RateMyProfessors Review Site - Essay Example

With increased traffic, RateMyProfessors.com put in a 2-level filtering process for weeding our fake faculty profiles. Once any faculty profile was created, the back program would interact with Google APIs and search for clues regarding the authenticities of the profile.

For example, if a new profile for Carlos Alva has been created claiming this person to be a faculty with Stanford University, then the program would interact with Google through Google API and search for “Carlos Alva Stanford University”. In case there are any results, the profile will be allowed to be rated. If there are no results of the above-given search, the profile will be flagged for further human review. This twin filtering of profiles created helped RateMyProfessor.com weed out fake faculty profiles. (Swapceinski J., April 2002)

2- Describe the different types of databases, and why should Google use a relational database, please be as detailed as possible and use many outside references.

Databases can be categorized under various kinds based on the architecture, and the types of databases include relational databases, flat file databases, hierarchical databases, network databases, and hybrid databases. (Peterson, n.d.)

While flat file databases mimic the construction of a table where data is contained in cells (rows and columns), a hierarchical database contains multiple levels connected by nodes. Relational databases are an extended form of flat file databases and consist of multiple tables connected through a key field. A network database is a type of database where each data can have multiple owners. This is unlike a relational database where there are no owners and a hierarchical database that has only one owner.

Relational databases offer several advantages over other databases, namely, reduced redundancy, increased scalability, and data integrity. Google uses a range of factors, including hyperlinks by other web pages, to determine the relative importance of a web page. (Annam V., n.d.)

A relational database offers better results for Google as hyperlinks have been assigned some importance in Google’s algorithm. So, the relative importance of a web page depends on on-site data as well as its relationship with other web pages (data). A relevant result for a keyword search will require an “assembly” of information from multiple data sources. Read More