Data is a critical asset for any organization, and managing it effectively is essential for driving business value and achieving competitive advantage. As such, CIOs need to play a key role in ensuring that their organizations are managing data effectively. This article highlights some of the things that CIOs need to do with data. Develop a data management strategy The first step for any CIO in managing data effectively is to develop a data management strategy. This strategy should outline how the organization will manage data, including how it will be collected, stored, secured, analyzed, and used. The strategy should
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Loop it up: Unleash the power of for loops! I use for loops way more than I use while loops. It seems like most of the time I’m reading items from a database: for loops are perfect for that. I tend to use while loops in Java programs where I need to execute some code until the program terminates; that’s not realistic in PHP. In web-programming, I almost exclusively use for and foreach loops. In most programming languages, the for loop follows the following syntax: for (exp_before; exp_before_loop_body; exp_after) { loop_body } Once PHP encounters the for loop, it looks at the expression exp_before to initialize the necessary variables that are required by the loop. When
What do you do while Doing Do-While Loops? A regular while loop will skip over the loop body if the expression that’s evaluated is never true. But what if we need the contents of the body to be executed at least once? That’s what the do-while loop does for us. <?php $will_execute = false; while ( $will_execute ) { echo “I will execute at least once”; } ?> Looking at the code above, the while loop will never execute since the expression is always false. PHP will just skip over it. In this example, we want the statement to execute at least once. We want PHP to
Regardless of the intention, if you come into an organization outside of an IT role and immediately divert your attention towards IT, you will be judged. The IT department is there to assist other departments, no question about that. I don’t want you to think that we’re talking about people that need tools in order to perform their jobs. No, these are the individuals that will write you an email on day one of starting their position and tell you exactly what IT needs to do to improve the organization. The other group is the group that’s barely holding on
This Might take a While If you’ve never been introduced to the concept of a loop, think about it this way. Let’s say that you’re looking at an excel sheet. In that excel sheet you have rows that go down the sheet. Each row has some data inside of it. To read the contents of the next row, you move down. You can keep reading the contents of each row up until you reach the last row of that excel sheet. With a loop, you can read the information from a particular row, add 1 to the current row number,
Why Not “Switch” from If/Else? Are you tired of writing if/elseif/elseif/…/else statements? You’re not alone. There is a more elegant way to write such large statements: the PHP switch statement. Let’s take a look at the anatomy of the switch statement. switch ( $arg ) { case “value_1”: expression if matched value_1 break; // terminate case “value_2”: expression if matched value_2 break; // terminate … default: execute if no cases matched } The switch statement accepts an argument. It has a series of “cases” that could potentially match the value of the argument. If it matches, the statements inside of that particular case are executed.
tired of if/else? How about ternary? The PHP Ternary Operator is a way to quickly express if/else statements. The ternary operator follows the following syntax: ( boolean expression ) ? if_true : if_false; If the boolean expression evaluates to true, the “if_true” result is displayed, otherwise the “if_false” result is displayed. Just as a quick recap, the normal if/else syntax looks like the following: <?php $expression = true; if ( $expression ) { // do statement if true } else { // do statement if false } ?> This gets redundant especially when you’re just echoing
Elseif: Between if and Else When you have more than 2 outcomes in your decision making, you’re going to need to use the PHP elseif statement. The elseif keyword goes in between the if and the else keywords. Your primary condition is handled by the if statement. If the condition is met inside of the if statement, there’s no point in testing any other conditions. The code that’s inside of the if statement body is executed and the remainder of the elseif/else statements are skipped. When the condition is not met, PHP will check the elseif statements next. If a condition matches, the code inside of that particular elseif statement body will execute and PHP will skip the remainder
What else is there? The PHP Else statements execute when the if statement’s condition evaluates to false. Remember, the expressions inside of the if statement can only execute when the conditional expression evaluates to true. The else keyword is appended right after the closing curly brace of the if statement. <?php $exercised = false; if ( $exercised ) { echo “You’re being healthy.”; } else { echo “Crickets”; ?> When the programmer chooses to omit the curly braces from the if statement because of a single line expression, the else keyword is appended immediately below the expression that’s
What is Cybersecurity? Easy question with a not-so-straightforward answer. The definition differs based on the person or organization that you ask. A person that needs to safeguard their Instagram account will define Cybersecurity much differently than an organization that deals with patient data, and even that organization will define it differently than a government that’s safeguarding its citizens. Individuals are mostly concerned with securing their personal data and keeping their accounts protected from hijackers. They want their devices operating efficiently and without prying eyes. Businesses need not only worry about their intellectual property, they also need to secure customer