A portal in modern Information and Communication Technology is usually a web/online – based soft solution usually with the following key objects below:

• The key objectives of Portal Project are:

1. To facilitate the creation of the web enabled Institution.
2. To foster industry and customer-wide communication mechanisms for the efficient delivery of business, solutions, support issues, and to deliver an online “community” to foster relationships on and off Institution.
3. To research, select and implement an appropriate infrastructure of hardware and software to provide the portal environment.
4. Extend the current quality control, standards of delivery and a technical framework across the Institution to ensure seamless integration between local hierarchical information and the main Portal environment.
5. Develop a standardized content management system for the delivery of campus wide information based upon a mixed conscript subscript model.
6. Seek to provide an extensive portal environment that can be expanded to incorporate all administrative functionalities.

The Portal is more like a Data Centre for as much data that the Institutions will want store/house, and as much/little that the Institution want to be seen and viewed online by those who would have been given access to it (either as administrators or parents/guardians). In the case of ACADEMIA, all of the following MAY be displayed on the portal:

• School/institutions details: address, telephone, emails, notice board, etc
• Students’ data: name, identification number/pin
• Students’ record: subjects/courses, grades and scores, punctuality
• Teachers assigned to classes/subjects/courses

BENEFITS OF “ACADEMIA”:

• Online assessment of pupils and students careers’ work.
• ‘Real-time’ monitoring of progress.
• Emails (personal and mass) to parents/guardians from schools and vice – versa.
• Automatically generated emails upon data updates.
• Automatic analysis and graduation of scores.
• Serves as notice boards for your institution (where information from school can be viewed), thereby minimizing the ‘extra’ expense of printing papers and many times undelivered newsletters.
• Long and tedious trips to institutions are minimized

Please be on the look out, and watch out for this space.

Cookies are messages that web servers pass to your web browser when you visit Internet sites. Your browser stores each message in a small file, called cookie.txt. When you request another page from the server, your browser sends the cookie back to the server. These files typically contain information about your visit to the web page, as well as any information you’ve volunteered, such as your name and interests.

The term “cookie” is an allusion to a Unix program called Fortune Cookie that produces a different message, or fortune, each time it runs.

Examples of cookies

Cookies are most commonly used to track web site activity. When you visit some sites, the server gives you a cookie that acts as your identification card. Upon each return visit to that site, your browser passes that cookie back to the server. In this way, a web server can gather information about which web pages are used the most, and which pages are gathering the most repeat hits.

Cookies are also used for online shopping. Online stores often use cookies that record any personal information you enter, as well as any items in your electronic shopping cart, so that you don’t need to re-enter this information each time you visit the site.

Servers also use cookies to provide personalized web pages. When you select preferences at a site that uses this option, the server places the information in a cookie. When you return, the server uses the information in the cookie to create a customized page for you.

Security concerns

Only the web site that creates a cookie can read it. Additionally, web servers can use only information that you provide or choices that you make while visiting the web site as content in cookies.

Webmasters have always been able to track access to their sites, but cookies make it easier to do so. In some cases, cookies come not from the site you’re visiting, but from advertising companies that manage the banner ads for a set of sites (such as DoubleClick.com). These advertising companies can develop detailed profiles of the people who select ads across their customers’ sites.

Accepting a cookie does not give a server access to your computer or any of your personal information (except for any information that you may have purposely given, as with online shopping). Servers can read only cookies that they have set, so other servers do not have access to your information. Also, it is not possible to execute code from a cookie, and not possible to use a cookie to deliver a virus.

Viewing and controlling cookies

For privacy reasons, you may wish to view the cookies currently stored in your browser or control which sites you accept cookies from. You may also decide what period of time they may be stored and used. Most modern browsers offer the ability to control cookie settings; to do this, see the appropriate document below, or consult your browser’s help files:

A database is a collection of data, which is organized into files called tables. These tables provide a systematic way of accessing, managing, and updating data. A relational database is one that contains multiple tables of data that relate to each other through special key fields. Relational databases are far more flexible (though harder to design and maintain) than what are known as flat file databases, which contain a single table of data.

To understand the advantages of a relational database, imagine the needs of two small companies that take customer orders for their products. Company A uses a flat file database with a single table named orders to record orders they receive, while Company B uses a relational database with two tables: orders and customers.

When a customer places an order with Company A, a new record (or row) in the table orders is created. Because Company A has only one table of data, all the information pertaining to that order must be put into a single record. This means that the customer’s general information, such as name and address, is stored in the same record as the order information, such as product description, quantity, and price. If customers place more than one order, their general information will need to be re-entered and thus duplicated for each order they place.

Whenever there is duplicate data, as in the case above, many inconsistencies may arise when users try to query the database. Additionally, a customer’s change of address would require the database manager to find all records in orders that the customer placed, and change the address data for each one.

Company B is much better off with its relational database. Each of its customers has one and only one record of general information stored in the table customers. Each customer’s record is identified by a unique customer code which will serve as the relational key. When a customer orders from Company B, the record in orders need contain only a reference to the customer’s code, because all of the customer’s general information is already stored in customers.

This approach to entering data solves the problems of duplicate data and making changes to customer information. The database manager need change only one record in customers if someone changes addresses.

Web portals provide a single point of access to a variety of content and core services, and ideally offer a single sign-on point. Portals give you a managed online experience, and can be particularly helpful as a start and return point for those new to the web. Portal content is dynamically managed through databases, application windows, and sometimes cookies. Portals often include calendars and to-do lists, discussion groups, announcements and reports, searches, email and address books, and access to news, weather, maps, and shopping, as well as bookmarks. Web portals often organize information into channels, customizable page containers where specific information or an application appears. Channels make it easy to locate information of interest by categorizing content.

Web portals offer advantages over home pages because they can offer user-specific, customized views. For example, a university’s web portal could offer customized, specific content available to you based on your roles (e.g., faculty, student, staff, administrator). Roles help the portal determine your privileges for reading, searching, updating, adding channels, and personalizing content. The portal uses the information stored in the roles to offer the appropriate content and service choices. You can then create further, more specific content organization by selecting from the personalized material and services, thus making the portal work the way you do.