Partnership Firms

In this case, more than two persons but less than twenty persons come together and form a partnership firm. Each of these partners is the owner of the business in the proportion decided among themselves. Partnership is a contract among the partner s and the relationship among the partners is governed on the basis of terms and conditions laid down in an official and written document called as “partnership deed” or “partnership agreement”.

Advantages

1)      This form of organisation is also reasonably easy and economical to form and operate.

2)      As resources of more than one person are pooled together, capacity of the business to handle more complex business operations or operations requiring more amounts of funds is better as compared to the proprietary firms.

3)      The tax structure applicable to the partnership firms is fairly reasonable. At present, profit of the partnership firm is at a flat rate of 35%. While calculating the profit of the partnership firm, following amounts can be claimed by the firm as the allowable expenditure.

4)      Not many of the government regulations are applicable to the partnership firms.

Disadvantages

1)      This form of organisation also does not have any legal status. The partnership firms exist due to the existence of the partners. If the partners cease to be in existence, the firm ceases to be in existence. The retirement or death of a partner leads to the dissolution of the partnership firm.

2)      The capacity of the business to raise the funds and to coupe up with the complex business operations is comparatively limited through it is more than that of the proprietary firms.

3)      Partnership firm is also an unlimited liability organisation. In the sense, if the assets of the firm are insufficient to meet its liabilities, personal property of the partners is always at stake.

4)      It is not possible to transfer the ownership of the business to somebody else without affecting the basic constitution of the business.

Proprietary Firms

Only one person is the owner of the business who is called as the proprietor and the same person is the manager. All the profits earned by the business belong to the proprietor and he is liable for the losses and liabilities of the business.

Advantages:

1)      Proprietary firm is the easiest and most economical form of business organisation to form and operate. Not many of the government regulations are applicable to the proprietary firms.

2)      This type of organization is very suitable where size of the business is very small and the complexities involved in the business are comparatively less. However, if the size of the business increases or the complexities in the business operations grow, this form may prove to be insufficient.

Disadvantages:

1)      The proprietary firms exist due to the existence of the proprietor. If the proprietor ceases to be in existence, the firm ceases to be in existence.

2)      As only one person is owner and the manager, the capacity of the business to raise the funds and to cope up with the complex business operations is comparatively limited.

3)      Proprietary firm is always an unlimited liability organisation. In the sense, if the assets of the firm are insufficient to meets its liabilities, personal property of the proprietor is always at stake.

4)      The income of the proprietary firm is always clubbed with the individual income of the proprietor. As such, effective rate of income tax which the proprietor may be required to pay is likely to be higher.

5)      It is not possible to transfer the ownership of the business to somebody else without affecting the basic constitution of the business.

The Fields of Finance

There can be various fields where finance function may operate. In each field, finance executive deals with the management of money and claims against money.

Business Finance: The term business finance covers all the activities carried on with the intention of earning profits. Thus, business finance covers the study of finance function in the area of business which includes both trade as well as industry.

Corporation Finance: Corporation Finance is a part of business finance and deals with the financial practices, policies and problems of corporate enterprises or companies. The corporation finance studies the financial operations carried on by a corporate enterprise from the stage of its inception to the stage of its growth and expansion.

International Finance: International finance is the study of flow of funds between individuals and organisations beyond national boundaries and developing the methods to handle these funds more effectively.  

Public Finance: It deals with the financial matters of the Governments. It becomes crucial as the Governments deal with huge sums of money which can be raised through the sources like taxes or other methods and are required to be utilised within the statutory and other limitations.

Private Finance: It deals with the financial matters of non-government organisations.

Database Administrator (DBA)

The main advantage of using database is to have central control of all data and transactions that happen in the database. A user who has the complete central control of the database is called as database administrator. The following are the functions of a DBA.

·         Schema definition: The DBA creates the original database schema by executing a set of data definition statements in the DDL.

·         Storage structure and access method definition.

·         Schema and physical organization modification: The DBA carries out changes to the schema and physical organization to reflect the changing needs of the organization.

·         Granting of authorization for data access: The main function of a DBA is to ensure security of the database by granting access to users. The authorization information is kept in a special system structure that the database system consults whenever someone attempts to access the data in the system.

·         Routine management: The activities of the DBA are periodically backing up of the database, ensuring enough free disk space and monitoring jobs running on the database and ensuring the performance of the system.

Database Languages

A database system provides a data definition language to specify the database schema and a data manipulation language to express database queries and updates. These two parts are separately two huge languages but complied together as two parts in a widely used SQL language.

Data Definition Language (DDL)

We specify a database schema by a set of definitions expressed by a special language called a Data Definition Language (DDL). Any DDL statement after creating the table schema updates a special set of tables called the data dictionary or data dictionary.

The data dictionary is called a metadata, that is ‘data of data’.  A database system consults the data dictionary before reading or modifying the actual data. The storage structure and access methods used by the database system by a set of the statements in a special type of DDL is called a data storage and definition language. The data definition language thus satisfies the constraints oriented to the database schema.

Data Manipulation Languages (DML)

·         The retrieval of information stored in the database.

·         The insertion of new information into the database.

·         The deletion of information from the database.

·         The modification of information stored in the database.

Data Models

Data Models can be defined as the structure of a database. It is collection of conceptual tools for describing data, data relationships, data semantics and consistency constraints. Any tool, which provides a way to describe the design of the database in a logical way, is called a data model.

The Entity-Relationship (ER) Model

The ER model is based on a perception of a real world that consists of a collection of basic objects called entities and of relationships among these objects. An entity is a thing or object. Entities are described in a database by a set of attributes. A relationship is an association among several entities.

For example, ‘customer’ and ‘account’ are entities in a banking database. Customer-ID, name are the attributes of a customer. Customer and account are related with each other.

The overall logical structure of a database can be expressed graphically by an E-R diagram, which is built up from the following components:

·         Rectangle, which represents entity sets.

·         Ellipse, which represents attributes.

·         Diamond, which represents relationships among entity sets.

·         Line, which link attributes to entity sets and entity sets to relationships.

Relational Model

The relational model uses a collection of tables to represent both data and the relationships among that data. Each table in this model has multiple columns and each column has a unique name. The relational data model is the most widely used data model and a vast majority of current database systems are based on this model. The relational model is at a lower level of abstraction than the E-R model. Database designs are often carried out in the E-R model and then translated to the relational model.

 

Database Schema

The overall design of the database is called the database schema. A database schema corresponds to the variable declaration in a program. Each database system can have several schemas that are partitioned according to the levels of abstraction. The physical schema describes the database design at the physical level while the logical schema describes the database design at the logical level. A database can have several schemas at the view level which are called its sub-schemas.

Data Abstraction

The main purpose of the system is its usability and therefore the retrieval of data from the database should be made very efficient. Since many database system users are not computer trained, developers hide the complexity from users through several levels of abstraction, to simplify the user’s interaction with the system. The three main levels of abstraction are:

Physical Level: The lowest level of abstraction describes how the data is actually stored. The physical level describes complex low-level data structures in detail.

Logical Level: A higher level of abstraction describes the data stored in the database and the relationships that exists among the data. It describes the entire database in a relatively simple data structure.

View Level: The highest level of abstraction describes only part of the entire database. Even though the logical level uses a simpler structure, complexity remains because of the variety of information stored in a large database.

Database system versus file system

The traditional approach to information processing has for a separate master file and its own set of personal files for each application. The major disadvantage of a file system is that files become dependent upon programs and in turn programs become dependent upon files. Few other concerns of a file-oriented approach are:

Data Redundancy: The same piece of information may be stored in two or more files. Since different programmers create the files and application programs over a long period, the various files are likely to have different formats and the programs may be written in several programming languages. Moreover, the same information may be duplicated in several files. The redundancy leads to higher storage and access costs and may lead to data inconsistency.

Difficulty in accessing data: The conventional file-processing environments do not allow the needed data to be retrieved in a convenient and efficient manner. So more responsive data retrieval systems are required for general use.

Data isolation: Since we have all the data scattered in various files and these files may be in different formats, retrieval of data in an appropriate format is difficult.

Integrity problems: The data values stored in the database must satisfy certain types of consistency constraints. The problem is compounded when constraints involve several data items from different files.

Database System Applications

Databases are widely used. These are the some applications where a database is used:

Banking: For customer information, accounts, loans mad other banking transactions.

Airlines: For reservations and schedule information. Airlines were among the first to use databases.

Universities: For student information, course registrations and grades.

Credit card companies:  For purchases/transactions on credit cards and generation of monthly statements.

Telecom Sector: For keeping records of calls made, generating monthly bills, storing network information etc.

DBMS

A database is collection of related information stored so that it is available to many users for different purposes. The management of database is done by a software package known as Database Management System.

A database management system (DBMS) is a collection of interrelated data and a set of programs to access that data.

The primary goal of a DBMS is to provide a way to store and retrieve information that is both convenient and efficient.

A database management system is a combination of hardware and software components. A database management system is the major software component of a database system e.g. ORACLE , SYBASE.

Most database management systems have the following facilities:

1)      Creation, addition, deletion and modification of data.

2)      Creation, addition, deletion and modification of files.

3)      Collective or selective retrieval of data.

4)      Sorting or indexing of data at the user’s discretion and direction.

5)      Various reports can be produces from the system. Data stored in the system can be manipulated.

6)      Mathematical functions can be performed.

7)      Maintenance of data integrity.

The DBMS interprets and processes the user’s request to retrieve information from a database.

 

Life is confusing

I don't like going to office (like many other people), I dream about having enough money so that I don't have to work for somebody else. When I go to office I feel trapped but recently I had taken leaves from office and I was sitting at home and that also felt not so good. Life is really confusing!

Producing a child is a crime in our country...

The way population is growing in our country, I think producing a child is a crime. People think if they are getting married then its mandatory to breed. At least our conversative society thinks like that if you don't have a child then its something wrong with you..Really Sick Mentallity!

I have seen people who are incapable of handling their lives are bringing another life (child) on this planet...seriously disgusting. I think you must be mentally, physically, emotionally and economically stable to produce and raise a child, otherwise it will be extremely unfortunate for the child to be born to unstable parents/family.

I think we must do something about it, the situation is alarming. The government should take such steps where NOT producing a child is rewarding. We must have such social awareness.