Lecture Review Week 4

Week 4 of lectures has concluded early today.

Database --- Going into more advanced SQL,, there is the Group By att1, att2, though it there must be no ambiguity between the names of the attributes. The Having keyword is used for aggregate functions.

Nested queries are not recommended, and should be avoided as far as possible as nested queries might be quite misleading. In evaluating nested queries, you think of it as evaluating it in a nested for loop. Nesting are done in the Where line, as Where is the condition for the outer query. Results of inner query is not allowed to be brought out to the outer query.

View is a query with a name, after making the view, the view will be like another table and you can query the view as you would to any table. View is always up to date, any change in the original table will be reflected in the view.


Business Law --- Misrepresentation is a false statement and is of material fact that is made by one part to another, and induces this other part to enter into a contract. To show that it is a misrepresentation, all these four ingredients must be present.

Silence does not amount to misrepresentation, meaning that if the salesperson heard you saying to yourself about something wrong, and did not correct you, it won't be counted as a misrepresentation.

You are not induced into the contract if you had relied on your own judgement or individual investigation, knew of the false statement, or never knew of its existance.

There are three types of misrepresentation, fraudulent, negligent, wholly innocent. It is fraudulent when you know that the statement is false, without belief in its truth, or recklessly not caring whether it's true or not. It is negligent if the false statement is made without reasonable ground, and wholly innocent if it is made with reasonable grounds but the statement still turn out to be false.

Remedies to first two types are damages and/or recission, while for innocent misrepresentation is only recission. Recission is giving back and taking back.

Silence does not amount to misrepresentation unless there is a change in circumstances, or you told the truth but not the whole truth.

Next part was on illegal contracts, either illegal by statute or by common law. Illegal contracts are void contracts. Therefore it does not exist. To claim damages for this type of contract, you have to establish the case without relying on the illegal contract, or the parties are not equally at fault, or the plaintiff repents before the contract is substantially performed.

Contract in Restraint of Trade are prima facie void unless it can be proven that it protects properties of the person who enforced the restraint. For restraints in business, the length of restraints must be reasonable, and must not be contrary to public interest.


Business Communication --- In the continuation of User-Manual Writing, we discussed the six guidelines for task writing. 1) Task names should be action oriented, by using strong verbs and go direct to the point. 2) Organise the tasks logically, you won't want to read a manual which teaches you how to uninstall before installing do you? 3) Determine the elements for each task, 4) Write steps as actions, 5) Group steps under sub-task heading, this will make the manual more readable as related tasks are grouped into one. 6) Be consistent with options, notes and tips.

Tasks can be ordered in two ways, functional and sequential. Functional ordering is more used for reference as it focus on what the software can do. Sequential is more useful in teaching novice user as it focus on what the user wants to do with the program.

Here's the eleven task elements: Task name, user, explanation of task, start state, goal state, steps, results, screens, options, notes, tips. The essential elements are task names, explanation, steps, results, screens and notes.