Flow of teaching

The generic flow of teaching is just a guideline.

The precise order and content of the presentation can be modified

to adapt towards the specific needs of various groups.

1 Basic Data Concepts and ACL interface:
1.1 Who is ACL?
1.2 What is the ACL software?
1.2.1 Generic view of the software
1.2.2 ACL Interface and components
1.2.2.1 Interface:
1.2.2.2 ACL Components
1.3 Data
1.3.1 Basic Example of data: 19761201
1.3.2 Generic concepts: (slides)
1.3.3 The four data categories in ACL
1.4 The concept of table:
1.4.1 Table Layout:
1.4.1.1 The elements needed to describe the structure of a flat file.
1.4.2 Data file:
1.5 The concept of Views
1.6 Creating an ACL project
1.6.1 Putting a table in an ACL project
1.6.1.1 Defining a flat file
1.6.1.2 Link an existing table to another data file (can duplicate also)
1.6.2 Defining Computed Fields
1.6.2.1 Generic concepts
1.6.2.2 Simple Computed Fields (Expressions)
1.6.2.3 Using a logical field or expression as a filter
1.6.2.4 Conditional Computed Fields
1.6.2.5 Special concept of fixed point math 2 Examples of some types of data files:
2.1 Flat
2.2 Examples of other types
2.2.1 Text report.
2.2.2 Excel (Viewed in Notepad)
2.2.3 Delimited file
3 Data access
3.1 Someone prepares the data file for you
3.1.1 Flat files
3.1.1.1 Manual layout
3.1.1.2 Automatic layout
3.1.2 Other file format
3.1.2.1 A New flat file where the original data is copied in a flat file format.
3.1.2.2 The table layout pointing to that new file (not the original)
3.2 You access the data yourself
3.2.1 ACL Client/Server
3.2.2 ODBC
3.2.3 You export the data yourself from the database
4 Verification stage
4.1 Preamble:
4.2 Verify
4.3 Count
4.4 Total
4.5 Statistics
4.5.1 Generic
4.5.2 Use Between()
4.5.3 System Variables
4.5.4 Examine Sequence
4.5.5 Gaps – Missing Items
4.5.5.1 Isblank()
4.5.5.2 Gaps
4.5.6 Duplicates
4.5.6.1 On
4.5.6.2 List fields
4.5.7 Other verification
4.5.8 Profiling (Grouping) of data
4.5.8.1 Classify, Stratify, Age:
4.5.8.2 Cross-Tab like Excel pivot table
4.5.8.3 Summarize a more powerful variation of Classify
4.6 Re-ordering the data
4.6.1 Sort
4.6.2 Index
4.6.3 Quick Sort
5 Multi-file operations
5.1 Extract
5.1.1 Types of Extract
5.1.2 Create a subset of an initial table
5.1.3 Combining many tables with identical structure
5.2 Export
5.3 Join
5.3.1 Basic Concepts: (slide show)
5.3.2 Mini case study with a review of all the major concepts: Payroll Analysis
5.3.3 Multiline reports
5.3.4 Graphing results
5.3.5 Relations
5.3.5.1 Direct relations
5.3.5.2 Indirect relations
5.3.5.3 Basic concepts
6 Defining other types of data files
6.1 Report files
6.1.1 Use report wizard to define the report (Slide Show)
6.1.2 Use log to create a script to define a type of report automatically
6.2 Various types of Excel files
6.2.1 Standard
6.2.1.1 Prepare Excel sheet
6.2.1.2 Import data
6.2.1.3 Make needed format corrections within ACL
6.2.2 With combination of numeric and alpha-numeric in the same column
6.2.2.1 Prepare Excel Sheet. For each of those columns:
6.2.2.2 Define Dbase file with ACL Wizard
6.2.3 The Excel sheet looks more like a printed report
6.2.3.1 Modify Excel
6.2.3.2 Use the ACL Report definition Wizard
6.3 Delimited files
6.4 Use of ODBC
7 Other concepts that could be included
7.1 Appending tables with differences in structure
7.2 Command line commands such as:
7.3 SAP related concepts
7.4 Direct Link
7.5 Private file format
7.6 Sampling
7.7 Benford
7.8 Some functions