I'm going to talk about the UML, but I'm actually a database person, so hopefully I didn't scare you with UML in the title, so I got to get all the mechanics of this stuff right. So what's the UML? I'm sure most of the people in the room here have heard what the UML is. UML is unified modeling language, you know, I mean that's a little presumptuous right there, but it's a graphical language from modeling software, and it arose from the many object-oriented software development approaches of the 1990s, that was a good thing, because in the 1990s there's this tower of babble effect where there's different notations, different methodologies around, they're all trying to do the same thing, it's not constructive, and the purpose of UML was to try to standardize that, which is a good thing, there's some good things and some bad things about it, I'll try to talk about both, and it's been sponsored by the object management group. So UML has a variety of diagrams, I don't know if there's a diagram, I think in general it's hard to think of a diagram they didn't throw in the thing, there's so many different diagrams in it, so I just list six possibilities there, the class diagram is really the UML model for data modeling, so that's what I'm going to talk about here, but they have object diagrams, use case diagrams, state diagrams, activity diagrams, sequence diagrams, collaboration diagrams, I mean all kinds of diagrams, I'm not going to talk about that, I'm just going to focus on the class diagram, so what is UML good for, more specifically what is UML good for with regard to databases, I'm not going to talk about all the other models, so UML class model is good for conceptual data models, I use it for that all the time, I use it for communicating with business experts, and so this slide is going to talk what's good about, the next slide is going to talk about what's bad about it, so I use it for communicating with business experts, and it's good because it defers database details, I don't have to talk about primary keys and foreign keys and alternate keys and candidate keys and indices and referential integrity and have their eyes glazed over, I can focus on the key entity types or classes and the relationships between them and the critical attributes and have the discussion at that level, so I think I don't know where I read it, I read something recently where somebody was saying oh you can't show UML model to a business person and well there's all kinds of diagrams, so if you're talking about some of the other diagrams that might very well be true, but as far as the class model is concerned I show it to business people all the time and actually what I do is I get my laptop out, I project it on the screen, I get 10, 15, 20 business people in the room from all different camps and we'll just start modeling and they'll, oftentimes it's like kicking off an application model, so they'll start communicating requirements, I'll start capturing them as we talk and they have their side business discussions and we just proceed and actually works quite well with that and when I first started out doing it, I kind of had a preamble where I explained UML terminology and concepts and notation and I attended a talk once at a conference and this guy didn't even have the introduction for his talk, he just launched right into his material and I was quite impressed with that, so I said let's try doing a UML model, I'm not even going to explain it to him, I just got launched right into it and that actually works because I mean the UML class model is derived from Peter Chen's entity relationship notation, it's quite intuitive, there's not that many constructs to it and I keep translating the model back and forth into English as we go, so you don't have to understand precisely what all the constructs mean because they hear me explaining it in their terms and they ask questions, I answer the questions, we go back and forth, it actually works quite well and I actually have a demo of doing that on YouTube and I got the link for YouTube on my last slide if you have any interest in that, so another thing the UML is good for is obviously communicating with programmers and there's a lot of programers grumble about the UML but they're familiar with it and they use it nonetheless so you can reach them, one of the things I really like using UML for is abstraction and thinking abstractly about data models and data modeling patterns and it's really helpful when you're trying to think of how do I abstract the model, what level of abstraction am I at, what do I exactly, what's the trade-offs and representations and not have to deal with keys and identity and all that and set that aside as a later decision so UML is good at that and another thing UML is good for which some data people may not pay enough attention to is you can summarize behavior in the UML model and that's quite useful and I can give you at least three examples of where it's useful, one is say you got your high-level conceptual model, your classes, your entity types are representing the business terminology because there's no reason you can't fit the high level methods, high-level operations on the diagram, that's just like the service-oriented architecture mentality when I put them on the diagram so that's useful to communicate, I do that sometimes, it's useful to communicate there, another reason for putting behavior together with data model diagrams, the database people care about is a lot of applications of stored procedures and it's useful to put the stored procedures with the data and think about it that way and the third reason is I'm working on this, I only have partial progress, I've been using data models to try to drive the design of XSD files and XSD and XML is data just like databases and I think it makes sense to drive that off data models too and if you're dealing with XSD and XML files oftentimes you're dealing with the service-oriented architectures so why did I put the summary of the services on the same diagram? So having being able to summarize high-level behavior and the data modeling diagram is quite useful in practice so what are some uml weaknesses? Well, uml does not address database design some of the uml tools out there do address database design like enterprise architect, I don't use it for that I mean they do support database design I've had some discussion with the vendor they've shown me some of the things they do other people I've seen them use it for that I don't use it for that I find it more convenient if I'm doing a database design or they use Erwin or a tool like that for database designs so actually the way I often operate is I use a uml tool for the high-level conceptual model and I transition to a database tool like Erwin some were around the logical model so I often use a blend of the tools together but like I said there are some uml tools I do address database design my personal opinion I think they're clumsy another one of the uml weaknesses is over-emphasizes programming jargon actually from a database point of view it's offensive I mean it's just right in your face you can hardly get away from it I never got involved in the I never got involved in the omg process for creating the uml I could have gotten involved if I want to when I was a GE research I worked with Jim Rumbaus I knew him quite well and I could have used that as a non-trader to get involved with the process I didn't want to do that I mean one of the reasons I became a consultant is I could do what I wanted and that was one of the worst forms of torture I could think of is to be involved in that committee so I didn't want to do that but you know I heard things about the object management group meetings even though I wasn't there from other people and it's just all this programming minutiae was driving it and and actually the work we did at GE was one of the inputs into the uml and when we did a work at GE we paid attention to databases so like the omg the good thing they did is they got rid of this tower of babble with these different notations that meant similar things when the bad things they did is they lost the database input but you know I talked to Rumbaus about some and he just told me there's so much politicking and and negotiations and so forth you could hardly get the people there to pay attention to databases so that's just what happened another uml weakness most of what I see I see most database practitioners especially those with some level of skill they're aware of the uml they know what it is maybe the beginners and novices don't know what it is but the serious practitioners they know what the uml is but not many people use it in practice that's what I see I'm a consultant I go in and out of a lot of companies so I actually see quite a bit and there's certainly a chasm between the programming and the database cultures between the style and the chasm's artificial a lot of it but it's there and nonetheless so the weakness of uml is that it's not widely adopted I actually think it can be used more widely and that's part of what I'm trying that's what I'm advocating in this talk and of course uml is not relevant for data warehouses and just to be clear and one of my past books I wrote about 10 years ago I have a star schema and I did a uml model for it and that's not incorrect but I would say now it's pointless why bother using a uml model for a star schema the structure is so simple you hardly have to try that and you're not going to abstract any further it's already abstracted with the star schema and and when you're looking at a star schema database you often will see the keys anyhow so why suppress that so it's not wrong to use uml for that like I did in the past but I don't think there's any purpose to it so what I'm going to do is I'm going to walk through a number of uml constructs and explain them with examples and some commentary and I'm going to try to compare it to IE as I go and I've done this before and it actually went over quite well because people have been using IE models I mean over and over again and know the notation inside out and it's a good anchor point for explaining uml stuff the diagrams I'm going to show here for the uml side use enterprise architect and for the IE side I used Erwin Erwin is iDef 1x and IE there's a switch yeah and actually I use iDef 1x most of the time with Erwin and I actually use that in the prior version of this talk and I would I give it to Chicago Dame the last fall of prior version of this talk and I kind of solicited commentary from the audience and one of the comments I got from the audience that I didn't know before is this lady said if you use iDef 1x I'm not going to pay attention to you I want to see iE that's all I use no it's fine I asked for comments that was a good comment I appreciate it and uh so my so I have two thoughts in my head and she said IE is what everybody uses so I got two thoughts in my head one is she doesn't know what she's talking about or the second comment is she's right and I don't know which one's the case so I actually talked to a lady a computer association she said hey it is widely used she's this lady's right so I switched IE for this talk I actually worked with logic methodology that Erwin uses what you're seeing when you switch okay is the notation it gives you the ability to change the notation but all the methodology rules that follows when you're in IE if I get through any other comments or questions before I proceed okay so here's an example of a uml data model um hopefully it's well I hopefully it's somewhat readable in the back I'll uh I'm going to go through pieces of it as I proceed so here's an example I'm not going to walk through it's a frequent flyer a simple model for frequent flyer information I'll go through pieces of it as I proceed I may come back to the slide here's the exact same thing in IE notation and this example doesn't bring it out real well well there's a couple of comments I'll make so first of all if you look at the uml data model the boxes on that and the boxes on the IE model closely correspond not exactly correspond closely correspond and the second comment I'll make about this that this example doesn't bring out as well as others is generally speaking the uml data model has fewer strings on it fewer text legends on it than the IE does because you're not showing all the keys for example so it's more compact it's more concise it's easier to explain at a high level having a smaller model does matter if you're interacting with a group of people in the room you can fit more in the screen it's more legible when I when I do data modeling I'll often split things across subject areas that confounds a lot of people because I want to see it all on the screen so being able to have a higher information density without just shrinking all the fonts that is useful so first concept is a notion of a uml class and that's the same thing as an entity type in IE and here's just a very simple example and you can see the so I define what an object is what a class is so an object's a concept abstraction or thing with identity and application meaning so even in the UM when I'm doing uml model I don't show primary keys I don't show um I don't show foreign keys as such I do I'm thinking in terms of identity I think of that all the time and then the class is a description of similar objects so object corresponds to entity and class corresponds to entity type and you can see the uml notation to the left and the IE notation to the right for the same thing okay yeah so customer is an entity type uh entity is John Doe, Jane Smith and a lot of the the literature is really sloppy on the term entity um so that's actually a good question for thank you for the question the literature is really sloppy so that's why I use entity entity type uh the correspondence between those two words is clear but if you look at entity in the literature sometimes we're referring to an occurrence sometimes we're referring to a description uh literature is inconsistent and I avoided the word instance um that sounds like a programming term to me that's a prominent term in uml and um I'm trying to avoid gratuitous programming jargon so I deliberately avoided the word instance I'd rather use word occurrence entity type is like a customer entity is like Jane Doe, Jim Smith you know so an entity type is what you type into a Irwin model an entity is a record on the table so uml attribute this prior slide shows classes and attributes frequent flyer account is the name of the class and the three items underneath it are attributes account start date balance current amount and balance current date so a value is a piece of data for an object and the attribute is a description of similar values so in the case of uml the notion of value and attribute has the same meaning is what you'd expect from the database world that's the same um and like I said the prior slide shows a few attributes and then the so actually the uml box is three parts I only showed two the top has the class name the second has the attributes and the third has the operations so I just didn't show it in my example but the operations are behavior for an object and I got a really simple example here like you could compute the current balance and retirement activity posts have been examples and operations derived data and earlier I gave you some um some methodology reasons why operations are relevant to data models for example like I said you can you can summarize services you can represent stored procedures and sometimes in my data models I show operations it's quite helpful okay so here's another uml term the notion of an association association is a uml term I think relationship is generally what I see in the database world and here again is a simple example uh frequent fire the customer has a one to many relationship um and like I said the uml model has the same meaning as the ie model on the right side so let me uh define a couple concepts I want to come back to this model so link is a physical or conceptual connection among objects it's at the occurrence level it's record level and an association is a description of similar links so that's at the type level so entity type class association are all the same thing object link occurrence are at the same level so I disagree with your statement a couple ways so yeah if you look at if you look at a lot of the object-oriented literature yeah they're talking about object-oriented design yeah that's what they're talking about but uml intrinsically it's not tied to object-oriented design I use it all the time for object-oriented analysis and actually where I came from a GE research I mean we wrote a book that was one of the methodologies that was a pre-course uml a few of you here might have heard of OMT object modeling technique is what vaunted rumba to the limelight as a co-author of their book the focus of the book was an object-oriented analysis object-oriented design was like a secondary thought was an afterthought in their book one okay and like I said so we're talking about object-oriented analysis butch was talking about object-oriented design with the uml is certainly as people can explain it and convey it the design aspect is emphasized but still the uml notation intrinsically is not tied to design and then the second point is what's in the uml notation what's in the tools are two different things and uml tools are really emphasizing design too and in my view that's unfortunate you got this junk you got to look past use them and yet you actually pointed that really well Dave in your book you really pointed that out well I've kind of yeah I use uml and I've just I've just kind of like subconsciously look past all the junk and focus on the core notation when you actually can't turn a lot of it off you gotta ignore it and uh and it's it's offensive from a data modeling point of view so so there's a lot of baggage with the uml which certainly represents which certainly tilts heavily towards object-oriented design which tilts for its programming design not data design there's a lot of baggage with uml like that but the core language is an ER notation you can use it like that and that's what I do and I've defined it accorded accordingly so but like I said and and and and like I said in your book you made a very I thought you made a very good observation uh about all this baggage with the uml and uh I never paid that much attention to it I've always kind of wondered why don't people use it more it seems kind of obvious to me well that's is one of the reasons so I think it's a good observation any other questions okay so um so I talked about link and association it's the same link is the same as a relationship association is the same thing as a relationship type the word relationships use ambiguously just like the word entity is the type or occurrence level so I guess if you really want to be careful in the database literature you'd use relationship instance relationship type and avoid the word relationship so but so looking at this example again in the IE notation you can see that I didn't put a name on the relationship I'm sure most data modelers would probably do that I often don't bother okay enough that's um yeah that's right so you can see my bias there you can see my bias there and um that's certainly a matter of style when I um go well if it's a many to many relationship and I go to implement the relationship of course with the table I pay attention to the name then so I'd be more likely to name those um I've won the many like this I'd be more likely to name the customer end especially if there's multiple relationships the customer and I want to disambiguate them so that's like a rule name I'll talk about that coming up but like I said I'm just calling attention to the fact I don't I don't have a relationship name on the IE and some people might object to that and on the UML it's certainly fine not to have a relationship name uh it's common I would actually make the argument that the N names are more fundamental than the relationship name another comment I make is on the IE often when there's relationship names or directed names you have to read them one way here's one name you gotta read the other name here's the other name and actually the origins of the UML we didn't have directed relationship names because from a semantic point of view there's no point to that other than the fact that words happen to read one way or the other I mean just really semantically there's no point to it well in the UML of course there's directed relationship names because point because programmers think of implementing them with pointers so but that's not what I'm calling attention to here so I showed a binary association that has two ends and each end can have a name and a multiplicity sometimes it's called an association N name sometimes it's called a roll name officially now in the UML I think it's called an association N name I think they couldn't think of a longer name for it than that so that's why they use that so it's just a legend next next to the intersection and I use N names a lot because oftentimes we have a we have a primary key that's referred to by foreign key you rename the foreign key and the roll names are really nice in that regard so yeah okay so I don't have any other examples of that oh and another point I'd like to make let's see yeah multiplicity so multiplicity is a number of instances of one class that may refer to a single instance of an associated class so actually in the UML word people use the term multiplicity which is actually the correct term in the database world people use cardinality and they're being sloppy it's a wrong term so cardinality is the size of a set multiplicity is a constraint on the size of a set so multiplicity is what you are doing in the database world cardinality is a sloppy name that that just about everybody uses to refer to the same thing and the reason I'm so aware of that distinction is I wrote a paper in the past I must add a mathematician or reviewer or something he corrected me and educated me and fine okay fair enough but like and so like I said in the actually in this regard the UML has it right and the database world doesn't have it so well so but like in a lot of times I use word multiplicity seems to confuse database people but like I said loosely speaking it's the same as cardinality so oh here's an example of an association class so that's kind of to the left side that's more foreign notation to most database modeling people there's a many to many relationship between airline partnership and airline for example there's a star alliance that's an airline partnership and united's an airline that belongs to the star alliance Lufthansa is an airline that belongs to the star alliance and you know when they go in and out of the partnership you can have effective dates that can consider good form that's now analysis model because the model means that already why you need to say it again what the model says to the left is a combination of an airline partnership and an airline uniquely identifies let's see if I can get this wasn't so good was it okay there we go that stupid little red pointer airline partnership and airline the combination uniquely identifies that that's what the model says you need to say it again so like I said this is an analysis level model it's a conceptual so when you do in the uml model when you do conceptual models you can certainly do in the uml if you do full-fledged logical models for a database well you probably won't bother doing that uml when I use a database design tool but if you use the conceptual model with some of the critical attributes you can certainly do that still in the uml and at that level why do you want to clutter it with something that's already stated and this model on the left this model on the right meet exactly the same thing mm-hmm yeah like I said I'm I'm no no let me continue let me continue so so yeah I do write definitions like I said I'm actually a database person if I I do programming many years ago I don't do it anymore because there's a waste of my time I rather do the database stuff so I'm actually a programming person who's into object-oriented methodology I don't mess around with java and c plus plus and all that stuff I'm just on the methodology side so when I define these things I do it a couple ways one way is a dad dictionary uh you in a tool like enterprise architect you can click on a class and attribute pull up a panel and type in a definition just like you do in Erwin same kind of thing so do dad dictionaries I um for business people often have narratives where I'd have a word documented I copy and paste the uh the model and then I write pros where the definitions are embedded in so yeah of course I define things okay oh hi okay okay so okay so there's there's two comments here that's a good point there's two comments here the first the question I had here earlier is putting the foreign keys in the association class I said that's unnecessary okay I misunderstood I misunderstood okay okay I misunderstood then I misunderstood okay that's fine okay so that was a misunderstanding so so in the uml you can name that or not name it and both are correct and this is small model so I didn't bother to name it and what I and what I do when I'm doing a database design I'd call it like airline partnership underscore airline um so yeah so in the uml model if you want to say hey that's not a good practice I can't find the thing which is actually a fair comment because if you're like an enterprise architect a tool and you look in their browser window it's not named you can't tell what's what but if you go in the diagram and click and say jump tooth in the diagram then you find it so if you want to say as part of software engineering protocol you always name them that's certainly reasonable enough I often don't do that but you might actually be a good idea to even do it all the time that's fair enough that's fair enough that's a good point happens to be many to many you can't represent that in sql or in a relational model therefore you have to convert your relationship into an association entity and all entities have to have a name that's how you get to that point but the point is also the gentleman back there and the gentleman up here making the point that in the tool also it's a little cumbersome if you don't have names you got to play tool games um which is like I said there's certainly nothing wrong with assigning a name to that if you choose do we want to talk about it now because you can address uh go ahead if you got question if we run on too long I'll move things ahead so I mean in the entity relationship world every entity must have some mechanism of uniquely identifying an instance in the uml world you can if you so desire although you you know developers probably don't like it you can list for example uh uh in airline you could have airline id there as a as a nah nah that's a good form uml you don't show artificial keys that's not a conceptual model every object has intrinsic identity you take it for granted when you're doing the uml the database side you show what the identifier is explicitly so but okay yes and then uml you could say it but the uml actually doesn't address that you gotta do some ad hoc right which is ad hoc okay no actually let's Dave say some but still the right but in an analysis model you're not supposed to show artificial things and that was my point but I'll make another point here is uh you notice in the i.e. model I made airline id the primary key could have made airline name the primary key um and you know that's a trivial example but in a real in big models you have this stuff all over the place so the uml model actually corresponds to multiple i.e. models depending on how you go about doing identity how you go by doing primary keys so uh and actually if you're thinking about when you're doing a conceptual model you'd really rather not be dealing with that you really like to defer that decision the whole idea of software engineering you defer decisions till you have to make them so virtue of the uml model like this for conceptual modeling is you don't show the identifiers and of course any kind of reasonable database design any kind of intelligent database designer is going to address it at some point and usually I have guidelines and rules and so I always use id's for identifiers I know it's a religious argument whether or not to do that I'm in the camp of always using id's but regardless deferring that and not showing it in the conceptual model is a good thing and business people greatly appreciate that just brief I want to move on yeah well I accept yeah it's a logical model but corresponds to uml and I'm trying to show the correspondence is why I did that because people are grounded in i.e. and not grounded uml and I find out I have discussions with people and they say uml means this I said no it doesn't mean this the same as i.e. it's like oh and that's kind of I found this kind of a useful way to try to communicate and I actually think in both worlds so I mean this is the way my mind operates so so let me talk about qualified association that's something that's unusual in the uml that's not in too many database modeling notations but I think it's a really good idea so if I want to find a frequent flyer account the airline plus the account number yield to frequent flyer account of course an airline has many frequent flyer accounts the account number disambiguates them so it's not I'm still not saying what the primary key is this is a semantic statement I'm saying that the frequent flyer account is the natural key to that is the airline identifier plus the account number I'm making it's a constraint it's a it's a semantic statement of constraint and this i.e. model is a corresponding model to uml model so so I use I use qualifiers quite a bit so when I do data models I pay lots of attention to natural keys because they're important constraints on identity but I I rarely use them as a primary key and I enforce them separately I define as alternate keys so um so that's the uml qualifier I kind of explained that so here's an example of uml generalization I guess this corresponds pretty well to the database world there's not too much difference there so the uml models on the left and the i.e. models on the right and the uml model on the left actually it could have showed the activity discriminator there too enterprise architectural will certainly display that they don't call it discriminator in the uml notation in the uml jargon it's it's generalization set name so I don't I'm not especially fond of that so I use the word discriminator but you know they mean the same thing and that's the point and you can go in a uml tool such as enterprise architect and assign an activity discriminator to it and show it just like in the right model even though I didn't do it here so another comment I'll make is uh Dave's comment I took him like a month fumbled around with the uml tool and come up to speed I had the same kinds of problems uh yeah I mean I could construct a simple diagram very quickly but to become skilled at the tool and get the thing to do what I wanted to do it took me a while to come up to speed and that's part of the reason I decided for database design I'm tired of fighting it I'm not going to fight it for that and then the other thing is too if you're using a uml for for data modeling you're outside the mainstream at some point you got cut over to the mainstream and and that's another reason why I use a tool tool strategy so whether it's exhaustive or not overlapping okay overlapping's the term oh geez I I know I I know the the object going modeling literature addresses whether it's exhaustive or not whether it's overlapping or not I don't remember off hand exactly what they have in uml 2 and what they don't so they they address it I'm not sure exactly what the notation is what I always do is a matter of software engineering protocols I never use overlapping uh and I also use all we use use exhaustive and if it's not exhaustive well there's another subtype you know so I uh well that's my mistake on the slide yeah yeah yeah I see it now I see it now that's my no it's my mistake on the slide okay yeah yeah because I'm actually starting to write a book now and some of the stuff and I fixed it in the book and I it's a mistake on the slide I intended the x so I'll make some more comments along the same line so when I'm doing data modeling I never use multiple inheritance doesn't happen that often I confuse business people it's easy enough to work around when I get into design and if I'm happening to deal with an object oriented language I might use multiple inheritance because you can mix in different aspects but I avoid it when I'm doing conceptual modeling therefore I don't have overlapping that's a formal multiple inheritance I just stay away from it I recast the model to avoid it so that's uh one of the few examples when I'll take a conceptual model and maybe tainted a bit looking ahead towards implementation I just don't I just don't want to deal with it I want to explain it because you're going to confuse the business people in practice it doesn't happen that much it's not worth the headache that's my opinion well actually I've maybe I'm incorrect on this I've treated both these forms of multiple inheritance in the past so maybe that sloppy jargon but fair enough what's that right well yeah we agree on that so so you can certainly see even we're here talking about here and it's a little confusing to talk about so boy I don't want to do that to a business person that's not a very nice thing to do I mean they're ready tolerating me being in the room as it is so oh here I got a few comments on Dave's new book I've read it it's a very good book I agree with some things don't disagree with some things not surprising it doesn't necessarily mean I'm right even but points of agreement Dave says the umel was not designed with databases in mind well yeah it's like yeah it's like it's not and there's program and everybody knows that that's pretty what he said that nicely and it also is programming oriented details it should be ignored and I've actually never said that in my writings and I should so that's actually a very good observation sometimes you have these biases or assumptions that come in your head and you don't state them and they're not helpful to people and that's something that Dave pointed out very well that I actually haven't in the past and I'm correcting in the future we don't agree some in terms of associate umel roles and relationships I'm not going to try to say here he's wrong and I'm right I just say we don't agree so and I actually like to talk about that some offline we get a chance um okay so you oh you don't cover some umel I read your book that's fine that's fine and and I and if I was going to do the slide now I wouldn't use that word so I I'll accept that correction and then I'm not uh you you're you're you're you're you're thought to very okay you know what I don't agree with that but go on the issues that I thought you actually said specifically in the slide the umel inmate is an alien for black yeah that's right that's right I use it for that correct but we both agree that misunderstands is not the proper word here and and I accept the correction which is fair enough um so using umel and IE together so um I use umel for the front end of the modeling the conceptual and some of the logical modeling and then I use IE I've used all kinds of notations over the years I use IE or something else if that's what the customer wants for the database design which is the full floods logical and the physical models for data warehouse applications umel's pedantic why bother then another comment I'll make here is one of the things that I like about the umel is um is actually I I look at a umel model and I traverse it and I know how the umel model corresponds to sequel code because I have mechanical mapping rules I use so I look at a umel model and I think in terms of traversal and actually write sequel code that does that um so traversal umel model and sequel code is the same thing to me uh it's just like it just interjoins in sequel so uh you know of course you got complex sequel queries like nested queries and that that doesn't correspond directly umel but you know a lot of the a lot of the boilerplate and sequel queries is just interjoins and conditions in the where clause and selection of columns in the select clause so I think it's really useful to think in terms of traversals when you look at umel models and I emphasize that with business audiences and that's one of the ways I try to get them to internalize it and check the model to make sure it works because I say if they got a business query and they can't reverse the model to answer it and all likelihood the model's broken we got to fix it and here this is this is I'm sure you remember this this string here but I got some videos that show how I use umel models with a business audience as dummied up but it's representative say that again please I don't know what you word but I don't know what you meant by the word extend oh the way to the front there extends now the defined term that's what I'm objecting to okay fine of course of course yeah super type yeah umel activities are super class flight activity and other activity or subclasses and it directly corresponds to this IE model activities are super type and flight activity and other activity or subtypes I don't understand the point that's right okay so one of the things I'll do sometimes the implementation I'll define two views on top of this so the generalization partitions the objects but for I can define a flight activity view which pulls in all the activity attributes and all this and I can define another activity view which pulls in all these the fundamental problem is as follows object going languages have intrinsic support for generalization a relational database does not so you have some kind of a workaround this is usually what I do is three tables but yeah some people sometimes they shove it all up here sometimes they take the attributes and copy it down here but if you got complex topology that doesn't work so well right so there's a little bit of bias but like I said if you got a complex topology this is the default way that I that I always do it and most other people do it this way that I've seen too so that's all that I got thank you for attending I'm happy to talk to anybody offline


Winston Edmonton here with Studio B, IBM Edge 2013. I've got Stan Waisaki with Mark III Systems. Stan, I understand that you were recognized by IBM today. Yeah absolutely, we got a choice reward for the work that we've been doing in the pure space and it's really nice to be recognized in front of all of your peers. That is impressive, that really is. Now I was just down where they have the pure setup. Yeah. A lot of customers over there. Oh absolutely. So tell me a little bit about what you do. So you know we're a regional business partner. We're based in Houston, Texas and you know we service Houston, Austin, San Antonio. We've been in pretty much an IBM only partner for 18 years so we have a very large customer base and with pure I think you know there's a lot of partners here that deserve this award. There's a lot of people doing great things in pure. I think one thing that separates us, a couple things that separate us is we've had some early success. So we closed quite a few large deals last year which is nice and we've also closed several competitive deals competing against UCS, HP takeouts and so forth and we focused mainly more on the BladeCenter 2.0 kind of message right which is follow on to the BladeCenter and selling the value of a product at the beginning of the life cycle. Massive IO capabilities to handle different changes in IT paradigms and the message that we're delivering to our customers and our prospects is working. So one of the other things that we've been doing is we've been freely sharing how we're selling it to the rest of the pure team and you know I mean from my perspective if IBM increases their market share in pure it's going to help me sell in my territory. Well tell me about that because you've got a lot of organizations that understand they need to make some changes but they drag their feet you know they try to hold off as long as they can sometimes longer than they really should. What is the message that you're giving that is helping them understand the value of you know jumping in and getting this done now? Well I mean I think you said the exact thing so people like to hold on to their technology right but if you hold on to a server right or even a blade for five six years at the end of that life cycle it's not doing nearly what you need right it's it's it's slow your your workloads have changed from when you bought it and that is the exact value that we're selling with pure that you can buy it today and have the same infrastructure ten years down the road and who knows what you're going to be doing ten years from now and it has enough horsepower and flexibility to handle whatever you're doing for ten years so that's a that's a that's a really strong message that I think was missing from IBM's initial message that they were sending out. It's it's investing in their it's not investing in their now it's investing in their future. Absolutely. Interesting now you've been a partner for 18 years very impressive what excites you as far as IBM the future and the trends that you see what what are you excited about? You know what seems like for the last ten years or so every year I say you know it's never been better to be an IBM business partner and and I can absolutely say that today you know we have a being IBM only you know we have fewer tools in our toolkit to go to our customers right so what we do is we take the best that IBM has to offer at any given point in time and we bundle those into good solutions so that we can sell value to our customers right now we can sell XIV we can sell real-time compression we can sell pure systems other there's sand volume controller for storage virtualization there's so many great products that the competition can't touch and so so we we keep ourselves busy with just what we have you know on the plate right now and and it's working give me some case studies you know we've got folks that watch and sometimes for some reason they just don't think that what we're talking about applies to them sure give me some case studies and I think sometimes when people hear that they realize you know what that I fit that mold I could I could I could take advantage of that absolutely so so yesterday up on stage I had a customer with me from the Rowan companies their their base in Houston they they have 30 some odd oil rigs throughout the world right they're an HP shop with Cisco for their core network and Cisco was pushing UCS very hard and they needed to refresh their data center but they hadn't yet invested in Nexus right so so the solution for UCS involved of a massive upgrade to their core infrastructure and they were hesitant to do that additionally it would require EMC storage they already had some but they would have had to upgrade it and that was a another major change for them right so we came in with a with a pure solution in XIV and the XIV sold itself the easiest product to manage I mean he even says you know it feels like we have a full-time equivalent employee living inside of it that just takes care of it for him you know but but we were able to come in with a much simpler solution that that does everything that they need they didn't need to upgrade their core and then we also bundled SystemX servers and some DS3 500 storage for their oil rigs so the other thing that he said was very important to them was a single vendor solution right who do I go to for support yeah well UCS couldn't do that right there they're a they're a Cisco EMC solution and then you know on their oil rigs where they just needed a server or two what option do they have another UCS out there that was overkill times 34 oil rigs so we had an outstanding solution and I think if people take a step back look at their environment and look at the actual value that you get out of flex systems versus the the marketing glitz that IBM kind of tends to tends to push they'll see that it's a good fit and I'm still blown away by the 18-year relationship you have with IBM but tell me about 2013 IBM Edge how do you how do you compare this event with last year's event oh wow it's it's it's doubled in size right so last year was was storage only right I think it's very natural for them to include the pure and in the cloud in the overall message because it goes hand in hand I like the fact that not all of the speakers are IBMers that they're bringing under industry analysts I enjoy the I enjoy when they bring customers up on stage to to talk about the value that they get because like I said the value that a customer get doesn't necessarily match the message that IBM selling right so and and we have a bunch of our customers here as well so that already have a bunch of these IBM products right but you know they see how other customers are using triggers their imagination and you know and we're already having conversations about what we're going to sell them next that's great so the folks that are listening and now they understand that yeah this is applicable how can they get in touch with you what's the best way to to learn more about what you do oh thank you thank you for that yeah get us on the web mark III sys.com our website we're going to kind of going through a major redo so what you see tomorrow may not be what you what you see today but it's it's it's got our contact information we also have a toll-free number 888 MARK III it's not 1-1-1 because that gets you a bad company but mark III 888 MARK III perfect very good appreciate you coming out Winston thank you very much Winston Edmonton Studio be shining out


Again a popular question amongst my viewers. What is better, higher sPCM or DSD? Well, that depends. Digital audio started with pulsecode modulation, abbreviated to PCM. It is based on the theorems of Nyquist and Shannon that in essence say that you can code any band limited signal in numerical values if you sample it at least twice the band limit frequency. I've been investigating flaws in these theorems, journalistically not scientifically, but couldn't find even the slightest doubt that people immensely more knowledgeable than I am. Those theorems stand solid. But why then can a digital audio sound so poor there? The problem lies in the band limiting, in layman's terms cutting off the audio at a given frequency, for CD 20 kHz is chosen. But if you cut off the audio at 20 kHz, the filter that does that will cause problems in the audio that is left. Especially the nasties that occur in the area around 3 kHz where our hearing is the most sensitive are rather audible. Many people started theorizing about sounds above 20 kHz being heard by humans only to explain why digital audio couldn't sound good. A more productive approach was to double the sampling frequency to 88.2 kHz and filter at 40 kHz, one octave higher. This shifts the filter nasties also one octave up and away from the most critical part of the spectrum. That made digital audio sound better, but by quadrupling the sampling frequency to 176.4 kHz further improvement was achieved. But there is a variable in the equation. The quality of the reconstruction filter in the player. The better that filter is, the less nasties will occur and the less the impact of higher sampling rates will be. Already in my year of birth CC Cutler described Delta Sigma conversion that forms the basis of Direct Stream Digital, DSD for short, the alternative for PCM. See my video DSD explained part 1 and 2 if you want a more detailed explanation. For here it suffices to mention that an extremely high sampling rate frequency is chosen, 64 times that of the CD. Since that generates loads of bits, only one bit amplitude resolution is used. This means that a signal to noise ratio of only 6 dBs can be achieved. By applying a technique called noise shaping, that noise can be moved out of band. This way the signal to noise ratio in the audio band is more than sufficient but above the audible spectrum there will be a lot of noise that might not be appreciated by your wide band equipment. So often a mild roll off filter is applied that starts at somewhere between 30 and 50 kHz. Over the years DSD at even higher sampling rates are used by some. 128 and even 256 times 44.1 kHz, so the name DSD was completed with that figure. DSD64, DSD128 and DSD256. In the beginning of digital audio, digital analog conversion was done uniquely using ladder converters. Although 16 bit resolution was claimed that usually was effectively 14 bits. The system works quite simple. The most significant bit, MSB for short, opened the switch that passed 1 volt output. The second significant bit, 2 SB abbreviated, opened the switch that passes half a volt and so on. If all bits are 1, all switches are opened resulting in a total of 2 volts output if the DAC adheres to the red book specifications. Once you get to the 21st bit, we're talking one microvolt, a voltage that is extremely hard to maintain exact due to thermal noise and other nasties. I have measured quite some digital to analog converters over the years, standalone and integrated in CD players but only one or two came close to 21 bit resolution. Most good ones offer 20 bit resolution and the rest was less, despite the 24 bit sticker on the front. Modern ladder converter chips are still limited to that 20 bit but by stacking up more converters, chips piggyback, the low level errors can be averaged out and can result in a higher amplitude resolution. These converters are nowadays called NOS DACs from non-oversampling digital to analog converters. When delta sigma converters became available, that like DSD worked with only one bit resolution and noise shaping, the linearity problem seemed solved since only one bit was used. But this technique moved the amplitude linearity to the time domain so precision clocks became extremely important. In the meantime there are DAC chips that use techniques somewhere in between like 3 or 4 bit resolution but between a player and a DAC the information, the audio is normally sent as either PCM or DSD. Many computer programs that play out audio to a DAC can convert audio from one format to the other and change the sampling rate within one format. The audio data has to be packed and labeled to make sense to the player. The most basic way to pack audio data is the waveform. It stores the audio data perfectly and is a lightweight container, as the pros call it. But the support of metadata was poor for a long time and still is not supported by many players. AIF or AIFF stores the audio data about the same way but the metadata is far better supported. Both containers store the bits the way they are in the audio stream. Then there are lossless compression containers that make the files up to 45 percent smaller without any loss of information. The most used is the free lossless audio codec, flag for short. The other popular one is Apple lossless audio codec, abbreviated ALAC. Both are widely supported in contrast to the lossless Windows Media format or WMA. The WMA format also knows lossy variants, thus wants to throw away information and as a result will sound inferior on a decent stereo. The same goes for MP3 and AAC that also degrade the sound quality as trade-off for file size and are the popular ones. Although I do use AAC in the car, it is the better of the two. I would not use either on my stereos, not even in my sub 100 euro setup 3. Frequently I come across people that claim that Flag sounds inferior to Wave. This means that the playback system doesn't handle Flag very well. Flag works like zip compression on a computer. The data is packed more efficiently but that takes some computing power to unpack. If the player is not powerful enough or has poorly performing code to unpack, chances are this will impact the sound quality. A well-known case from the past was a lin player, but that's long solved. Although I have not heard problems with apple lossless, the same could occur with it too, of course. Whether Flag or DSD sounds better depends largely on your equipment. If you play Redbook files, those files that are used on CD, chances are your DAC will upsample them. The question is, will your DAC do a proper job or does the player or player's software in the computer do a better job? Often, but not always, the software does the better job since a computer usually has more processing power than the processor in a DAC. The quality of the player's software has to be taken into account of course. If you use a DAC that does have a very high quality upsampling, I have this experience with cord DACs and there will be others. Let it do the upsampling. The question whether Wave or Flag sounds better also is a hardware and software dependent and that goes for the other lossless formats too. Whether you should prefer DSD over Flag or any other PCM format again is a matter of hardware and software. I will give you an extreme example. If you use a Nostag that does up to 192 kHz, DSD files have to be decimated to PCM 192 kHz. At best this gives a little loss but you lose quality anyway. Using 192 kHz PCM files would be the best option and if you also play 44.1 kHz files having quality player software upsample them to 176.4 kHz might give an improvement in sound quality. Why? Not because the highest sampling rate holds more information. There can't be more information than there was in the original file. But as we have seen before, at higher sampling rates the reconstruction filter gets an easier job and its nasty shift to a part of the frequency spectrum that is far less critical to our ears. If you use a hardware player that plays all sampling rates in PCM and DSD, you will not have to transcode the audio files to other sampling rates from DSD to PCM or vice versa. The best way always is to buy files that perform optimally on your system. But if you now own a system that only does 44.1 and 48 kHz and want to upgrade later on, you could buy high res files and make 44.1 or 48 kHz copies using downsampling software. The original files are carefully kept elsewhere of course. The conversion will cause a slight loss but if you use proper software the damage will be small and might not be audible on your current player. Since there is no single optimal solution, you can only compare differences between possibilities yourself. Try to be as structural as possible. Write down the possible solutions and use each possibility for a week or so, provided you play music regularly. Don't switch every few minutes for then you focus on the wrong things. If you don't hear a difference when you switch after a week, you might wonder if there is a difference and if there should be a difference if it's worth bothering. If you do hear a difference, go for the best option to your ears anyway and compare that with the other options of your system. I would start with bit perfect playback so no upsampling, downsampling or other processing in the player or player software and listen for a week. Then pick another option and again listen for a week. Always use integer upsampling, so upsample 44.1 kHz to 88.2 or 176.4 kHz and upsample 48 kHz to 96 or 192 kHz. DSD always is an integer multiple of 44.1 kHz, so if you have to convert DSD to PCM always convert to 44.1, 88.2 or 176.4 kHz. Conversion to a non-integer sampling rate needs more complex calculations and thus should be avoided. Trust your ears. If you don't hear a difference, accept that despite of what others say. And if you do hear a difference, accept that too despite what others say. Always take longer periods for listening and use a wide collection of music. So an easy question leads to a less easy answer as is always the case in audio. Easy answers are suspect and although they can be comfortable to you, they seldom are right. Welcome to my world. The next week there will be another video as always at 5pm central european time. If you don't want to miss that, subscribe to this channel or follow me on the social media, so you will be warned when new videos are out. If you liked this video, give it a thumbs up. Many thanks to all that support this channel financially, it keeps me independent and thus trustworthy. If you also feel like supporting my work, the links are in the comments below this video on YouTube. I am Hans Beekhuyzen, thank you for watching and see you in the next show or on theHBproject.com. And whatever you do, enjoy the music.


Activity for teaching passive voice, Jenga. This is a simple, fun, and versatile idea if you have access to some Jenga sets, sometimes known as Tumble Down Tower. This is best played in groups of 2-6 students, so you'll need enough sets to suit your class size. Write a verb on each block an erasable ink, or on slips of paper that you put face down on the table, remember that only transitive verbs can be used for passive. Write passive and active on separate slips of paper or card, and also put these face down with each set. Students take turns in taking out a block, and turning over a card then making sentences in either active or passive as appropriate. If the other students agree that the sentence is correct, the next student has a go. If it's incorrect, they must repeat the process. The idea is not to be the student that causes the tower to collapse. Have an amusing forfeit, for example, if they do, they must clean the classroom. You can restrict this to one tense or allow the use of any tense depending on the focus of your lesson.


Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs, Manuel Castro. Okay, the regreso. Muy buenas noches a todos y todas. Si me escuchan que digan viva México. Que vivan los mexicanos de Nueva York. Y que vivan los inmigrantes de Nueva York. Que se escuchen. It is my incredible honor for me to be up here. As I said earlier today, celebrating the Dia de Muertos, the day of the dead for the first time at Gracie's Mansion. And this could have not been possible without the support of Mayor Eric Adams, who just arrived and is here with us today. And Mayor, I just shared with everyone here how incredibly important this celebration is for Mexicans all over the world and for Mexicans in New York. But Mayor, I also shared with them how important and meaningful it was for you to visit the vacillica of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico during our recent visit there. And not only have you acknowledged Mexican community and the immigrant community and our contributions to the city, but you know and understand the importance of holding events such as these. So Mayor, like I shared with the crowd earlier today, New York City has never seen a more Mexican mayor than Mayor Eric Adams. So with that, I am proud to introduce the mayor of the greatest city in the world, Mayor Eric Adams. Thank you. This is such an important, the first of his kind, right? Commissioner, first time we're here celebrating the day of the dead. And I believe it's the day of the living with us spiritually. I was happy to see a photo of my mom that was here as part of the entire display that was here. And I cannot thank the commissioner enough who has traveled with me not only to Mexico, but down to the south of the border here in our country has been a real partner, has been a dreamer. He knows what it is to have a dream and to obtain that dream. So please, let's give it up for an amazing commissioner, commissioner Castro. And I think it's important before I begin tonight, there was something that was announced about our campaign. And I just want to be clear to you, all my campaigns are the highest ethical standards. Any inquiry that is done, we're going to fully participate and make sure that it's done correctly. I have not been contacted by anyone from any law enforcement agency. And that's why I came back from DC to be here to be on the ground and look at this inquiry as it was made. But we're here tonight to celebrate moving to this important event that we're having. Now, is Dia de Montes? Did I say it right? Dia de Muertos. Motos, motos. OK, today is the day of celebration with thousands of New Yorkers. Remember family members and friends who have passed. Because absent from the body is present in the spirit. Just because someone leaves us physically does not mean they left us spiritually.  And I'm glad that New Yorkers have a chance to experience this rich tradition. Mexican New Yorkers play an important role in our city and have grown to become our third largest Latino community in the city. Therefore, I see some of my police officers that I hear from police officers, the teachers, the firefighters, to every day New Yorkers making New York continue to function. And you are many of our first responders. People were able to shelter in place because you were in the right place to ensure that the city continued to function. Several weeks ago, a trip to Mexico together, Commissioner Castro and I, I went to Puebla. And they gave me such a rural reception. And they saw their son come home. It was just amazing as they acknowledged their son and how great he's doing here in the city. I experienced the warmth of the Mexican people. And especially, I want to thank my good friend, Councilor General Lopez, who's here as well. He has been a real guide in life for all of us. Give it up for your Councilor General, his hospitality. And New York and Mexico share an unbreakable bond. We are together with so many things. And so I was grateful for the opportunity to speak to so many inspiring leaders who are dedicated to creating an even better future for the future of the nation of Mexico. And for the many meaningful conversations I have with people dedicated to solving our global asylum seeker crisis, everyone in the city just want to work, just want to contribute to the American dream. And you know that better than anyone because you have been working hard for the people of this city. And I thank you for that. And I want to emphasize that New York City is a city of immigrants. We are deeply committed to the wellbeing of our immigrant communities and to constrain your strength in our relationship with the Mexican people. The more we learn about each other, the better citizens we can be. And I just want to really thank you. I did this in Borough Hall. We celebrated the day of the dead. In Borough Hall, we did it throughout my time there. And to bring it here to City Hall for the first time is a real acknowledgement of the rich spirit and culture that the Mexican people bring to this great city. So thank you so much, Viva Mexico.   And so I would like to welcome Carmen Serrano. Carmen Serrano is a community leader. Jairo Guzman, the Executive Director of Collision Mexicana from Zamora Entertainment. Pablo Enmira Zamora. Don Pedro Enmira Zamora. We wanna really give an awesome round of applause to our amazing Senator, Senator Robert Jackson. Senator, come say a few words for us. Give it up for Senator Jackson. Buenas noches a todos, ¿cómo estás? Well, this is my first time here in this ceremony. But one thing that I know is that Mayor Adams opens up this house to so many people for the first time and continuously, from a cultural point of view, so people can understand we are the type of city that we represent everyone. And I appreciate that, Mayor. Keep up the good work.  So thank you for having me. I appreciate it. And congratulations to all of you. Lot of fun. Enjoy yourself. Enjoy the rest of the evening. Viva, Mexico. Una plaza para Pedro Zamora y Mayra Zamora. Una plaza para Jairo Guzman y Carmen Serrano. And the party doesn't end here, as many of you know. We have a big celebration at Times Square where we'll continue to celebrate Dia de Muertos. This event is sponsored by the Department of Transportation with Commissioner Idani Rodriguez and many of our great city offices and agencies. Thank you so much.


Today is a typical rainy winter's Friday in Jerusalem, but we're going out to do some birdspotting today. They figured I need a few new hobbies. We went to the airport last week to Ben-Gurion to watch some airplanes. So today we're going birdspotting. Frankly, there's two great birdspotting venues in Jerusalem. One of them is the bird observatory in Rose Garden, which is by the Knesset, which is really really nice. They have a whole like bird deck over there. But where we're going today because it's a little bit closer and it's such a rainy day we don't want to travel far is Gazelle Valley, which I've been to before. You can see Gazelle's roaming there. It's really really cool. So we're on our way there now and hoping to catch some some Jerusalem birds. What this is is a basically open patch of land wildlife reserve of about 64 acres, 250 Dunham's. Now for those who haven't heard of Dunham's it's actually it's a Turkish word and it's it's Turkish word because Israel was actually part of the Ottoman Empire for a stretch of about 400 years and therefore you'll see words in Israeli use that are actually hangovers from the time that Israel was part of the Ottoman Empire. It works out to about 64 acres. Now this patch of land here is called Gazelle Valley because there's a herd of about 65 different Gazelles who just roam here freely. The amazing thing is you don't really need a big telephoto camera lens or any kind of special gear to find them. We just walked in here and there was like three or four of them crossing the road right in front of us. And they're not super timid. They're not like, you know, that afraid of humans. So, you know, don't get up right next to them, but you can definitely approach them. I have here today my new copy of the Collins bird guide, which I understand is considered the authority on bird spotting matters. So I figured this would be an interesting new hobby through shooting videos with my video camcorder. I must admit, I'm kind of getting fascinated by wildlife. So this place, it's at 50, 64 acres, 250 dunams in the Givat Mordechai neighborhood of Jerusalem. You can see here the Gazelles and it's all laid out really nicely and even on a sort of damp gray day like this on a Friday. This is a cool place to come. So let's see if I can get any interesting shots of Gazelles and other birds and other delights of nature in this cool park in Jerusalem. So like any shared space in Jerusalem, you do find a lot of different groups using this space. I'm recording this video here on a Friday, a few hours before Shabbat. So you see a lot of religious families. I try not to use the term ultra orthodox or hardy because I think it's kind of a little bit stigmatizing. But you see a lot of religious families of all different denominations enjoying the wildlife here because this is such a to so much nature here. You see a lot of really serious photographers with their big telephoto lenses. You see some people just like sitting on a bench, maybe, I don't know, contemplating thinking through their issues. It's really kind of wholesome here. And you can definitely, even though this is a Friday, probably one of the busier times. It's actually not super busy and it's even less busy generally during the week. I just want to say as well that this park was sort of, as I mentioned at the start of this video, kind of a civic success. The people wanted this to exist as a space for wildlife and for people to enjoy wildlife, but it's not the only park or open space in the situation in Jerusalem. There's a very beautiful hill called among locals, Givat Tartouro Mesim, the Lupine Hill Flower Hill, located over in Armona Natsiv. That's also currently being threatened by development as far as I know in their pressure groups like they were here resisting training every little bit of Jerusalem into concrete. I think the thing about Jerusalem is it's a very, very significant city for many groups, but especially for Jews. There's a very urgent need for housing in Jerusalem for people living in the city. A lot of the housing stock currently in the city is luxury housing, which is only occupied for a percentage of the year by typically people based who are overseas. The city of Jerusalem has looked to enforcing punitive taxes to kind of discourage that sort of development. Anyway, all this to say that there's definitely this push and take going on in Jerusalem by which we need more housing, but we don't want in the process of developing the city to swallow up all the beautiful amenities. And I think that the success of Gazelle Valley and having this kind of respite that local people can not leave the city, but enjoy some peace and quiet, proves how important spaces like these are for a healthy, thriving and functioning city. If you spent any time touring around Israel and you recognize the type of Gazelles here is mountain Gazelles, those amazing creatures you see seemingly defying gravity on the edge of the hills and around Mitzparamon and in the Ramon crater, you'd be correct. So how did mountain Gazelles end up in Jerusalem in what is actually the biggest, by the way, urban park in the country? It's an interesting story. So all the way this way in front of me, looking west, I mentioned at the start of this video that this park is located on the western expanses of the city of Jerusalem. So in 1993, the Jerusalem planning authorities decided to build a highway further west beyond these tall buildings, the concrete, Holy Land, Malcha, all that is a really, really lovely area called the Jerusalem Hills, the same area that was ravaged by forest fires last year. Now, these Gazelles were migrating freely, nomadically, if you will, between the Jerusalem Hills and this part of Jerusalem that at the time was underdeveloped or underdeveloped or less developed than it is today, let's say. In 1993, the Jerusalem authorities decided to build a highway in this area in order to improve the outbound connectivity westward toward Tel Aviv. Now, the thing was there was at the time already a family of 35 Gazelles or so living in this little park. And when the highway was built, it effectively cut themselves off between the Jerusalem Hills and this area. So solution had to be found. That is the genesis of the urban activism. The Jerusalem municipality wanted to develop also this area with houses. But obviously, a solution had to be found for the 55 beautiful wild animals already living in this area. And now, as I mentioned, it's the biggest urban park in the whole of Israel and it's home to, at this point in time, about 60 different Gazelles as well as many plants. They've tried to reintroduce some plants into this area as well as a bird. So a whole abundance of wildlife in this little wedge of urban Jerusalem.


Every generation looks to be distinct, yet we all share common traits, and we all are doing our best to make sense of the world we find ourselves in, to change it, to better it. We want to be faithful and we want to be strong. But when our story intersects with another's, and we join together, united with family and friends and connected with enemies and those who have hurt us, we try to make sense of these things. We try to make sense of each other's shortcomings, and we try to make sense of the pain in the world and wonder what faith even matters. Are you steadfast? What does that mean?


Biden says U.S. was not involved in Wagner mutiny in Russia. U.S. President Joe Biden has said that Washington and NATO had no involvement in the brief armed uprising against Russia inciting by leader of Wagner Private Military Company, the Afghani precaution. We made clear that we were not involved. We had nothing to do with it. This was part of a struggle within the Russian system Biden said on Monday. We are going to keep assessing the fallout of this weekend's events and the implications for Russia and Ukraine, he told reporters. Biden's comments came after last weekend's instability in which Wagner mercenaries headed by Prigoshin seized Russia's Rostov city and headed to Moscow in an armed convoy to confront Russia's military leadership. However, Prigoshin announced on Saturday that he would stand down to avoid luxury.


Okay, so as I said my name is Jefferson Cornelius and I'm with the cognizant technology So my kind of profile starts with you know being an interaction designer first and slowly getting into business development now into digital strategy and So I thought you know for this particular Occasion I thought I'll quickly talk about design thinking in producing digital strategy Both are two big buzzwords right now the design thinking and digital strategy I thought like you know it'll be nice to hear from my experience as well as I kind of seen the in the in the enterprises so basically Right, so it's interesting right I mean The buzzword is just a digital and then earlier and what what was digital was you know Just that digital watch my dad used to buy and then it had this LED displays But now digital is something completely different and I'm going to talk a little bit away from the design into more business consulting And more into the strategy part right and that's where I see that you know the appreciation of design thinking in producing strategy Will stand good so that is where right so when we talk about digital and then we talk about design We have heard speakers speak about you know experience design how you know things are so useful in you know building up the Strategies for the enterprises, but what is digital strategy right and how what are the components of it? And how can really design thinking help it right that's I'm going to quickly touch upon that right? so digital strategy is basically for me Nowadays, you know I met a colleague and he was thinking like hey everybody's talking about digital strategy and digital So what exactly that is and whatever is not mainframes is now turning up to be digital So you're talking about enterprise applications. You're talking about web applications. You're talking about mobile everything come in come I'm in combination you have digital and then how do you really produce the digital strategy now clients come in and ask you What is my what is the strategy that you're going to give me right so it's it's but if you see you know Experience design has a large portion in the digital strategy part right and obviously your business goals and objectives Right, and how are you really going to lay up your you know roadmap to? To produce that particular the strategy you know all the application that you're talking about the group of application or the ecosystem that you're going to develop and How are you really going to communicate right the communication strategy right and the channels? What the different kind of channels web was one now mobile it could be social it could be something else tomorrow Are you really going to incorporate that into your strategy and your products existing products your apps and and right in the Center is there your your innovations and then everything is enabled by your technology So in a way, it's not just your experience is I experienced design is a major part But we do really have to think about the all the other factors that found the digital strategy right so it's very interesting that I Mean whatever I put on the it doesn't mean any size of it or scale of it But it's just there right so it's interesting that Everybody are talking about digital strategy in a nod and want to get the best out of of every every guys But one big problem that I see is Convergence now I have these different groups different streams coming in say like analytics groups are coming Right, I mean in your companies you would have seen right analytics you have marketing is one team Design another team and you have Technologies coming in and say like this won't work and the business consultants coming in and say like this wouldn't work Now this particular digital consultant or the guy who actually drives it, you know He has to bring the convergence right he has to bring everybody together and say like okay This is the proper strategy that a client needs to do or go about and do an implementation roadmap for it And he doesn't have a lot of time in in a typical digital strategy engagement What really happens is it's mostly four to six weeks a maximum ten weeks Within that he has to bring a lot of people together You know make a mindful decisions and so that he he or she you know does the right thing and then do not You know fail in that particular short time, right? So it's it's it's a convergence becomes a big problem now. Maybe not in the future, but right now So that is where you know we found or like interestingly You know the design thinking Really really helps as designers I don't have to really talk to you about the design thinking aspect of it But these are some of the key questions that have been asked in terms of the digital strategy, right now What are we trying to achieve? Right financials it could be financials You know who are we serving? Customers users or if you if you're talking about a digital India or like that kind of a country or the You know city specific its citizens that are central, right? How do we do it? No channels the marketing's and You know, are we really going to achieve something that is the ROI factor that we're talking about, right? How are we going to enable it? That's a technology. Why are we doing it? Maybe it's competition, right? And how are we going to do it do the diagnostics first? So these are the some of the you know Questions are very active questions that you really ask when you do the digital strategy part of it And everything if you see it's kind of related to your design kind of thinking, right? So that is where when we talk about really convergence in terms of digital strategy The design thinking concepts really come alive when you produce it. It is that I mean digital strategy basically try applying, you know a lot of These these factors into your, you know All the techniques into your the way you produce digital strategy You will be amazed to find the kind of results that you get, right? Predominantly, I've just put these four key elements in terms of design thinking, right? Empathy creativity rationality and business and most of you guys know what it is Empathy creativity rationality business is not exactly in that order Certain clients might need, you know a variable, you know in a creativity could be more, you know business could be more You know and then empathy could be more so it totally depends But then if you can play around with these four factors and then you can really get a good Convergence and then the resultant is a good digital strategy. So basically Interestingly a lot of companies that right now, you know are looking at this, you know, they want innovations, right? I mean they want innovations right away and digital strategy when you produce it They say like okay fine. How are we going to do it differently? So interestingly if you see right in the middle is innovation about your the chart there like viability Desirability and feasibility. So if you combine all these together and then get a really good digital strategy You can really point out into the right innovation. That's that's that's been an experience And I think that that would be most of your experience as well. So If you see You know what does the client really want these days? I mean I mean interestingly they are they don't have much time the competitions are growing really disruptive You know, somebody is somewhere coming up with really great ideas Now one is trust demanding you have a really short time and and then in within that short time You have to really give a really good strategy meaning, you know therefore you have to establish the trust and This kind of certain certain techniques in the design thinking area like your typical design Techniques that you do right contextual inquiry or your persona development scenario validation The usability testing and all those things really or concept testing this really help in building that particular trust You know, okay, you are in connect with the users. You are in connect with the business, right and then Certain other clients are innovation demanding. They say like I need to really beat the competition what I need I need to do So that means you have to really come up with great ideas That's where the creativity goes up and then you study the market so deeply and therefore the clients trust you and then you give the right Strategy so basically if you see a lot of clients, you would have experienced trust demanding or your You know innovation demanding so this pretty interesting on that lines So, you know, I you know, it's what it's all you guys know this But interestingly I was talking about the convergence, right?  Interestingly my experience has been as well if you bring the the the the customer centricity or the user user centricity Or this even citizen centricity, you know, you really, you know get to the bottom of it You know, whichever team that you are trying to lead, you know, it could be analytics team It could be your technology cloud team, you know big data team You know if you're trying to big bring that focus into those teams and say like, okay, let's together see what is actually the users want You know and in that way, right? You try to you know emanate that kind of a feel to your team and then they kind of you know sink in with you And that helps in you know Quickly getting on them on board and then giving you a good Strategy so this is you know if some of the things that you already know, right? The values the usability part of it the ecosystem part of it the kind of collaboration or the community building and The scalability part.  So basically? Yeah, so basically if you see You're talking about convergence and you're talking about design thinking techniques, right? Building up in into this, you know, it's really short time four to six weeks you know using that kind of To two major techniques at that we saw it's useful and then we really actively uses the design thinking workshops Right very open-minded design thinking workshops where participator design and you have the designers you have the clients You have the product managers and everybody together and then you sort it out You know that really helps another thing is still struggling, but then the outcome based kind of models, right? The simulations that we are talking about right if you are developing a concept What are you really trying to say to the client in order to tell it to the market, right? So that kind of balancing act that you do really, you know The clients really embrace that and then we have a lot of success stories in it So so those two aspects are there so quickly, you know one of the case studies that we did and interestingly you know This is a Veros management system and this this particular company was located in one region North America and They had a problem like whether to buy a product or you know develop a product, right? That was the key things and then and it's not just your A lot of systems where that you know mainframe systems where they're, you know a lot of other apps mobile everything Whether and they wanted to really create one particular platform kind of a thing so what we I mean There was a big issues and we we kind of developed a team I mean brought down a particular team which has designers, you know Strategists, you know domain experts, you know who really know the systems in and out and then you know We kind of segregated that particular product with the client So there with the design thinking workshop we sat with them and then try to you know You know build a particular model You know that that you see that you know traffic management and inventory management and those kind of things right and then Using, you know rapid prototyping we developed concepts to show them and the clients saying like this is what it would look like And then we also did importantly a financial management for example Are you going to do you know only country specific are you going to go global which they really liked it? so that is kind of the models that we made and That kind of attracted them and do and finally they said let's build the model Let's build the product right so basically if you see if you see the kind of things that you do will really change the client's Perspective and therefore, you know it benefits the clients you and then it could also be in the implementation becomes pretty easy Right, so if you see that is what I am saying, right? I mean the design thinking workshops rapid prototyping the visits that we made to that A particular place the diagnostics that we did you know the big data analysis and user research journey mapping becomes very important And finally the financial modeling So I mean in conclusion what I'm trying to say is digital strategy It could be a buzzword great You know what can designers really contribute to that is immense because the fundamentals could of that thinking You know can be derived from design so you know it's except that you know Even when you develop the strategy that that is you know financial Users global in nature and other things certain design thinking techniques can be really used in bringing people together That's what I call convergence So that gives a lot of success and then and then you kind of really produce a good digital strategy. Thank you