2002 Virginia Industrial Directory (Virginia Industrial Directory 2002)

Book Description

The Test

The knowledge and skills it measures

Interpreting your child's and your school's test results

How you can help your child's teacher and schoo raise test scores by reinforcing key concepts at home

Your Child

Developing a positive, confident approach to the test

Home activities to build problem-solving and reading comprehension skills measured by the test

Coping with test anxiety

Book Description

This second volume in the series, Strategic Management and Information Technology presents a coherent set of papers that deal with the challenges of leveraging information technology for designing inter-organizational relationships. Instead of assembling a set of papers that are loosely connected to the broad theme of strategy and information technology, this volume presents a well-knit compendium of papers on a coherent topic.

Customer Reviews:

A CULT CLASSIC!!!.......2005-02-22

Dr. Sutton effectively brings Jacksonian Baltimore to life in this morality tale that has become a cult classic. Dr.Sutton is indeed the greatest history writer ever in addition to being the rawest history teacher in the world. Journeymen for Jesus changed the way I thought about Jacksonian Baltimore and for that I am forever indebted to the master, Dr.Sutton.

A History of Ordinary Americans at its Finest.......2004-01-16

Having borrowed this book twice from the library I have just now decided to buy a copy to keep in my bookshelf. This is an excellent book, and one which owes a good deal to E. P. Thompson's ground-breaking "Making of the English Working Class" in its method of historical analysis. In other words instead of relying on boring statistics and trends to explain the history of the common people it focuses on the people themselves and the actions that they took. This makes it interesting for the reader who is thus able to identify and empathise with the historical figures that Sutton describes. This is history as it should be written, a human story, about ordinary people and their lives, and how they reacted to events that seemed beyond their control.

The book itself examines how craft workers in Baltimore faced the challenges posed by industrial capitalism. How they saw their livelihoods being undermined by its cheap goods and the actions they took in response. In a sense it describes how the true Republic was lost. It also looks at the role that their religion played in that struggle. This is indeed a "peoples' history".

Writing history in this way, Sutton joins other excellent American historians like Ronald Schultz, Sean Wilentz, Bruce Laurie, and the late Christopher Lasch. All of these are well worth reading if you want to know how the common people lived before the crass materialism of modern capitalism stamped itself on American history. This history reconnects one to an older and more just and moral American Republic now sadly lost to corporate greed and warmongering. The American people are indeed well served by historians of this calibre.

A must-read!.......2001-10-28

I was captivated from the first page to the last. This gripping tale of evangelical artisans struggling to adapt to an emerging capitalist culture while keeping their producerist principles in 19th century Baltimore kept me up way past my bedtime in order to finish it. Even Dr. Sutton's footnotes are well worth reading!

This book is wonderful!.......2000-12-08

This is the most informative and well-written book I've ever read. I was captivated by it from beginning to end and I think that William Sutton is the greatest history writer of all time. Buy this book! It's a classic!

Journeymen for Jesus: Evangelical Artisans Confront Capitalism in Jacksonian Baltimore. : An article from: Church History

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Journeymen for Jesus: Evangelical Artisans Confront Capitalism in Jacksonian Baltimore. : An article from: Church History
Russell E. Richey
Manufacturer: American Society of Church History
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

General | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Church History, published by American Society of Church History on September 1, 1999. The length of the article is 896 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Journeymen for Jesus: Evangelical Artisans Confront Capitalism in Jacksonian Baltimore.
Author: Russell E. Richey
Publication: Church History (Refereed)
Date: September 1, 1999
Publisher: American Society of Church History
Volume: 68 Issue: 3 Page: 749

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Journeymen for Jesus: Evangelical Artisans Confront Capitalism in Jacksonian Baltimore

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Journeymen for Jesus: Evangelical Artisans Confront Capitalism in Jacksonian Baltimore
William R. Sutton
Manufacturer: Pennsylvania State University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OQM2UQ

Book Description

This is an updated and edited version of Robin Marris' classic The Economic Theory of Managerial Capitalism (1964). This was widely recognized as pathbreaking as it was the first attempt by a professional economist to make a formal theory of the behavior and growth of a large-scale "managerial" corporation based on a realistic assessment of the sociological and institutional environment. The model determined the long run growth rates of individual firms on the basis of the financial and market environment on the one hand, and the needs, interest and aspirations of both managers and shareholders on the other. Managers in particular were shown to trade desire for growth against fear of takeover. These then novel important features of modern capitalism--mergers, takeovers and executive bonuses and the relationship between the growth of firms and the growth of the economy--have become increasingly topical. The new book contains the original introduction along with reworked and updated coverage of the theoretical model, along with completely new chapters both of micro-theory and assessing and responding to the debate which the book created.

Book Description

The "father of data warehousing" incorporates the latest technologies into his blueprint for integrated decision support systems

Today's corporate IT and data warehouse managers are required to make a small army of technologies work together to ensure fast and accurate information for business managers. Bill Inmon created the Corporate Information Factory to solve the needs of these managers. Since the First Edition, the design of the factory has grown and changed dramatically. This Second Edition, revised and expanded by 40% with five new chapters, incorporates these changes. This step-by-step guide will enable readers to connect their legacy systems with the data warehouse and deal with a host of new and changing technologies, including Web access mechanisms, e-commerce systems, ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems. The book also looks closely at exploration and data mining servers for analyzing customer behavior and departmental data marts for finance, sales, and marketing.

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The father of the data warehouse incorporates the latest

Customer Reviews:

Inaccurate and pompous, with little substance.......2003-01-14

I approached this book with an open mind, but after I stumbled upon a couple of obviously wrong and some nonsensical statements, I started reading it much more skeptically, and finding more and more problems with it. (However, it did provide more fun ;))

The book has a good premise, trying to explain information system with the factory metaphor. Although authors give some good insight in the way IS should or could be thought of and modeled, there are many instances in the text where you read something and say to yourself "what where these good people thinking". This then undermines your confidence in their vision and full understanding of the matter. And although I think this is a matter of personal preference, authors sometimes seem to be in love with their style, producing some beautiful nonsense like this: "The legacy environment is only a very small vestige of its former invincible self." (pg. 42)

Let me give you some more examples of what I'm talking about:
Authors create metaphors of user classes, calling them "tourist, farmer, explorer and miner", which in itself is not a bad idea, but then they go on to say "...farmers found at the ODS environment are quite different from the farmers found at the data mart". So why did you create the single metaphor then?

Also, check this out: "A miner will typically look over many, many rows of data...". As opposed to what, just a "many rows of data"? Whence some people might need "not so many rows of data"? Like I'm reading a book for my eight-year-old, for goodness sakes!

Then there is this graph showing the directional flow of data, but then it reads: by the way, in all this streams, data can sometimes ("in 1-5% of the cases" - authors never say how they got these numbers, it is all a slight of hand) flow in the opposite direction!!?(Pg. 24) And they go about giving 5 examples, 4 of which are wrong - there is no data flow in them at all!
Example:"...sales dept. notes that loans are slowing down. The decision is made to reduce home loan rates by 1/2 percent."
This is not the back flow of data, as authors assert, it is an information feedback loop that involves people (management), and their decisions. Data (loan rates) is not coming back from Data Mart. User is somehow entering it into Operational system (application). His decision is influenced by data analysis, but it does not reverse the data flow. The fundamental issue here is that authors ignored the fact that information processes in the company involve people as well as the data and systems, and should be modeled as such. To use their metaphor, users should be a part of the information ecosystem. Hence it is not true that, as the book claims, corporate information factory embodies the information ecosystem. (Pg.7)

"...'event' date ...reflects the moment in time when the data in the record was accurate". (Pg. 96) This is incorrect. 'event' date is just recording the time of that single event. Record is always accurate after that, it does not 'age' with time.

At pg. 191 it is asserted that Data Warehouse provides "depth" to the data. That is true only if it is built (modeled) with "depth" requirements in mind. Before I can get "deep" information from the DW, I must build it with my questions in mind, otherwise, it will not give me data. An abstractly deep DW does not exist. It is always an answer to a particular question, or number of questions.

"The Dimension of History" (pg. 193-194) is just plain good old nonsense, with example (life stages of an individual) being completely off the mark. Reminds me of the student who does not know the correct answer to the question so he tries to invent some plausible response, letting his imagination fly ... Sad.

And so on, and so on...

I saved the best ones for the end:
"...the external world is full of normal occurrences and normal events. The very ordinary nature of the external world makes us take it for granted." (Pg. 49) Very philosophically deep, indeed ;)
"The emergence of the integrated applications comes slowly and, in many cases, imperceptibly" (pg.42) Yeah, it just creeps on you when you're not looking... ;)
".. the back flow of the data is minuscule to the point that in some cases it is so small as to be unmeasurable". (Pg. 23) :0 Beg your pardon? This is not quantum physics, guys, this is computer science. Anything can be observed, perceived and measured to the level of a single bit. Or are we talking bit-quarks here? Informational principle of uncertainty?

It is disappointing to have this book co-authored by the "father of the data warehouse".

To the (prospective) readers: This is a fun book if you are an experienced data architect, bad if you wish to use it as a blueprint for your work, and dangerous if you are an IT manager and impose it on your staff.

To the authors: Give us a break, please go back and re-make a decent book around the good basic idea. Less poetic style would also be appreciated. Forget about quantum physics. And give it to some unbiased reviewers first. Remember, only the real friends will tell you the unpopular truth.

a book obsessed with technologies.......2002-09-20

The very idea that all the technologies serve the purpose of businesses gets lost here in this book.

If one wants to look for help for their work, look somewhere else.
If one wants to learn some jargons to impress his/her date, this one is the ideal one.

It Depends!.......2001-03-22

Evaluating "overview" books such as these is difficult. If this is a new subject to you or you are a manager needing an overview, you'll probably find it a good introduction to the Inmon-style Data Warehouse (the other being Kimball-style). But after giving the book a "once-over", that's it. Nothing is handled in enough detail to make this any kind of reference or guide. So from the novice perspective this is a "must read" and as good an introduction to CIF as you will get, from the people that define the standards - give it 4 stars (why not 5 stars will be discussed later). If you have worked on Data Warehousing projects in the past but your environment was not particularly designed with much forethought, then by all means whiz through this book and you'll see that all the pieces can be part of a cohesive strategy - 3 stars. If you are experienced then you'll probably see this as a waste of time, too high level. You can get everything in here from various web sites, whitepapers or other books - 1 star. Regardless of where you're coming from though this is one of the few books that actually use pictures in a way that is detrimental to clarity. Some are repeated so many times, so inane or so large that you have to surmise that they are mostly there to thicken the book. The appendix, CIF Architecture Guidelines, is also the largest section of the book yet I have no idea what the point is. I think it would be more appropriately titled - Incomplete Ruminations on Random Topics.

Excellent starting point in data warehousing.......2000-07-26

What a number of previous reviewers did not realise is that this book is about data warehouses, and not enterprise architecture, even though it is named to seem that way.

This book is an excellent high level overview of data warehouses and should be read by anyone who is going to be building a data warehouse from scratch or needs a starting place to learn about data warehouses. It explains all the concepts that are involved in building a data warehouse and explains what things can cause problems when implementing one.

It will not, however, describe the technical details on how to implement the data warehouse or many of the structures within it. That kind of information is readily available in many other books.

This is a perfect starting point for learning about data warehouses and especially good since it is a quick read and will not waste your time with a lot of wordiness.

50,000 ft-level architectural overview.......2000-05-23

I saw Ms. Imhoff give a talk, so I was motivated to buy her book. I was expecting more detail and more depth, but I was satisfied anyway. As a new comer to the data warehousing/OLAP field, I found it helpful to have a book that showed me the "forest"; many other books are available to show me the "trees."

The book is a very high-level architectural overview of the components of a "corporate information factory", including the data warehouse, data mart, and operational data store. It describes the components and their relationships. It describes the motivations and reasons these components are organized the way they are. It describes some of the important engineering tradeoffs in alternate designs.

The book is a quick and simple read. I got a few very important concepts and ideas from it, but I must definitely read several other books for greater depth and focus.

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