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Horticulture/Herbicides

Herbicides are substances used to kill unwanted plants, often used in modern gardens in lieu of or alongside other weed control techniques. The use of herbicides has benefits in terms of saving labor and time, but can also cause some problems by killing non-target plants or other organisms, contaminating the environment, and in some cases may have toxic effects on humans and other animals.

Types of herbicides
Herbicides are classified in several ways, including effect, selectivity, persistence, application, and action. They are also further divided into herbicides that are acceptable in organic growing methods and non-organic growing methods.

Effect

 * Pre-emergent herbicides work by interfering with the germination of seeds. Pre-emergents must be well-timed according to the germination time of the weed being controlled, but when timed correctly they provide the best solution to the problem, as a preventative rather than a cure.
 * (see ../Pre-emergent Herbicides/ for details on particular pre-emergents)

 * Contact herbicides work by killing any part of the plant they come in contact with. In most cases these will not kill the entire plant and will need to be reapplied periodically, eventually draining the plant's energy stores and killing it after several applications.
 * Systemic herbicides work by killing the entire plant over a short period of time, and are conducted throughout the plant through the vascular system. Many weeds are resistant to these herbicides however, so repeat applications are often needed.
 * Drench herbicides are applied to the soil, rather than or along with application to the plant. Most of these herbicides are long-lasting, and therefore not appropriate for use in places where plants are to be grown.

Selectivity
Selective herbicides kill specific target plants while leaving the desired plants relatively unharmed. Herbicides used to control lawn weeds are in most cases selective herbicides.

Non-selective herbicides kill any plant they come in contact with (though some plants are resistant to various herbicides).

Persistence
Different herbicides have various "persistence", meaning some stay active over a long period of time, while others become inactive shortly after application.

Application
Herbicides can be applied in one of a few ways. Some are sprayed as a liquid, some applied as granules, some applied through irrigation systems or fumigation (though rarely done in gardens), and some are painted directly onto plant parts. Most herbicides can be applied using more than one method, depending on what they are being used for.

Action
Their classification by mechanism of action (MOA) indicates the first enzyme, protein, or biochemical step affected in the plant following application. The main mechanisms of action are:

 * Dessicators work by removing the water from plant cells, causing cell death.
 * Acids and bases work similarly to dessicators, by chemically "burning" plant cells. These are substances that are extremely acidic or alkaline.
 * Nutritional controls work by shifting the balance of nutrients, either providing too much of a particular nutrient, or restricting the availability of other nutrients. This most commonly involves slatering the soil pH, but in some cases certain nutrients can be used to control specific species of plants.
 * ACCase inhibitors are compounds that kill grasses. Acetyl coenzyme A carboxylase (ACCase) is part of the first step of lipid synthesis. Thus, ACCase inhibitors affect cell membrane production in the meristems of the grass plant. The ACCases of grasses are sensitive to these herbicides, whereas the ACCases of dicot plants are not.
 * Group 2 Injury Symptoms.jpg ALS inhibitors: the acetolactate synthase (ALS) enzyme (also known as acetohydroxyacid synthase, or AHAS) is the first step in the synthesis of the branched-chain amino acids (valine, leucine, and isoleucine). These herbicides slowly starve affected plants of these amino acid]]s which eventually leads to inhibition of DNA synthesis. They affect grasses and dicots alike. The ALS inhibitor family includes sulfonylureas (SUs), imidazolinones (IMIs), triazolopyrimidines (TPs), pyrimidinyl oxybenzoates (POBs), and sulfonylamino carbonyl triazolinones (SCTs).
 * EPSP Synthase Inhibitor – Group 9.jpgEPSPS inhibitors: The enolpyruvylshikimate 3-phosphate synthase enzyme EPSPS is used in the synthesis of the amino acids tryptophan, phenylalanine and tyrosine. They affect grasses and dicots alike. ../Glyphosate/ is a systemic EPSPS inhibitor but inactivated by soil contact.
 * Synthetic auxin inaugurated the era of organic herbicides. They were discovered in the 1940s after a long study of the plant growth regulator auxin. Synthetic auxins mimic this plant hormone. They have several points of action on the cell membrane, and are effective in the control of dicot plants. 2,4-D is a synthetic auxin herbicide.
 * Photosystem II inhibitors reduce electron flow from water to NADPH2+ at the photochemical step in photosynthesis. They bind to the Qb site on the D2 protein, and prevent quinone from binding to this site. Therefore, this group of compounds cause electrons to accumulate on chlorophyll molecules. As a consequence, oxidation reactions in excess of those normally tolerated by the cell occur, and the plant dies. The triazine herbicides (including atrazine) are PSII inhibitors.

Acceptability for organic growing
By organic]is meant a herbicide that can be used in a farming enterprise that has been classified as organic. Organic herbicides are expensive and may not be affordable for commercial production. They are much less effective than synthetic herbicides but of course do not inject unnatural chemicals into the environment.

Organic herbicides include:
 * Vinegar - effective for 5-20% solutions of acetic acid with higher concentrations most effective but mainly destroys surface growth and so respraying to treat regrowth is needed. Resistant plants generally succumb when weakened by respraying.
 * Steam - has been applied commercially but now considered uneconomic and inadequate.  Kills surface growth but not underground growth and so respraying to treat regrowth of perennials is needed.

 * Flame - considered more effective than steam but suffers from the same difficulties.
 * BioWeed - effective for 10-20% solutions of Pine Oil with higher concentrations most effective Will Also control seed by desiccation. Best applied when weeds are immature.

Common herbicides

 * ../2,4-D/, a broadleaf herbicide in the phenoxy group used in turf and in no-till field crop production. Now mainly used in a blend with other herbicides that act as synergists, it is the most widely used herbicide in the world, third most commonly used in the United States. It is an example of synthetic auxin.
 * ../Atrazine/, a triazine herbicide used in corn and sorghum for control of broadleaf weeds and grasses. Still used because of its low cost and because it works as a synergist when used with other herbicides, it is a photosystem II inhibitor.
 * ../Clopyralid/, is a broadleaf herbicide in the pyridine group, used mainly in turf, rangeland, and for control of noxious thistles. Notorious for its ability to persist in compost. It is another example of synthetic auxin.
 * ../Dicamba/, a persistent broadleaf herbicide active in the soil, used on turf and field corn. It is another example of synthetic auxin.
 * ../Glyphosate/, a systemic nonselective (it kills any type of plant) herbicide used in no-till burndown and for weed control in crops that are genetically modified to resist its effects. It is an example of an EPSPs inhibitor.
 * ../Imazapyr/, is a non-selective herbicide used for the control of a broad range of weeds including terrestrial annual and perennial grasses and broadleaved herbs, woody species, and riparian and emergent aquatic species.
 * ../Imazapic/, is a selective herbicide for both the pre- and post-emergent control of some annual and perennial grasses and some broadleaf weeds. Imazapic kills plants by inhibiting the production of branched chain amino acids (valine, leucine, and isoleucine), which are necessary for protein synthesis and cell growth.
 * ../Metoalachlor/, a pre-emergent herbicide widely used for control of annual grasses in corn and sorghum; it has largely replaced atrazine for these uses.
 * ../Paraquat/, a nonselective contact herbicide used for no-till burndown and in aerial destruction of marijuana and coca plantings. More acutely toxic to people than any other herbicide in widespread commercial use.
 * ../Picloram/, a pyridine herbicide mainly used to control unwanted trees in pastures and edges of fields. It is another synthetic auxin.
 * ../Triclopyr/, triethylamine salt (3,5,6-trichloro-2-pyridinyloxyacetic acid) is a systemic herbicide that interferes with cell growth.  Tryclopyr is fast dissipating with a half-life of about 1 day.  Most commonly used to control aquatic plants in ponds or combined with 2,4-D to target woody plants such as blackberry.

History
Prior to the widespread use of chemical herbicides, cultural controls, such as altering soil pH, salinity, or fertility levels, were used to control weeds. Mechanical control (including tillage) was also (and still is) used to control weeds.

The first widely used herbicide was ../2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid/, often abbreviated 2,4-D. It was developed by a British team during World War II and first saw widespread production and use in the late 1940s. It is easy and inexpensive to manufacture, and kills many broadleaf plants while leaving grasses largely unaffected (although high doses of 2,4-D at crucial growth periods can harm grass crops such as maize or cereals). 2,4-D's low cost has led to continued usage today and it remains one of the most commonly used herbicides in the world. Like other acid herbicides, current formulations utilize either an amine salt (usually trimethyl amine) or one of many esters of the base compound. These are easier to handle than the acid.

2,4-D exhibits relatively poor selectivity, meaning that it causes stress to non-target plants. It is also less effective against some broadleaf weeds, including many vinous plants, and sedges. A herbicide is termed selective if it affects only certain types of plants, and nonselective if it inhibits most any type of plant. Other herbicides have been more recently developed to achieve desired selectivities.

The 1970s saw the introduction of ../Atrazine/, which has the dubious distinction of being the herbicide of greatest concern for groundwater contamination. Atrazine does not break down readily (within a few weeks) after being applied. Instead it is carried deep into the soil by rainfall causing the aforementioned contamination. Atrazine is said to have high carryover, a very undesirable property for herbicides.

../Glyphosate/, frequently sold under the brand name Roundup, was introduced in the late 1980s for non-selective weed control. It is now a major herbicide in selective weed control in growing crop plants due to the development of crop plants that are resistant to it. The pairing of the herbicide with the resistant seed contributed to the consolidation of the seed and chemistry industry in the late 1990s.

Many modern chemical herbicides for agriculture are specifically formulated to decompose within a short period after application. This is desirable as it allows crops which may be affected by the herbicide to be grown on the land in future seasons. However, herbicides with low residual activity (i.e. decompose quickly) often do not provide season-long weed control.

Health effects
Herbicides have been alleged to cause a variety of health effects ranging from skin rashes to death. The pathway of attack can arise from improper applicatrion resulting in direct contact with field workers, inhalation of aerial sprays, food consumption and from contact with residual soil contamination. Herbicides can also be transported via surface runoff to contaminate distant surface waters and hence another pathway of ingestion through extraction of those surface waters for drinking. Some herbicides decompose rapidly in soils and other types have more persistent characteristics with longer environmental half-lives. Other alleged health effects can include chest pain, headaches, nausea and fatigue. Most herbicides (primarily the non-organic) must be extensively tested prior to labeling by the Environmental Protection Agency. However, because of the large number of herbicides in use, many are concerned about potential health effects. Some of the substances in use are alleged to be mutagenic, carcinogenic or teratogenic.

title: Horticulture/Herbicides


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User talk:194.158.202.1

Please stop. If you continue to use Wikibooks for advertising, you will be temporarily blocked from editing. -- Herby talk thyme 11:10, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

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Horticulture/2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid

Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D, or C8H6Cl2O3) is a common systemic herbicide used in the control of broadleaf weeds. It is the third-most widely used herbicide in North America and the most widely used herbicide in the world. It was developed during World War II by a British team at Rothamsted Experimental Station, under the leadership of Judah Hirsch Quastel, aiming to increase crop yields for a nation at war. When it was commercially released in 1946, it became the first successful selective herbicide and allowed for greatly enhanced weed control in wheat, maize (corn), rice, and similar cereal grass crop, because it only kills dicots, leaving behind monocots.

2,4-D is sold in various formulations under a wide variety of brand names. It continues to be used for its low cost, despite the availability of more selective, more effective, and less toxic products.

2,4-D is a member of the phenoxy family of herbicides, which include:

 * 2,4,5-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4,5-T)
 * 2-methyl-4-chlorophenoxyacetic acid (MCPA)
 * 2-(2-methyl-4-chlorophenoxy)propionic acids (mecoprop, MCPP)
 * 2-(2,4-dichlorophenoxy)propionic acid (dichloroprop, 2,4-DP)
 * (2,4-dichlorophenoxy)butyric acid (2,4-DB)

2,4-D is manufactured from chloroacetic acid and 2,4-dichlorophenol, which is itself produced by chlorination of phenol. The production process creates several contaminants including isomers, monochlorophenol, and other polychlorophenols and their acids.

The powerful defoliant and herbicide Agent Orange, used extensively throughout the Vietnam War, contained 2,4-D. However, the controversies associated with the use of Agent Orange were associated with a contaminant (dioxin) in the 2,4,5-T component.

Uses
2,4-D is most commonly used for:

 * Weed control in lawns and other turf
 * No-till burndown
 * Control of weeds and brush along fences and highway and railroad rights of way
 * Conifer release (control of broadleaf trees in conifer plantings)
 * Grass hayfields and pastures
 * Cereal grains
 * Corn and sorghum (occasionally)

Over 1500 herbicide products contain 2,4-D as an active ingredient

Action
2,4-D is a synthetic auxin, which is a class of plant growth regulators.

Precautions
The LD50 in rats has been reported as 375 and 666 mg/kg in two different studies. Single oral doses of 5 and 30 mg/kg body weight did not cause any acute toxic effects in human volunteers.

The amine salt formulations can cause irreversible eye damage.


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Talk:Horticulture/2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid

Auxin activity
I think that there should be mention about physiologic activity of that molecul in plant body. I am not sure, what effect kill the plant, but I am sure that 2,4-D has strong activity of auxin molecules. In fact it is classified as synthetic auxin (but with some special effects). Reo On 22:36, 20 June 2005 (Discussion moved - Reo On 20:35, 17 July 2006 (UTC))


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Information and Communication Technologies for Poverty Alleviation/The Lessons of Experience

What lessons can be learned so far?
It should be evident from the examples that where demonstrable results have emerged, it has been because of a clear focus on the development strategy. As the G8 DOT Force states, “Efforts to increase access to ICTs should be rooted in a broader strategy to combat poverty.” From the examples cited, we can make the following observations:

ICTs alone are insufficient for significant benefits to emerge. If there is no attendant workable development strategy, ICTs cannot be expected to result in optimal outcomes. Giving voice to the poor and helping them apply their knowledge is a key element in combating poverty, and should be incorporated into ICT approaches to poverty alleviation. Directly addressing the needs of the poor and most marginalized, particularly women and girls, is vital.

ICTs will not transform bad development into good development, but they can make good development better. ICTs act as an amplifier of underlying processes. What makes development work well will be made to work better by using ICTs. On the other hand, if used inappropriately, ICTs add unnecessary costs to the process. Also, users and promoters could get disillusioned when expected benefits from ICT use fail to emerge, which in turn could hinder subsequent efforts to use ICTs appropriately.

Effective applications of ICTs comprise both a technological infrastructure and an information infrastructure. The information infrastructure includes all that is required to make the ICTs relevant to their context, including all sources of information and its consumers. Mobilizing them into a coherent infrastructure requires methods and skills that are quite different from those required to assemble the technology infrastructure. While ICTs can be effective tools for tackling poverty, the spread of technology should not be an objective in itself. Poverty, not the digital divide is the problem.

In rural settings in developing countries (where the vast majority of poor people live), it is always a challenge to install the technological infrastructure, but the task is relatively simple compared to establishing the information infrastructure.

Developing countries suffer from poor and underdeveloped infrastructures and creative approaches to supplement the existing infrastructure are often necessary in order to achieve connectivity. No single technology is suitable for all needs. Each ICT (old and new) will be appropriate in different circumstances. Solutions can be technically demanding, making it advisable to recruit the best technical people that can be found. However, they should not be put in charge. First, no matter how creative and efficient the technology, its implementation will always be judged by development outcomes. Second, technical people need to devote their energies and expertise to the technology and should not be burdened with the issues of designing the information infrastructure and mobilizing system users. Generally, the two sets of skills that are required tend to be mutually exclusive.

The application of ICTs in the absence of a development strategy that makes effective use of them will inevitably result in sub-optimal outcomes.

It is important to be able to differentiate between types of outcomes and to balance them against the intentions, aspirations and potential of the technology and its users. At the same time, it is important to recognize that unexpected outcomes can turn out to be more desirable than those that were expected. ICT implementations have their own dynamics, and projects should acknowledge that introducing technology itself changes the dynamics of the problem that the technology is intended to solve. Sub-optimal outcomes are often a product of failing to respond to system dynamics in a way that would have directed the technology more closely towards better development, and failure to adapt to the dynamics of a responsive development strategy.

While ICTs provide opportunities for development, desirable outcomes always arise from the actions of people. The information infrastructure, and especially the people in it, makes up the key enabling environment that will determine the nature of the outcomes. When the main focus is on technology, there is a tendency to leave the people issues to chance. However, the enabling environment is crucial to providing information and communication services, innovation and entrepreneurship, and free flow of information. Education and skills are key enablers of the effective use of ICTs.

Other studies have drawn similar conclusions. The DFID report concludes, “Information, communication and knowledge are critical elements of poverty reduction and meeting the international development targets. ICTs, used appropriately, can be effective tools to advance DFID’s mission” (Marker et al., 2002). But to succeed, ICT projects must build on an assessment of local needs, as defined by local people. Well-meaning government officials, officers of international aid agencies and workers in NGOs sometimes assume that they know what is needed at the grass roots. Thus, projects are often not based on any real assessment of local needs. Furthermore, they assume a uniformity of needs in distinct localities with different populations, economic bases, cultures, social organization and levels of need. They also take for granted that providing computers and/or web connections will (without additional efforts) provide increased social justice, enable local peoples to sell their products in the world market, feed the hungry, meet unmet medical needs, and so on (Keniston and Kumar, 2000).

What are the key social dimensions to ICTs for poverty alleviation?
Research from Latin America advocates a social vision for using ICTs to eliminate and/or redress the deeply rooted inequalities of modern societies. The vision is based on the following premises:

 * Connectivity is important, but it is not sufficient to contribute to development.

 * Equitable access, meaningful use and social appropriation of ICT resources are all necessary to take advantage of available opportunities and achieve positive results.

 * Certain enabling environments must exist for ICTs to contribute effectively to development.

 * Risks and threats exist in the use of ICTs for development and should be avoided or minimized.

In this vision, ICTs are neither positive nor negative in themselves, but they are not neutral either. ICT deployment could end up reproducing and deepening existing inequalities in society. The term social appropriation is used to describe the process that leads to the social transformations that occur as a result of using ICTs. Social appropriation occurs when Internet resources help transform daily life by contributing to the solution of concrete problems. Evidence of appropriation is not found in the use of ICTs, but rather in the changes that they have brought about in the real world.

The social appropriation of ICTs for development can be demonstrated in a number of ways, such as by offering better medical information to patients; improving the quality of education through the use of innovative teaching resources; introducing varied, relevant programming into community radio broadcasting; increasing sales of local products in the marketplace; disseminating the results of local research; and coordinating action among diverse groups with common goals.

One way of achieving social appropriation is the methodology known as infomobilization. This methodology is based on socio-technical systems theory, which claims that separate efforts to optimize the technical system and the social system will lead to sub-optimal results, and can even be infeasible. The same information system can be a success in one organization/community but a failure in another, while the same organization/community can experience success with one information system but fail with another. Hence, the information system and its context must be studied, understood and managed together, not separately. Infomobilization applies these theories to rural communities in a developing country.

Infomobilization is concerned with the information requirements of communities. It addresses the design, delivery and utilization of community information systems by:

 * Defining community information requirements based on needs and priorities that have been expressed by the communities themselves;

 * Igniting community aspirations and empowering communities with appropriate skills for fostering local development that is information-based;

 * Expanding a community’s social capital through enhanced access to communication facilities and information resources;

 * Embedding community-based ICT services within existing economic, governance and social structures;

 * Infusing enhanced capability for information access within communities;

 * Achieving sustainability of financing, service delivery and operating functionality;

 * Ensuring that benefits arising are not usurped by existing elites, and are equitably disseminated among the socially and economically disadvantaged groups; and

 * Extending and intensifying existing development programmes that carry a significant potential for additional community benefit from enhanced information management capabilities that are based on ICTs.

The methodology consists of the actions necessary to ensure that ICTs have optimal impacts for development within rural communities in developing countries. The process is made up of techniques for

 * Familiarizing communities with their existing use and sources of information as well as with the gaps that exist between existing and desired information resources;

 * Alerting communities to the potential application of information to their problem-solving efforts and to their development aspirations;

 * Sensitizing communities to the existence and accessibility of abundant information resources and to the capabilities of ICTs for accessing and manipulating information;

 * Propelling communities towards the acquisition of the new knowledge they will require in order to exploit the power of ICTs;

 * Empowering communities with information literacy, the skills necessary for the mastery of new media, the Internet and multimedia;

 * Motivating communities to apply ICTs to the new opportunities that become possible from their relationship with ICTs;

 * Encouraging the collection, classification, preservation and dissemination of indigenous knowledge and cultural information artefacts; and

 * Fostering appropriate local mechanisms for sustaining the equipment, services and operations of community-based ICTs.

These techniques comprise a community learning system, whereby the community starts by learning about its information needs, and then begins to satisfy those needs and, as a result of the experience, becomes increasingly capable of understanding and satisfying information needs of an increasingly higher order.

How should project implementers engage with communities?
The World Bank’s advice regarding a participatory style of community engagement is relevant for ICT implementation methodologies:

 * Methodologies for designing and implementing useful information systems should emerge from participatory action-oriented analytical activities

 * Data should be obtained using a combination of surveys, direct interviews, workshops and discussion groups

 * Useful information systems should be embedded within the needs of the community

 * Specific actions are required by both the implementers and the community in order to articulate those needs

 * The implementers should learn about life in the beneficiary communities

 * The community should learn about ICTs from the implementers

 * Community members should perform major portions of the implementation

 * The implementers should be able to identify with the community

 * As a team, the community-implementers should be capable of critically reflecting on iterative cycles of action in order to achieve beneficial outcomes from the project

Participatory forms of analysis in which community aspirations and development activities are moulded and tracked in a cyclic manner are more likely to achieve desirable results than technology implementation that is predicated on fixed expectations and inflexible assumptions of what outcomes should look like.

What are other project implementation considerations?
Unexpected outcomes

The social dynamics of communities, when combined with the characteristic of ICTs as intellectual (as opposed to industrial) technologies, can lead to unexpected outcomes of ICT implementation. In some cases, these can turn out to be more desirable than those that were targeted, and they are to be encouraged. Figure 7 illustrates a combination of possibilities:

Figure 7: Project Outcomes

Evaluation Monitoring and evaluation of social interventions tend to be too quantitative. Evaluation can benefit from the richness of qualitative approaches, such as story telling. Stories are based on experience and they represent empirical evidence of events. They capture the richness of events and the circumstances of the people involved in the events, their emotions and perspectives of reality. They also reveal life histories and the connection between personalities and events. In describing how things actually happened, stories offer learning opportunities for understanding causalities and the shifting dynamics that occur between people, events, technology, institutions and the environment. Besides, stories evoke a response from the listener, and this can add depth to the communication that is taking place during the re-telling.

Also, stories can summarize multiple events that are linked in some meaningful way in a cumulative manner that helps to identify trends so that future behaviour can be directed towards desirable outcomes. Hence, stories cultivate social change, becoming part of the intervention rather than being separate from it. As the outcome of story telling is in large part determined by the context of the telling, stories can be re-used within multiple contexts, thereby serving multiple purposes. While it is improbable that statistical analyses would contain stories, it is possible for stories to contain statistical analyses. Moreover, stories collect data that are difficult to represent in statistics, such as emotions, and evidence suggests that such factors are influential in determining community-based reactions to social interventions.

Time scales Donors and implementers often set the time scales for ICT projects with little reference to the recipient community. In some cases the time scales are determined within frameworks of national or international budgeting that have no bearing on the conduct of the project. Experience suggests that communities will determine for themselves the rate at which they take up innovations, and project implementers should be prepared for this. In the case of the Gujarat Milk Co-operative, implementation efforts spanned 10 years before the full potential of the application was achieved. Sometimes a focus on “deliverables” denies the dynamics of the social context of the project. Even use of the term “project” can be problematic. Projects have definite start and end points, which are important milestones for management, but the activity is often regarded by the recipient community more as a continuous process, with no ending in sight. These different perspectives can create tension between implementers and recipients.

Top-down or bottom-up ICT deployment tends to fall into one of two categories: top-down projects by central or state governments and bottom-up grass-roots initiatives by local communities and NGOs. Top-down national programmes have difficulty incorporating the specifics of the local context of a rural community. On the other hand, scaling up the successes of focused grass-roots initiatives is also proving to be a challenge.

There is a need for a methodology that will enable field workers involved with ICT projects to mobilize communities towards achieving optimum outcomes from them. If a detailed methodology can be formulated, tested and documented, then large numbers of field operatives can be trained to implement it across many communities. Such a capability would enhance the likelihood of optimal development outcomes from a nationwide implementation, effectively incorporating the benefits of focused small-scale grass-roots projects into a large-scale national programme.

Social mobilization has already been demonstrated to be an efficient means of alleviating poverty on a wide scale, using methods based on the exploitation of physical assets. An equivalent technique that focuses on exploiting information assets is now required. Methodologies are important for ICT professionals as they bring together simple tools and techniques that are useful in assuring a high degree of success with ICT implementation. Methodologies for the analysis, design and implementation of information systems account for all of the logical processes that need to be considered for an ICT project to achieve, or exceed, its objective. They go beyond the mere installation of technology by addressing the behavioural changes of technology users that are known to be necessary for technology to fulfil its potential. The most useful methodologies are those that can accomplish this aside from being easily taught to operatives who need not be highly qualified. Such methodologies incorporate simple-to-use tools and techniques that are structured together in such a way as to ensure that all aspects of the system problem are properly addressed.

Can ICTs for poverty alleviation be sustainable?
The concept of sustainability in development can be traced back to a 1987 report by the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED, 1987), known as the Brundtland Report. It states: Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Sustainable development focuses on improving the quality of life for all of the Earth’s citizens without increasing the use of natural resources beyond the capacity of the environment to supply them indefinitely. Sustainability discourse has since extended beyond issues relating to the irreversible depletion of the environment and the inevitable exhaustion of finite natural resources. Sustainability in development is now more widely regarded as the ability of a project or intervention to continue after the implementing agency has departed, a condition that often has little to do with environmental protection or with the preservation of natural resources. In view of the seemingly common occurrence of project breakdowns after the departure of the implementing agent, sustainability in terms of continuity has become a key indicator of success of development activities, as well as an important criterion in pre-implementation planning for obtaining funds.

In many cases, the sustainability of development projects focuses on the single question, “Who will pay for the project after the implementing agent departs?” A popular response is for project implementers to design interventions that will generate sufficient income so that they will pay for themselves. In these cases, the role of the implementing agent is to provide seed inputs, including, but not limited, to capital that will get the project started and enable it to continue under its own impetus after the implementer departs.

But sustainability is not limited to the need of development to pay for itself. The International Institute for Sustainable Development lists three common characteristics of sustainable development:

 * Concern for equity and fairness
 * Long-term view
 * Systems thinking

Concern for fairness and equity reflects the need for the benefits of development to reach the least privileged, those least endowed with resources and the most vulnerable. The long-term view encompasses the unexpected and undesirable outcomes of development efforts, as well as the tension that emerges between implementers with short-term project orientations and beneficiaries with long-term process considerations. For example, building a bridge is a short-term project, whereas crossing the river is a long-term process. Systems thinking includes multidimensional perspectives, the identification of feedback loops and the consideration of the consequences of actions, acknowledging the complexity of social life everywhere and the inter-relatedness of everything.

Sustainability of ICTs has emerged as a key issue in the debate surrounding their use in development. In most cases, the discussion refers to financial selfsustainability, which is often regarded as a condition for the continued use of the technology. In fact, there are four types of sustainability that apply to telecentres:

 * Sustaining financial viability (Hudson, 1999)
 * Sustaining staff capability (Baark and Heeks, 1998)
 * Sustaining community acceptance (Whyte, 1999)
 * Sustaining service delivery (Colle and Roman)

Financial viability refers to the capacity to generate sufficient income to cover costs of operation and/or the cost of initially establishing a telecentre. While this ability to pay for itself generally requires the derivation of revenue directly from those who use the services, it does not preclude the possibility of other continuing sources of revenue, such as funding from government (Hudson, 1999).

Projects that introduce new skills also need to maintain the sustainability of the capabilities developed. This is possible only to the extent that trained people, or their trained replacements, continue to work in the same area and their capabilities are maintained and utilized. Sometimes, trained staff discover a better market for their skills and are lured away from the project (Baark and Heeks, 1998).

It is important to note that a technology’s sustainability will be determined by the degree of community acceptance that it is able to generate. For example, the introduction of a community telecentre, if successful, is going to have a major impact on the community—its culture, communication patterns, economy, social structure and future development. Telecentres that are seen as mere technological providers rather than social and cultural community centres have been found to be less sustainable. The degree of community involvement in, and commitment to, a telecentre is a success factor, and measures of user behaviour and perceptions are at the heart of any evaluation of telecentres (Whyte, 1999).

Sustaining service delivery relates to the continuation of flows of information that communities find useful and useable. But it also relates to sustaining the overall services in terms of adapting to evolving community needs, proactively seeking new sources of useful information, and alerting the community to the value of information. Colle and Roman suggest strategies for technology implementation that foster sustainability of service delivery, namely; having local champions or innovators to mobilize others to accept the vision of an ICT initiative; raising awareness about information and ICTs as a valuable resource for individuals, families, organizations and communities; and focusing on information services rather than on technology to build a local institution that is fully woven into the fabric of the community.

Sustainability of ICTs shines a spotlight on the issue of sustainability in development as it embodies many of the dimensions of the sustainability theme as it has evolved since first coming to the attention of development practice. Of these dimensions, financial sustainability might be argued to be the most critical or even the most difficult to achieve. Despite the plummeting cost-power ratio of computers, their price typically remains many orders of magnitude beyond the average annual incomes of potential users in developing countries. Therefore, the cases in this primer are described from the perspective of financial sustainability. In addition, financial sustainability warrants special attention because of the reassurance required by governments that telecentres will result in net benefits and will not become a drain on resources.

Because most ICT projects are recent and experimental, experience with their sustainability is limited. Many current experiments are more concerned with establishing the social value of ICTs. For instance, few of the Gyandoot kiosks have achieved commercial viability (World Bank 2002), and even though the Village Information Shops in Pondicherry are expanding their operations to new locations, they still require outside financial support. It is commonly assumed, however, that effective rural ICT access requires economic subsidy and financial loss. Others argue that ICTs should be economically viable if they are to gain wide, robust and long-lived usage. One report suggests that there are at least six broad categories that must be considered for economic self-sustainability: costs, revenue, networks, business models, policy and capacity (Best and Maclay, 2002). Best and Maclay (2002) prescribe the following actions for achieving sustainability:

Keep costs low

 * Reduce capital costs with new devices and wireless applications
 * Use appropriate technologies to reduce recurrent costs
 * Generate revenue from diverse fees and services
 * Focus first on core communication applications
 * Promote gradual growth of other revenue sources

Create jobs and revenue with remote ICT-enabled services (e.g., transcription of hard copy records)

 * Benefit from network effects, scope and scale
 * Aggregate markets and leverage the benefits of large networks
 * Exploit economies of scale and scope by promoting larger networks
 * Design context-appropriate business models
 * Create rural service providers for Internet, computing and telephony
 * Add telecentres to existing businesses
 * Add businesses to telecentres
 * Promote rural-urban cooperation
 * Guard against potential negative externalities, e.g., location, marketing/awareness, and staff composition

Support rural access with policy

 * Adapt to the dynamics of rural markets and limited competition
 * Remove regulatory barriers to rural services
 * Promote universal access policies and support incentives
 * Require and enforce interconnection
 * Be wary of time-metered calling charges
 * Use Voice over IP(VoIP) to promote competition
 * End spectrum allocation regimes that punish rural wireless
 * Improve the overall business environment, e.g., for credit
 * Build local capacity


text:
Information and Communication Technologies for Poverty Alleviation/Towards a General Framework Poverty Alleviation with ICTs

What are the policy dimensions relating to ICTs for poverty alleviation?
Telecommunications reform Most developing countries are adopting policies to break down the monopoly provision of telecommunications services, with rural development as a target outcome. Despite limited understanding of the relationship between ICTs and rural development, as well as deficiencies in key resources, governments are generally enthusiastic about the prospects for rural development through the widespread deployment of ICTs. ICT policy formulation and implementation for rural development at the national level typically involves:

 * A high-level authority, often under the direct control of the head of government
 * Telecommunications reform
 * Expansion of the physical infrastructure
 * Focus on e-government and e-commerce
 * Revised regulatory environment and legal framework
 * Private sector participation
 * Universal service arrangements
 * Pilot projects

Rural development The largest numbers of poor people in Asia live in rural settings. Consequently, poverty alleviation is inextricably interwoven with rural development, and urban development without rural development is ill advised. Most rural areas are typified by scattered settlements, villages and small towns, which may be hundreds of kilometres from the nearest major urban centre. Rural and remote areas share some or all of the following characteristics:

 * Shortage or absence of public services and health and education services;
 * Shortage of qualified technical staff;
 * Geographical or topological features that militate against the establishment of a telecommunication network at affordable cost;
 * Harsh climatic conditions that impose severe equipment constraints;
 * Limited economic activity, centred primarily on agriculture, fishing and cottage industries;
 * Low per capita incomes, generally well below those in urban areas;
 * Low population density; and
 * High levels of traffic per telephone line due to the inadequacy of telecommunication services and the large numbers of users per line.

Accordingly, policy making for rural development must take each of these aspects of rural life into account.

Many of the examples included here demonstrate that ICTs can be used to alleviate the adverse impact of most or all of these negative aspects of rural life. For example, in the majority of developing countries, teledensity (expressed as the number of lines per 100 inhabitants) is low and in some cases very low in rural remote and poorly served areas. One of the prime causes of low teledensity is the high cost of installing equipment in return for low usage. However, new technologies already available or in an advanced stage of development offer scope for marked improvement. Benefits to be derived from the improvement of rural teledensity include the following:

 * Integration of the rural population into national economic, social and political life
 * Regional decentralization
 * Improved effectiveness of government programmes
 * Improvements in social welfare

Apart from the disparities between developed and developing nations, the rural-urban divide in most Asian developing countries leaves the majority of poor people at a huge disadvantage. For serious and measurable alleviation of poverty to occur, effective policies that specifically target rural development are necessary. By adopting and promoting ICTs for poverty alleviation, governments can make such policies more effective, increasing their scope of application across broad sections of the population, deepening their impact within narrow sections of the population, and generally making development more efficient.

Is there a general framework describing poverty alleviation with ICTs?
From an examination of the examples quoted here, it is possible to trace events and influences backward from beneficiary to inception and to suggest a framework of ICT implementation that is engaged with relevant processes and principles of poverty alleviation. The framework so derived facilitates an understanding of how ICT can help alleviate poverty.

A pro-poor ICT policy begins with a development commitment that targets poverty alleviation, with government acknowledging its role as a major employer and user of ICTs. This leads to the infrastructure development that will be required to achieve widespread poverty alleviation through local access combined with suitable methods to ensure that access is used to the best effect. Government also encourages institution reform leading to the delivery of effective services capable of exploiting the infrastructure. The services are directed towards and delivered to the local access points of the poor people who need them.

'''Figure 8. A framework for poverty alleviation using ICTs'''

This image is available under the terms of GNU Free Documentation License and Creative Commons Attribution License 2.5

ICT policy ICT policies should be concerned both with ICT production and ICT use. The concern here is for policies for ICT use that specifically target poverty alleviation, as opposed to e-commerce, e-government, e-learning, and the like. Although these carry the potential for poverty alleviation, they directly benefit better-off citizens and may not necessarily deliver benefits to poor people. ICT policies for poverty alleviation should directly address the causes of poverty.

Development strategies Specific strategies need to articulate how poverty alleviation will occur, for instance through enterprise development, micro-credit programmes, social mobilization, pro-poor tourism and HIV/AIDS awareness. Priorities reflecting needs that have been articulated by poor people themselves usually result in implementation that is more effective at alleviating poverty than those that are decided by governments or their advisers.

Local access Access to technologies has to be planned, organized and well managed. This is likely to be some form of shared access, perhaps through existing institutions such as libraries or post offices, or through the creation of new institutions such as multi-purpose community telecentres. Sharing access implies organizational arrangements that are not present when access is predominantly one-to-one, as in the rich countries, which means that modalities for shared access will be exclusively generated in developing countries.

Government as a user Governments typically control half of the ICT assets in developing countries. They are a major employer and a major supplier of public services. Their role as users of ICTs is critical to the national response to ICT-based opportunities and the rate of ICT adoption. They are also responsible for actually implementing policy, which is different from merely stating it.

Information and physical infrastructures The physical infrastructure is concerned primarily with the diffusion of telecommunications to rural and under-served populations, usually in some form of universal service scheme. Information infrastructures include existing media that serve to mobilize information within the country. ICTs open opportunities for new forms of information delivery that can be complementary to existing flows, without rendering them obsolete.

Methods Experience indicates that bottom-up approaches to the design of information systems for community development are superior to alternatives. Development that is demand-driven has a far greater likelihood of achieving its aims, and methods that foster listening to the poor and factoring their wishes into the design of solutions are usually more sustainable and more substantial. Policies have to cater for the inclusion of such methods.

Institutions Significant returns from ICTs are achieved when institutions adopt transformational approaches to service delivery, which often completely change the nature of the organization and revitalize its purpose and goals. If new technology is used merely as a substitute for old technology, without affecting existing patterns of behaviour, organization and relationship management, then sub-optimal outcomes can be expected.

Specific purposes Here the concern is what services ICTs are directed at—for example, education, health, and commerce—and how stakeholders are drawn into productive relationships that result in poverty alleviation. Looking at specific purposes includes determining who is responsible for what, and how activities are coordinated.

People The target population for policy-making for poverty alleviation must be known in relation to each specific service. Service must be capable of differentiating between the poor and the not-so-poor, so that benefits can be directed to their intended recipients.


text:
Cookbook:Steamed Sweet Rice

Ingredients

 * 1½ cups (360 ml) sweet glutinous rice (mochi gome)
 * Water

Procedure

 * 1) Place sweet glutinous rice in a medium bowl.
 * 2) Wash rice thoroughly in cool water, rinsing and repeating until water is clear, drain, then return rice to bowl.
 * 3) Add 3 cups (720 ml) water to the rice. Soak for 6 hours or overnight.
 * 4) Drain well, spread rice evenly in a round, 8–9 inch (20 cm) shallow baking pan, and add ⅓ cup (80 ml) water.
 * 5) In a wok, bring about 4 cups (950 ml) water to a boil over medium high heat.
 * 6) Place a steamer tray in the wok.
 * 7) Cover the pan of rice and place on the tray over the boiling water.
 * 8) Steam for 30 minutes. If rice is not tender, sprinkle with 2–3 tablespoons of water, and steam it for 5 minutes more.
 * 9) When tender, remove steamer tray from wok.

title: Cookbook:Steamed Sweet Rice


text:
Category:Hazelnut recipes

Recipes involving hazelnuts.

title: Category:Hazelnut recipes


text:
Business Continuity Planning

A Business Continuity Planning (BCP) methodology is used to produce a plan to enable an organization to continue in operation in the face of some kind of interruption to its normal operation. The methodology needs to be scalable for an organization of any size and complexity. Even though the methodology has roots in regulated industries, any type of organization may create a BCP manual, and arguably every organization should have one in order to ensure the organization's longevity. Evidence that firms do not invest enough time and resources into BCP preparations are evident in disaster survival statistics. Fires permanently close 44% of the business affected. In the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, 150 businesses out of 350 affected failed to survive the event. Conversely, the firms affected by the Sept 11 attacks with well-developed and tested BCP manuals were back in business within days. A BCP manual for a small organization may be simply a printed manual stored safely away from the primary work location, containing the names, addresses, and phone numbers for crisis management staff, general staff members, clients, and vendors along with the location of the off-site data backup storage media, copies of insurance contracts, and other critical materials necessary for organizational survival. At its most complex, a BCP manual may outline a secondary work site, technical requirements and readiness, regulatory reporting requirements, work recovery measures, the means to re-establish physical records, the means to establish a new supply chain, or the means to establish new production centers. Firms should ensure that their BCP manual is realistic and easy to use during a crisis. As such, BCP sits along side crisis management and disaster recovery planning and is a part of an organization's overall risk management.

The development of a BCP manual has five main phases: analysis, solution design, implementation, testing and organization acceptance, and maintenance.

Analysis
The analysis phase in the development of a BCP manual consists of an impact analysis, threat analysis, and impact scenarios with the resulting BCP plan requirement documentation.

Impact analysis
An impact analysis results in the differentiation between critical and non-critical organization functions. A function may be considered critical if the implications for stakeholders of damage to the organization resulting are regarded as unacceptable. Perceptions of the acceptability of disruption may be modified by the cost of establishing and maintaining appropriate business or technical recovery solutions. A function may also be considered critical if dictated by law. Next, the impact analysis results in the recovery requirements for each critical function. Recovery requirements consist of the following information:

 * The time frame in which the critical function must be resumed after the disaster
 * The business requirements for recovery of the critical function, and/or
 * The technical requirements for recovery of the critical function

Threat analysis
After defining recovery requirements, documenting potential threats is recommended to detail a specific disaster’s unique recovery steps. Some common threats include the following:

 * /Natural disasters/ (e.g., earthquakes, hurricanes, flooding, fires)
 * /Disease/
 * /Hacking/
 * /Power outage/
 * /Terrorism/

All threats in the examples above share a common impact - the potential of damage to organizational infrastructure - except one, disease. The impact of diseases is initially purely human, and may be alleviated with technical and business solutions. During the 2002-2003 SARS outbreak, some organizations grouped staff into separate teams, and rotated the teams between the primary and secondary work sites, with a rotation frequency equal to the incubation period of the disease.

The organizations also banned face-to-face contact between opposing team members during business and non-business hours. With such a split, organizations increased their resiliency against the threat of government-ordered quarantine measures if one person in a team contracted or was exposed to the disease.

Damage from flooding also has a unique characteristic. If an office environment is flooded with non-saline and contamination-free water (e.g., in the event of a pipe burst), equipment can be thoroughly dried and may still be functional.

Definition of impact scenarios
After defining potential threats, documenting the impact scenarios that form the basis of the business recovery plan is recommended. In general, planning for the most wide-reaching disaster or disturbance is preferable to planning for a smaller scale problem, as almost all smaller scale problems are partial elements of larger disasters. A typical impact scenario like 'Building Loss' will most likely encompass all critical business functions, and the worst potential outcome from any potential threat. A business continuity plan may also document additional impact scenarios if an organization has more than one building. Other more specific impact scenarios - for example a scenario for the temporary or permanent loss of a specific floor in a building - may also be documented.

Recovery requirement documentation
After the completion of the analysis phase, the business and technical plan requirements are documented in order to commence the implementation phase. For an office-based, information technology intensive business, the plan requirements may cover the following elements which may be classed as ICE (In Case of Emergency) data:

 * The numbers and types of desks, whether dedicated or shared, required outside of the primary business location in the secondary location
 * The individuals involved in the recovery effort along with their contact and technical details
 * The applications and application data required from the secondary location desks for critical business functions
 * The manual workaround solutions
 * The maximum outage allowed for the applications
 * The peripheral requirements like computer printers, copiers, fax machines, calculators, paper, pens etc.

Other business environments, such as production, distribution, warehousing, etc., will need to cover these elements, but are likely to have additional issues to manage following a disruptive event.

Solution design
The goal of the solution design phase is to identify the most cost effective disaster recovery solution that meets two main requirements from the impact analysis stage. For IT applications, this is commonly expressed as:

 * 1) The minimum application and application data requirements
 * 2) The time frame in which the minimum application and application data must be available

Disaster recovery plans may also be required outside the IT applications domain, for example in preservation of information in hard copy format, or restoration of embedded technology in process plant. This BCP phase overlaps with the disaster recovery planning methodology. The solution phase determines:

 * the crisis management command structure
 * the location of a secondary work site (where necessary)
 * telecommunication architecture between primary and secondary work sites
 * data replication methodology between primary and secondary work sites
 * the application and software required at the secondary work site, and
 * the type of physical data requirements at the secondary work site.

Implementation
The implementation phase, quite simply, is the execution of the design elements identified in the solution design phase. Work package testing may take place during the implementation of the solution, however; work package testing does not take the place of organizational testing.

Testing and organizational acceptance
The purpose of testing is to achieve organizational acceptance that the business continuity solution satisfies the organization's recovery requirements. Plans may fail to meet expectations due to insufficient or inaccurate recovery requirements, solution design flaws, or solution implementation errors. Testing may include:

 * Crisis command team call-out testing
 * Technical swing test from primary to secondary work locations
 * Technical swing test from secondary to primary work locations
 * Application test
 * Business process test

At minimum, testing is generally conducted on a biannual or annual schedule. Problems identified in the initial testing phase may be rolled up into the maintenance phase and retested during the next test cycle.

Maintenance
Maintenance of a BCP manual is broken down into three periodic activities. The first activity is the confirmation of information in the manual. The second activity is the testing and verification of technical solutions established for recovery operations. The third activity is the testing and verification of documented organization recovery procedures. A biannual or annual maintenance cycle is typical.

Information update and testing
All organizations change over time, therefore a BCP manual must change to stay relevant to the organization. Once data accuracy is verified, normally a call tree test is conducted to evaluate the notification plan's efficiency as well as the accuracy of the contact data. Some types of changes that should be identified and updated in the manual include:

 * Staffing changes
 * Staffing persona
 * Changes to important clients and their contact details
 * Changes to important vendors/suppliers and their contact details
 * Departmental changes like new, closed or fundamentally changed departments.

Testing and verification of technical solutions
As a part of ongoing maintenance, any specialized technical deployments must be checked for functionality. Some checks include:

 * Computer virus definition distribution
 * Application security and service patch distribution
 * Hardware operability check
 * Application operability check
 * Data verification

Testing and verification of organization recovery procedures
As work processes change over time, the previously documented organizational recovery procedures may no longer be suitable. Some checks include:

 * Are all work processes for critical functions documented?
 * Have the systems used in the execution of critical functions changed?
 * Are the documented work checklists meaningful and accurate for staff?
 * Do the documented work process recovery tasks and supporting disaster recovery infrastructure allow staff to recover within the predetermined recovery time objective?

Treatment of test failures
As suggested by the diagram included in this article, there is a direct relationship between the test and maintenance phases and the impact phase. When establishing a BCP manual and recovery infrastructure from scratch, issues found during the testing phase often must be reintroduced to the analysis phase.

title: Business Continuity Planning


text:
Talk:Business Continuity Planning

Purged Wikipedia BCP Article URLs
Exported from import source
 * -- 66.45.145.191 13:39, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

title: Talk:Business Continuity Planning


text:
MySQL/Optimization

Before Starting To Optimise
When the database seems to be "slow" first consider all of the following points as e.g. making a certain query absolutely unnecessary by simply using a more sophisticated algorithm in the application is always the most elegant way of optimising it :)
 * 1) Finding the bottleneck (CPU, memory, I/O, which queries)
 * 2) Optimising the application (remove unnecessary queries or cache PHP generated web pages)
 * 3) Optimising the queries (using indices, temporary tables or different ways of joining)
 * 4) Optimising the database server (cache sizes etc)
 * 5) Optimising the system (different filesystem types, swap space and kernel versions)
 * 6) Optimising the hardware (sometimes indeed the cheapest and fastest way)

To find those bottlenecks the following tools have been found to be helpful:
 * vmstat
 * to quickly monitor cpu, memory and I/O usage and decide which is the bottleneck

 * top
 * to check the current memory and cpu usage of mysqld as well as of the applications

 * mytop
 * to figure out which queries cause trouble

 * mysql-admin (the GUI application, not to confuse with mysqladmin)
 * to monitor and tune mysql in a very convenient way

 * mysqlreport
 * which output should be use as kind of step by step check list

Using these tools most applications can also be categorised very broadly using the following groups:
 * I/O based and reading (blogs, news)
 * I/O based and writing (web access tracker, accounting data collection)
 * CPU based (complex content management systems, business apps)

Optimising the Tables
Use the following command regularly to reorganize the disk space which reduces the table size without deleting any record :

Moreover, when creating the tables, their smallest types are preferable. For example:
 * if a number is always positive, choose an  type to be able to store twice more into the same number of bytes.
 * to store the contemporaneous dates (from 1970 to 2038), it's better to take a  on four bytes, than a   on 8.

Comparing functions with BENCHMARK
The BENCHMARK function can be used to compare the speed of MySQL functions or operators. For example: mysql> SELECT BENCHMARK(100000000, CONCAT('a','b')); +---+ | BENCHMARK(100000000, CONCAT('a','b')) | +---+ |                                    0 | +---+ 1 row in set (21.30 sec)

However, this cannot be used to compare queries: mysql> SELECT BENCHMARK(100, SELECT `id` FROM `lines`); ERROR 1064 (42000): You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'SELECT `id` FROM `lines`)' at line 1

As MySQL needs a fraction of a second just to parse the query and the system is probably busy doing other things, too, benchmarks with runtimes of less than 5-10s can be considered as totally meaningless and equally runtimes differences in that order of magnitude as pure chance.

Analysing functions with EXPLAIN
When you precede a SELECT statement with the keyword EXPLAIN, MySQL explains how it would process the SELECT, providing information about how tables are joined and in which order. This allows to place some eventual hints in function.

Using and understanding EXPLAIN is essential when aiming for good performance therefore the relevant chapters of the official documentation are a mandatory reading!

A simple example
The join of two table that both do not have indices:

Now the second table gets an index and the explain shows that MySQL now knows that only 2 of the 3 rows have to be used.

Now the first table also gets an index so that the WHERE condition can be improved and MySQL knows that only 1 row from the first table is relevant before even trying to search it in the data file.

Status and server variables
MySQL can be monitored and tuned by watching the status-variables and setting the server-variables which can both be global or per session. The status-variables can be monitored by SHOW [GLOBAL|SESSION] STATUS [LIKE '%foo%'] or mysqladmin [extended-]status. The server-variables can be set in the /etc/mysql/my.cnf file or via SET [GLOBAL|SESSION] VARIABLE foo := bar and be shown with mysqladmin variables or SHOW [GLOBAL|SESSION] VARIABLES [LIKE '%foo%'].

Generally status variables start with a capital letter and server variables with a lowercase one.

When dealing with the above mentioned per-session system variables it should always be considered that those have to be multiplied by max_connections to estimate the maximal memory consumption. Failing to do so can easily lead to server crashes at times of load peaks when more than usual clients connect to the server! A quick and dirty estimation can be made with the following formular:

min_memory_needed = global_buffers + (thread_buffers * max_connections)

global_buffers: key_buffer innodb_buffer_pool innodb_log_buffer innodb_additional_mem_pool net_buffer

thread_buffers: sort_buffer myisam_sort_buffer read_buffer join_buffer read_rnd_buffer

Note: Especially when dealing with server settings, all information should be verified in the respective chapters of the official documentation as these are subject of change and the authors of this text lack confirmed knowledge about how the server works internally.

Index / Indices
Indices are a way to locate elements faster. This works for single elements as well as range of elements.

Experiment
Note: when you make your time tests, make sure the query cache is disabled ( in my.cnf) to force recomputing your queries each time you type them instead of just taking the pre-computed results from the cache.

Let's run the following Perl program:

What does it do? It simulate the data feeds from an industrial lines that weight stuff at regular intervals so we can compute the average material usage. Over time lots of records are piling up.

How to use it? We can check the number of elements with: The size must be important: Incidentally restoring from the dump is way faster, because it uses extended inserts!

This SQL command will scan all records to get a total sum: Let's say we need to compute the total material used during January 1st 2008: MySQL will also need to browse the entire database, even for this tiny number of records. This is because records can be anywhere: at the bottom, at the end, in the middle, nothing guarantees that the records are ordered.

To improve this, we can add an index to the 'date' field. This means MySQL will create a new hidden table with all the date sorted chronologically, and store their offset (position) in the 'weightin' table to retrieve the full record.

Because the index is sorted, it's way faster for MySQL to locate a single record (using a binary search algorithm) or even a range of data (find the first and last element, the range is in-between).

To add the index: The index doesn't work if the query needs computer on the field (e.g. ) but works for ranges (e.g.  ).

You can notice that the .MYD file grew: That's were MySQL stores the indices. Initially there was an index for the 'id' field, which the case for all primary keys.

Another example
Another example: let's say we want to optimise this query:

We can do so by adding an index on the 'line' field, in order to group the doubles together, which will avoid the query to rescan the whole table to localize them:

The index file grew:

General considerations
The first and foremost question that is always asked for SELECT queries is always if indices (aka "keys") are configured and if they are, whether or not they are actually be used by the database server.

Individual queries can be checked with the "EXPLAIN" command. For the whole server the "Sort_%" variables should be monitored as they indicate how often MySQL had to browse through the whole data file because there was no usable index available.
 * 1. Check if the indices are actually used

Keeping the indices in memory improves read performance a lot. The quotient of "Key_reads / Key_read_requests" tells how often MySQL actually accessed the index file on disk when it needed a key. Same goes for Key_writes, use mysqlreport to do the math for you here. If the percentage is too high, key_buffer_size for MyISAM and innodb_buffer_pool_size for InnoDB are the corresponding variables to tune.
 * 2. Are the indices buffered

The Key_blocks_% variables can be used to see how much of the configured key buffer is actually used. The unit is 1KB if not set otherwise in key_cache_block_size. As MySQL uses some blocks internally, key_blocks_unused has to be checked. To estimate how big the buffer should be, the sizes of the relevant .MYI files can be summed up. For InnoDB there is innodb_buffer_pool_size although in this case not only the indices but also the data gets buffered.

 * 3. Further settings

sort_buffer_size (per-thread) is the memory that is used for ORDER BY and GROUP BY. myisam_sort_buffer_size is something completely different and should not be altered.

read_buffer_size (per-thread) is the size of memory chunks that are read from disk into memory at once when doing a full table scan as big tables do not fit into memory completely. This seldomly needs tuning.

Query cache
The main reason not to use any MySQL version below 4.0.1 if you have read-based applications is that beginning with that version, MySQL has the ability to store the result of SELECT queries until their tables are modified.

The Query Cache can be configured with the query_cache_% variables. Most important here are the global query_cache_size and query_cache_limit which prevents single queries with unusual big results larger than this size to use up the whole cache.

Note that the Query Cache blocks have a variable size whose minimum size is query_cache_min_res_unit, so after a complete cache flush the number of free blocks is ideally just one. A large value of Qcache_free_blocks just indicates a high fragmentation.

Worth monitoring are the following variables:
 * Qcache_free_blocks
 * If this value is high it indicates a high fragmentation which does not need to be a bad thing though.

 * Qcache_not_cached
 * If this value is high there are either much uncachable queries (e.g. because they use functions like now) or the value for query_cache_limit is too low.

 * Qcache_lowmem_prunes
 * This is the number of old results that have been purged because the cache was full and not because their underlying tables have been modified. query_cache_size must be increased to lower this variable.

Examples:

An empty cache: mysql> SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'query_cache_type'; +--+---+ | Variable_name   | Value | +--+---+ | query_cache_type | ON   | +--+---+ 1 row in set (0.00 sec) mysql> SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'query_cache_size'; +--+---+ | Variable_name   | Value | +--+---+ | query_cache_size | 0    | +--+---+ 1 row in set (0.00 sec) mysql> SHOW STATUS LIKE 'Qcache%'; +-+---+ | Variable_name          | Value | +-+---+ | Qcache_free_blocks     | 0     | | Qcache_free_memory     | 0     | | Qcache_hits            | 0     | | Qcache_inserts         | 0     | | Qcache_lowmem_prunes   | 0     | | Qcache_not_cached      | 0     | | Qcache_queries_in_cache | 0    | | Qcache_total_blocks    | 0     | +-+---+ 8 rows in set (0.00 sec)

A used cache (savannah.gnu.org): mysql> SHOW VARIABLES LIKE "query_cache_size"; +--+--+ | Variable_name   | Value    | +--+--+ | query_cache_size | 33554432 | +--+--+ 1 row in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> SHOW STATUS LIKE "Qcache%"; +-+--+ | Variable_name          | Value    | +-+--+ | Qcache_free_blocks     | 1409     | | Qcache_free_memory     | 27629552 | | Qcache_hits            | 7925191  | | Qcache_inserts         | 3400435  | | Qcache_lowmem_prunes   | 2946778  | | Qcache_not_cached      | 71255    | | Qcache_queries_in_cache | 4546    | | Qcache_total_blocks    | 10575    | +-+--+ 8 rows in set (0.00 sec)

The matching  configuration parameter is: query_cache_size = 32M

To clear the cache (useful when testing a new query's efficiency): mysql> RESET QUERY CACHE; Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

Waiting for locks
The Table_locks_% variables show the number of queries that had to wait because the tables they tried to access where currently locked by other queries. These situations can be caused by "LOCK TABLE" statements and also by e.g. simultaneous write accesses to the same table.

Table cache
MySQL needs a certain time just to "open" a table and read its meta data like column names etc.

If many threads are trying to access the same table, it is opened multiple times.

To speed this up the meta data can be cached in the table_cache (alias table_open_cache since MySQL 5.1.3).

A good value for this setting is the number of max_connections multiplied with the number of usually used tables per SELECT.

Using mysqlreport or by looking at the currently Open_tables and ever since Opened_tables as well as the Uptime the number of necessary table opens per second can be calculated (consider the off-peak times like nights though).

Connections and threads
For every client connection (aka session) MySQL creates a separated thread under the main mysqld process. For big sites with several hundred new connections per second, creating the threads itself can consume a significant amount of time. To speed things up, idle threads can be cached after their client disconnected. As a rule of thumb not more than one thread per second should be newly created. Clients that send several queries to the server should use persistent connections like with PHPs mysql_pconnect function.

This cache can be configured by thread_cache_size and monitored with the threads_% variables.

To avoid overloads MySQL blocks new connections if more than max_connections are currently in use. Start with max_used_connections and monitor the number of connection that were rejected in Aborted_clients and the ones that timed out in Aborted_connections. Forgotten disconnects from clients that use persistent connections can easily lead to a denial of service situation so be aware! Normally connections are closed after wait_timeout seconds of being idle.

Temporary tables
It is perfectly normal that MySQL creates temporary tables while sorting or grouping results. Those tables are either be held in memory or if too large be written to disk which is naturally much slower. The number of disk tables among the Created_tmp_% variables should be neglectible or else the settings in max_heap_table_size and tmp_table_size be reconsidered.

Delayed writes
In situations like writing webserver access log files to a database, with many subsequent INSERT queries for rather unimportant data into the same table, the performance can be improved by advising the server to cache the write requests a little while and then send a whole batch of data to disk.

Be aware though that all mentioned methods contradicts ACID compliance because INSERT queries are acknowledged with OK to the client before the data has actually be written to disk and thus can still get lost in case of an power outage or server crash. Additionally the side effects mentioned in the documentation often reads like a patient information leaflet of a modern medicament...

MyISAM tables can be given the DELAY_KEY_WRITE option using CREATE or ALTER TABLE. The drawback is that after a crash the table is automatically marked as corrupt and has to be checked/repaired which can take some time.

InnoDB can be told with innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit to delay writing the data a bit. In case of a server crash the data itself is supposed to be still consistent, just the indices have to be rebuilt.

INSERT DELAYED works on main Storage Engines on a per query base.

title: MySQL/Optimization


text:
User talk:204.39.18.143

Thanks for experimenting with Wikibooks. Your test worked, and has now been removed. Please use Sandbox for any other tests you want to do, since testing material in modules will normally be removed quickly. Please see the welcome page if you would like to learn more about contributing to our project. Thanks. -- Herby talk thyme 15:03, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

title: User talk:204.39.18.143


text:
Information and Communication Technologies for Poverty Alleviation/Conclusion

Conclusion
Alleviating poverty with ICTs is not as straightforward as merely installing the technology, but it is not conceptually complex either. Provided a few relatively simple principles can be followed, it seems likely that widespread poverty alleviation can be achieved with ICTs. The main challenges are not actually in the technology; they lie in the coordination of a disparate set of local and national factors, each of which can derail efforts if not taken into account.

In summary, the following five principles emerge from the ICT for Poverty Alleviation Framework described above:

 * Strategize for poverty alleviation, not for ICT
 * Reform telecommunications through privatization, competition and independent regulation
 * Promote public access: aggregate demand for sustainability (which is not only financial)
 * Reform institutions to achieve transformational benefits
 * Develop appropriate approaches for listening to the poor

As a crosscutting multidimensional approach to development, ICTs can stretch implementation energies to the full. They also challenge traditional approaches to development. But they promise substantial improvements in the daily lives of millions of poor people. The framework for poverty alleviation is offered as a tool for guiding efforts towards achieving this potential. The framework allows for a full consideration of the range of relevant critical factors prior to embarking on implementation as well as for post-hoc reflections on outcomes. It represents a first effort, and it is acknowledged that other, similar tools exist. Through a combination and further synthesis of experiences and observations, the framework can become a practical tool for use by planners and policy-makers with general applicability in multiple contexts.


text:
Metal Gear Series

This book is designed to give detailed facts and information on the fictional universe of the Metal Gear videogame series. Most of the information in this book is based on plot details given in the Metal Gear videogames themselves, as well as various documents related to the series.

Table of Contents

 * 1) Timeline
 * 2) /Early History/
 * 3) /Big Boss Era/
 * 4) /Solid Snake Era/
 * 5) /Comparisons to Reality/
 * 6) Plot Summary
 * 7) /Outer Heaven Uprising/
 * 8) /Zanzibar Land Disturbance/
 * 9) In the Darkness of Shadow Moses: The Unofficial Truth
 * 10) /The New York Mirror/
 * 11) /The Shocking Conspiracy Behind Shadow Moses/
 * 12) Character Biographies
 * 13) /Solid Snake/
 * 14) /Big Boss/
 * 15) /Raiden/
 * 16) /Ocelot/
 * 17) /Roy Campbell/
 * 18) /Gray Fox/
 * 19) /Liquid Snake/
 * 20) /Solidus Snake/
 * 21) /Otacon/
 * 22) /Meryl Silverburgh/
 * 23) Places
 * 24) /Tselinoyarsk/
 * 25) /Outer Heaven/
 * 26) /Zanzibar Land/
 * 27) /Shadow Moses Island/
 * 28) /USS Discovery Tanker/
 * 29) /Big Shell/
 * 30) Organizations
 * 31) /The Philosophers/
 * 32) /The Patriots/
 * 33) /FOX/
 * 34) /FOXHOUND/
 * 35) Strategy guide for Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain

title: Metal Gear Series


text:
Java Programming/Applets/Graphics and Media

Painting
By overriding the  and   methods of an Applet (or one of its subcomponents), you can have fairly direct control over the rendering of an Applet. The Graphics object provides various primitives for working for two-dimensional graphics.


text:
User talk:59.92.143.21

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title: User talk:59.92.143.21


text:
Cookbook:Chokladboll (Swedish Chocolate Balls)

A chokladboll (literally meaning chocolate ball) is a traditional Swedish pastry often eaten with coffee during fika. They are quick and easy to prepare, since they require no baking and only a few, common ingredients.

Ingredients

 * 3 ¼ cups (500 g / 1.1 lb) quick oats
 * 1 ¼ cups (275 g / 9.7 oz) white granulated sugar
 * 6 Tbsp (75 g / 2.6 oz) cocoa
 * 1 Tbsp (15 ml / 14 g / 0.49 oz) vanilla sugar OR 1 tsp (5 ml / 0.17 oz) vanilla extract, added with the coffee
 * ⅔ cup (160 g / 5.6 oz) butter or margarine, softened
 * 6 Tbsp (90 ml / 3 oz) cold coffee
 * Flaked coconut or pearl sugar

Procedure

 * 1) Mix oats, sugar, vanilla sugar, and cocoa in a large bowl.
 * 2) Using your hands or a potato masher, incorporate the butter into the dry ingredients until the dough has an even consistency.
 * 3) Add the coffee and mix until incorporated.
 * 4) Fill a small bowl with flaked coconut or pearl sugar.
 * 5) With your hands, roll the dough into 1-inch (3 cm) diameter balls.
 * 6) Roll each ball in the coconut or pearl sugar and place on a tray.
 * 7) Chill chocolate balls for at least one hour before serving.