NEWSLETTER
The AITP's Special Interest Group for Education

Volume 8, No. 3 --- October 1998
Stuart A. Varden, Editor

President's Message

Dear EDSIG members:

The count down to ISECON '98 in San Antonio, TX at the Holiday Inn Riverwalk has started! The ISECON '98 chair, Dr. David Feinstein, has done a terrific job in putting together a paramount conference. One can feel the excitement with a strong registration count for both the ISECON '98 and also the AITP Student Conference that will be held in tandem at the same hotel. Saturday morning's schedule includes a combined session with AITP students and a Leadership Workshop. According to our current pre-registration, we expect between 130 and 160 ISECON registrants in attendance with over 85 paper presentations and six principal speakers with over 250 students attending the AITP student events. A number of vendors will be present. Some of the vendors will have high hopes of offering the some of the students a career with their company.

I think you will find this to be one of the premier ISECON conferences. I believe that the slate of principal speakers from the I/S industry will offer a very robust learning experience for educators. The wide variety of paper presentations will dovetail with many of the principal speaker's topics. Certainly, "Teaching Takes Center Stage" this year in San Antonio. I hope you will make plans to be there. EDSIG members receive a $25.00 discount to ISECON this year.

Many of you have become aware that ComputerWorld is now the publisher of the EDSIG Journal of Information Systems Education (JISE). Just around the corner is the next issue of JISE. Dr. Kevin Elder has been working hard to get this to press. I know that many of you have wondered where your JISE publication is. Now, under the leadership of Kevin and ComputerWorld, we can expect quality and timeliness from the journal. I, along with the editor, offer our apologies in trying to get the journal made on to a regular quarterly issue. John Corrigan at ComputerWorld indicates that we work out the acceptable format (which has been the hold up), the downstream production of future JISE publications should be solved. Look forward to a quality journal in the months to come.

Please check out the EDSIG Newsletter on the Internet at csis.pace.edu/edsig. We are currently looking for a permanent home for the web page, but until then, use the URL above. Dr. Stuart A. Varden has done an excellent job with this web site. Little by little, EDSIG is telling its story in many forms.

I expect to see one of the best ISECONs we have witnessed in many years. I expect to see the JISE publication to flourish under the editorship of Kevin and the publishing of ComputerWorld. This is the combination for which we have been waiting.

Please help us out and be supportive of this great organization.

Jack Russell, Ph.D., CCP
1998 President of EDSIG

Herman Hoplin Named EOY

The EDSIG Board has named Professor Herman "Hoppy" Hoplin, DBA, as Information Systems Educator of the Year. "Hoppy", as he is known affectionately has a long and distinguished career as educator, management consultant, and is currently professor emeritus at Syracuse University. He is dedicated to the Global development of Information Systems (IS/IT). He is a pioneer in the field with broad experience in business, government, education, and professional organizations and societies.

Please join us in congratulating Hoppy at ISECON'98.

EDSIG Newsletter --- Page 2
Join Us at the Open EDSIG Board Meeting at ISECON

The annual open EDSIG Board meeting is scheduled for October 17, 1998 from 5:30-7:00pm in San Antonio at this year's ISECON. This year has been a very active one for the Board which has already met twice. The establishing of a ListServe, compliments of Board member Bill Tastle of Ithaca College, has proven to be a most effective tool for maintaining full Board participation on EDSIG initiatives. The Board is seeking active membership participation. Agenda items for the business meeting will include:
  • The President's Message to the membership.
  • EDSIG Officer Reports.
  • The current status of JISE.
  • Discussion of a revised set of EDSIG By-Laws.
  • Plans for ISECON'99.
  • Nomination of candidates of Officers/Board members for 1999.

EDSIG Unveils First Web Page

EDSIG now has a Web site where EDSIG activities and issues as well as links to resources for IS Educators can be found. Currently, the Web page is hosted at Pace University in New York under the URL csis.pace.edu/edsig, but will eventually be moved to another location under the URL "www.cise.org".

EDSIG wishes to thank Mr. Ted Dixon, an Information Systems graduate student at Pace University, for his fine work in assisting in the development of the Web page.

Historically Speaking

This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of E.F. Codd's initial investigations of the management of large commercial databases. One year later, he published the landmark article "Derivability, Redundancy, and Consistency of Relations Stored in Large Data Banks" in the IBM Research Report in which the idea of the relational database model was introduced. Codd, an IBM researcher working in San Jose, found his ideas enthusiastically embraced by the academic and research communities. His worst detractor - IBM Marketing!

It seems that IBM was promoting its strategic database product, IMS, which was grounded in the hierarchical database model. Meanwhile, Codd was trumpeting the superiority of the relational model, and thus by implication was undermining the IMS marketing effort. In fact, other vendors introduced commerical relational database products before IBM - INGRES for one. Codd eventually left IBM.

IBM needn't have worried. IMS has had a long and highly successful place in the industry until very recently, and remains a mainstay of many key legency applications. As it turned out, the early implementations of the relational model were notably poor performers. One joke that floated around IBM in the 1980s went something like this: What's the question that matches the answer "Lassie, Rin Tin Tin, and DB2." The question: "Name two movie stars and a dog!"

With increased memories and improved query optimization techniques, relational products, including DB2, overcame their early performance problems and now dominates today's database world. Codd, however, continues to maintain that no commercial product has ever fully implemented all the features of the relational model.

FROM:

Dr. Stuart A. Varden
EDSIG Membership Director
Pace University
Information Systems Department
Goldstein Center, Room 320
861 Bedford Road
Pleasantville, NY 10570