1. TIME-SERIES CONSTRUCTION

A time series is a database constructed of the same parameters of information over a time, for instance the growth of a son recorded over the years. A time series is the same for data as time-lapse is for recording change of a scenery or growth of a plant.

Examples of using the Sycamore Series to record time series information.

I. Example: temperature changes in Stockholm
I. The temperature changes of Stockholm recorded every hour. This can be done if we find a server on the Net where this information is freely available and we set up the Sycamore DN to fetch the data each hour. On top of which we need a script to be able to get the information needed from day to day even if the HTML containing the temperature information changes daily.

II. Competitor's pricing lists
II. Another example could be an automated system of grabbing say 30 important prices of competitors that sell about the same product lineage and compile a file for the purposes of price management. This is possible, even if the names of these products on the on-line catalogue of the competitors do not match. The script language allows for such functions as name replacement. The outcome of this process would then be a daily updated file of price comparison to help companys own price setting.

PICTURE: Time series as raw data, as a table and a finally as a graph

2. VOLUMES OF INFORMATION FETCHED AND SAVED FOR STATISTICAL PURPOSES

I. Customized data fetching: 2000 communal election data of Finland
The program was set up to import all information from governmentally maintained Web-site containing all information of the elections. This data had parameters like county, party, candidate name, number of votes….

Info on the data retrieval process:

• The process took around 18 minutes including downloading, extracting data and synchronizing/saving the data
• 874 files were downloaded
• The material took 8,3 MB of harddrive space
• Over 2500000 cells were updated during the process. Over 41600 different records were saved. One record comprised for instance of one candidate in one municipality.
• On top of this of course we need to construct and test the script, but even that did not take that long.

3. REMOTE FILE SHARING TO FILIALS OF AN ORGANIZATION

With Sycamore Series program family automated systems of file maintenance and updating comes possible for an organization that has it's computers geographically spread out. The maintenance is controlled from one place. Sycamore DN applications running on each computer of an organization will automatically get all those files updated, which are older than the versions enlisted in the version control script list maintained centrally. Only if the version currently on the computer is older, will the downloading process commence. The script language takes care of the process control by itself automatically. The program can distribute files of almost any size and type from anywhere on the Net to all computers that have the specified channel key installed.

The most important advantages of Sycamore DN controlled file sharing is that:

A. it is much more secure than file attachments. The security comes from three sources:

- sending: files are not sent, they are only put to a secure Internet server, which has a limited access, if wanted, even access coded access.

- transmitting: unopenable script code is used to transmit information of files to be downloaded. Not like with email attachment, the files can be opened by any hacker, who could get the email MIME/file itself. These files are transmitted as bits, not as text. These files won't have any attaching explanation of where they are and where they go, as Email files always have.

- receiving: the receivers are so limited, that they all need to have a program to receive the channel information. But even then receivers can be limited to only handpicked users according to their program licence number

B. It is much faster

- Attached email files take a lot of transmission space and time, since they embed the files within the email package. This usually means at least 35 % more length to the encoded file.

- With Sycamore series the file length is what is, and if wanted, the files to be sent are zipped into even a tighter packege

EXAMPLES OF REMOTE FILE SHARING

a. Advertising files
Transferring campaign advertising files to all parties involved in the advertising process regularly or to filials that may use the same material but do only a bit of changing on their own. Large files transferred as attached files with email become often too big and slow and may consume the email quota beyond it's limits. Large campaign files containing pictures or even multimedia videos may be over 30 MB each.

b. Documentation
New manuals and other documentation can be sent for instance in HTML or Acrobat format

c. Very long files or packaged folders
Other file transmission within a company. File length can be almost anything, even tens of megabytes depending of course on the quality of the internet connection. Scripts have a file size check element within them. If the file length of the transferred file is other than the exact amount of bytes ot he original, the file will not be saved as a usable copy. Only a transferred copy under a different name gets saved. Then the program tries to get the file once again, and if it fails, the file is to be re-loaded next time the script is run.

-  The scripts can not be gained access to by any outsider. Therefore it is possible from the security point of view to transmit organization's files via the Net with the Sycamore DN software. The most secret files nevertheless are beneficial to be transported by other means than the Net, or at least the files should be encrypted.

Also packed zip-files can be distributed and dismantled automatically on the client computers.

PICTURE: From one single center the "subscribing" computers, clients, can be ordered to duplicate a list of files from one server to these computers.

4. PORTAL AUTOMATION - WEB PAGE AUTOMATIC UPDATE APPLICATIONS

A website can be maintained by adding there a place to which daily some changing feature is fetched from either our own database or from the Net, a news feature for instance. In the latter case the copyright owner's permission of the material and usage of it must of course first be gained to have this kind of polling. This kind of automated website feature can be build using Sycamore Series program family. There is no need to update this changing material then by hand. Another example could be a database on maintenance computer from where daily or after say 30 minute intervals something is added on the Net. It can be HTML pricelists, that are maintained all the time or anything alse. Then we do not need to have a dedicated server hooked on to a up-to-date database, but with less cost we can do nearly realtime changes on the Website without having to dedicate a person to do this maintenance or having to buy dedicated applications to do complex database handling.

EXAMPLES

- The material automatically added to the autoupdated webpage can be on our own computer, for instance in Finland a name's day list for each day. From this database daily the current name's day firstnames are put into the HTML of for instance the first page of our web page. The system is based on a database not connected to web directly, but the Sycamore PORTAL/AUTOMATION does the changes automatically as often as it is set to do.

- Price list can be maintained during the day and it can be automatically polled on the Net for instance every half an hour. Then we do not need expensive server application to run our databases realtime. It is sufficient to have web portal automation from a computer off-line to the server on-line.

- From a television channel homepage we can download the program information and poll it to our page (providing that we have been given a permission to do so by the broadcasting company)

PICTURE: The werbsite HTML can be included with a secret tag, which is a key where to insert the daily/hourly changing material from a database or from another web page (if copyright issues allow). This process is automated with Sycamore PORTAL/AUTOMATION

5. FILE GATHERING FROM THE NET WITH SACAMORE WORM

Sycamore DN has a build-in feature called WORM. It is a spider that can grab all certain types of files under certain certain web addresses or within a certain link distance to the starting page. These files are then downloaded and named individually and also a check routine is available to check that there is no dublicate of the newly downloaded file under a different name already on the hard disk.

• With this feature we can collect for instance multimedia files like MID files, WAV files, MPG files, JPG files or any other file types from the Net automatically.
• Building a link database for Portal purposes for instance becomes possible with the WORM. There are many script-based guidelines what kind of links are accepted.

6. OTHER TAILOR-MADE APPLICATIONS OF SYCAMORE DN

I. REMOTE ACCESS

Sycamore DN program with DES/Script is such a flexible and versatile piece of programming, that we can also deliver limited distance usage, remote control, remote fetching and remote running tailored systems. For security reasons this kind of long distance running of computers is limited, and no such scripts are made outside Laudatum Oy, the programs vendor.

II. PROGRAM UPDATES

Updating other applications becomes possible via Sycamore Series. Each application needs it's own specific channel to be used to deliver updated program files.

PICTURE: Remote control, remote operation and remote access systems can be build on a small scale using Sycamore DN. Parameters from processes of some programs can be returned via built-in email function. These won't nevertheless be real-time applications.

THE MOST IMPORTANT AREAS OF USE OF THE SYCAMORE SERIES

MAIN USES OF SYCAMORE SERIES:

1. Time-series build-up
Time-series is a statistical longitudinal section of some variable, in contrast to changing time. For instace the temperature change during months is such a time-series.
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2. Masses of files of certain file type downloaded and saved as a statistical data
Sycamore Series can be used for one-time downloads and converting HTML-type of data tables into statistically usable data.
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3. File delivery to filials or partners of an organization
Internal file delivery within organization can be easily handled with Sycamore Series. A dedicated channel is a very good way to solve this problem. The size of the deliverable files can be very large.
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4. Portal automation
Portal automation is automatically functioning web-page change and maintenance. Time period between changes can be anything from one minute to days.
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5. GATHERING MULTIMEDIA FILES
Multimediafiles can be collected to a vast sourcebase if wanted, for months with Sycamore DN/WORM.
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6. TAILORED APPLICATIONS
Sycamore Series is open to many kinds of tailored applications. Since the engine of Sycamore Series is very flexible and script-based, new applications can be made without having to change the software.
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