Why the Internet is SO COOL, and KnowledgeBooks portal stuff
Why is the Internet so COOL? One reason is that people help each other. I try to spend about 30 minutes a week answering peoples questions on my favorite Usenet news groups.
Today someone helped me! I needed to do an SQL query against a database that I just created with information on board of directors for a sampling of US companies. I am a little rusty on my SQL and was having problems. So, I posted to comp.databases a question and within a few minutes Bob Badour (who I do not know) was kind enough to help me out.
Here is an example of his much-appreciated help on my tiny first-cut test database (this finds people who are on more than one board of directors):
factbook=# select A.firstname, A.lastname, A.stockticker, B.stockticker
FROM companydirector A, companydirector B
WHERE A.firstName = B.firstName and
A.lastname = B.lastname and
A.stockticker < B.stockticker;
firstname | lastname | stockticker | stockticker
-----------+-----------+-------------+-------------
James | Barksdale | AOL | SUNW
Jr., | Cash | GE | MSFT
Philip | Condit | BA | HPQ
Carleton | Fiorina | CSCO | HPQ
Ann | Fudge | GE | HON
Jr., | Hockaday | DJ | F
Nobuyuki | Idei | GM | SNE
Alan | Lafley | GE | GM
James | Mellor | CSC | GD
Michael | Miles | AOL | DELL
Rozanne | Ridgway | BA | MMM
Jr., | Smith | GM | NT
John | Thompson | IBM | SYMC
(13 rows)
(Note: I should have also checked on middle names and my spidering software needs to be improved when processing names, but you get the idea:-)
I needed a non-trivial sized database to use for demoing the KnowledgeBooks portal software that I am working on and I chose to spider the SEC Edgar database and use the most excellent CIA World FactBook data.
4:27:41 PM 
|
