Evaluation

Evaluation

In this project the software programs used are Word, Linux, Telnet, Gemini and SPSS.

Word processing software such as Microsoft word lets you create, edit or revise and format documents which can be printed, displayed and used as attachments. Word was used to create documents such as this report.

Linux was one of the first operating systems with the flexibility to be used on almost any computer. It is a multi-user operating system which became very popular in universities and eventually emerged as the operating system of choice for powerful work stations. This was our operating system of choice; on which to use in conjunction with a stand alone PC as our platform.

Telnet is a terminal emulation program for TCP/IP networks such as the Internet. The Telnet program runs on your computer and connects your PC to a server on the network. Effectively, this program allowed us to access the Universities server from computers outside of the universities network.

Gemini is the Universities server for its network and for its website which is accessible from any computer with internet access. This is the server we used to run our program and various applications.

SPSS is the other application which we used to run our program.

The universities network is made up of a series of local area networks, which are all connected to the main servers of which one is Gemini. The local area networks are not only spread across a single campus but across two campuses. One of the two main servers is dedicated to the PC's i.e. the management of applications, etc. The other is concerned with making high speed internet access available to all the computers as well as making the universities major website available to any computer with internet access worldwide.

We have used two alternative platforms in this project. The first is a stand alone PC desktop running on a Solaris operating system. Our organisations current method of handling and analysing survey data is on a standalone PC, which uses a Sun's Ultra SPARC processor, a Solaris operating system and a Sun E450 mid-range server computer. We wrote a Unix-based SPSS program and entered a data file constructed from the results of our market research.

The other method used for our organisation to handle and analyse survey data was to use a PC that is part of a local area network and which is linked to a small sever with the Novell Netware Network operating system. For this we need Windows XP operating system and Intel Pentium 4 processor. To run the system we had to use the windows version of SPSS.

The two user interfaces we used