My neighbours acquired a Gread Dane and were concerned that it would jump over the 2ft 6in high fence into my garden. They were suggesting 6ft high solid panels. I said "Don't be silly! Train the dog." Dogs are 'good' at territorial limits and there never was a problem. He came to look over the fence and sometimes put his paws onto the top to 'say hello' but that was as far as it went.
So why is this relevant? Because (1) You need to define what is and ins't acceptable. (And from that it follows you have some sanctions for offenders.) (2) A lot of trespassing is caused by curiosity. (3) A lot of fence-breaking is caused by wanting a clear view of threats at a distance.
Of course in school there are additional reasons, but let's look at the social dynamics from the maliciously minded student's point of view. (OK some are just careless and it is possible that nobody told them what was/not acceptable.) Do they benefit from their actions? It is up to the school to see that they don't. Simple.
Obviously bad things will still happen so cast-iron tech (a)prevention and (b) restore are necessary, but who would suggest a school policy of 'it's OK for kids to bring weapons because the teachers have bullet proof vests'. Prevention (I repeat because you need both bits: Define 'acceptable' and work out how 'crime' doesn't pay) is a far less expensive strategy than armour plate.
NB Reprobates can onlt be caught if they can be identified. Some audit trail or 'only you have access so it must have been you' tech mothods required.
(2) Because you have to be able to identify offenders
When you read a lot of books in a field or get pointed in the direction of 'works' you need to get a feel for the foibles, leanings and reliability of emphasis of different authors. "Bloggs tends to be dismissive of foo but is just the author to read if you want practical examples." "Smith repeats a lot of stuff without sufficient checking but at least you get to discover the sources." It is these characteristics of authors (or publishers) that will be lost in a hotch-potch.
If you don't need frequent access then all you really need is some high density storage scheme with a logical, position based, retrieval method and approximate indexing. The highest density is of course without any case or envelope. Some have suggested sliding onto a central spool but this is far inferior (in terms of random access and having all labels in the same orientation) to being filed on edge on two bars. (As in oOo where the O is the CD). Let's suppose you want to put some bars like this in a drawer, which way should the bars go? Probably front to back. Now all discs can be stored with the label/id in the same orientation.
Now you have a sliced polyester saussage which needs 'book ends' to stop slumping. One end would be the back of the drawer and the other either a heavy lump or a magnet that sticks to the bottom of the drawer.
What about access? Very simple. You know the dates of arrival so all you do is put a file card with the date on slipped between one day's batch and the next. Or if you seralise and keep a database do the same with each 50 discs. Write the date/serial on the corner of the card and it will show beyond the discs.
Finally if thee is a certain amount of taking out and putting back you take a batch of 100, or a whole saussage and with a marker pen draw a line along the saussage at 12 o'clock in red so putting a small red blob on the edge of all discs. Now take say a blue marker pen and draw a line starting at one end of the saussage at say 11 o'clock and ending at the other end at say 1 o'clock, ie a diagonal line. This means that if a disc is replaced in the wrong position or a bunch have been removed you can see immediately by the discontinuity in the diagonal line.
Back when dinosaurs ruled the earth I used a thing called Clarion (MS DOS) which was fantastic for running up database applications quickly to show to the user what was possible. In fact one of these lasted 15 years! (The oldest thing in the office by far except the people.)
I'm currently trying to find a framework that lets me bash in a few schemas, press a button and hey-presto we have a starting point for discussion where the user can see why I've been 'getting everything back to front' as they see it 'cos I have the vision and they have blinkers.
Trying to find an industrial strength framework that actually works (for me) out of the box is taking a lot of time.
Being of the Old School I'm not too happy with the relative opaqueness of application generators. If I was to commit to developing a real app using a framework then I'd need to spend a lot of time finding out how it really works. At this stage in their evolution I'll postpone that investment for about a year. My criteria are (1)Robustness (2)Portability (3)Good docs (4)Tweakability.
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My neighbours acquired a Gread Dane and were concerned that it would jump over the 2ft 6in high fence into my garden. They were suggesting 6ft high solid panels. I said "Don't be silly! Train the dog." Dogs are 'good' at territorial limits and there never was a problem. He came to look over the fence and sometimes put his paws onto the top to 'say hello' but that was as far as it went. So why is this relevant? Because (1) You need to define what is and ins't acceptable. (And from that it follows you have some sanctions for offenders.) (2) A lot of trespassing is caused by curiosity. (3) A lot of fence-breaking is caused by wanting a clear view of threats at a distance. Of course in school there are additional reasons, but let's look at the social dynamics from the maliciously minded student's point of view. (OK some are just careless and it is possible that nobody told them what was/not acceptable.) Do they benefit from their actions? It is up to the school to see that they don't. Simple. Obviously bad things will still happen so cast-iron tech (a)prevention and (b) restore are necessary, but who would suggest a school policy of 'it's OK for kids to bring weapons because the teachers have bullet proof vests'. Prevention (I repeat because you need both bits: Define 'acceptable' and work out how 'crime' doesn't pay) is a far less expensive strategy than armour plate. NB Reprobates can onlt be caught if they can be identified. Some audit trail or 'only you have access so it must have been you' tech mothods required. (2) Because you have to be able to identify offenders
When you read a lot of books in a field or get pointed in the direction of 'works' you need to get a feel for the foibles, leanings and reliability of emphasis of different authors. "Bloggs tends to be dismissive of foo but is just the author to read if you want practical examples." "Smith repeats a lot of stuff without sufficient checking but at least you get to discover the sources." It is these characteristics of authors (or publishers) that will be lost in a hotch-potch.
Now you have a sliced polyester saussage which needs 'book ends' to stop slumping. One end would be the back of the drawer and the other either a heavy lump or a magnet that sticks to the bottom of the drawer.
What about access? Very simple. You know the dates of arrival so all you do is put a file card with the date on slipped between one day's batch and the next. Or if you seralise and keep a database do the same with each 50 discs. Write the date/serial on the corner of the card and it will show beyond the discs.
Finally if thee is a certain amount of taking out and putting back you take a batch of 100, or a whole saussage and with a marker pen draw a line along the saussage at 12 o'clock in red so putting a small red blob on the edge of all discs. Now take say a blue marker pen and draw a line starting at one end of the saussage at say 11 o'clock and ending at the other end at say 1 o'clock, ie a diagonal line. This means that if a disc is replaced in the wrong position or a bunch have been removed you can see immediately by the discontinuity in the diagonal line.
Back when dinosaurs ruled the earth I used a thing called Clarion (MS DOS) which was fantastic for running up database applications quickly to show to the user what was possible. In fact one of these lasted 15 years! (The oldest thing in the office by far except the people.)
I'm currently trying to find a framework that lets me bash in a few schemas, press a button and hey-presto we have a starting point for discussion where the user can see why I've been 'getting everything back to front' as they see it 'cos I have the vision and they have blinkers.
Trying to find an industrial strength framework that actually works (for me) out of the box is taking a lot of time.
Being of the Old School I'm not too happy with the relative opaqueness of application generators. If I was to commit to developing a real app using a framework then I'd need to spend a lot of time finding out how it really works. At this stage in their evolution I'll postpone that investment for about a year. My criteria are (1)Robustness (2)Portability (3)Good docs (4)Tweakability.