Forced distribution method

This system is used to eliminate or minimize rater’s bias so that all the personnel may not be placed at the higher end or lower end of the scale. It requires the rater to apprise an employee according to a predetermined distribution scale under this system it is performance and promo ability. For this purpose a five point performance scale is used with out any descriptive statement. Employees are placed between the two extreme good or bad job performances. For ex 10% given to outstanding, 20% given to good and 40% given to satisfactory.

Limitation-
This method use in wage administration leads to low morale and low productive.

Checklist method
Under this method the rater does not evaluate employee performance; he supplies report about it and the final rating is done by personnel department. A series of question are presented concerning an employee to his behavior. The rater then checks to indicate if the answer to a question about an employee is positive or negative. The value of each question may be weighed equally or certain question may be weighed more heavily then others.

Example-

Is the employee really interested in job? Yes/no
Is he regular on his job? Yes/no
Is his equipment maintained in order? Yes/no
Does he ever make mistake? Yes/no
Does he follow instruction properly? Yes/no

Limitation-
This method suffers from bias on the part of the rater because he can distinguish positive or negative question
Process can be expensive and time consuming
Separate checklist must be developed.

Free essay method

Under this method the supervisor makes a free form, open ended appraisal of an employee in his own words and put down its impression about the employee. He takes note of these factors

Relation with fellow supervisor
General organization and planning ability
Job knowledge and potential
Employee characteristics and attitude
Production, quality, and cost control
Physical condition and
Development needs

Limitation-
It contains a subjective evaluation of the reported behavior of an individual may effect such employment decision as promotion, lay-off. Etc.
Some appraisal may not write a descriptive report
The appraisal may be loaded with flowery language about the quality of rate then the actual evaluation

Critical incident method

The essence of this system is that it attempts to measure workers performance in terms of certain events and episode that occur in the performance rates job. These events are known as critical incident method. The supervisor keeps a written record of the event that can easily recalled and used at the time of performance appraisal.

Limitation
Negative incident are generally more noticeable than positive ones
The supervisor may be put off and easily forgotten
Very close supervision may be required and it may not be like by the employee

Straight ranking method

It is the oldest and simplest method of performance appraisal, by which the man and his performance are considered as an entity by the rater. No attempt is to be made to fractionalize the rate; the whole man compared with the whole man; that is the ranking of a man in a work group is done against that of another. The relative position of each man is tasted in terms of his numerical rank.

Limitation- this is the simplest method of separating the most efficient from the least efficient and relatively easy to develop and use. But the greatest limitation of his method is the as described below:-

In practice it is very difficult to compare a single individual with human beings having various behavior traits.
The method only tells us how a man stands in relation to the others in the group but does not indicate how much better or worse he is than another.
It is difficult task when large number of person are rated
It does not eliminate snap judgment.

Grading Method

Under this system, the rater consider certain feature and marks them accordingly to the scale, train categories of worth are first established and carefully defined. The selected feature may be analytical ability, cooperativeness, dependability, self-expression, job knowledge, leadership, etc they may be as below:-

A-out standing B-very good C-average D-fair E-poor

These are used in the selection of candidates by the public service commission.

Limitation-
in this method we can’t get the actual performance of the employee. for example if consider that those employee who got 50 to 60 point is in average then the who got 50 point may be de motivated and who got 51 point may be happy with that appraisal .

Graphic Rating Method

This is the most commonly used method of performance appraisal. Under it a printed form one for each person to be rated. The factors which are including in this method are employee characteristics and employee contribution. In employee characteristics are included are leadership, attitude, enthusiasm, locality creative ability, analytical ability, co-ordination. In the employee contribution are include the quantity and quality of work, the responsibility assumed, specific goal achieved, regularity of attendance. These traits then evaluated on continuous scale where in the rather place a mark somewhere along a continuum.

Limitation-
However this method also not free from limitation
The rating is generally subjective often the rating cluster on the high side when this method is used
Another severe limitation is that it assume that each characteristics is equally important for all jobs

Forced choice description Method

it attempts to correct a rater tendency to give consistently high or low rating to all the employees under this method the rating elements are several sets of pair phrases or adjective relating to job proficiency and personal qualification the following statement are illustrative of the type of statement that are used

Organize the work well
Lacks the ability to make people feel at ease
Has a cool even temperament
Is punctual and careful
Is a hard worker and co-operative

Limitation-
Trained technicians are required prepare sets of series for each occupational group
Most of the raters become irritated with the test because they are not being trusted
The result of evaluation doesn’t prove useful for training purposes because the rater is ignorant of how he is evaluating the individual.

UNDERSTANDING PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL METHODS

Once the employees has been selected, trained and motivated, they are then appraised for their performance. Performance appraisal is the step where the management finds out how effective it has been hiring and placing employees. If any problem is identified, steps are taken to communicate with the employees and to remedy them. So “a performance appraisal is a process of evaluating an employees performance of a job in terms of its requirement “.

Several methods and techniques of appraisal are available for measurement of the performance of the employee. The methods and scales differ for obvious reason. First they differ in sources of traits and qualities to be apprised. The quality may differ because of difference in job requirements. Second they differ because of different kinds of workers who are being rated .third the variation may be caused by the degree of precision attempted in an evaluation. Finally they differ because of the method used to obtain weighting for various traits.

The performance appraisal method is divided into three categories as given below:-

>> Trait-based method
>> Behavioral method
>> Comparative method
>> Result oriented method

The part concerned with me is the comparative methods
There are so many methods which are include in comparative method but the most important and most popular are given as below:-

- Straight ranking method
- Grading method
- Graphing rating method
- Forced choice description method
- Forced distribution methods
- Check list method
- Critical incident method
- Free from easy method

Prominently, Oracle is the name of the database management system that is introduced by the Oracle Corporation.

Referring to Oracle products, Oracle9i is the latest product released by Oracle Corporation. In comparison to Oracle products and unlike Oracle8i, which is only a database management system, Oracle9i comprises of the following software:

Oracle9i Application Server – Oracle9iAS

Oracle9i Database Server – Oracle9iDB

Oracle9i Developer Suite – Oracle9iDS

More elaborately, Oracle9i is a platform and not a simple database management system.

By the way, Oracle9iDB is the database management system that is used to store and access data. Oracle is the most widely used relational database management system (RDBMS).

Be acknowledged, the Oracle Corporation is second largest software company next to Microsoft. Oracle Corporation has been targeting Internet programming with the caption – software powers the internet.

Furthermore, Oracle Corporation is also into Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). It has Oracle Applications that includes Oracle Financials and many more.

The Oracle Database-Server

As we know that Oracle database server is one of the databases that are widely used in client/server computing as back-end. Front-end programs that are written using application development tools such as Visual basic access Oracle and submit SQL commands for execution.

Oracle8i onwards oracle is trying to provide extra facilities that are required to be an internet database.

We know that the Oracle8i provides special features to support various types of data that is to be stored in web sites. Oracle supports both OLTP (online transaction processing) applications as well data warehouse applications, which contain a very large database (VLDB).

One of the biggest advantages of Oracle has been its presence on around 100 different platforms. Oracle is quite scalable, which means it can scale up and down very easily as the requirements change.

Oracle also provides Java Virtual Machine (JVM) as part of database. This enables oracle to run java programs. In fact, starting from Oracle8i, oracle can run programs written either in PL/SQL or Java.

What is Oracle Instance?

The Oracle instance is a collection of memory structures and processed that is used to manage oracle database. Each oracle database is to be accessed by one or more Oracle instances. If two or more instances are accessing the same database, it is called as parallel server architecture.

Whenever we start using an oracle database, we must first start Oracle instance. Oracle instance will them open the database and make it available to users.

Furthermore in the nutshell, every oracle installation contains at least one Oracle Instance and one oracle database

Understanding a Personal-Oracle

When talking about the Personal Oracle, it is one of the flavors of Oracle. This is not a product that is used by production system (systems where real data is stored). Elaborately, this is more like a learning tool since it runs on desktop PCs. In personal oracle, oracle instance, oracle database and client application all run on the same machine (see figure 3). Unlike others, in the Oracle database server, only oracle instance and database reside on the server and client applications run on clients.

Moreover, it is also possible to develop an applications using Personal Oracle on your desktop/laptop and deploy them in a client/server environment.

OSI PHYSICAL LAYER

Topology: Physical arrangements of the network.

Transmission Media: The type of media we will use to send information.

Types of Topology:

Bus Topology:

Advantages: It’s the cheapest type of topology, easy to implement, used on smaller networks and can be used in distributed networks.

Disadvantages: It’s a passive technology in which a user cannot regenerate signals. Number of users is limited and if its break on any one point whole network will be dead.

Ring Topology:

Advantages: it’s an active topology because it can regenerate signals. Easy to implement and can be used in distributed networks

Disadvantages: It was also need at a certain extent because it was not available to all the users what we want. If it is break on any one point whole network will be dead.

Star Topology:

Advantages: There is a central connecting device by which every computer is connected separately. If one physical link is break only this computer will be dead, it will not disturb the others. It can be passive as well as active topology. It was passive before now it is active due to LAN Switches which checks, examines and regenerates the signal. It can support large number of users.

Disadvantages: Expensive as compared to other topologies.

Central Device: Ethernet – Hub, Ethernet – Switch, Token Ring – MAU.

Star – Bus Topology / Hybrid:

When it’s a combination of star and bus such as star is within the building and to connect buildings we use bus topology.

WAN Topologies:

In WAN (World Wide Area Network) we have four topologies.

Daisy Chain: When computers at different cities are connected to each other like a bus topology. The head of one is connected to the tail of another. It’s not purely like a bus, the network are connected to one another in form of links. If one link of networks is dead the other will be disconnected, it’s slow. It is used only where branch office is connected to head office and secondly the importance of time and response is not needed.

Hub & Spoke: When networks are connected to one another in the form of star topology, there is one central network which is connected to all other network. If one link is down, the others will not be disturbed. It’s faster than the daisy chain but its cost is higher than the previous one. Cost is dependent on the distance and geographical location.

Mesh Topology: Any source has more than one links exist is called mesh topology. Its selected due to when the time of link is critical in mesh a single point is connected to every other point. It’s very reliable as compared to other types. We need more links to connect these points, if one link is down that other links will not be interrupted.

Partial Mesh Topology: Every link is not connected to every another link but still using more than one path to transmit information to link. Its combination of daisy chain with fully mesh or hub & spoke. It’s not necessary you use a single topology in WAN, you combine different topologies depending on the business scenario by taking care of pros and cons.