Management Information System II Fall Semester
Lecture 1. Foundations of Business Intelligence: Databases and Information Management Objectives After reading this lecture , you will be able to: 1. Describe basic file organization concepts and the problems of managing data resources in a traditional file environment. 2. Describe how a database management system organizes information and compare the principal database models. 3. Apply important database design principles. 4. Evaluate new database trends. 5. Identify the challenges posed by data resource management and management solutions. General Notes Information is becoming as important business resource as money, material, and people. Even though a company compiles millions of pieces of data doesn't mean it can produce information that its employees, suppliers, and customers can use. Businesses are realizing the competitive advantage they can gain by compiling useful information, not just data. 1 Organizing Data in a Traditional File Environment Why should you learn about organizing data? Because it's almost inevitable that someday you'll be establishing or at least working with a database of some kind. As with anything else, understanding the lingo is the first step to understanding the whole concept of managing and maintaining information. It all comes down to turning data into useful information, not just a bunch of bits and bytes. File Organization Terms and Concepts
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Management Information System II Fall Semester
The first few terms, field, record, file, database, are depicted in Figure 7.1, which shows the relationship between them. An entity is basically the person, place, thing, or event on which we maintain information. Each characteristic or quality describing an entity is called an attribute. Each record requires a key field, or unique identifier. The best example of this is your index number/social security number: there is only one per person. That explains in part why so many...