PHP- Automated Housekeeping
Queries are run by users through the web interface and by administrators through either administrative web interfaces or from the MySQL command interpreter. However, sometimes automated querying is necessary to produce periodic reports, update data, or delete temporary data. We discuss how queries can be automated in this section.

To show how queries can be automated, consider an example from the online winestore. The shopping cart in the online winestore is implemented using the winestore database. As discussed in Chapter 12, when an anonymous user adds a wine to their shopping basket, an order row is added to the orders table. The row is for a dummy customer with a cust_id=-1, and the next available order_id for this dummy customer. A related items row is created for each item in the shopping cart. The order_id is maintained in the session variable order_no so that orders by different anonymous customers aren’t confused.

Our system requirements in Chapter 1 specify that if a customer doesn’t purchase the wines in their shopping cart within one day, then the shopping cart should be emptied. This is an example of a DELETE operation that should be automated. It is impractical to require the administrator to run this query each day to remove junk data.

The following query can be run from the Linux shell to remove all orders rows that are more than one day old and are for the dummy customer:

% /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql -uusername -psecret
-e ‘USE winestore; DELETE FROM orders WHERE
unix_timestamp(date) <
(unix_timestamp(date_add(now( ), interval -1 day)))
AND cust_id = -1;’
The MySQL time and date function unix_timestamp( ) converts a timestamp attribute to an integer that is accurate to the nearest second. In this query, we compare the value of the entry in the orders table with the value of exactly one day earlier from the current date and time. If the row is older than one day, then it is deleted. The same query works for the items table, when orders is replaced with items in the FROM clause.

13.1.1 cron Jobs
Having designed and tested the query, it can be inserted into a Unix cron table to automate the operation. The crond daemon is a process that runs by default in a Linux installation and continually checks the time. If any of the entries in user tables match the current time, then the commands in the entries are executed. Consider an example:

30 17 * * mon-fri echo ‘Go home!’
This prints the string at 5:30 p.m. each working day. The two asterisks mean every day of the month, and every month of the year respectively. The string mon-fri means the days Monday to Friday inclusive. More details about cron can be found by running man crontab in a Linux shell.

We can add our housekeeping query to our cron table by running:

% crontab -e
This edits the user’s cron table.

We have decided that the system should check for old shopping carts every 30 minutes. To do so, we add the following two lines to the file:

0 * * * * /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql -uusername -psecret
-e ‘USE winestore; DELETE FROM orders WHERE
unix_timestamp(date) <
(unix_timestamp(date_add(now( ), interval -1 day)))
AND cust_id = -1;’

30 * * * * /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql -uusername -psecret
-e ‘USE winestore; DELETE FROM items WHERE
unix_timestamp(date) <
(unix_timestamp(date_add(now( ), interval -1 day)))
AND cust_id = -1;’
The first line contains the complete query command for the orders table from earlier in this section, and the second line the items query. The shopping cart orders DELETE query runs exactly on each hour, while the items DELETE query runs at 30 minutes past each hour. Different times are used to balance the DBMS load.

Reports, updates, delete operations, and other tasks can be added to the cron table in a similar way. For example, we can output a simple report of the number of bottles purchased yesterday and send this to our email address each morning:

0 8 * * * mon-fri /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql -uusername
-psecret -e ‘USE winestore; SELECT sum(qty) FROM
items WHERE unix_timestamp(date) >
(unix_timestamp(date_add(now( ), interval -1 day))) AND
cust_id != -1;’ | mail help@webdatabasebook.com
We could also have automatically written the information to a log file or to a table in the database.

More PHP Tutorial

Everyday companies across America are realizing the benefits of automated payments. There are literally billions of electronic payments being processed each year through the ACH (Automated Clearing House) System. Since 1974 this nationwide network has provided business and government agencies with a fast, inexpensive way to move money.

In the same way that technology has had an impact on the way we live and work, so it has changed the way in which we make payments. Increasingly, we are choosing to use automated payments rather than paper based payments such as checks and bankers’ drafts.

In 2004 there were a record 4.8 billion automated payments (4.5 billion of those were processed by BACS). 93% of automated payments are bulk transactions generated by organizations and businesses both large and small and are: direct debits, used mainly to pay utility bills, life and general insurance premiums and various subscriptions; direct credits, used mainly for salary payments, pensions, annuities and child benefit.

The remaining 7% is made up of inter-bank telephone and online banking payments and standing order payments.

Even with the best intentions, some of your customers will have difficulty making every monthly payment to your office on time. You can continue spending a small fortune on sophisticated billing and collection systems, or you can switch over to one of the fastest growing methods for receiving monthly payments from your customers.

With proper authorization, you can collect money from your customers in one banking day, no matter where they bank in the United States (given funds availability). Gone forever are the days of manually processing payments. No longer will you wait for a check in the mail. No more printing or processing paper items. No time, money or administrative energy spent on doing things the “old way.” And, no more excuses for late payments.

These systems also include the use of Electronic Check Recovery. If a check or pre-authorized payment is returned for non-sufficient funds, your transaction will automatically be re-submitted. Not only does this ability save you time and money, it saves you and your customer the embarrassment of collecting the NSF items.

Virtually any business can benefit from electronic payments, including health clubs, home security companies, internet service providers, leasing companies, insurance companies, merchants on the Internet, wholesale distributors, catalog companies, collection agencies, phone companies, city utilities and many others. Your company is no exception.
What Are The Advantages of Automated Electronic Payments?

Timely Funds Settlement
Less Expensive than Mailing Invoices
Streamlines Your Billing Department
Built-in Recovery for NSF Items
No Cost for NSF Checks
Reliable Cash Flow
Custom Payment System Tailored to Your Business
Internet Payment Solutions
Ability to Take Checks Over the Phone
Direct Payroll Deposit
Software Available
No Cost for Special Equipment
No Customer is too Small

Imagine a future where all payments will be automated…Companies will simply collect the money owed to them by electronically debiting their customer’s bank account…Welcome to the future.

”Automated payments improves cash flow by eliminating the time lag between billing and payment, and saves invoice costs. It also spares clients the hassle of writing and mailing checks. There was a 100% increase in the number of checks cut since 1992 due to small-biz growth…”

Business Week Enterprise/June 22, 1998

Learn about the best automated forex trading software systems. Download automated forex software now!

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The Forex markets are a great way to make money from home. There are many programs online which can help you profit by teaching you market signals and improve your currency trading strategies. If you want to give yourself the best chance of succeeding in Forex, you must try FAP Turbo. This system is a virtual robot which can automatically help you profit through currency trading. Best of all, FAP Turbo comes with a full money back guarantee and you can start with as little as $50. Give it a shot – if you aren’t satisfied with your results you can get a full refund. You have nothing to lose and thousands of dollars to gain!

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The foreign exchange (currency or FX) market is where currency trading takes place. FX transactions typically involve one party purchasing a quantity of one currency in exchange for paying a quantity of another. The Foreign Exchange Market that we see today started evolving during the 1970s when worldover countries gradually switched to floating exchange rate from their erstwhile exchange rate regime, which remained fixed as per the Bretton Woods system till 1971. Today FX market is one of the largest and most liquid financial markets in the world, and includes trading between large banks, central banks, currency speculators, corporations, governments, and other institutions. The average daily volume in the global forex and related markets is continuously growing. Traditional daily turnover was reported to be over US$ 3.2 trillion in April 2007 by the Bank for International Settlements. The purpose of FX market is to facilitate trade and investment. The need for a foreign exchange market arises because of the presence of multifarious international currencies such as US Dollar, Pound Sterling, etc, and the need for trading in such currencies.

The problem can easily be summed in the words ‘selling skill’.

I am not talking about marketing, I am talking about the ability to sell sell sell.

See most people can be good at marketing, but when it comes to selling, it is a whole different story.

To sell something requires more than marketing, it requires an understanding of your buyer. A deep understanding and the ability to communicate in words and images the reason someone should buy whatever it is you are selling and to understand major trends and trend forces to enter the conversation already going on in their mind, as a famous copywriter once said.

But here is the big problem with automated anything: It is not human. It is machineware.

People do not buy from automated systems, they buy from people. They buy from people they trust.

You can automate almost everything in your business except that one intangible thing: the human touch.

To me that is the biggest problem with automated systems on the Internet, the lack of humanity,to buy anything you want to know that you are dealing with a person and not a faceless company or system that is why you can automate everything else except selling.

Selling is a personal skill. It requires you to put yourself in your buyers shoes and sense their objections before they ask. Feel the pain they feel and offer a solution that best fits their situation.

You do not see a lot of really fine-tuned selling skills in email newsletters. Agora offers are the best I have ever read. Their copy is selling perfection or as close as you can get.

The reason you do not see very good selling in email marketing is that the market is so hot right now, good sales copy is not required to make a sale. People will jump and just about anything that looks decent.

But that will change, making it harder for anyone to make a sale without really top-quality selling skills.

You might be scratching your head saying, ‘Gee, if it is easy to make a sale now, I must be doing something wrong because I can not sell anything!’

And that is my point. The bar is being raised almost daily and the offers that worked 1 year ago, no longer hold water.

There are other reasons it is getting tougher and tougher to sell online – if you are unskilled in the art of selling – one of those other factors is the life cycle of a product. Products are released and die within months, sometimes weeks!

Think of Firesales,they were hot now where are they? I guess there are still a few around, but they are almost dead. Big product launches have been huge in 2006, will they be in 2007? Maybe, maybe not, they will probably be replaced with some other new marketing strategy.

Being on top of trends, markets and Internet technology all help to craft sales strategy but who can keep up with it all? Unless you are dedicated to online trends, current marketing strategy and technology changes it will be hard to keep up. It is a full-time job and then some of it takes up a lot time.

That brings us full-circle: Selling is a personal skill that is crafted on an awareness of these trends, or ‘major forces that can neither be shaped or stopped, but only watched carefully and guide your copy along these line’ as Eugene Schwartz, the famous copywriter, would say as well as being able to enter a persons conversation in their mind.

Selling in not just the ability to write a few entertaining trigger words in an email. it is being able to harness the forces of major trends, capturing them in your copy in a way that makes the sale.

Heady stuff, but oh so important.

Do you find it difficult to sell? To convince people to buy your products or affiliate products?

What I have said here may be the problem and it is also the problem and failure of using automated systems to sell products and services online. People buy from people, not machineware or systems.

There are literally millions of marketers trying their hardest to make money online that are approaching their business the wrong way.

They spend days on end working as hard as they can to succeed online, only to finally give up, and join the “its just too much work” team.

If they only realized that all the ‘work’ they are putting in is the exact reason they do fail. Not that you do not have to put in real, honest effort to succeed online or at any thing, for that matter, the name of the game in online marketing and having a successful home based business is automation.

How is this possible?

Technology is the answer. Technology allows us to work smart instead of way too hard. There are systems out there which allow you to do this.

One example is GRN Team Builder, recently launched to help Global Resorts Network representatives automate their businesses.

Global Resorts Network offers luxury travel club memberships. This is an not timeshare ownership, rather a unique alternative to it. What is unique, or unusual, is that the rates for booking the accommodations are not seasonally adjusted. Members are able to book luxurious resort properties at any time during the year. A fixed rate applies all year long.

GRN Team Builder offers an “automated prospector” to GRN representatives so they do not have to spend all of their time on the phone. This allows

them to devote more time to marketing their GRN business. In addition, GRN Team Builder offers a plug-in marketing solution that allows members

to begin driving high quality traffic to their automated prospector the very first day. This traffic is converted into leads which are then

contacted automatically by Virtual Assistants.

One of the greatest points of failure for most attempting to earn income from home has to be prospecting. It is truly difficult to find the time or the stamina to talk with enough strangers to sort through all the “leads” to find real qualified buyers. Add to this the fact that most people have no desire to be thrust into a “sales” role, and we have a real problem. When prospects respond an ad placed by a GRN representative using GRN Team Builder, the Virtual Assistants do all the talking for them.

So if you joined GRN and decided to utilize GRN Team Builder…what do you have to do?

It’s very simple…utilize the tools provided by GRN Team Builder to drive traffic to your site…sit back…and collect checks…

Once you set your business up properly, making money truly is a passive process.

Forex trading can be a highly profitable business, but as everything in life it all comes down to knowing very well what you are doing. So to be a profitable trader you need to have some good level of expertise, or you have to try and become achieve such level, but then again, doing that in a short period of time is almost impossible and very costly considering you are putting money at risk.

Believe me, even if you are an expert you will make mistakes quit often, maybe not because of a lack of knowledge, but because we as humans sometimes let emotions like fear and greed take us over, and this is where a reliable automated forex system comes in.

I have been trading for quit a while, and I started by trying to educate myself as much as I could, so I began my trading operation on my own. I didn’t do that bad, but I was not making the kind of money I was expecting, considering what some friends of mine where cashing in every month.

After a few months I decided that I have had enough, so I confronted one of my friends to try and suck some information out of him; when I finally managed to break him, he agreed to let me in on what he was doing, and here is what I got:

He told to me that on top of some trading by himself, he had purchased an automated forex system that could actually place and close over 90% winning trades completely on its own.

Initially I took that for a joke and kept asking him to come clean with me, but he insisted that that was it, and to dig me out of my skepticism he sat me at his pc and showed me his forex trading chart. After 15 minutes staring at the monitor, I was surprised by the sound of a new trading order being placed without me or my friend touching anything; it was the automated forex system working. My jaw fell to the ground and I almost strangled my friend for not sharing this with me before.

I stayed there for a several hours because I had to see more to actually believe it. Well, after a good 6 hours monitoring the software in motion, I witnessed how it placed 3 winning trades for a $600 profit.

As you might guess, I did not wait until the next day and went straight home to download the software, and after three months using it I can only say that not having it is a waste of your money. That is right, a waste of money, because everyday you trade without the software you are missing out on profits that you are unlikely to make all by yourself, and here is why:

1) You can be attentive about what is going on in the forex market for only a few hours a day, because we as humans need to eat, sleep and sometimes even work, and every time you are not following the trends of the market you are potentially missing profitable entry points for a trade. The automated forex system will be on guard 24 hours per day, and it will take advantage of every good opportunity to place a winning trade, which often occurs during the night.

Humans get scared and nervous with the idea of losing money, which often ends up in an actual loss of money. The automated forex system will never be scared or greedy, it will always act based on the market conditions and therefore will have much higher rate of winning trades.

This does not mean that you cannot trade based on what you know about the forex market, because having an idea of what you are doing will always place you ahead. However, if you team up with an automated forex system you are certain to increase your profits by 100% or more, and if you are new to the forex market, you will start on the right foot making profits from the very beginning with very little risk.

So if you have ever wondered whether you should have an automated forex system by your side or not, the answer is: Definitely. Not having it will cost you a lot of potential profits.

An automated PBX telephone support system is much sought after by small and medium sized businesses looking for advancement. Such a system facilitates smooth handling of the large number of incoming and outgoing calls within an office structure. PBX or a private branch exchange can be customized according to the requirements of a particular business or corporate.

Characteristics of an Automated PBX Telephone System

An automated office phone system enables automatic transfer of calls to the user’s extension phone lines without the need of a receptionist. It functions with the backup of a public switched telephone network and the internet and connects the users and callers within a home-based or remote business structure. The calls are effectively channelized to the appropriate extensions utilizing a range of advanced functionalities and custom menu options. Auto attendant, call forwarding, custom greetings, after hours answering, voicemail and other value added features distinguish an automated PBX phone support system.

Means to Cut Down Telecom Rates

A PBX phone system comes with a variety of money-saving features. It eliminates the need for buying an on-site hardware system. Connections to different extension phone lines are given through a single connection, as well. Hence, the users can save the money that would have to be spent for onsite hardware maintenance, and for getting additional phone lines for each extension. Moreover, the provision for toll free numbers and local numbers is highly cost-effective.

Effective Call Management within an Office Network

Nowadays, business people prefer automated PBX supported telephone system in their office space because of its effective call management features. You may be having employees working in different geographical locations. Utilizing state-of-the-art technology, it enables easy call transferring services to different extensions of the concerned business establishment. The extension phone numbers can be a cell phone number, office number or any other personal number. This phone system enables all-time accessibility between the employers and employees as well as that with customers.

Highlights of an Automated PBX Telephone Support System

• Easy to manage
• Create well-established corporate image
• Establish virtual presence in multiple locations through local phone numbers
• Attract more customers through professional call attending service
• Scalable

Many people are turning to Currency Trading to beat the credit crunch. With more jobs being lost it seems Forex Trading using Automated Currency Trading Systems is the new work at home alternative.

If you are an investor and you haven’t had any luck with your investments one of the things you should consider includes currency trading. You don’t need to have any pre-qualifications when you learn an automated currency trading system. You can start with a small amount to open an account. There are plenty of ways to get started. A small deposit of as little as $250 gets you a robot trading account. Many of these offer e-books for instructions and learning and will even guide you through designing your investment strategy.

When you open a Forex trading account with many online robots starting with $5,000 to $10,000, the account will usually come with free online automated currency trading classes. The classes will walk you through everything you need to do to get started with your automated investments. You will learn the right time to enter a trade, how many trades to make, how to manage your positions, and the right time it is to exit specific trades.

Even if you are a complete beginner, you can still start trading almost instantly. Anyone can invest. Beginners can learn Forex trading. Even expert investors take advantage of trading classes and investing in the Forex market because it is the best way to invest today and finally make a big return on your investment. Automated Trading Systems are ideal for people that are new to Forex Trading. Currency trading is where the money is today and anyone can use an automated system.

A trading strategy is extremely important when you are an investor. Most Forex trading systems will teach you how to build a strategy that works for you. You can learn step by step how to buy and sell currencies at the right time. You need to know how to manage stop losses and your money. Automated currency trading is the best solution because all of these things can be learned and work for you while you are away. This is a real set it and forget system once its installed.

People trading in the stock market who are losing their shirts are now switching to the currency markets. It is definitely the route to go when you are looking for a new way to trade. Currency trading may seem a little scary as opposed to stocks. However, the market is excellent and there is a lot of money to be made in currency trading.

Forex trading is the best solution for someone who is not doing well with stocks and bonds and looking for something new. You will have to open a minimum account in order to get started. If you begin your investment with a large amount of money you may even have access to free classes to get your started. Automated currency trading is the best thing you can do because you won’t miss the good trades because the system will do it for you.

Some people regard gambling as a means of testing their intuition, while many others are into it for the money. If you are one of those people who are struggling to make some money from gambling, you have probably tried all sorts of methods and techniques, which were supposed to turn you into an expert, but didn’t have the outcome that you had expected. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could do all the betting you like from behind your computer screen? Or, better yet, wouldn’t it be really nice if some programme could do all the gambling for you, in your absence, and you had nothing left to do but to reap the benefits, that is make some extra money?

The answer you are looking for is an automated Betfair system. This betting system can handle all the gambling for you, while you sleep, eat, work, and so forth. You can make some nice money with this automated Betfair system, while investing very little time and money. Five to ten minutes a day is all the involvement on your part and the money will keep coming day after day, week after week.

This automated betting system I am talking about is actually a software programme that you will be using on your PC. In other words, you need a Windows based PC, a broadband connection, a Betfair account and the betting system software. That’s all there is to it. The software can be used immediately after you have received it, while the Betfair account takes no more than five minutes to open. Furthermore, the software is not complicated at all. The betting system programme only requires that you alter four key points and click a few buttons, which makes it really easy to use by anyone. No experience or special training is required.

The automated Betfair system uses the Betfair API interface to place bets on your behalf. In other words, you could be anywhere around or outside your home and you would still be making money.

If you need a little more convincing, you can try this betting system yourself, before you actually order it, by downloading a free 24-hour trial version, and see for yourself that the system is great.

If the benefits are still not obvious, here is a short review of the ways in which this automated Betfair system can be beneficial for you: it automatically places laying bets on your behalf based on the criteria that you demand; your requirements can be finely tuned due to the variable factors installed on this betting system, such as amount to lay, time to get involved, percentage to recover; maximum lay price, or competitiveness; it is very simple to install and can be used the very same day you receive it.

Even those who are new to gambling know that there are some risks involved. When you gamble the traditional way, it all depends on your intuition and your luck. Your winnings can be substantial, just as your losses can be considerable. One more benefit that derives from this automated Betfair system is that you will never lose everything. Any reasonable person understands that you can’t possibly win every day, but this programme makes sure that you will not go bankrupt either. Due to the built-in safety features of this betting system, you can rest assured that you won’t have any shocks when you come home and check your Betfair account.

For more info about Betting system or even about automated Betfair system please review this page http://www.ultimategamblingsystem.co.uk

We all have seen the ads and commercials claiming they have the surefire way to get rich quick. But when it is all said and done most can not show actual proof that their method works. Let’s face it; we all want the same thing. To be financially independent, to not have to work hard for our money and to have the things we want when we want is the dream we all share. Wouldn’t it be great to find a site that will allow you to make money hand over fist day and night all while you sit back and enjoy the fruits of your labor?

What exactly is automated cash online? This is a way to earn an income online with doing little to nothing to make the money. Imagine being able to take those family vacations that you have always wanted to go on or to buy that home you always dreamed of. No more hassle from the creditors about when you can pay your bills. Yes the freedom of being financially independent is one we all share and one that makes us all equal.

One website that offers a sure fire method of doing just that is automatedcashformula.com. You can let your computer work on autopilot for you. It will work round the clock for you without having to worry about affiliate markets or pay per click sites. You don’t even need a website to use this method of automated online cash. How simple is that? It is so simple that just about anyone can do it and with no huge investment.

This method comes complete with a step-by-step guide on what to do and how to do it to be your own boss and to have the financial freedom that you so deserve. Why waste your time with all of those sites that claim they have your way to fame on their site but never come through with their promises. This is a method that it tried and true and you can be a part of this great opportunity. No matter if you currently are employed or you just lost your job, this is something anyone can afford to do. Embarking on this journey will be well worth it.

Don’t sit at home just reading and fantasizing about how things would be if you had all the things that you want, get up and make it happen. You deserve it and so does your family. Get in on the great automated online cash market while it is still available to you. Everyone all over the world can help cash in on their own little piece of heaven and so can you. No website needed, no advertising, no long laboring hours of work just you and a computer is all you need to be the person you want to be, rich and successful.