COMP 440
11/07/00
PHAM
RTC: Jane G.
PROFESSOR: If team is more than or equal to three, the score will be divided by the number of person in the team.
Okay? If the team is two or less, then the score will go with the student. Suppose you have 100, in this case, each person will get 100 points. In this case here, if three person, then each person will get 33.3. Clear to you?
You have any questions before I start lectures.
I look at my e-mail this morning, and I found that somebody asked me what is a research topic they have to choose. The research topic is start from whatever you read before, you go deeper, broader, and then you focus on certain things, read about 10 papers, and produce more than 10 page report.
Okay?
The last lecture I mentioned about the overview of the integration of different research topics in the optimization; therefore when you do the research, you look at in the overall pictures, you know which part is lacking, and you might want to go a little bit further to search for the paper in the area of the integration. And you will enjoy it. Any questions?
The research paper you have done before -- this is a bonus -- also, that is the pilot for you to start to do real research paper. Your research paper includes, like I mentioned, at least 10 or more pages of report. Moreover, you have to bind them; cannot be loosely like this. Put them in a three-ring binder and bind them up. All the reference paper put in the back. The initial, your report of the 10 or more pages will be on the top I will post you the way I grade the research paper in the future. You will see that. And you follow the guideline and do a good job. The research paper is worth one letter grade. So please do seriously. Have any question?
MALE STUDENT: What if in general we are supposed to go off what we did in the first paper. What if the first paper is basically something that's like a new concept so there's not many papers on it or something we came up with.
PROFESSOR: The way I look at it, really nothing is really new. You have always find some things related to it. Unless you didn't go broad enough to see relationship, which is your idea and the rest of the population. If you have a problem, you come to see me, and then I will help you to see the linkage between your paper or your idea to the rest of research. Any other question?
I emphasize in reading. The reading's very important in this class, help you a lot in the future.
MALE STUDENT: So we don't -- the TPC period? Last time you said the research was on the TCP period #7.
PROFESSOR: One example, I take one of the TCP, query 7. I want to focus how they do the group by. How they do the hashing, do the elimination. You see one query or 21 or 22 queries, you can see it relate to the multiple different angle of research.
MALE STUDENT: So I don't have to go there. I can go somewhere else.
PROFESSOR: You can go somewhere else. Correct.
MALE STUDENT: How long do we have to finish that project?
PROFESSOR: The time for the project here, will be the end of semester. That means not the end of the lectures, will be the end of the exam, the final exam.
MALE STUDENT: And when is the test #3, like one week before the final?
PROFESSOR: No. The test #3 is still in the air. We haven't finished the last phase of the textbook yet about the programming design. We will learn that in the next week or two. Then you have exam on that.
Other question?
Okay. Let's do the project here.
PROFESSOR: This is only one time I introduce the project. That means I'm not going to go back here and talk it again. The project is try to modify current problem in one of industry and scale down so you have all to do with in reading four, five weeks.
In the project, you have to think a lot. You think how to solve the problem to form the table, to see is it possible, the database, solve the current problem in the company or not. Not only the problem of the company, but you might see the problem can be problem many other companies in similar situation.
In other words, that you don’t expect to get solution from the research in the public. The only thing is, you sit down, get the textbook, and try to solve the problem.
So what is the problem in here?
2. Project introduction
a, let me introduce the company. Doesn't matter which company. Company uses e-mail to communicate each other. However, there are many email to request a certain task: e-mail transaction. Also, there are many e-mails between group to group. (ON BOARD). It might be some e-mails from one section of the company to another section.
Now let's talk about the general e-mail. The general e-mail is a communication among the employees. It might be personal; it might be some news from when they read the newspaper and they want to share with friend but we not talking about the personal e-mail. So we don't discuss. NO personal e-mail. We are talking about the e-mail to request a certain task.
Most of the tasks you request by e-mail, a company, they will issue a number they call dock#, because the dock# can be traced from its follow-up email to see progress of the solution.
For example, the e-mail from the leader of the team is sent to members of the team. It request to fix a bug in the optimizer and the system is broken down and here is the system printed out. Please look at this one and to correct it. This is the doc# so they generate the dock number. The one who is going to fix the bug look at this one generally, look at that one carefully and rerun the program to find out where is the bug; can they replicate the error. After that he or she determines that this is not my area. He or she responds that to that docket. They say I believe that in this section is the employee E is working on that. So please assign this task to the employee E. The task immediately forwarded to employee E and they open the mail and try to fix that one. When it is fixed they will forward back to the whoever's requested it, saying it is done, please test it. So the work will be forwarded to another team to test it. Suppose everything is fine, and then at this time dock will be closed.
The email task requesting has been done for many years. Been done for 10 years. Might do on the papers. Doesn't have to be in the e-mail. Might be done in the form of paperwork. So you can request form. So they have a request form.
So look at the pictures so you see what's going on here. (ON BOARD). So team A, team B, team C, and each team have certain people who work under team B. So I have b1, b2, b3, b4, and many people who work under team A, a1, a2, a3 and a4, and C, c1, c2 and c3. They do have a name. For example, the optimizer team, file system team, debugging tool team. Testing team. They have a different kind of name to represent that. and every employee in the team here will have its own e-mail address. Now this is within one company.
Now the company have another branch. It might be in, instead of Los Angeles, might be in India. In India they have another team, too. A group of people working on the same single, big project, however they able to look at all these problems and maybe try to fix that because they might want to sell the product in India. So you can see very big scope of the company engage multiple team, when they try to improve or maintain the standard of the system.
Now, the company look at the e-mail here, they say can we computerize the e-mail. Oh, e-mail already computerized. But this is different computerized. Computerized in the e-mail here, except for communication, the computerized in here mean to keep track all the transactions between the employee, the due date -- can they meet the due date or not, and who's responsible for the terrific, if the task does not meet the deadline.
So let's look deeper in the structures in here --
b structure. Most of the company have the tree structure. The root is the top, like the CEO or CFO, and the bottom, they are worker. Above the worker we might have a project leader. And several leader, they might have a branch. So they do have a structure. And will this structure, for me -- for my point of view, it almost universal nowadays. University have it, the tree structure, president on the top, many vice-president below that and then have a dean. So the structure is very popular now and this is the way they want to look at the structures in here.
Now look at in the level structure; this is the high level and the low level in here.
Now, the top level might send the task. When the top send the task to particular person or particular group, that group must perform the task. For sure. Because the president send the task to the project leader. Okay? So the rule, they say this. This is the rule. This is the data policy. Okay?
When the policy say that if the high level send to the low level, all the intermediate level must receive the same request. That means the e-mail, or the e-mail task sent from the top level to suppose to the lowest level, augment branches below that must receive it. Doesn't say clearly to me, but mean that the sibling might not know about it because they have nothing to do with the other branch and, another term is all the e-mail sent from the top to the lowest will travel through the tree. So that is a policy #1.
Policy #2 is if the due date is nearby or the task is not completed on time, all the people above that, task managers, must be responsible for the unfinished task. So in other words, if CEO send to the third level to say please finish this one within a week. A week pass by. The CEO look at it, it's not finished yet, because no response from that person. So the third level have to be responsible for the task and the middle one must be responsible too because he or she is the boss of the other.
So near to the deadline, you can see that that kind of the structure will make everybody, especially all the people in the management level, will pick up the phone and call to the really task manager, what's going on. Are you going to finish on time or not? It's only 7 hours from the deadline. Do you need any help. What's going on? How long do you take? A couple hours or more? Okay. So that is policy #2. That means all intermediate management level must be responsible for the unfinished task.
Do you have any question about it? Why they want to do this way here? The company want to keep track of number of transactions within a week. How many new transactions is going on? New transaction mean request (ON BOARD). How many tasks have been finished? And the unfinished tasks. And they want to keep track of these ones in certain date. It doesn't have to be a week. It can be within a month. It can be within a year. Not only tom keep track of number of transaction, they want to see the number of transaction within each group. So transactions within a group. It might be within a division. Or might be it might be a branch. Et cetera.
So why they want to see the number of transactions within the group? Now they know the group have four or five people, and they see the number of transaction increase trickle in the last few months. They know that the traffic is there. So they might want to send more forces, the manpower, to that particular group and try to reduce the traffic.
Suddenly they seeing some of the branch. The number of unfinished tasks increased drastically. What's going on to that one? They will look at that immediately to that branch to say is that the leader; he didn't do properly his job or whatsoever he going to do that one too.
And they might be concerned about how many tasks is generated within a week and how many finish within that week so they can measure the flow of work. Anyone have a question about that so far?
Soon enough, you see that suppose the CEO requests a task to one of the leaders; let's call that task XYZ, each task has a certain dock#. They want to keep track of all the e-mail related to that one, that one might respond. Should we do this, they might put #1 next to that. And then another #2. So it will have a sequence of the e-mail to company, based on single task.
Then one day, the top level approve the task and that one will be finished.
The company worry about the number of transaction. Because the number of transactions might not be the number of e-mail they send from one level to another level. Because the e-mail might relate to the same kind of a task. The only thing shot back and forth between the several teams, etc. So your job is to keep track of these ones too. Even though they don't see what's going on. But they want to keep track of all the E maim related to the same task.
FEMALE STUDENT: So are you saying we need to make like a structure to put them all in folders, like we have it in our system like in a computer. Are we going to have folders for each task, for each group, and file them in accordingly? Organize the e-mails so you can go to a folder and get the e-mails for that task.
PROFESSOR: You have to get the table, how they link together and then they might not be in order the way you want, but you can sort it to extract them so they will see that, for example, like that. One leader want to see what's going on to docket numbers 1, 2, 3, 4. Then you have generate a query to say that dock #1, 2, 3, 4, they pull out a sequence of it. The day generated, the response to what's going on
FEMALE STUDENT: Like the explorer we have in our computers?
PROFESSOR: All right. Decide to computerize the transaction of task management in here, it is possible that once in a while the CEO send the message out without task, so you don't have to respond. Okay? So CEO might send general letter to everybody, but that is not a task. That is another policy here. The e-mail might not be a task at all.
The company want to see that, especially on Friday, the warning signal on a computer, the unfinished task. The company love this one over here because they have so many benefit. The benefit of computerized the system this way. #1 is they can decide to know the flow of the work from one group to another group. Should they divide the group into two subgroups, because that section is booming. Should they merge two together because of the number of transactions going to go down; they can merge together so reduce the number of managers. The company want to look at this one in the over all pictures in here, is if we talk about a large company, they have a different branches around the world, so they can see that where is the traffic going to.
Another problem is very serious. I will tell you in advance, so you see that. What happened is we are sending from the request, from Los Angeles to New York. So New York branch supposed to finish that job. And the one in Los Angeles say that will be 5:00 p.m. on Friday next week. Well, 5:00 p.m. in Los Angeles or 5:00 p.m. in the New York time. So time is really influencing here. three hours might be different because will be considered as a late task or maybe take complete task. What happens if you transfer the task request from United States to Europe? Server on the way is dead for three hours. And you request that one to be finished in five hours by the time they arrive there it's already three hours late. So this is very interesting situation when you deal with reality.
The company want to see these ones to be solved. The company want to look at this one in the to see the promotion to the employee for the team, to give award, the one that have a lot of transactions to be generated and to finish on time. That kind of the group is suddenly improved 10% with last year, the same month. They might look at T the transaction to be completed, the transaction is unfinished and they can see the trend how going on to that group. Or they want to look at the number of employee within the group and how that one is moving up. So they might give more percentage in the salary raise to that one or maybe the support more for that division.