Old IBM Personal Computer

The IBM Personal Computer, commonly known as the IBM PC, is the original version and progenitor of the IBM PC compatible hardware platform. It is IBM model number 5150, and was introduced on August 12, 1981. It was created by a team of engineers and designers under the direction of Don Est ridge of the IBM Entry Systems Division in Boca Raton, Florida.

Alongside "microcomputer" and "home computer", the term "personal computer" was already in use before 1981. It was used as early as 1972 to characterize Xerox PARC's Alto. However, because of the success of the IBM Personal Computer, the term came to mean more specifically a microcomputer compatible with IBM's PC products.

Keep Your System Faster

Follow these tips and you will definitely have a much faster and more reliable PC! Most of the below tips :

1. Wallpapers: They slow your whole system down, so if you're willing to compromise, have a basic plain one instead!

2. Drivers: Update your hardware drivers as frequently as possible. New drivers tend to increase system speed especially in the case of graphics cards, their drivers are updated by the manufacturer very frequently!

3. Minimizing: If you want to use several programs at the same time then minimize those you are not using. This helps reduce the overload on RAM.

Boot your Computer Faster

Press start->run then type msconfig and press enter.Go to the startup tab. Here you will see a list of startup items. These are all the programs that automatically start when you boot your PC. It is these that slow down the boot up process.So uncheck all the unwanted items like ms-office, messengers other utilities that u may not need at startup). Don't uncheck your antivirus software.Restart your Pc to and see for yourself, your pc will now boot faster

A great new feature in Microsoft Windows XP is the ability to do a boot defragment. This places all boot files next to each other on the disk to allow for faster booting. By default this option is enabled, but on some systems it is not, so below is the information on how to turn it on:

Go to Start Menu and Click Run
Type in regedit then click ok
Find "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Dfrg\BootOpt imizeFunction"
Select "Enable" from the list on the right
Right on it and select "Modify"
Change the value to Y .
Reboot your Pc and see the change yourself.

Server in Hardware

Hardware requirements for servers vary, depending on the server application. Absolute CPU speed is not usually as critical to a server as it is to a desktop machine. Servers' duties to provide service to many users over a network lead to different requirements like fast network connections and high I/O throughput. Since servers are usually accessed over a network they may run in headless mode without a monitor or input device. Processes which are not needed for the server's function are not used. Many servers do not have a graphical user interface (GUI) as it is unnecessary and consumes resources that could be allocated elsewhere. Similarly, audio and USB interfaces may be omitted.

Servers often run for long periods without interruption and availability must often be very high, making hardware reliability and durability extremely important. Although servers can be built from commodity computer parts, mission-critical servers use specialized hardware with low failure rates in order to maximize uptime.

For example, servers may incorporate faster, higher-capacity hard drives, larger computer fans or water cooling to help remove heat, and uninterruptible power supplies that ensure the servers continue to function in the event of a power failure. These components offer higher performance and reliability at a correspondingly higher price. Hardware redundancy—installing more than one instance of modules such as power supplies and hard disks arranged so that if one fails another is automatically available—is widely used. ECC memory devices which detect and correct errors are used; non-ECC memory can cause data corruption

FTP Server -File Transfer Protocol

File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a network protocol used to transfer data from one computer to another through a network such as the Internet.FTP is a file transfer protocol for exchanging and manipulating files over a TCP computer network. An FTP client may connect to an FTP server to manipulate files on that server.

In active mode, the FTP client opens a dynamic port, sends the FTP server the dynamic port number on which it is listening over the control stream and waits for a connection from the FTP server. When the FTP server initiates the data connection to the FTP client it binds the source port to port 20 on the FTP server.

In passive mode, the FTP server opens a dynamic port, sends the FTP client the server's IP address to connect to and the port on which it is listening (a 16-bit value broken into a high and low byte, as explained above) over the control stream and waits for a connection from the FTP client. In this case, the FTP client binds the source port of the connection to a dynamic port.

Adaptive Server Enterprise

Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE) is Sybase Corporation's flagship enterprise-class relational database management system product. ASE is predominantly used on the UNIX platform but is also available for Windows.

Originally created for UNIX platforms in 1987, Sybase Corporation's primary relational database management system product was initially marketed under the name Sybase SQL Server. In 1988, SQL Server for OS/2 was co-developed for the PC by Sybase, Microsoft, and Ashton-Tate. Ashton-Tate divested its interest and Microsoft became the lead partner after porting SQL Server to Windows NT.

Microsoft and Sybase sold and supported the product through version 4.21. In 1993 the co-development licensing agreement between Microsoft and Sybase ended and the companies parted ways while continuing to develop their respective versions of the software.

In 1995, Sybase released SQL Server 11.0. Starting with version 11.5, released in 1996, Sybase moved to differentiate its product from Microsoft SQL Server by renaming it to Adaptive Server Enterprise.

Sybase provides native low-level programming interfaces to its database server which uses a protocol called Tabular Data Stream. Prior to version 10, DBLIB (Data Base Library) was used. Version 10 and onwards uses, CTLIB (Client Library).

SQL Server Express

Microsoft SQL Server Express is the freely-downloadable and distributable version of Microsoft's SQL Server relational database management system. It offers a database solution specifically targeted for embedded and smaller-scale applications. Unlike its predecessor, MSDE, there is no concurrent workload governor which “limits performance if the database engine receives more work than is typical of a small number of users." It does, however, have a number of technical restrictions which make it undesirable for large-scale deployments, including:

* Maximum database size of 4 GB per database (compared to 2 GB in the former MSDE). The 4 GB limit is per database (log files excluded) and can be extended in some scenarios through the use of multiple interconnected databases.
* Hardware utilization limits:
o Single physical CPU, multiple cores
o 1 GB of RAM (runs on any size RAM system, but uses only 1 GB)
* Absence of SQL Server Agent Service

Although its predecessor, MSDE, was virtually devoid of basic GUI management tools, SQL Server Express includes several GUI tools for database management. Among these tools are:

* SQL Server Management Studio Express
* SQL Server Configuration Manager
* SQL Server Surface Area Configuration tool
* SQL Server Business Intelligence Development Studio.

Database -A collection of information

A collection of information organized in such a way that a computer program can quickly select desired pieces of data. You can think of a database as an electronic filing system.

Traditional databases are organized by fields, records, and files. A field is a single piece of information; a record is one complete set of fields; and a file is a collection of records. For example, a telephone book is analogous to a file. It contains a list of records, each of which consists of three fields: name, address, and telephone number.

An alternative concept in database design is known as Hypertext. In a Hypertext database, any object, whether it be a piece of text, a picture, or a film, can be linked to any other object. Hypertext databases are particularly useful for organizing large amounts of disparate information, but they are not designed for numerical analysis.

To access information from a database, you need a database management system (DBMS). This is a collection of programs that enables you to enter, organize, and select data in a database.

DEC Alpha

Alpha, originally known as Alpha AXP, was a 64-bit reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), designed to replace the 32-bit VAX complex instruction set computer (CISC) ISA and its implementations. Alpha was implemented in microprocessors originally developed and fabricated by DEC. It was used in a variety of DEC workstations and servers, eventually forming the basis for almost their entire mid-to-upper-scale lineup. Several third-party vendors also produced Alpha systems, as well as PC compatible form factor motherboards.

Alpha supports both the OpenVMS (previously known as OpenVMS AXP) operating system and Tru64 UNIX (previously known as DEC OSF/1 AXP and Digital UNIX). Open source operating systems also run on the Alpha, notably Linux and BSD UNIX flavors (FreeBSD support ended as of 7.0). Microsoft supported the processor in Windows NT until NT 4.0 SP6 but did not extend Alpha support beyond RC1 of Windows 2000.

B-tree

In computer science, a B-tree is a tree data structure that keeps data sorted and allows searches, insertions, and deletions in logarithmic amortized time. Unlike self-balancing binary search trees, it is optimized for systems that read and write large blocks of data. It is most commonly used in databases and file systems.

In B-trees, internal (non-leaf) nodes can have a variable number of child nodes within some pre-defined range. When data is inserted or removed from a node, its number of child nodes changes. In order to maintain the pre-defined range, internal nodes may be joined or split. Because a range of child nodes is permitted, B-trees do not need re-balancing as frequently as other self-balancing search trees, but may waste some space, since nodes are not entirely full. The lower and upper bounds on the number of child nodes are typically fixed for a particular implementation. For example, in a 2-3 B-tree (often simply referred to as a 2-3 tree), each internal node may have only 2 or 3 child nodes.

XQuery

XQuery is a query language (with some programming language features) that is designed to query collections of XML data. It is semantically similar to SQL.

XQuery 1.0 was developed by the XML Query working group of the W3C. The work was closely coordinated with the development of XSLT 2.0 by the XSL Working Group; the two groups shared responsibility for XPath 2.0, which is a subset of XQuery 1.0. XQuery 1.0 became a W3C Recommendation on January 23, 2007.

"The mission of the XML Query project is to provide flexible query facilities to extract data from real and virtual documents on the World Wide Web, therefore finally providing the needed interaction between the Web world and the database world. Ultimately, collections of XML files will be accessed like databases".

Transact-SQL

Transact-SQL (T-SQL) is Microsoft's and Sybase's proprietary extension to SQL. Microsoft's implementation ships in the Microsoft SQL Server product. Sybase uses the language in its Adaptive Server Enterprise, the successor to Sybase SQL Server.

Transact-SQL enhances SQL with these additional features:

* Control-of-flow language
* Local variables
* Various support functions for string processing, date processing, mathematics, etc.
* Improvements [citation needed] to DELETE and UPDATE statements.

Visual Studio 97

Microsoft first released Visual Studio in 1997, bundling many of its programming tools together for the first time. Visual Studio 97 was released in two editions, Professional and Enterprise. It included Visual Basic 5.0 and Visual C++ 5.0, primarily for Windows programming; Visual J++ 1.1 for Java and Windows programming; and Visual Fox Pro 5.0 for database, specifically x Base programming. It introduced Visual Inter Dev for creating dynamically generated web sites using Active Server Pages. A snapshot of the Microsoft Developer Network library was also included.

Visual Studio 97 was Microsoft's first attempt at using the same development environment for multiple languages. Visual C++, Visual J++, Inter Dev, and the MSDN Library all used one environment, called Developer Studio. Visual Basic and Visual Fox Pro used separate environments.

Microsoft Visual Studio

Microsoft Visual Studio is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) from Microsoft. It can be used to develop console and Graphical user interface applications along with Windows Forms applications, web sites, web applications, and web services in both native code together with managed code for all platforms supported by Microsoft Windows, Windows Mobile, Windows CE, .NET Framework, .NET Compact Framework and Microsoft Silver light.

Visual Studio includes a code editor supporting IntelliSense as well as code re factoring. The integrated debugger works both as a source-level debugger and a machine-level debugger.

SQL Native Client

SQL Native Client is the native client side data access library for Microsoft SQL Server, version 2005 onwards. It natively implements support for the SQL Server features including the Tabular Data Stream implementation, support for mirrored SQL Server databases, full support for all data types supported by SQL Server, asynchronous operations, query notifications, encryption support, as well as receiving multiple result sets in a single database session.

SQL Native Client is used under the hood by SQL Server plug-ins for other data access technologies, including ADO or OLE DB. It is also used by the native SQL Server ADO.NET provider, Sql Client. The SQL Native Client can also be directly used, bypassing the generic data access layers.

SQL Server Management Studio

SQL Server Management Studio is a GUI tool included with SQL Server 2005 and later for configuring, managing, and administering all components within Microsoft SQL Server. The tool includes both script editors and graphical tools that work with objects and features of the server. SQL Server Management Studio replaces Enterprise Manager as the primary management interface for Microsoft SQL Server since SQL Server 2005. A version of SQL Server Management Studio is also available for SQL Server Express Edition, for which it is known as SQL Server Management Studio Express (SSMSE).

A central feature of SQL Server Management Studio is the Object Explorer, which allows the user to browse, select, and act upon any of the objects within the server. It can be used to visually observe and analyze query plans and optimize the database performance, among others. SQL Server Management Studio can also be used to create a new database, alter any existing database schema by adding or modifying tables and indexes, or analyze performance. It includes the query windows which provide a GUI based interface to write and execute queries.

SQL CLR

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 includes a component named SQL CLR via which it integrates with .NET Framework. Unlike most other applications that use .NET Framework, SQL Server itself hosts the .NET Framework runtime, i.e., memory, threading and resource management requirements of .NET Framework are satisfied by SQLOS itself, rather than the underlying Windows operating system. SQLOS provides deadlock detection and resolution services for .NET code as well. With SQL CLR, stored procedures and triggers can be written in any managed .NET language, including C# and VB.NET. Managed code can also be used to define UDTs which can be persisted in the database. Managed code is compiled to .NET assemblies and after being verified for type safety, registered at the database. After that, they can be invoked like any other procedure. However, only a subset of the Base Class Library is available, when running code under SQL CLR. Most APIs relating to user interface functionality are not available.

When writing code for SQL CLR, data stored in SQL Server databases can be accessed using the ADO.NET APIs like any other managed application that accesses SQL Server data. However, doing that creates a new database session, different from the one in which the code is executing. To avoid this, SQL Server provides some enhancements to the ADO.NET provider that allows the connection to be redirected to the same session which already hosts the running code.

SQL Server 2008

The current version of SQL Server, SQL Server 2008, (code-named "Katmai",)was released (RTM) on August 6th, 2008 and aims to make data management self-tuning, self organizing, and self maintaining with the development of SQL Server Always On technologies, to provide near-zero downtime. SQL Server 2008 will also include support for structured and semi-structured data, including digital media formats for pictures, audio, video and other multimedia data. In current versions, such multimedia data can be stored as BLOBs (binary large objects), but they are generic bit streams. Intrinsic awareness of multimedia data will allow specialized functions to be performed on them. According to Paul Flessner, senior Vice President, Server Applications, Microsoft Corp., SQL Server 2008 can be a data storage backend for different varieties of data: XML, email, time/calendar, file, document, spatial, etc as well as perform search, query, analysis, sharing, and synchronization across all data types.

Other new data types include specialized date and time types and a Spatial data type for location-dependent data. Better support for unstructured and semi-structured data is provided using the FILESTREAM[7] data type has been added, which can be used to reference any file stored on the file system. Structured data and metadata about the file is stored in SQL Server database, whereas the unstructured component is stored in the file system. Such files can be accessed both via Win32 file handling APIs as well as via SQL Server using T-SQL; doing the latter accesses the file data as a binary BLOB. Backing up and restoring the database backs up or restores the referenced files as well. SQL Server 2008 also natively supports hierarchical data, and includes T-SQL constructs to directly deal with them, without using recursive queries

Newborn Screening

Newborn screening tests take place before your newborn leaves the hospital. Babies are tested to identify serious or life-threatening conditions before symptoms begin. Such diseases are usually rare. However, they can affect a baby's normal physical and mental development.
Most tests use a few drops of blood from pricking the baby's heel. A hearing test involves placing a tiny earphone in the baby's ear and measuring his or her response to sound.
If a screening test suggests a problem, your baby's doctor will follow up with further testing. If those tests confirm a problem, the doctor may refer you to a specialist for treatment. Following your doctor's treatment plan can save your baby from lifelong health and developmental problems

Microsoft SQL Server Data storage:Buffer management

SQL Server buffers pages in RAM to reduce disc I/O. Any 8 KB page can be buffered in-memory, and the set of all pages at this time buffered is called the buffer cache. The quantity of memory available to SQL Server decides how lots of page will be cached in memory. The buffer cache is managed by the Buffer Manager. Either analysis from or marks to any side copies it to the buffer cache. Subsequent reads or writes are redirect to the in-memory copy, rather than the on-disc side. The page is updated on the disc by the Buffer Manager only if the in-memory cache has not been referenced for a few times. While writing pages back to disc, asynchronous I/O is use whereby the I/O operation is done in a backdrop thread so that other operation do not have to wait for the I/O operation to total. Each page is written along with its checksum when it is written. When interpretation the page back, its checksum is compute again and matched with the store version to ensure the page has not been injured or tamper with in the mean time.