IMT-11: Managing People-2014
IMT-11: Managing People-2014
PART - A
Q1. Do you agree that HRM is faced with several challenges in today's world? What are the steps that organizations should take to handle these challenges?
Q2. Discuss the issues that an HR department faces in the context of its structure in an organization.
Q3. In the times of economic recession, how would you balance the supply and demand of Human Resources in your organization?
Q4. An HR Audit is expensive, and though organizations are not legally bound to take it, they still pursue it. Why?
Q5. 'The purpose of training is to achieve a change in the behaviour of those trained and to enable them to perform better.' Discuss.
PART - B
Q1. Which appraisal system would you recommend to your organization for appraising its employees and why?
Q2. Write a short note on The Employees' State Insurance Act, 1948.
Q3. 'Separation means cessation of service agreement with the organization.' Discuss the different ways of separation in light of this statement.
Q4. Why is the quality of work life important for the employee and the organization?
Q5: Discuss how the recommendations of the National Commission of Labour can be used effectively in private organizations.
PART - C
Q1. 'Morale is high when there is improved employee contribution, lower labour turnover and absenteeism.' Discuss.
Q2. Design a systematic transfer policy.
Q3. What steps would you take to tackle human relations problems in your organization?
Q4. Why do you think it is important for an organization to involve employees or employee representatives at all levels of the decision-making process?
Q5. Discuss how collective bargaining evolved in India.
Case Study - 1
Human Resource Planning - What is that?
You are a human resource consultant. The newly appointed president of a large paper manufacturing firm has called you:
President: I have been in this job for about one month now, and all I seem to do is interview people and listen to personal problems.
You: Why have you been interviewing people? Don't you have a human resource department?
President: Yes, we do. However, the human resource department does not hire top management people. As soon as I took over, I found out that two of my vice presidents were retiring and we had no one to replace them.
You: Have you hired anyone?
President: Yes, I have, and that is part of the problem. I hired a person from the outside. As soon as the announcement was made, one of my department heads came in and resigned. She said she had wanted that job as vice president for eight years. She was angry because we had hired someone from outside. How was I supposed to know she wanted the job?
You: What have you done about the other vice president job?
President: Nothing, because I am afraid someone else will quit because they were not considered for the job. But that is only half my problem. I just found out that among our youngest professional employees, there has been an 80 per cent turnover rate during the past three years. These are the people we promote around here. As you know, that is how I started out in this company. I was a mechanical engineer.
You: Has any one asked them why they are leaving?
President: Yes, and they all give basically the same answer: They say they do not feel that they have any future here. Maybe I should call them all together and explain how I progressed in this company.
You: Have you ever considered implementing a human resource planning system?
President: Human resource planning? What is that?
Q1. How would you answer the president's question- 'Human resource planning? What is that?'
Q2. What would be required to establish a human resource planning system in this company?
Q3. What measures should the president take to retain good young employees?
Case Study - 2
The New Boss
One of the largest NGOs in Uttar Pradesh and Uttaranchal is the Environment Protection Agency. The grant management section of its water division was formed seven years ago. The main functions of this division are to review applications for grants, engineering designs and requests for change. It also inspects the operation and maintenance of wastewater treatment facilities. Four engineers, one technician and one secretary-cum-programmer reported to Prem Sharan, head of the section. Prem was 36 years old and had headed the section since its inception. He had earned a good reputation for his technical acumen and dedication. Three of the engineers had joined the section recently. The senior engineer, R. Sundaram, had been working there for the last four years. Prem had personally trained him. Because of his experience and expertise, Prem had allotted to him the areas with the most complicated projects. The other three engineers were given less complex regions. They were asked to work closely with Sundaram and learn all they could about the section's work.
At the beginning of the year, Prem decided that the new engineers had gained enough experience to undertake more difficult tasks. He divided the territory on a geographical basis. This section worked fine and the section was able to meet all its objectives.
Three months ago, he accepted an offer with larger responsibilities and growth possibility from a large organization in the private sector. He gave two months' notice to the top management. Time passed, but the top management did not even advertise for a new section chief. People in the section speculated as to who might take over. Most of them hoped that Sundaram would take over. On the Monday of Prem's last week, top executive met with him and the section employees and announced that they had decided to appoint a temporary section head till a new one could be hired. The person chosen was Shyam Mehrotra, a senior engineer from another EPA division. This came as quite a surprise to Sundaram and other people in the section. Shyam had no experience of the section's work. His background was in technical assistance. In his previous job he was required to do research in certain treatment processes so that he could provide more technical performance information to other divisions within the EPA.
Q1. What was the rationale behind Shyam's choice?
Q2. If you were the CEO, what action would you have taken?
Q3. Assess Prem's role as the section chief.
Q4. Was it proper for Prem to leave EPA?
IMT-10: Business Communication-2014
IMT-10: Business Communication-2014
SECTION - A
Q1: Successful communication depends on the common ground between you and your audience. Describe the ways to adapt your message to audience?
Q2: Identify the weakness/choose the right option as the case may be in each sentence:
(a) It is essential that you sign and return back the enclosed form.
(b) The production manager, nor the controller, presented (her, their) opposing views.
(c) Paige forgot to retain her expense vouchers; (this, this oversight) caused a delay in reimbursement.
(d) The consultants' (advice, advise) is to downsize the organization.
(e) I consider your remark a (complement, compliment).
Q3: What planning should you do before you begin writing or speaking?
Q4: You usually would want to build positive attitudes towards the information you are presenting, so in that sense how should you organize informative and persuasive messages?
Q5: Buffers are generally used when writing a bad news message. Discuss the purpose and the common types of buffers?
SECTION - B
Q1: E-mail communities develop their own norms. Mention the e-mail netiquette that should be followed by people who use email communication.
Q2: How will you decide whether to decide whether to use a chronological or a skills resume.
Q3: Find a single word substitute or a shorter phrase for the phrases given below:
(a) In accordance with your request.
(b) Please be advised.
(c) Few and far between.
(d) From the point of view of .
(e) Along the same lines.
Q4: Organize the following text into meaningful paragraphs.
As individuals, we acquire our culture as we grow up within it. It is not something we inherit. We primarily acquire our culture through the socialization process, which "teaches" us to be proper adults and citizens. The main agents for this process are, at first, parents or other guardians. Other people and institutions, particularly schools and religious organizations continue the process. Important values, patterns of thinking, and ways of behaving are passed on in this way. The process is rarely explicit; parents and others are often not conscious of the process themselves. This is important, because the things learned about our culture become deeply embedded in our mental make-up, to the extent that we are ourselves barely aware of them or reflect on them. They act as a kind of taken-for-granted foundations that guide our thinking, feeling and behavior.
Q5: Why is listening such hard work and how can one become a good listener?
SECTION - C
Q1: Is it important to differentiate yourself from other applicants for a job? How can an applicant create that right tone?
Q2: Discuss the main categories of non-verbal communication.
Q3: Suppose that you know that people with your qualifications are in great demand. Is there any reason for you to take effort to write a strong resume.
Q4: Should important e-mail messages be drafted offline? Why?
Q5: Draft a covering letter in response to an announced job opening which evinced a lot of interest in you?
CASE STUDY - 1
John is a 27-year old who is a foodservice manager at a casual dining restaurant. He is responsible for supervising and managing all employees in the back of the house. Employees working in the back of the house range in age from 16 years old to 55 years old. In addition, the employees come from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds. For many, English is not their primary language.
John is Safe Serve® certified and tries his best to keep up with food safety issues in the kitchen but he admits it's not easy. Employees receive "on the job training" about food safety basics (for example, appropriate hygiene and handwashing, time/temperature, and cleaning and sanitizing). But with high turnover of employees, training is often rushed and some new employees are put right into the job without training if it is a busy day. Eventually, most employees get some kind of food safety training. The owners of the restaurant are supportive of John in his food safety efforts because they know if a food safety outbreak were ever linked to their restaurant; it would likely put them out of business. Still, the owners note there are additional costs for training and making sure food is handled safely.
One day John comes to work and is rather upset even before he steps into the restaurant. Things haven't been going well at home and he was lucky to rummage through some of the dirty laundry and find a relatively clean outfit to wear for work. He admits he needs a haircut and a good hand scrubbing, especially after working on his car last evening. When he walks into the kitchen he notices several trays of uncooked meat sitting out in the kitchen area. It appears these have been sitting at room temperature for quite some time. John is frustrated and doesn't know what to do. He feels like he is beating his head against a brick wall when it comes to getting employees to practice food safety. He has taken many efforts to get employees to be safe in how they handle food. He has huge signs posted all over the kitchen with these words: KEEP HOT FOOD HOT AND COLD FOOD COLD and WASH YOUR HANDS ALWAYS AND OFTEN. All employees are given a thermometer when they start so that they can temp food. Hand sinks, soap, and paper towels are available for employees so that they are encouraged to wash their hands frequently.
Questions:
1. What are the communication challenges and barriers John is facing? Suggest solutions.
2. What are some ways John could use effective communication as a motivator for employees to follow safe food handling practices?
CASE STUDY - 2
Monsooned
Rebecca works with United Technologies, a Chicago based company. She is talking on the phone to Anubhav, the manager of one of United Technologies vendors for customer service outsourcing.
Rebecca: We really need to get all of the customer service representatives trained on our new process in the next two weeks. Can you get this done?
Anubhav: That timeline is pretty aggressive. Do you think it's possible?
Rebecca: I think it will require some creativity and hard work, but I think we can get it done with two or three days to spare.
Anubhav: Ok.
Rebecca: Now that our business is settled, how is everything else?
Anubhav: All's well, although the heavy monsoons this year are causing a lot of delays getting around the city.
Two weeks later…
Anubhav: We've pulled all of our resources and I'm happy to say that 60% of the customer service representatives are now trained in the new process. The remaining 40% will complete the training in the next two weeks.
Rebecca: Only 60%? I thought we agreed that they all would be trained by now!
Anubhav: Yes. The monsoon is now over so the rest of the training should go quickly.
Rebecca: This training is critical to our results. Please get it done as soon as possible.
Anubhav: I am certain that it will be done in the next two weeks.
Questions
1. Did Anubhav agree to the initial timeline requested by Rebecca? Explain
2. What might Rebecca be thinking about Anubhav? What might Anubhav be thinking about Rebecca? How will this incident affect their future interactions?
IMT-102: Database Adminitration-2014
IMT-102: Database Adminitration-2014
PART-A
Q1. Which are new data types introduced in SQL SERVER 2008?
Q2. What is a Filegroup? What is their purpose?
Q3. What are the two mechanisms to authenticate users in SQL server 2008? Write their advantages and disadvantages.
Q4. What is a FileStream Data? What are its advantages?
Q5. What is Policy Management? Briefly explain the four evaluation modes.
PART-B
Q1. What are the basic functions for master, msdb, model, tempdb and resource databases?
Q2. What is SQL Profiler, Server Agent and Service Broker?
Q3. What is Collation? Discuss briefly about the various Collation settings in SQL Server 2008.
Q4. Discuss the various Features of various SQL Server Editions?
Q5. What is stored procedure? What are the key benefits of using Stored Procedures?
PART-C
Q1. What is a role of SQL Server Agent service? Briefly explain its component?
Q2. Compare Full recovery model with Bulk-Logged recovery Model?
Q3. What is a role of SQL Profiler and Log File viewer? Briefly explain them
Q4. What do you understand by High Availability options? Compare all the three major options?
Q5. What is Data Collector? Briefly explain its components?
CASE STUDY-1
SQL Server 2008 Runs SAP ERP Database to Support Microsoft Worldwide
Situation
Microsoft has relied on SAP ERP software to run its financial operations since 1996 when it first deployed the solution on Microsoft® SQL Server® 6.5. Since then Microsoft's SAP ERP deployment, which now has a 6.5-terabyte backend database, has grown to join the top 5 percent of the largest SAP ERP deployments worldwide.
With 92,000 employees, operations in 89 countries, and 2007 revenues exceeding U.S.$51 billion, Microsoft has plenty of financial and operational data to track. The company's SAP ERP system handles Microsoft's treasury, worldwide sales, worldwide finance, worldwide human resources, worldwide operations, material management, U.S. payroll, and other mission-critical functions.
The company was happy with how its SAP ERP deployment was running on Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition and the Windows Server® 2003 Enterprise Edition operating system. SQL Server 2005 had provided excellent performance and rock-solid stability for the company's worldwide SAP-based operations.
SAP ERP performance at Microsoft includes:
• Over 1,300,000 dialog steps per business day
• 19 million transactions per month
• An average user response time of less than 0.7 seconds
As the SAP team members looked at the beta edition of SQL Server 2008 they saw features that they wanted to benefit from immediately, including database and backup compression technology and improvements in SQL Server Database Mirroring technologies.
But with so many of the company's mission-critical worldwide systems directly or indirectly dependent upon SAP ERP, the upgrade would need to be seamless, and performance and stability would need to be at least as good as the group had enjoyed with SQL Server 2005. In short, SQL Server 2008 needed to be enterprise grade— even in beta release.
"SAP ERP serves as the financial backbone of Microsoft," says Hans Reutter, Principal OE System Manager at Microsoft. "This means that we don't upgrade our database and other infrastructure without having complete confidence that it is enterprise ready."
In February 2008, Microsoft upgraded its SAP ERP environment to the beta edition of SQL Server 2008 Enterprise running on the Wndows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition operating system. The SAP deployment has a three-tier architecture that includes:
• Presentation Tier. The presentation tier includes a fat client, the SAP graphical user interface, which is used by some 2,000 heavy users of the SAP environment. The rest of Microsoft's worldwide employees access SAP through a Web browser, with access handled by 4 load-balanced servers running the Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition operating system and Internet Information Services (IIS).
• Application Tier. The application tier includes 12 load-balanced SAP application servers running Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition.
• Database Tier. The 6.5-terabyte SAP ERP database is hosted on the beta edition of SQL Server 2008 Enterprise, running on Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition. The database grows by about 200 GB a month. The full database is hosted on a single HP DL585-G5 server with 4-socket quad-core processors and 68 GB of RAM. It is connected using fiber optics to an EMC CX3-80 SAN disk storage array. To help ensure high availability, the database is setup with SQL Server 2008 synchronous database mirroring with automatic failover enabled. The second database server and storage is an exact copy of the primary server and storage to allow a failover without any performance impact.
The SAP deployment takes advantage of features new for SQL Server 2008, including:
• Data Compression.
• Backup Compression.
• Enhanced Auditing.
• Resource Governor.
• Enhanced Database Mirroring.
• Enhanced Autogrowth and Lock Management.
Benefits
Upgrading to SQL Server 2008 Enterprise gave Microsoft the data compression it needed to support better resource utilization and to reduce the size of backup storage required for its 6.5-terabyte SAP ERP database. The Microsoft SAP group plans to use the enhanced auditing feature of SQL Server 2008 to capture access information required for compliance reasons, while enjoying improved high availability with Database Mirroring, and reduced downtime needs with Online Indexing.
Resource Governor will enable the team to define the amounts of resources that individual workloads are allowed to use during execution. "We could use Resource Governor to regulate resources available for backups," says Bregler. "We may want to restrict backups to 10 percent of resources. Or if we wanted to increase the rate of backups, we could increase available resources. Resource Governor is a powerful tool for ensuring that key workloads always have the resources required to get the job done."
Results
Microsoft gained the data compression, backup compression, integrity of change tracking, and other benefits it sought by upgrading its 6.5-terabyte SAP ERP database to SQL Server 2008 Enterprise running on Wndows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition. The combination of Database Mirroring and Online Indexing has reduced the need for scheduled downtime, helping the group to enjoy 99.99 percent uptime for its platform.
SQL Server 2008 Runs SAP ERP Database to Support Microsoft Worldwide
Questions:
(a) Why Microsoft decided to move on SQL server 2008?
(b) Briefly explain any new feature of SQL server 2008 used in SAP deployment
CASE STUDY-2
SQL Server 2008 improves supervision of 20,000 company cars
Situation
Secar Bohemia operates automobile tracking systems, systems for monitoring vehicles, people and objects, and fleet management services including electronic drive logging. These services are provided in collaboration with Telefonica 02 Czech Republic and branded "02 Car Control".
The CarControl system currently (beginning of 2008) includes about 3 billion records amounting up to 1 TB, and it is being used by tens of thousands users worldwide, from China to the Russian Federation, in ten language versions.
It is designed to simplify car fleet operations for companies, with special focus on decreasing costs and providing logistics functionality. The system allows up to 20% cost savings on company fleet operations. Key system features include monitoring vehicle movement data and facilitating analysis of that information in the form of output reports.
The CarControl system is based on the .NET technology and uses Microsoft SQL Server as the database back-end.
The system is distributed across a number of servers with specific assigned roles. Generally, servers in the system comprise four categories:
1. Routers - communication servers, which pre-process incoming data, identify it, classify specific instances, and also manage the units onboard the vehicles.
2. Application Servers - host the end-user web-/lnternet-based applications that users interact with.
3. Database servers - store data and provide basic application logic on the database level (such as generating standard reports).
4. Analytics servers - these are special-purpose servers that perform complex analytic and database operations, such as evaluation of data from the traffic and logistics features. In addition, these servers are used to generate more sophisticated output reports.
Secar Bohemia had great expectations for the development and new features available in Microsoft SQL Server 2008 for the purposes of improving CarControl. "We realize that in order to succeed in a fiercely competitive environment, we have to constantly evolve and enhance our system and keep offering new features to users, to improve the efficiency of car fleet management. Opportunities for further development are exactly what the new Microsoft SQL Server 2008 offers," said Petr Vacek, Deputy Chairman of Secar Bohemia. In 2007, Secar Bohemia increasingly received requests for advanced analysis of input information, and more importantly, for visual presentation of output data such as charts. In addition, the system required optimizations in terms of performance as well as storage size, due to the massively increasing number of customers in the system. Last but not least, work had commenced on the development of a module to monitor the traffic situation.
Secar Bohemia in partnership with KAKTUS Software, which is responsible for the development of CarControl and is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, decided to evaluate the pre-release version of Microsoft SQL Server 2008.
This was motivated by the fact that Secar Bohemia was satisfied with the functionality of Microsoft SQL Server 2005 servers that had acted as the core of the Car Control system. Also considered were the low costs of upgrading to the new SQL Server, ease of migration and overall simplicity of moving to the new system. Microsoft SQL Server 2008 was the undisputable winner in all those considerations.
There are several instances of CarControl in operation, three of them in production and one for development and testing. It stands to reason that the initial deployment was completed on the testing version. This involved updating the central database server and the server that processes analytic workloads. Thanks to new database compression and management features, the volume of data decreased substantially, as did the requirements for available disk storage.
The most important features evaluated were deployed on the analytics server. This is where the testing and successful deployment of the following new features was completed: processing of spatial, geometrical and geographical data for the purposes of implementing traffic monitoring tasks, in conjunction with an application developed using SilverLight, also a new technology. Furthermore, a number of advanced analytics were developed and made available to users as reports. The developers implementing the new reports gave high praise to the new Designer tool and visual data presentation capabilities, especially as charts. The test mode was terminated in March 2008. There were no major issues identified in testing. Secar Bohemia is planning to deploy Microsoft SQL Server 2008 to the remaining instances by the end of 2008.
Benefits
Testing has confirmed that Microsoft SQL Server 2008 is stable and robust, and it provides a number of new features that can be used to expand CarControl in future.
Spatial data
The new SQL Server 2008 enables storing and processing of a wide range of new data types. These include new date and time types. This simplifies and accelerates processing this information. It is also possible to store larger binary data directly to disk. The HierarchylD data type lets developers structure interdependent information in the form of a tree. Last but not least, there are new data types that handle spatial data.
Data analysis and output reports
This is an area where SQL Server 2008 provides a large number of new features. Among the first to be used in CarControl were the output report generating capabilities. For instance, SQL Server enables creating reports in the new Designer tool, closely linking the resulting reports with Microsoft Office products. The key features of the new server that CarControl has put to use include the capability to present data graphically as charts, which can now have a much more attractive appearance compared to the previous version.
"Reliability and rich features are a matter of course in various systems. However, we acknowledge that emotional approach to products is also very significant. That is why systems developed by us offer top-class graphic design and user experience. To achieve this in the CarControl project, Microsoft has provided a tool that enables us to do just that," said David Kalous, Director of KAKTUS Software.
System administration
The new Management Studio significantly decreases the complexity of SQL server administration. SQL Server now includes a new policy framework, which enables setting and enforcing the same configuration settings and policies across multiple servers. New data types and data compression capabilities simplify data space management.
Results
Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, and Visual Studio 2008 provide a secure and trusted platform for creating and running your most demanding applications. Combined, the products provide a solid foundation for next-generation web applications, broad support for virtualization technology, and access to relevant information. Advanced security technology, developer support for the latest platforms, improved management and web tools, flexible virtualization solutions, and access to relevant information from throughout your organization enable a broad array of technology solutions.
SQL Server improves supervision of 20,000 company cars?
Questions:
(a) What was the business problem at Secar Bohemia?
(b) Briefly explain the benefits reaped by this company after moving to a new system on SQL server 2008.
IMT-11: Managing People-2014
PART - A
Q1. Do you agree that HRM is faced with several challenges in today's world? What are the steps that organizations should take to handle these challenges?
Q2. Discuss the issues that an HR department faces in the context of its structure in an organization.
Q3. In the times of economic recession, how would you balance the supply and demand of Human Resources in your organization?
Q4. An HR Audit is expensive, and though organizations are not legally bound to take it, they still pursue it. Why?
Q5. 'The purpose of training is to achieve a change in the behaviour of those trained and to enable them to perform better.' Discuss.
PART - B
Q1. Which appraisal system would you recommend to your organization for appraising its employees and why?
Q2. Write a short note on The Employees' State Insurance Act, 1948.
Q3. 'Separation means cessation of service agreement with the organization.' Discuss the different ways of separation in light of this statement.
Q4. Why is the quality of work life important for the employee and the organization?
Q5: Discuss how the recommendations of the National Commission of Labour can be used effectively in private organizations.
PART - C
Q1. 'Morale is high when there is improved employee contribution, lower labour turnover and absenteeism.' Discuss.
Q2. Design a systematic transfer policy.
Q3. What steps would you take to tackle human relations problems in your organization?
Q4. Why do you think it is important for an organization to involve employees or employee representatives at all levels of the decision-making process?
Q5. Discuss how collective bargaining evolved in India.
Case Study - 1
Human Resource Planning - What is that?
You are a human resource consultant. The newly appointed president of a large paper manufacturing firm has called you:
President: I have been in this job for about one month now, and all I seem to do is interview people and listen to personal problems.
You: Why have you been interviewing people? Don't you have a human resource department?
President: Yes, we do. However, the human resource department does not hire top management people. As soon as I took over, I found out that two of my vice presidents were retiring and we had no one to replace them.
You: Have you hired anyone?
President: Yes, I have, and that is part of the problem. I hired a person from the outside. As soon as the announcement was made, one of my department heads came in and resigned. She said she had wanted that job as vice president for eight years. She was angry because we had hired someone from outside. How was I supposed to know she wanted the job?
You: What have you done about the other vice president job?
President: Nothing, because I am afraid someone else will quit because they were not considered for the job. But that is only half my problem. I just found out that among our youngest professional employees, there has been an 80 per cent turnover rate during the past three years. These are the people we promote around here. As you know, that is how I started out in this company. I was a mechanical engineer.
You: Has any one asked them why they are leaving?
President: Yes, and they all give basically the same answer: They say they do not feel that they have any future here. Maybe I should call them all together and explain how I progressed in this company.
You: Have you ever considered implementing a human resource planning system?
President: Human resource planning? What is that?
Q1. How would you answer the president's question- 'Human resource planning? What is that?'
Q2. What would be required to establish a human resource planning system in this company?
Q3. What measures should the president take to retain good young employees?
Case Study - 2
The New Boss
One of the largest NGOs in Uttar Pradesh and Uttaranchal is the Environment Protection Agency. The grant management section of its water division was formed seven years ago. The main functions of this division are to review applications for grants, engineering designs and requests for change. It also inspects the operation and maintenance of wastewater treatment facilities. Four engineers, one technician and one secretary-cum-programmer reported to Prem Sharan, head of the section. Prem was 36 years old and had headed the section since its inception. He had earned a good reputation for his technical acumen and dedication. Three of the engineers had joined the section recently. The senior engineer, R. Sundaram, had been working there for the last four years. Prem had personally trained him. Because of his experience and expertise, Prem had allotted to him the areas with the most complicated projects. The other three engineers were given less complex regions. They were asked to work closely with Sundaram and learn all they could about the section's work.
At the beginning of the year, Prem decided that the new engineers had gained enough experience to undertake more difficult tasks. He divided the territory on a geographical basis. This section worked fine and the section was able to meet all its objectives.
Three months ago, he accepted an offer with larger responsibilities and growth possibility from a large organization in the private sector. He gave two months' notice to the top management. Time passed, but the top management did not even advertise for a new section chief. People in the section speculated as to who might take over. Most of them hoped that Sundaram would take over. On the Monday of Prem's last week, top executive met with him and the section employees and announced that they had decided to appoint a temporary section head till a new one could be hired. The person chosen was Shyam Mehrotra, a senior engineer from another EPA division. This came as quite a surprise to Sundaram and other people in the section. Shyam had no experience of the section's work. His background was in technical assistance. In his previous job he was required to do research in certain treatment processes so that he could provide more technical performance information to other divisions within the EPA.
Q1. What was the rationale behind Shyam's choice?
Q2. If you were the CEO, what action would you have taken?
Q3. Assess Prem's role as the section chief.
Q4. Was it proper for Prem to leave EPA?
IMT-10: Business Communication-2014
IMT-10: Business Communication-2014
SECTION - A
Q1: Successful communication depends on the common ground between you and your audience. Describe the ways to adapt your message to audience?
Q2: Identify the weakness/choose the right option as the case may be in each sentence:
(a) It is essential that you sign and return back the enclosed form.
(b) The production manager, nor the controller, presented (her, their) opposing views.
(c) Paige forgot to retain her expense vouchers; (this, this oversight) caused a delay in reimbursement.
(d) The consultants' (advice, advise) is to downsize the organization.
(e) I consider your remark a (complement, compliment).
Q3: What planning should you do before you begin writing or speaking?
Q4: You usually would want to build positive attitudes towards the information you are presenting, so in that sense how should you organize informative and persuasive messages?
Q5: Buffers are generally used when writing a bad news message. Discuss the purpose and the common types of buffers?
SECTION - B
Q1: E-mail communities develop their own norms. Mention the e-mail netiquette that should be followed by people who use email communication.
Q2: How will you decide whether to decide whether to use a chronological or a skills resume.
Q3: Find a single word substitute or a shorter phrase for the phrases given below:
(a) In accordance with your request.
(b) Please be advised.
(c) Few and far between.
(d) From the point of view of .
(e) Along the same lines.
Q4: Organize the following text into meaningful paragraphs.
As individuals, we acquire our culture as we grow up within it. It is not something we inherit. We primarily acquire our culture through the socialization process, which "teaches" us to be proper adults and citizens. The main agents for this process are, at first, parents or other guardians. Other people and institutions, particularly schools and religious organizations continue the process. Important values, patterns of thinking, and ways of behaving are passed on in this way. The process is rarely explicit; parents and others are often not conscious of the process themselves. This is important, because the things learned about our culture become deeply embedded in our mental make-up, to the extent that we are ourselves barely aware of them or reflect on them. They act as a kind of taken-for-granted foundations that guide our thinking, feeling and behavior.
Q5: Why is listening such hard work and how can one become a good listener?
SECTION - C
Q1: Is it important to differentiate yourself from other applicants for a job? How can an applicant create that right tone?
Q2: Discuss the main categories of non-verbal communication.
Q3: Suppose that you know that people with your qualifications are in great demand. Is there any reason for you to take effort to write a strong resume.
Q4: Should important e-mail messages be drafted offline? Why?
Q5: Draft a covering letter in response to an announced job opening which evinced a lot of interest in you?
CASE STUDY - 1
John is a 27-year old who is a foodservice manager at a casual dining restaurant. He is responsible for supervising and managing all employees in the back of the house. Employees working in the back of the house range in age from 16 years old to 55 years old. In addition, the employees come from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds. For many, English is not their primary language.
John is Safe Serve® certified and tries his best to keep up with food safety issues in the kitchen but he admits it's not easy. Employees receive "on the job training" about food safety basics (for example, appropriate hygiene and handwashing, time/temperature, and cleaning and sanitizing). But with high turnover of employees, training is often rushed and some new employees are put right into the job without training if it is a busy day. Eventually, most employees get some kind of food safety training. The owners of the restaurant are supportive of John in his food safety efforts because they know if a food safety outbreak were ever linked to their restaurant; it would likely put them out of business. Still, the owners note there are additional costs for training and making sure food is handled safely.
One day John comes to work and is rather upset even before he steps into the restaurant. Things haven't been going well at home and he was lucky to rummage through some of the dirty laundry and find a relatively clean outfit to wear for work. He admits he needs a haircut and a good hand scrubbing, especially after working on his car last evening. When he walks into the kitchen he notices several trays of uncooked meat sitting out in the kitchen area. It appears these have been sitting at room temperature for quite some time. John is frustrated and doesn't know what to do. He feels like he is beating his head against a brick wall when it comes to getting employees to practice food safety. He has taken many efforts to get employees to be safe in how they handle food. He has huge signs posted all over the kitchen with these words: KEEP HOT FOOD HOT AND COLD FOOD COLD and WASH YOUR HANDS ALWAYS AND OFTEN. All employees are given a thermometer when they start so that they can temp food. Hand sinks, soap, and paper towels are available for employees so that they are encouraged to wash their hands frequently.
Questions:
1. What are the communication challenges and barriers John is facing? Suggest solutions.
2. What are some ways John could use effective communication as a motivator for employees to follow safe food handling practices?
CASE STUDY - 2
Monsooned
Rebecca works with United Technologies, a Chicago based company. She is talking on the phone to Anubhav, the manager of one of United Technologies vendors for customer service outsourcing.
Rebecca: We really need to get all of the customer service representatives trained on our new process in the next two weeks. Can you get this done?
Anubhav: That timeline is pretty aggressive. Do you think it's possible?
Rebecca: I think it will require some creativity and hard work, but I think we can get it done with two or three days to spare.
Anubhav: Ok.
Rebecca: Now that our business is settled, how is everything else?
Anubhav: All's well, although the heavy monsoons this year are causing a lot of delays getting around the city.
Two weeks later…
Anubhav: We've pulled all of our resources and I'm happy to say that 60% of the customer service representatives are now trained in the new process. The remaining 40% will complete the training in the next two weeks.
Rebecca: Only 60%? I thought we agreed that they all would be trained by now!
Anubhav: Yes. The monsoon is now over so the rest of the training should go quickly.
Rebecca: This training is critical to our results. Please get it done as soon as possible.
Anubhav: I am certain that it will be done in the next two weeks.
Questions
1. Did Anubhav agree to the initial timeline requested by Rebecca? Explain
2. What might Rebecca be thinking about Anubhav? What might Anubhav be thinking about Rebecca? How will this incident affect their future interactions?
IMT-102: Database Adminitration-2014
IMT-102: Database Adminitration-2014
PART-A
Q1. Which are new data types introduced in SQL SERVER 2008?
Q2. What is a Filegroup? What is their purpose?
Q3. What are the two mechanisms to authenticate users in SQL server 2008? Write their advantages and disadvantages.
Q4. What is a FileStream Data? What are its advantages?
Q5. What is Policy Management? Briefly explain the four evaluation modes.
PART-B
Q1. What are the basic functions for master, msdb, model, tempdb and resource databases?
Q2. What is SQL Profiler, Server Agent and Service Broker?
Q3. What is Collation? Discuss briefly about the various Collation settings in SQL Server 2008.
Q4. Discuss the various Features of various SQL Server Editions?
Q5. What is stored procedure? What are the key benefits of using Stored Procedures?
PART-C
Q1. What is a role of SQL Server Agent service? Briefly explain its component?
Q2. Compare Full recovery model with Bulk-Logged recovery Model?
Q3. What is a role of SQL Profiler and Log File viewer? Briefly explain them
Q4. What do you understand by High Availability options? Compare all the three major options?
Q5. What is Data Collector? Briefly explain its components?
CASE STUDY-1
SQL Server 2008 Runs SAP ERP Database to Support Microsoft Worldwide
Situation
Microsoft has relied on SAP ERP software to run its financial operations since 1996 when it first deployed the solution on Microsoft® SQL Server® 6.5. Since then Microsoft's SAP ERP deployment, which now has a 6.5-terabyte backend database, has grown to join the top 5 percent of the largest SAP ERP deployments worldwide.
With 92,000 employees, operations in 89 countries, and 2007 revenues exceeding U.S.$51 billion, Microsoft has plenty of financial and operational data to track. The company's SAP ERP system handles Microsoft's treasury, worldwide sales, worldwide finance, worldwide human resources, worldwide operations, material management, U.S. payroll, and other mission-critical functions.
The company was happy with how its SAP ERP deployment was running on Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition and the Windows Server® 2003 Enterprise Edition operating system. SQL Server 2005 had provided excellent performance and rock-solid stability for the company's worldwide SAP-based operations.
SAP ERP performance at Microsoft includes:
• Over 1,300,000 dialog steps per business day
• 19 million transactions per month
• An average user response time of less than 0.7 seconds
As the SAP team members looked at the beta edition of SQL Server 2008 they saw features that they wanted to benefit from immediately, including database and backup compression technology and improvements in SQL Server Database Mirroring technologies.
But with so many of the company's mission-critical worldwide systems directly or indirectly dependent upon SAP ERP, the upgrade would need to be seamless, and performance and stability would need to be at least as good as the group had enjoyed with SQL Server 2005. In short, SQL Server 2008 needed to be enterprise grade— even in beta release.
"SAP ERP serves as the financial backbone of Microsoft," says Hans Reutter, Principal OE System Manager at Microsoft. "This means that we don't upgrade our database and other infrastructure without having complete confidence that it is enterprise ready."
In February 2008, Microsoft upgraded its SAP ERP environment to the beta edition of SQL Server 2008 Enterprise running on the Wndows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition operating system. The SAP deployment has a three-tier architecture that includes:
• Presentation Tier. The presentation tier includes a fat client, the SAP graphical user interface, which is used by some 2,000 heavy users of the SAP environment. The rest of Microsoft's worldwide employees access SAP through a Web browser, with access handled by 4 load-balanced servers running the Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition operating system and Internet Information Services (IIS).
• Application Tier. The application tier includes 12 load-balanced SAP application servers running Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition.
• Database Tier. The 6.5-terabyte SAP ERP database is hosted on the beta edition of SQL Server 2008 Enterprise, running on Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition. The database grows by about 200 GB a month. The full database is hosted on a single HP DL585-G5 server with 4-socket quad-core processors and 68 GB of RAM. It is connected using fiber optics to an EMC CX3-80 SAN disk storage array. To help ensure high availability, the database is setup with SQL Server 2008 synchronous database mirroring with automatic failover enabled. The second database server and storage is an exact copy of the primary server and storage to allow a failover without any performance impact.
The SAP deployment takes advantage of features new for SQL Server 2008, including:
• Data Compression.
• Backup Compression.
• Enhanced Auditing.
• Resource Governor.
• Enhanced Database Mirroring.
• Enhanced Autogrowth and Lock Management.
Benefits
Upgrading to SQL Server 2008 Enterprise gave Microsoft the data compression it needed to support better resource utilization and to reduce the size of backup storage required for its 6.5-terabyte SAP ERP database. The Microsoft SAP group plans to use the enhanced auditing feature of SQL Server 2008 to capture access information required for compliance reasons, while enjoying improved high availability with Database Mirroring, and reduced downtime needs with Online Indexing.
Resource Governor will enable the team to define the amounts of resources that individual workloads are allowed to use during execution. "We could use Resource Governor to regulate resources available for backups," says Bregler. "We may want to restrict backups to 10 percent of resources. Or if we wanted to increase the rate of backups, we could increase available resources. Resource Governor is a powerful tool for ensuring that key workloads always have the resources required to get the job done."
Results
Microsoft gained the data compression, backup compression, integrity of change tracking, and other benefits it sought by upgrading its 6.5-terabyte SAP ERP database to SQL Server 2008 Enterprise running on Wndows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition. The combination of Database Mirroring and Online Indexing has reduced the need for scheduled downtime, helping the group to enjoy 99.99 percent uptime for its platform.
SQL Server 2008 Runs SAP ERP Database to Support Microsoft Worldwide
Questions:
(a) Why Microsoft decided to move on SQL server 2008?
(b) Briefly explain any new feature of SQL server 2008 used in SAP deployment
CASE STUDY-2
SQL Server 2008 improves supervision of 20,000 company cars
Situation
Secar Bohemia operates automobile tracking systems, systems for monitoring vehicles, people and objects, and fleet management services including electronic drive logging. These services are provided in collaboration with Telefonica 02 Czech Republic and branded "02 Car Control".
The CarControl system currently (beginning of 2008) includes about 3 billion records amounting up to 1 TB, and it is being used by tens of thousands users worldwide, from China to the Russian Federation, in ten language versions.
It is designed to simplify car fleet operations for companies, with special focus on decreasing costs and providing logistics functionality. The system allows up to 20% cost savings on company fleet operations. Key system features include monitoring vehicle movement data and facilitating analysis of that information in the form of output reports.
The CarControl system is based on the .NET technology and uses Microsoft SQL Server as the database back-end.
The system is distributed across a number of servers with specific assigned roles. Generally, servers in the system comprise four categories:
1. Routers - communication servers, which pre-process incoming data, identify it, classify specific instances, and also manage the units onboard the vehicles.
2. Application Servers - host the end-user web-/lnternet-based applications that users interact with.
3. Database servers - store data and provide basic application logic on the database level (such as generating standard reports).
4. Analytics servers - these are special-purpose servers that perform complex analytic and database operations, such as evaluation of data from the traffic and logistics features. In addition, these servers are used to generate more sophisticated output reports.
Secar Bohemia had great expectations for the development and new features available in Microsoft SQL Server 2008 for the purposes of improving CarControl. "We realize that in order to succeed in a fiercely competitive environment, we have to constantly evolve and enhance our system and keep offering new features to users, to improve the efficiency of car fleet management. Opportunities for further development are exactly what the new Microsoft SQL Server 2008 offers," said Petr Vacek, Deputy Chairman of Secar Bohemia. In 2007, Secar Bohemia increasingly received requests for advanced analysis of input information, and more importantly, for visual presentation of output data such as charts. In addition, the system required optimizations in terms of performance as well as storage size, due to the massively increasing number of customers in the system. Last but not least, work had commenced on the development of a module to monitor the traffic situation.
Secar Bohemia in partnership with KAKTUS Software, which is responsible for the development of CarControl and is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, decided to evaluate the pre-release version of Microsoft SQL Server 2008.
This was motivated by the fact that Secar Bohemia was satisfied with the functionality of Microsoft SQL Server 2005 servers that had acted as the core of the Car Control system. Also considered were the low costs of upgrading to the new SQL Server, ease of migration and overall simplicity of moving to the new system. Microsoft SQL Server 2008 was the undisputable winner in all those considerations.
There are several instances of CarControl in operation, three of them in production and one for development and testing. It stands to reason that the initial deployment was completed on the testing version. This involved updating the central database server and the server that processes analytic workloads. Thanks to new database compression and management features, the volume of data decreased substantially, as did the requirements for available disk storage.
The most important features evaluated were deployed on the analytics server. This is where the testing and successful deployment of the following new features was completed: processing of spatial, geometrical and geographical data for the purposes of implementing traffic monitoring tasks, in conjunction with an application developed using SilverLight, also a new technology. Furthermore, a number of advanced analytics were developed and made available to users as reports. The developers implementing the new reports gave high praise to the new Designer tool and visual data presentation capabilities, especially as charts. The test mode was terminated in March 2008. There were no major issues identified in testing. Secar Bohemia is planning to deploy Microsoft SQL Server 2008 to the remaining instances by the end of 2008.
Benefits
Testing has confirmed that Microsoft SQL Server 2008 is stable and robust, and it provides a number of new features that can be used to expand CarControl in future.
Spatial data
The new SQL Server 2008 enables storing and processing of a wide range of new data types. These include new date and time types. This simplifies and accelerates processing this information. It is also possible to store larger binary data directly to disk. The HierarchylD data type lets developers structure interdependent information in the form of a tree. Last but not least, there are new data types that handle spatial data.
Data analysis and output reports
This is an area where SQL Server 2008 provides a large number of new features. Among the first to be used in CarControl were the output report generating capabilities. For instance, SQL Server enables creating reports in the new Designer tool, closely linking the resulting reports with Microsoft Office products. The key features of the new server that CarControl has put to use include the capability to present data graphically as charts, which can now have a much more attractive appearance compared to the previous version.
"Reliability and rich features are a matter of course in various systems. However, we acknowledge that emotional approach to products is also very significant. That is why systems developed by us offer top-class graphic design and user experience. To achieve this in the CarControl project, Microsoft has provided a tool that enables us to do just that," said David Kalous, Director of KAKTUS Software.
System administration
The new Management Studio significantly decreases the complexity of SQL server administration. SQL Server now includes a new policy framework, which enables setting and enforcing the same configuration settings and policies across multiple servers. New data types and data compression capabilities simplify data space management.
Results
Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, and Visual Studio 2008 provide a secure and trusted platform for creating and running your most demanding applications. Combined, the products provide a solid foundation for next-generation web applications, broad support for virtualization technology, and access to relevant information. Advanced security technology, developer support for the latest platforms, improved management and web tools, flexible virtualization solutions, and access to relevant information from throughout your organization enable a broad array of technology solutions.
SQL Server improves supervision of 20,000 company cars?
Questions:
(a) What was the business problem at Secar Bohemia?
(b) Briefly explain the benefits reaped by this company after moving to a new system on SQL server 2008.
No comments:
Post a Comment