Small Business Information Management System Development And Research

In 21 century, we are entering a digital and multimedia information world. What do I mean by that? In a digital and multimedia information world everything is electronic, in which, information capability processing is increasing by exponential function, that reaches trillion bits (10¹² bits), communication of velocity of flow is expressed by trillion bits per second (Tb/s), and communication frequency is calculated by trillion hertz (10¹²Hz, THz), that is, time response is counted by picosecond (10^-12s). So we can say that we are in the 3T (trillion) information age.The traditional commercial information management mode was not satisfied with development of new economy and market economy, because the amount, degree and range in business are increasing rapidly as global economy, science and technology progresses. Therefore, soaring economic growth brings about the small commercial information management system.The small commercial information management system research and development goal is to design application software that is available and useful for user's demands through studies of the basic principles, structures and applications in this system.Several necessary conditions are required in order to design and establish a successful small commercial information management system. Of course, database is one of the key technologies and plaies a major role in the system. Databases are managed and controlled by database management system (DBMS); however, the software user and developer use database management system by means of program, directly or indirectly. Perhaps wecan say that database systems are among the most complex types of software available at the present time. The capabilities that a database management system provides the user mainly are: persistent storage, programming interface and transaction management. Databases essentially include four elements; there are user's data, metadata, indexes and application metadata. In the general, database user and developer do not access application metadata directly; they manage data by tools in DBMS.The database language SQL (Structured Query Language) has a large number of capabilities, including creating data, storing a mass of amounts of data, statements thatquery and modify the database, and database modification through three commands, called INSERT, DELETE and UPDATE. One of the powerful features that SQL provides is the ability to use subqueries within a WHERE, FROM, or HAVING clause. A subquery is a complete select-from-where statement whose value is tested in one of these clauses. These days, SQL, the query language, based on the relational model, is an important industry standard, and widely used in the commercial RDBMS (Relational Database Management System) such as SQL Server, Oracle, Sybase and so forth. Since SQL become one of the most popular DBMS languages as well, we choose Microsoft SQL Server 2000 as RDBMS language in our Small Commercial Information System. We can use SQL itself alternately, or combine one of the host languages, take their own advantages, and at last establish a useful database system with amity interface. We know that many kinds of application software such as Visual C++, Visual Basic, Delphi, and PowerBuilder all support SQL clauses those are embodied in. Almost every RDBMS support SQL language too, so that we can transfer data from one RDBMS to another RDBMS without mistakes by means of standard SQL language program. It is very convenient to use SQL language in Delphi because it support embodied SQL clauses. Commonly, the SQL clauses are used through Tquery or TADOquery groupwares. The SQL clauses can be set in attributes of Tquery or TADOquery of SQL. When the program is designed, first choose SQL attributes in Dialog Box of Attributes in these groupwares, click the Button with suspension points,then can open the String List Editor dialog box, and then SQL clauses can be added in the Dialog Box. And also SQL clauses can be created automatically using SQL Builder in Delphi, in this way, syntax mistakes can be avoided those caused by handwriting.As everyone knows, databases today are very important to every business. They are used to maintain internal records, to present data to customers and clients on the World-Wide-Web. And as mentioned in this paper, databases also support many other commercial processes, manage transactions and store commercial information. Different kinds of databases are likewise found at the core of many scientific investigations. As a matter of fact, databases themselves are a crystallization of wisdom of the human race. The power of databases comes from a body of knowledge and technology that has developed over several decades and is embodied in specialized software called a database management system, or DBMS, or more colloquially a database system.Familiar to us, a DBMS is a powerful tool for creating and managing large amounts of data efficiently and allowing it to persist over long periods of time safely. We not only study the small commercial information management system in the depth of the database principle, but also introduce DBMS technology carefully and thoroughly. So it is essential to study and apply DBMS in theory and in practice.