FTP client programs available today. Few of them are
also available freely. Most of the browsers do have the facility to support FTP.
While accessing FTP sites the protocol ftp or ftps (FTP over SSL) should be
used instead of http. For example an ftp URL may look like ftp://pucsc/it.pdf.
FTP access can be either based on a user name, password mode or it can
be also be in anonymous mode. In the case of anonymous mode there is no need
for providing the username and password. This anonymous mode is used in sites
where contents can be downloaded by anyone who visits that FTP site.
7.9.1 FTP data transfer
FTP data transfer can happen in two modes. They are ASCII (American
Standard Code for Information Interchange) and Binary format.
ASCII would be used while transferring plain text. Here the character by
character ASCII would be transferred over the network and the receiving
computer would covert it back to character.
ASCII mode would be helpful only for text based data transfer. When
the data to be transferred is in the form of non-text like images, other file
formats etc, the binary mode would be used. Here the bit stream wise data
transfer would take place.
If ASCII mode or text mode is used for above mentioned usage then it
has the possibility to corrupt the files that are transferred.
7.9.2 FTP demerits
Though FTP helps to transfer files from one location to another it do
have certain problems. They are as listed below:
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FTP doesn't checks for the correctness of data. Many data transfer methods
follow the error checking procedure where as in FTP there is no error
checking is available.
stands for Secure Socket Layer) which is more secure than the FTP. Though
FTP has got above mentioned problems, it is still a widely used protocol to
transfer files over internet. Many popular sites provide FTP support, if there is a
need for transferring files from the users or to the user.
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One of the popular BBS used during those times was called FidoNet.
FidoNet was very popular based on the type of services it provided. There were
many other BBS which were very similar to FidoNet (in fact they all used the
same software and techniques that were used with FidoNet). All those networks
were called FidoNet Technology Network (FTNs).
BBS were unreliable in nature because they were not operated from a
high quality server centre or similar. Many users hosted BBS in their own
machines. So connectivity was not that much reliable.
BBS acted as discussion forums as well where users with a specific
interest can share their views by posting information on these BBS.
Intranet scope is limited to the organization level. In other words intranet can
be accessed only with in an organization.
Intranet can be considered as private internet with only the relevant data.
If you wish to have file sharing then FTP support should be enabled.
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The servers have to be established. These servers would host the information
that would be requested by the users. There can be individual servers for
database, application etc.
Since the intranet is based on internet standards the clients for accessing the
intranet are nothing but the web browsers. Here the selection of web browser
can be made by keeping the organization's need in mind because here the
boundary is restricted to an organization.
A network monitoring tool can also be used to monitor the functions or load
of the intranet to facilitate better access.
Since the intranet is well defined i.e. you know the number of users, the
servers can be tweaked for performance keeping in mind the number of
concurrent users.
During information distribution proper access rights can be set so that right
information reaches right people at right time.
Through intranet a common standard can be shared across all the teams of an
organization.
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7.11.3 Disadvantages
The following list gives you list of all factors that to be considered while
setting up an intranet (in terms of disadvantages)
Finding the trade-off between rights given to the users and administrative
restrictions.
A problem in the intranet server would degrade the performance of all the
departments of the organization.
7.11.4 Extranet
Extranet is similar to intranet except with a variation that the boundary is
not strictly limited to the organization but authorized people outside the
organization can also access the extranet.
For example an organization may like to give access to some parts of its
system to users like customers, vendors etc who reside outside the organization.
In such a case you cannot use intranet. Here extranet can be successfully
implemented.
Access to the network would be on the basis of authorization. The users
would be given user id and password which can be applied to access the
resources.
Apart from these user id and password based authorization there can be
other methods of authorization like IP based authorization etc. In IP based
authorization users would be checked for their IP. If the IP falls with in the
specified list or specified range then access would be given. Otherwise access
would be denied.
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7.12 HTML
Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) can be considered as a corner
stone of World Wide Web. The pages of World Wide Web are constructed with
HTML.
HTML is a markup language. Markup languages are used to represent
the form and structure of a document. Markup languages don't support any
logical commands like programming languages. So, HTML also doesn't support
any logical commands. The point you have to remember here is that HTML is
not a programming language; it is only a markup language.
HTML and all other markup languages are derived from SGML
(Standard Generalized Markup Language). Many of the markup languages like
XML etc are derivatives of this SGML.
</b>
The data in between opening tag and closing tag would be applied the
particular style provided by the tag. A HTML document has the following
structure
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<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>
{contents}
</body>
</html>
Any HTML document has to start with the tag <HTML> and the same
need to be closed at the end. The next tag would be <body> and it would be
closed before the </HTML> tag.
For example
<html>
<body>
Welcome to Pondicherry University
</body>
</html>
The HTML listing and the output is as shown in the figure 7.3
Figure 7.3 Simple HTML listing with its output
7.12.2 Steps for creation of first HTML file
Following the steps given below to create a simple html page:
Open any text editor any type the above given code and save the by giving
any name and .html extension.
Launch any web browser and open the html file to view the output.
Head Section
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14.
Body Section.
Head section would hold certain specialized tags like <title>, <meta>
etc. In the body section the actual document layout would be created. Body
section is the core section of any html document because only here the actual
content of the document is given. Head section in html is optional.
7.12.4 HTML output
The output of a HTML listing depends on various factors. Most
important factors are as listed below:
23.
The browser with which you are viewing the document has a major role
in deciding the actual display because it is only the browsers which interprets
the html code and display the output.
24.
The operating system that you use would also play a major role in
The display resolution (like 800 x 600 etc) would have an impact on the
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For example
<b> This is bold text </b>
<u> this is underlined text </u>
<i> this is italicized text </i>
7.12.5.4 Starting a new line
To start a new line html provides a tag called <br>. <br> refers to break.
<br> is a pair less tag i.e. There is no closing tag for <br>. Few tags in html are
without closing tags.
For example:
<body>
This is line one <br> this line two <br> line 3
</body>
7.12.5.5 Inserting a horizontal Line
To insert a horizontal line the <hr> tag can be used. For example
<body>
This is group 1
<hr>
This is group 2
</body>
The above html listing would provide the output where there is a
horizontal rule is provided in between the two lines.
7.12.5.6 Linking to other page
Most important attribute of html document is the ability to link from one
document to another. To provide this facility html has got the link tag <a> </a>.
In addition to liking other documents portions of same document can also be
given as target for anchor tag.
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For example
<body>
<a href=www.podiuni.edu.in> Pondicherry University </a>
<a href=www.mkuniversity.org> M.K. University </a>
</body>
The above listing would produce an output consisting two hyperlinks. By
clicking the hyperlinks your browser would land on to the corresponding URL
given for those links.
7.12.5.7 Inserting Images
HTML is not only for text data. It has the capability to handle various
forms of data like image, audio etc. To insert an image in to an html document
<img> tag is used. For example:
<body>
Taj Mahal <img src=tajmahal.jpg width=100 height=100>
Himalayas <img src=himalayas.jpg width=100 height=200>
</body>
The output of above listing would be a page containing images of
tajmahal and himalayas. Also the text Taj Mahal , Himalayas would be
displayed. The width and height attributes specifies the width and height of the
images.
7.12.5.8 Creating Tables
Many times it is required to give the data in a tabular format. HTML
provides table tag to create tables. Table creation involves various tags. They are
as listed below:
<table>
<th>
<tr>
<td>
- To specifiy a cell
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For example
Figure 7.6 Table Tag
There are various attributes that you can use with in a table definition.
Few of them are listed below:
21.
border
22.
23.
Cellspacing
24.
Cellpadding
25.
Rowspan
26.
Colspan
Apart from creation of tables, the table tag has got an important usage.
Another usage of table tag is to align the contents. HTML doesn't provide any
coordinate based positioning. So to properly create the layout of pages table tag
is used. In these cases the border property of table tag would be set to zero so
that the table will not be visible to the end user.
7.12.5.9 Listing Tags
To create list html provides listing tags like ordered listing and
unordered listing. An example for unordered list is given below:
<body>
<ol>
<li> CPU </li>
<li> Mother Board </li>
<li> RAM </li>
</ol>
</body>
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The above example would display a list with three items in it. Each item
would be displayed in a separate line. They would be preceded with symbols
(like bullets) to identify them as individual item. These bullets are also
customizable.
In case of ordered list instead of <ol> the tag <ul> would be used. And
the output would have numbers instead of bullets.
7.12.5.10 Marquee tag
Marquee tag is used to scroll text on the display to get attention from the
user. For example:
<body>
<marquee>
This text would be rolling
</marquee>
</body>
The direction and speed of rolling can be controlled with the help of
various parameters.
XHTML it is mandatory to close all the tags. If the closing tag does not exist
then also there is a special mechanism. For example <br> would be used in
XHTML as <br />
30.
html it is optional.
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31.
Summary
Internet is the global network. Internet is called network of
networks.
The history internet began with ARPANET.
There are various modes of connecting to internet: dial-up,
broadband access etc.
The organization which provides you the access to internet is called
Internet Service Providers (ISP). For example BSNL.
Modem is the device used to convert analog signals to digital and
vice-versa.
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1. ARPANET
2. Google
3. Netscape
4. All of the above
5. None of the above
23.
IP stands for
1. Internal Programming
2. Internet Permissions
3. Internet Protocol
4. All of the above
5. None of the above
24.
1. Internet Explorer
2. Chrome
3. iBrowse
4. All of the above
5. None of the above
25.
1. Macintosh
2. Unix
3. DOS
4. All of the above
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1. Windows
2. Linux
3. Macintosh
4. All of the above
5. None of the above
27.
1. HTML
2. XML
3. PHP
4. All of the above
5. None of the above
28.
1. <nl>
2. <br>
3. <enter>
4. All of the above
5. None of the above
29.
1. <hr>
2. <hrule>
3. <hori_ruler>
4. All of the above
5. None of the above
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30.
1. HTTP secure
2. HTTP simple
3. HTTP synchronous
4. All of the above
5. None of the above
31.
1. Firefox
2. Internet explorer
3. Safari
4. All of the above
5. None of the above
Part II (Short Questions)
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
19.
20.
21.
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Answer Key
Part I
1. a
2. c
3. c
4. a
5. d
6. c
7. b
8. a
9. a
10. a
Part II
11.
There are many ways of accessing internet. One such way is called dial-
up connection. In dial up the ISP will provide a number to dial using which
the connection would be established. The dial-up connections are normally
slower in nature.
13.
The terms www and internet are not synonyms. Internet refers the
A web browser is software used to access the World Wide Web. There
exists an array of web browsers today. Some of them are listed below:
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DNS stands for Domain name systems. The name systems role is to
convert the user entered URL into IP address. If domain name systems were
not there users have to remember the IP addresses which is very difficult to
practice.
17.
The e-mails can be accessed either through World Wide Web or e-mail
clients. E-mail clients are software which you can install in your machine to
access your e-mail account. Popular e-mail clients are
(a) Mozilla Thunderbird
(b) Outlook Express
(c) Evolution
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Lesson 8: Multimedia
Introduction
Today we are all living in the information technology world. The role of
computers in human life has become inevitable. One of the major causes
for computers becoming part-and-parcel of everybodys life is because
of the simplicity of its usage. Gone are the days when computers were
only for technology oriented people.
Can we now imagine a computer that does not has the capability to
display images? It may sound very uncommon today. The power of
computers lies in their ease of use. The factor behind the ease of use is
that the computers now have the capability to handle multiple media.
Objectives
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Text
Animation
Audio
Video
The fig 8.1 illustrates various components (content forms) of multimedia.
8.2.1 Text
The text component consists of only the alphabets, numerals and
special characters. This is the most preliminary content form. The text
component itself has various effects associated with it. They are as follows:
Font face
Font size
Character spacing
At the same time the amount of text that would be used in the multimedia
presentation should also be under control. We should not overuse the text
content in a multimedia presentation.
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8.2.2 Graphics
Graphics refers to still images. An image is nothing but a matrix of
pixels (pixels refers to the picture cells). With the help of image we make the
content to be more effective because an image is worth more than thousand
words. There exist various kinds of images that can be used in a multimedia
presentation. The following table 8.1 lists out various image file formats and
their explanations.
Image format
Meaning
Bmp
Bitmap image.
Jpeg
Png
Tiff
Gif
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is smaller, so it is easy to transfer these file over internet because they consume
very less storage space. Let us have a glance on these two file formats.
Gif uses 8 bits per pixel. So the maximum number of colors with gif image is
256
The gif format is supported by most of the web browsers. This makes gif a
good choice for World Wide Web.
Jpeg compression is a loosy compression method but still human eyes are not
capable of identifying those lose.
Most of the image processing tools provide various levels of compression for
jpeg. As the compression increases image size is reduced at the same time
quality of the image is also reduced.
Generally for compression of images various algorithms are used. They
fall under the techniques like run length encoding (RLE), statistical compression
etc.
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8.2.3 Animation
Any object in a multimedia presentation that has movement associated
with it, is called animated. The fundamental usage of animation is that they can
be used for some illustration purpose.
An animation is again a sequence of continuous still images arranged in
a specific order so that it creates the illusion of movement. So to create an
animation sequence we need to create the required still images first. Then we
can combine these still images using specific tools to create the animation.
Smoothening of images edges to improve the look of the image is called
anti-aliasing.
8.2.4 Audio
Audio component adds the real richness to any multimedia presentation.
The audio can range from human voice to special effects sound. In order to
handle audio in a presentation we need to first capture the audio. Then we
should integrate the audio in proper place in to the presentation. There exist
various kinds of file formats for audio. Some of them are listed below:
Mp3
Ra (real audio)
8.2.5 Video
Animations are artificially created sequence of events where as video
refers to captured sequence of real events. The usage of video in a multimedia
presentation lies where we need to integrate some clips of recorded events. To
handle video we have specific file formats like dat, mpeg4 etc.
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8.4.1 Education
The applications of multimedia in the field of education are many. Elearning itself, has become a vast field. Multimedia based presentations have
become common teaching tool in institutes of higher learning. The important
benefits of this method includes
Comparing to the traditional black board based teaching you can speed up the
learning process.
Lecture sessions can be made more interactive with the help of multimedia
tools.
8.4.2 Telemedicine
The effectiveness of telemedicine is primarily due to faster
communication links and multimedia. The telemedicine would not have been
successful to this extent without the help of multimedia.
The multimedia applications in telemedicine include video transmission
of patient diagnosis or surgery. The sound is also transmitted live to facilitate
communication between patient and doctor, doctor and doctor communication.
There exists few telemedicine software commercially available in the
industry. They all incorporate excellent multimedia capabilities.
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For each content form there exists a specific compression standard. For
example to compress audio the recent technique is mp3. The popularity of mp3
is well known to all. With the help of mp3 we can reduce an audio file of size 70
mega bytes to 4 mega bytes.
Another important reason for compression is that when the multimedia
content travels through a network they require huge band-width without
compression. If we compress the multimedia content, then it would occupy
comparatively very less band-width.
Summary
The compressed file formats like GIF and JPEG are widely used on
internet.
Bmp
Jpeg
Gif
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Shading
Sliding
Anti-aliasing
GIMP
Photoshop
Corel draw
.mp3
.wav
.ra
Large images
Multi-color images
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Define multimedia
Answer Key
Part I
1. a
2. c
3. d
4. d
5. b
Part II
6. Multimedia refers to the integrated usage of more than one media
together. Multimedia requires certain specialized hardware and software for
efficient performance.
7. Multimedia includes various content forms. They are as listed below:
Text
Graphics
Animation
Audio
Video
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8. With the help of virtual reality you can provide the user a feel that the
movements are happening in the real world. For example you can provide a
walk-through inside a building as if user is walking through the building.
9. Smoothening of image edges so that the image would look better is called
anti-aliasing. It is used to increase the quality of the image.
10. JPEG stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group. It is an image format
well suited for multi colored images. JPEG images provide a good level of
compression.
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Objectives
- 225 -
C++
Java
Small talk
PHP
Objective-C etc.
Though many languages were developed following Simula and
Smalltalk, it is only the C++ which attracted a larger mass of developers towards
object oriented programming. The object oriented programming attained much
popularity during 90's.
Once the concept of Graphical User Interface was introduced, the object
orientation techniques were suited optimally to them. Later most of the visual
programming languages supported the object oriented system concepts.
Nowadays object oriented system concepts are widely used in the Web
Scripting languages also (Both in client as well as in server side). For example
the recent version of server side scripting language PHP supports object
orientation to a greater extent. In the case of Client side scripting also JavaScript
provides support to object oriented concepts.
Most of the languages today are either completely object oriented or they
support object oriented concepts. The reasons for this support are explained in
later portions of this text.
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Smalltalk
Ruby etc.
There are certain other languages where you either follow object
orientation or omit them. For example in C++ language you can construct
program that doesnt touches any concepts of object orientation.
There are other languages which are based on the object orientation
concepts. For example in a language like Visual Basic you have the concept of
object, classes etc. But it is not object oriented programming language because it
doesnt support many object oriented concepts like inheritance etc. The choice
of language selection can be done on the basis of application that you are going
to develop and the target hardware.
9.3 Object Oriented programming concepts
A program in an Object oriented programming language would be
collection of objects and interactions between these objects. This section would
describe the fundamental concepts of object oriented programming. They are as
listed below:
Objects
Classes
Encapsulation
Polymorphism
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Inheritance
9.3.1 Objects
Objects are the fundamental units of Object Oriented programming.
From the term itself you can understand that these programming languages are
totally based on objects.
An object is an instance of a class. An object would hold the data and the
functions (that would operate the data together). An object would provide some
mechanisms in the form of functions using which the external world can access
the data members of objects.
9.3.2 Classes
A class is blueprint using which the objects are created. Class consists of
two components. They are member variables and member functions. These
member variables and functions would have various access modifiers like
private, public, protected. A Class can have relationship with other classes.
For example you can consider vehicle as a class. The class for defining
vehicle would have members like number of wheels, fuel type, color etc.
An object belonging to the class vehicle would have corresponding values for
these variables. For example you can consider Maruti-800 as object for this
class. Here the values would be filled for variables specified above. Number of
wheels would be filled with 4, color with blue etc.
Many such real world examples can be given. For example, animal is a
class and Lion is an object belonging to the class.
In general all the objects created using a particular class would have
most of the common properties. Here you have to remember one thing that the
values of properties can differ for each object. For example Animal class can
have property like type, the values can be different for this properties which
may include herbivorous, carnivorous etc.
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9.3.3 Encapsulation
Encapsulation is the process of binding many items together so that they
can be accessed easily as a single unit. You can visualize the concept of
encapsulation in terms of capsules. In capsules more than one type of
medicine is put together and given to the patient as a single unit. The consumers
of the capsule need not to know about the internal elements of medicines present
in the capsule. For him the capsule is a single unit.
Similarly in the case of Object oriented programming various units like
data and the functions to access those data are put together. The user is not
required to handle these pieces individually. They can be handled as single unit.
This process is called encapsulation.
The access points to the objects would be clearly defined. Generally
these access points are member functions. The data associated with an object is
not directly manipulated by external world. It is these functions which acts as
the interface to the data associated with the object. But there is an exception to
this phenomenon. When the data associated with object is declared as public
then it can be accessed directly.
In general encapsulation hides the internal operations to the external
world. It gives you the interfaces using which the associated data can be
manipulated safely.
9.3.4 Inheritance
The most important feature of Object Oriented programming is the
concept of inheritance. The inheritance of Object oriented programming can be
compared with human inheritance. A child would inherit traits (characteristics)
from the parents. In addition to that the child can have it's own special
characteristics.
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The inheritance in OOP is also the same. Here a class would inherit
properties and methods from another class. The reason for which inheritance is
getting popular is the concept of reusability.
Reusability provides you the advantage that every time you need not
start from the scratch. You can create new classes which would inherit from the
existing classes.
There exist many types of inheritance. They are as listed below:
Hierarchical inheritance
Multiple inheritance
Hybrid inheritance
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In other words in the case of multi level inheritance few classes are both
derived classes as well as base classes.
Figure 9.2: Multilevel Inheritance
9.3.4.3 Hierarchical inheritance
In the case of hierarchical inheritance more than one class would be
derived from a single class. For example if there are two classes Class B and
Class C which are derived from Class A then it is called hierarchical inheritance.
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clubbed together to form hybrid inheritance. You can select more than one type
of inheritance and use them in a combined manner then it becomes hybrid
inheritance.
Figure 9.5: Hybrid Inheritance
9.3.5 Polymorphism
The term polymorphism is combination of two terms viz., poly +
morphic many faces. In polymorphism the same entity would have different
meaning in different places.
There exits two types of polymorphism. They are
Function overloading
Operator overloading
In the function overloading two functions would exist with the same
name. Which function is to be called would be decided based on many of the
factors as given below:
For example if there are two functions with the same name say interest. Then
these versions should differ either in terms of number of arguments or data type
of the argument.
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The basic meaning of the operator is not changed i.e., the operator +
is not overloaded to perform the - operation.
associated with object oriented programming. Some of them are described in the
following paragraphs:
9.3.6 Instance
An object created from a class is called an instance of the class. Each
instance of the class would occupy some amount of main memory. The values
associated with each instance may be different. (Except for static members; in
the case of static members value is shared across all the instances).
9.3.7 Access Modifiers
Access modifiers are used to define the scope of the variables used.
There exist three commonly used access modifiers. They are
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Public: The public variables can be accessed freely with the help of
objects. You can associate a public variable with the object name
and use them directly. For example object_name.variable_name is
the common syntax in most of the programming languages.
Private: Private variables are accessible only with in the class. They
cannot be used directly from outside the class.
These access modifiers can be used effectively to protect the data from
unwanted access. Apart from variables the member functions can also be
assigned access modifiers.
9.3.8 Constructors
Constructors are the specialized member functions which would be
called automatically during the object creation. The constructors are generally
used to initialize values.
Constructors can also be overloaded i.e., you can have more than one
constructors. Corresponding constructors would be invoked based on the
number and type of parameters present.
Generally constructors have the same name as the name of the class. But
this is not the mandatory condition in some of the languages like PHP. (In PHP
you have specialized constructor called __construct).
Constructor themselves are not mandatory. If you wish then you can
include constructors. At the same time you can create classes with out
constructors also.
9.3.9 Destructors
Destructors are antonyms to constructors. Destructors would be called
when object has no more references. Destructors would also have the same
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using the object name. But the static members are directly accessed through the
class name itself.
Generic use of static member is to use them for counting purposes. Since
the values associated with static members would retain across all the instances it
would be easy to identify the number of objects created for that class using static
variables.
9.3.12 Friend functions
The functions which are declared as friend functions can use the
members of a class for which it has been declared as friend.
As we stated in the case of access modifiers, the members would have
strict access restrictions based on its type of access modifier. The friend
functions would get the freedom to access the members of a class which are not
accessible by others outside the class. The usage of friend functions has to be
proper; otherwise it may totally disturb the security associated with object
orientated programming.
9.4 Object Oriented Database Management Systems
Object Oriented Database Management Systems (OODBMS) are
relatively new technology in the world of databases.
Most of the commercial applications would require databases to store
values permanently and retrieve them effectively whenever required. Now the
programming is object oriented but the database is still based on the relational
model.
OODBMS is an effort to replace the Relational Database Management
Systems with object based technology. The concept of Object orientation would
be used in OODBMS to store and retrieve.
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By using OODBMS and OOP together, both the application and the
database would be based on object oriented technologies. So it may produce
better synchronization between application and the database.
But still the OOBDMS have not become that much popular comparing
with RDBMS. May be in the future these OOBDMS may occupy considerable
amount of space in the database paradigm.
9.5 Object oriented design process
If you want your application to be object oriented then certain steps or
actions has to be followed. This section highlights these actions.
Deciding on the members: Once the objects are identified you have to
finalize the members (both variables and functions) associated with the
object. During this step itself, you have to decide the scope of each
member i.e., whether they are public or private or protected.
Collecting objects together: You can identify the objects that have
features in common. Then you can group them together.
Idea of common super class: This is related to the previous step. You
can create a common super class which would host many other classes.
In larger commercial frameworks you can find out that most of the
classes are derived from a common base class. By doing this, the
further programming process becomes much simpler.
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Data security: The object oriented systems make the data more
secure. In the case of traditional system the security associated with
data is very less. But in the case of object oriented systems it clearly
specifies the accessibility of data. These access rights make the data
more secure because now the data would be handled only with in the
restricted set of functions (where the data is actually needed and they
are authorized to access these data).
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name and same operator would be used but internally they may have
different implementations. The same is not possible in traditional
systems.
The above mentioned are the list of advantages that an object oriented
system gives you over the traditional systems. From both the user and developer
views object oriented systems are far better than the traditional systems
9.7 Issues with Object oriented systems
Though object oriented systems provide all the above mentioned
advantages, there are certain issues which need to be addressed with object
oriented systems. This section would provide you a view on those issues which
have to be looked up in the object oriented design and development process.
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Most of the languages today have support for object oriented concepts.
Object based languages has support for few of the object oriented
concepts but not all. For example visual basic (up to 6.0) is considered
as object based language.
Inheritance is the process using the existing class functionality into new
classes. There are many types of inheritance like simple, multilevel,
multiple etc.
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Static members are common across all the objects created. Static
members can be accessed with class name itself.
There exist many access modifiers like public, private and protected.
C++
Java
ForTran
Constructors
Can be overloaded
inheritance
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abstraction
access modifiers
Single
Multiple
Hierarchical
operator overloading
function overloaded
virtual function
Abstract class
The members which can be accessed directly with class name is/are
private members
public members
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static members
reusability
extensibility
abstraction
The concept that is used to free up memory from unwanted resources is/are
called
destructors
constructors
operators
Simula
Smalltalk
C++
Define object.
What is inheritance?
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1. c
2. d
3. a
4. b
5. d
6. b
7. c
8. d
9. a
10. a
Part II
An object is an instance of a class. The class acts as a model using which the
objects are created.
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Function overloading is using a single function name for more than one
purposes. Multiple version of a function would be written. Each function
would differ in the count and type of parameters.
A static member function is common to all the objects. These members can
be accessed directly by using the class name. One generic usage of static
function is to use them as counters.
When a class is derived from more than one base class it is called multiple
inheritance.
There exist may object oriented programming languages. Some of them are
C++, Java, Smalltalk, PHP etc.
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Objectives
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same software but there would be access rights (i.e., only authorized users
would be allowed to access critical portions of the software).
Though ERP software has its scope across all the departments of an
organization it is not always mandatory that ERP should cover all the
departments. Even if one or two departments are missed then also the software
can be termed as Enterprise resource planning.
Workflow management
Scheduling of Production
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Staffing (recruitment)
Pay bill
Cash management
Assets management
ERP would consist of modules for all of the above mentioned tasks. If
the ERP is not there then these departments has to use to individual software
which would again use separate databases. So it would become very tedious to
fetch the data which is required without much delay.
Top level view of data: The top level management requires a bird's eye
view of data i.e. every unit in the organization may have different ways of
interpreting and presenting the data which would become very confusing
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and less useful for the organization. To provide that unified top level view
of data you require a system which has its scope in the entire above
mentioned departments. ERP is definitely such a system. So this becomes
the primary reason for implementation of ERP.
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require some time delay i.e., immediately after the implementation of ERP you
cannot expect tangible financial benefits.
The cost incurred due to customization, cost of testing should also be
taken into consideration. Apart from all the above mentioned cost there is one
more important component called data migration.
The organization would have its operational data. Those data would be in
the individual software. So it becomes ultimately necessary to migrate all these
data from the standalone software to ERP system. To perform this migration
tasks specialized data migration tools would be used.
During the migration of data itself you have to consider various factors.
Some of them are listed below:
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All the above mentioned tasks may be directly equated with cost. The
entire above mentioned steps would have the operational cost associated with it.
The total cost of an ERP implementation would include all the above
mentioned factors. So before deciding to go for the ERP system the organization
has to clearly think about the merits and demerits in terms of financial
implications as well as workflow modifications.
In one word you can state that ERP software are costlier in nature at the
same time they are effective as well.
Identifying the right product: The very first decision that the
organization has to take is the selection of best suited ERP product for
that organization. There exist many companies which produces ERP
software today. For example, PeopleSoft, Oracle etc. The selection of
correct product would play a major role in deciding the success or
failure of that particular ERP implementation.
Installation of optimal hardware: Not only the ERP software but any
software would function smoothly if and only if there is the optimal
hardware. Even the best software can produce worst results if they are
implemented on improper hardware.
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going to adopt the ERP's way and where to customize the ERP
according to organization's workflow. This decision would play a vital
role in effectiveness of that ERP implementation.
Training of internal staff: In order to work with the ERP software the
employee's of the organization has to undergo proper training
procedure. Because it is those employees who are going to use the ERP
software on a day-to-day basis. They have to be made to feel
comfortable with the ERP software. (Initially there can be a level of
opposition from the employees because the ERP is going to replace the
tools in which they would have got expertise). It becomes the
responsibility of the training team to make the internal staff to feel
comfortable with the ERP software.
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Once the above mentioned activities are performed then (up to training
of internal staff) then ERP can be applied for production purpose (i.e., for
actual use).
To make the ERP software more productive there can be one more
testing step after customization before the data migration. At this step the
correctness of the customization can be tested. The later testing i.e., after the
data migration it would be tested with original data from the standalone
software. This testing can identify more bugs because there can be certain bugs
which may be dependent on certain specific data patterns which can be missed
during the previous testing with test-data.
Security: Since the World Wide Web can lead to potential hackers
landing on your system, they have to be much secure.
Nonstop functionality: Once the web interface is there the system has to
be up and running for most of the time. If there is schedules for
upgrading your ERP system then proper measures has to be taken so
that the end users would not get affected drastically.
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But these features would make your ERP system more powerful. But
these components where customers have direct transaction through web have to
be made secure at the same time easier to use.
If the organization is of global scale then the concepts of
internationalization should also be taken into consideration because customers
can be from any part of the globe and they feel very comfortable if the interface
is supporting their own regional settings.
These features can increase the customer size of the organization because
now you are attracting customers from every part of the globe. (These features
may not be required to organization where its operational boundary is restricted
to lesser geographical boundary.
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ERP systems would improve the customer satisfaction since all the
departments would get the real time update of data. This facilitates
quicker actions for customer queries.
Though ERP provides all the above mentioned advantages there exist
disadvantages also. They are as listed below:
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ERP
software
becomes
too
much
complicated
at
many
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Wired Communication
Wireless Communication
Infrared
Bluetooth
Wi-Fi
Satellite communications.
In the above list the first three techniques can be applied only in a shorter
distance. But the mobile computing would require a communication
methodology that can cover a larger area.
So the last two techniques from the above list i.e., microwave based
communication and satellite communication can be used for longer distance
communication.
Among these two techniques satellite communication can be used to
cover very large areas. So in case where the connectivity is required at a global
scale the satellite communication mode would be very much useful.
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Mobile devices
Wireless network
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Base stations: Each base station would cover certain area. These base
stations are transceivers. The base stations would be located in places
decided by the network administrator based on various factors.
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From this mobile network you would be able to access the public
switched telephone network (PSTN).
The complete description of all the above technique would be out of scope of
our current text.
10.2.2 Advantages and disadvantages of Mobile computing
There exist many advantages of mobile computing as listed below:
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Summary
ERP would cater the needs of all the departments (majority of) of the
organization: Production, Finance, Human Resource Management etc.
There are many advantages of ERP like high level view of data,
extended security etc. Proper access controls can be established through
ERP.
ERP is not synonymous to back office software. ERP has larger scope
than the back office software.
There exist many cellular network technologies like GSM, CDMA etc.
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Cost of hardware
Cost of training
Cost of software
ERP software
Customizable
improved security
slower execution
non extensibility
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Wireless Fidelity
Wired Findings
Windows Findings
TDMA is
Hand-held devices
Wireless networks
Battery power
A collection of points
A collection of cells
A collection of devices
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mobile net
mobile com
opera mini
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Answer Key
Part I
1. b
2. d
3. d
4. a
5. a
6. a
7. d
8. b
9. a
10. c
Part II
ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning. ERP covers all the departments
of an organization. ERP maintains single database for storing data about all
the departments.
Cost of hardware
Cost of customization
Cost of training.
ERP gives various advantages like high level view of data, more security,
finer access controls, customization etc.
Various technologies used in mobile networks are GSM, TDMA, and CDMA
etc.
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List of Figures
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Figure 3.3: Display Card as Interface between CPU and Display device
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Fig 6.6 : Spreadsheet showing the result of the formula in the cell
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