ASSIGNMENT
Course Code : MS-07
Course Title : Information Systems for Managers
Assignment Code : MS-07/TMA/SEM-I/2018
Coverage : All Blocks
Note: Attempt all the questions and submit this assignment on or before 30st April, 2018 to
the coordinator of your study centre.
1. Why is the Central Processing Unit (CPU) is called the “Brain” of the Computer? What are
the components of a CPU? What factors affects the speed of a computer?
2. Define data and information. What is the difference between the two? What are the main
characteristics of information?
3. What are the types of inventory management systems? Define them and partition them into
further classes. Also, briefly explain each subdivision.
4. How can you use the Web as a data source for your data warehouse? What types of
information can you get from the Web? Explain briefly the steps needed to ensure that only
good quality, reliable data is loaded into the data warehouse from the Web.
5. What are expert systems? Mention the working principles of expert systems. Also discuss
how knowledge can be represented in expert systems.
6. Write short notes on any three of following:
(a) Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID)
(b) Polymorphic viruses
(c) Business software solutions firm Microsoft
(d) Features of JAVA.
(e) Online Analytical Processing (OLAP)

 
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Answer
1. Why is the Central Processing Unit (CPU) is called the “Brain” of the Computer?
What are the components of a CPU? What factors affects the speed of a computer?
Ans.: The base of operations for the brains of a computer is the motherboard. The
motherboard serves as a literal foundation for many of the other elements inside your
computer. It's a large printed circuit board. The motherboard provides the connections and
sockets that let other components communicate with each other. Motherboards come in
different shapes and sizes – a motherboard in a laptop computer might not look like one from
a desktop PC.
The computer brain is a microprocessor called the central processing unit (CPU). The CPU is
a chip containing millions of tiny transistors. It's the CPU's job to perform the calculations
necessary to make the computer work – the transistors in the CPU manipulate the data. You
can think of a CPU as the decision maker.
Central processing unit (CPU) is the central component of the Computer System. Sometimes
it is called as microprocessor or processor. It is the brain that runs the show inside the
Computer. All functions and processes that is done on a computer is performed directly or
indirectly by the processor. Obviously, computer processor is one of the most important
element of the Computer system. CPU is consist of transistors,that receives inputs and
produces output.Transistors perform logical operations which is called processing. It is also,
scientifically, not only one of the most amazing parts of the PC, but one of the most amazing
devices in the world of technology.
In terms of computing power, the computer processor is the most important element of a
computer system. It add and compare its data in cpu chip. A CPU of all computers, whether
micro, mini or mainframe must have three parts.
Components of CPU:
• Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU): It is the part of computer processor (CPU) can be
used to perform arithmetic and logic operations. An arithmetic-logic unit (ALU) is
further divided into two parts, (AU) arithmetic unit and a (LU) logic unit.
• Control Unit (CU): Decodes the program instruction. CPU chip used in a computer
is partially made out of Silica. on other words silicon chip used for data processing are
called Micro Processor.
• Registers: It is temporary storage areas of the computer processor. It is managed by
control unit (CU).Registers holding data, instruction and address that are needed by
program while running.
The processor plays a significant role in the following important aspects of your computer
system;
• Performance: The processor is probably the most important single determinant of
system performance in the Pc. While other components also playa key role in
determining performance, the processor's capabilities dictate the maximum
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performance of a system. The other devices only allow the processor to reach its full
potential.
• Software Support: Newer, faster processors enable the use of the latest software. In
addition, new processors such as the Pentium with MMX Technology, enable the use
of specialized software not usable on earlier machines.
• Reliability and Stability: The quality of the processor is one factor that determines
how reliably your system will run. While most processors are very dependable, some
are not. This also depends to some extent on the age of the processor and how much
energy it consumes.
• Energy Consumption and Cooling: Originally processors consumed relatively little
power compared to other system devices. Newer processors can consume a great deal
of power. Power consumption has an impact on everything from cooling method
selection to overall system reliability.
• Motherboard Support: The processor that decides to use in your system will be a
major determining factor in what sort of chipset we must use, and hence what
motherboard you buy. The motherboard in turn dictates many facets of. The system's
capabilities and performance.
Both your computer components and the maintenance you perform on it affect how well it
performs. However, it's also important to consider that one outdated or damaged part in an
otherwise high-performing computer can prevent the other parts from working to their
maximum potential. Keeping your computer updated, free of viruses and in good condition
will help you get the best possible performance out of the machine.
• Hard Disks: Your hard disks store all of the data on your computer, from program
files to documents or photos. The space available on the hard drive doesn't have a
very large affect on the computer's performance, but the read and write speed do. A
hard disk that spins at 7200RPMs will be able to process data much more quickly than
a hard disk that spins at 5200RPMs. Solid state hard drives are a type of flash memory
that doesn't rely on moving parts, making them faster than standard spinning hard
disks.
• Processor Speed: The processor determines how fast your machine can run. Faster
processors are better for applications like gaming and video editing, because they can
quickly get data from your computer hardware to your monitor. Processors with more
than one core will also improve a computer's performance because they can perform
multiple tasks at the same time.
• Installed Memory: The amount and type of memory you have installed in your
computer determines how much data can be processed at once. Faster memory and a
larger amount of RAM will make your computer perform more quickly. Attempting
to use an application that overloads the RAM will give you significantly slower
speeds.

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• Video Processing Components: Some computers have the video processing

hardware on the motherboard, while others have a standalone video card. Generally,
computers with a standalone graphical processing unit (GPU) are better at displaying
complex images and video than computers with a GPU on the motherboard. Your
video card partially determines which software you can run and how smoothly it
works.
2. Define data and information. What is the difference between the two? What are the
main characteristics of information?
Ans.: The words Data and Information may look similar and many people use these words
very frequently, But both have lots of differences between them.
Data are plain facts. The word "data" is plural for "datum." When data are processed,
organized, structured or presented in a given context so as to make them useful, they are
called Information.
It is not enough to have data (such as statistics on the economy). Data themselves are fairly
useless, but when these data are interpreted and processed to determine its true meaning, they
becomes useful and can be named as Information.
Information is data that has been processed in such a way as to be meaningful to the person
who receives it. it is any thing that is communicated.
Data is the term, that may be new to beginners, but it is very interesting and simple to
understand. It can be anything like name of a person or a place or a number etc. Data is the
name given to basic facts and entities such as names and numbers. The main examples of
data are weights, prices, costs, numbers of items sold, employee names, product names,
addresses, tax codes, registration marks etc.
Information: Information is data that has been converted into a more useful or intelligible
form. It is the set of data that has been organized for direct utilization of mankind, as
information helps human beings in their decision making process. Examples are: Time Table,
Merit List, Report card, Headed tables, printed documents, pay slips, receipts, reports etc.
The information is obtained by assembling items of data into a meaningful form. For
example, marks obtained by students and their roll numbers form data, the report card/sheet is
the .information. Other forms of information are pay-slips, schedules, reports, worksheet, bar
charts, invoices and account returns etc. It may be noted that information may further be
processed and/or manipulated to form knowledge. Information containing wisdom is known
as knowledge.
Modem civilization has become so complicated and sophisticated that to survive one has to
be competitive. This compels the people to keep himself informed of all types of happenings
in the society. With the advent of educational reforms in society, mankind is surrounded with
a vast amount of data available. Modem business management system has also rendered itself
to bulk collection of data from various sources, that needs to be rearranged in a fashion so
that it can be utilized with minimum possible time. This needs a high amount of filing either
at data stage or at information stage. No office can be without files. If you go to any tax

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collection department or municipal office you will find a high amount of files stacked here
and there.
Modem rules, regulation and law requires every transaction to happen in a written form, may
be an agreement, application, voucher, bill, letter, memo, order etc. Paper files require a high
amount of storage space and paper storage creates several other problems like fire risk,
spoilage and deterioration by way of aging microorganism and humidity etc. In modem days
information is needed to run man's own livelihood to run a system or process or to command
a business.
The amount of information is growing very rapidly. The current age of information demands
computer literacy to be accompanied by information literacy as employers' dependence is
.now focused on professionals with up to date information and all kinds of information
processing skills so as to take the challenge of ever changing scenario of information in this
world information literacy helps to gather the appropriate information, evaluate the
information and generate an informed decision. The impact of information revolution has
been extended to each individual in the society and it is much faster than industrial
revolution.
The migration from industrial age to an information age has ended the repetitive effort of
workers by replacing them with computer software, robots with artificial intelligence have
replaced the humans, and multiprocessing computers have replaced office workers with
typewriters.
Good information is that which is used and which creates value. Experience and research
shows that good information has numerous qualities.
Good information is relevant for its purpose, sufficiently accurate for its purpose, complete
enough for the problem, reliable and targeted to the right person. It is also communicated in
time for its purpose, contains the right level of detail and is communicated by an appropriate
channel, i.e. one that is understandable to the user.
Further details of these characteristics related to organisational information for decision-
making follows.
Availability/accessibility: Information should be easy to obtain or access. Information kept
in a book of some kind is only available and easy to access if you have the book to hand. A
good example of availability is a telephone directory, as every home has one for its local area.
It is probably the first place you look for a local number. But nobody keeps the whole
country’s telephone books so for numbers further a field you probably phone a directory
enquiry number. For business premises, say for a hotel in London, you would probably use
the Internet.
Businesses used to keep customer details on a card-index system at the customer’s branch. If
the customer visited a different branch a telephone call would be needed to check details.
Now, with centralised computer systems, businesses like banks and building societies can
access any customer’s data from any branch.

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Accuracy: Information needs to be accurate enough for the use to which it is going to be put.
To obtain information that is 100% accurate is usually unrealistic as it is likely to be too
expensive to produce on time. The degree of accuracy depends upon the circumstances. At
operational levels information may need to be accurate to the nearest penny – on a
supermarket till receipt, for example. At tactical level department heads may see weekly
summaries correct to the nearest £100, whereas at strategic level directors may look at
comparing stores’ performances over several months to the nearest £100,000 per month.
Accuracy is important. As an example, if government statistics based on the last census
wrongly show an increase in births within an area, plans may be made to build schools and
construction companies may invest in new housing developments. In these cases any
investment may not be recouped.
Reliability or objectivity: Reliability deals with the truth of information or the objectivity
with which it is presented. You can only really use information confidently if you are sure of
its reliability and objectivity.
When researching for an essay in any subject, we might make straight for the library to find a
suitable book. We are reasonably confident that the information found in a book, especially
one that the library has purchased, is reliable and (in the case of factual information)
objective. The book has been written and the author’s name is usually printed for all to see.
The publisher should have employed an editor and an expert in the field to edit the book and
question any factual doubts they may have. In short, much time and energy goes into
publishing a book and for that reason we can be reasonably confident that the information is
reliable and objective.
Compare that to finding information on the Internet where anybody can write unedited and
unverified material and ‘publish’ it on the web. Unless you know who the author is, or a
reputable university or government agency backs up the research, then you cannot be sure
that the information is reliable. Some Internet websites are like vanity publishing, where
anyone can write a book and pay certain (vanity) publishers to publish it.
Relevance/appropriateness: Information should be relevant to the purpose for which it is
required. It must be suitable. What is relevant for one manager may not be relevant for
another. The user will become frustrated if information contains data irrelevant to the task in
hand.
For example, a market research company may give information on users’ perceptions of the
quality of a product. This is not relevant for the manager who wants to know opinions on
relative prices of the product and its rivals. The information gained would not be relevant to
the purpose.
Completeness: Information should contain all the details required by the user. Otherwise, it
may not be useful as the basis for making a decision. For example, if an organisation is
supplied with information regarding the costs of supplying a fleet of cars for the sales force,
and servicing and maintenance costs are not included, then a costing based on the information
supplied will be considerably underestimated.

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Ideally all the information needed for a particular decision should be available. However,
this rarely happens; good information is often incomplete. To meet all the needs of the
situation, you often have to collect it from a variety of sources.
Level of detail/conciseness: Information should be in a form that is short enough to allow for
its examination and use. There should be no extraneous information. For example, it is very
common practice to summarise financial data and present this information, both in the form
of figures and by using a chart or graph. We would say that the graph is more concise than
the tables of figures as there is little or no extraneous information in the graph or chart.
Clearly there is a trade-off between level of detail and conciseness.
Presentation: The presentation of information is important to the user. Information can be
more easily assimilated if it is aesthetically pleasing. For example, a marketing report that
includes graphs of statistics will be more concise as well as more aesthetically pleasing to the
users within the organisation. Many organisations use presentation software and show
summary information via a data projector. These presentations have usually been well
thought out to be visually attractive and to convey the correct amount of detail.
Timing: Information must be on time for the purpose for which it is required. Information
received too late will be irrelevant. For example, if you receive a brochure from a theatre and
notice there was a concert by your favourite band yesterday, then the information is too late
to be of use.
Value of information: The relative importance of information for decision-making can
increase or decrease its value to an organisation. For example, an organisation requires
information on a competitor’s performance that is critical to their own decision on whether to
invest in new machinery for their factory. The value of this information would be high.
Always keep in mind that information should be available on time, within cost constraints
and be legally obtained.
Cost of information: Information should be available within set cost levels that may vary
dependent on situation. If costs are too high to obtain information an organisation may decide
to seek slightly less comprehensive information elsewhere. For example, an organisation
wants to commission a market survey on a new product. The survey could cost more than the
forecast initial profit from the product. In that situation, the organisation would probably
decide that a less costly source of information should be used, even if it may give inferior
information.
Many students in the past few years have confused the definitions of value and cost.
Information gained or used by an organisation may have a great deal of value even if it may
not have cost a lot. An example would be bookshops, who have used technology for many
years now, with microfiche giving way to computers in the mid to late 1990s. Microfiche
was quite expensive and what the bookshops received was essentially a list of books in print.
By searching their microfiche by publisher they could tell you if a particular book was in
print. Eventually this information became available on CD-ROM. Obviously this information
has value to the bookshops in that they can tell you whether or not you can get the book. The

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cost of subscribing to microfiche was fairly high; subscribing to the CD-ROM version only
slightly less so.
3. What are the types of inventory management systems? Define them and partition
them into further classes. Also, briefly explain each subdivision.
Ans.: Inventory management, or inventory control, is an attempt to balance inventory needs
and requirements with the need to minimize costs resulting from obtaining and holding
inventory. There are several schools of thought that view inventory and its function
differently. These will be addressed later, but first we present a foundation to facilitate the
reader's understanding of inventory and its function.
There are two types of inventory systems: periodic and perpetual. For the small business
owner, the choice often depends on equipment costs compared to the time it takes to track
items manually.
Properly managing inventory requires a system of some sort. It doesn’t matter if the system
consists of writing inventory levels on the back of an envelope or using the most
sophisticated radio frequency identification system. The different types of inventory
management systems all have pros and cons. For the small business deciding on an inventory
management system, the choice comes down to counting inventory periodically or having a
computerized system track inventory changes every time an item comes in or out of the
business.
Many small business owners, especially if the business has very few products, keep track of
inventory manually. The easiest way to perform manual inventory management is to use a
spreadsheet. For example, a small bakery might use a spreadsheet to keep track of inventory
purchases and usage. The owner can also set up the spreadsheet to calculate when ingredients
need to be reordered.
Known as a periodic inventory system, employees must manually count the raw ingredients
and components they have on hand at set times: daily, weekly, monthly, quaterly or annually.
The more often the inventory is counted, the more accurate the system is. Employees enter
the numbers in a spreadsheet. Using the appropriate spreadsheet formulas, they can determine
if they have enough materials for the week or if she’ll need to purchase more.
The subdivisions of independent demand inventory management are the fixed order quantity
and fixed time period systems, and they're pretty straightforward. The fixed order quantity
model functions through a constant monitoring system, wherein a fixed amount of stock is
purchased whenever a given inventory level reaches a predetermined point. Thus, order
quantities are static. On the other hand, the fixed time period system operates through a series
of reviews conducted at regular, fixed intervals. Order quantities are not static in this case;
rather, they are based on the difference between current inventory and a predetermined level.
Inventory of materials occurs at various stages and departments of an organization. A
manufacturing organization holds inventory of raw materials and consumables required for
production. It also holds inventory of semi-finished goods at various stages in the plant with
various departments. Finished goods inventory is held at plant, FG Stores, distribution centers
etc. Further both raw materials and finished goods those that are in transit at various locations

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also form a part of inventory depending upon who owns the inventory at the particular
juncture. Finished goods inventory is held by the organization at various stocking points or
with dealers and stockiest until it reaches the market and end customers.
Besides Raw materials and finished goods, organizations also hold inventories of spare parts
to service the products. Defective products, defective parts and scrap also forms a part of
inventory as long as these items are inventoried in the books of the company and have
economic value.
Just-in-time (JIT) is one of the most talked about topics in materials planning primarily due to
its tremendous success in the context of Japanese companies. JIT or zero-inventory system is
an idealized concept of inventory management wherein we are able to supply whatever
material is required, wherever required, and whenever required just in time with 100 %
supply assurances without keeping any inventory on hand. Obviously, from the resource
management point of view, nothing can be better than this, as there are no inventories, no
shortages, and no replenishment orders placed. However, this concept necessitates that the
suppliers (vendors) are local and are 100 % dependable; orders splitting with small orders
without additional transportation costs is feasible, i.e., frequent deliveries are economically
viable, and the requirements are firmly known. This also calls for a single vendor base and
having long-term relationship with the vendor who has to be a quality vendor. This also
requires that the vendor has sufficient capacity to supply anytime without passing on the costs
of overcapacity to the buyer. Vrat (2011) has shown that the supply of oxygen to the human
body is perhaps the perfect example of a JIT/zero-inventory system, and from this analogy, a
number of prerequisites for the success of JIT can be visualized. In uncertain demand and
supply environment, JIT is not feasible. Thus, inventory management in uncertain supply
environment is JIC type in which minimization of the total expected system cost becomes an
important objective.
4. How can you use the Web as a data source for your data warehouse? What types of
information can you get from the Web? Explain briefly the steps needed to ensure that
only good quality, reliable data is loaded into the data warehouse from the Web.
Ans.: A data warehouse is a database designed to enable business intelligence activities: it
exists to help users understand and enhance their organization's performance. It is designed
for query and analysis rather than for transaction processing, and usually contains historical
data derived from transaction data, but can include data from other sources. Data warehouses
separate analysis workload from transaction workload and enable an organization to
consolidate data from several sources. This helps in:
• Maintaining historical records
• Analyzing the data to gain a better understanding of the business and to improve
the business
In addition to a relational database, a data warehouse environment can include an extraction,
transportation, transformation, and loading (ETL) solution, statistical analysis, reporting, data
mining capabilities, client analysis tools, and other applications that manage the process of

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gathering data, transforming it into useful, actionable information, and delivering it to

business users.
To achieve the goal of enhanced business intelligence, the data warehouse works with data
collected from multiple sources. The source data may come from internally developed
systems, purchased applications, third-party data syndicators and other sources. It may
involve transactions, production, marketing, human resources and more. In today's world of
big data, the data may be many billions of individual clicks on web sites or the massive data
streams from sensors built into complex machinery.
Data warehouses are distinct from online transaction processing (OLTP) systems. With a data
warehouse you separate analysis workload from transaction workload. Thus data warehouses
are very much read-oriented systems. They have a far higher amount of data reading versus
writing and updating. This enables far better analytical performance and avoids impacting
your transaction systems. A data warehouse system can be optimized to consolidate data from
many sources to achieve a key goal: it becomes your organization's "single source of truth".
There is great value in having a consistent source of data that all users can look to; it prevents
many disputes and enhances decision-making efficiency.
A data warehouse usually stores many months or years of data to support historical analysis.
The data in a data warehouse is typically loaded through an extraction, transformation, and
loading (ETL) process from multiple data sources. Modern data warehouses are moving
toward an extract, load, transformation (ELT) architecture in which all or most data
transformation is performed on the database that hosts the data warehouse. It is important to
note that defining the ETL process is a very large part of the design effort of a data
warehouse. Similarly, the speed and reliability of ETL operations are the foundation of the
data warehouse once it is up and running.
Users of the data warehouse perform data analyses that are often time-related. Examples
include consolidation of last year's sales figures, inventory analysis, and profit by product and
by customer. But time-focused or not, users want to "slice and dice" their data however they
see fit and a well-designed data warehouse will be flexible enough to meet those demands.
Users will sometimes need highly aggregated data, and other times they will need to drill
down to details. More sophisticated analyses include trend analyses and data mining, which
use existing data to forecast trends or predict futures. The data warehouse acts as the
underlying engine used by middleware business intelligence environments that serve reports,
dashboards and other interfaces to end users.
The Data Warehouse combines data from multiple sources into one common structure, giving
the data consistency for producing reports and analyzing and viewing population segments.
This is called the Commerce Server Business Analytics System. Business analytics is a way
of looking at your Web site data to answer specific questions about the performance of your
Web site. You can use the information provided by business analytics to improve your
customer service and to target content to users.
In order to transform our data warehouse into a Web-enabled data warehouse, we first have to
bring the data warehouse to the Web, and secondly we need to bring the Web to your data

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warehouse. Furthermore, we will discuss these two distinct aspects of a Web-enabled data
warehouse. In early implementations, the corporate data warehouse was intended for
managers, executives, business analysts, and a few other highlevel employees as a tool for
analysis and decision making. Information from the data warehouse was delivered to this
group of users in a client/server environment. But today’s data warehouses are no longer
confined to a select group of internal users. Under present conditions, corporations need to
increase the productivity of all the members in the corporation’s value chain. Useful
information from the corporate data warehouse must be provided not only to the employees
but also to customers, suppliers, and all other business partners. So in today’s business
climate, you need to open your data warehouse to the entire community of users in the value
chain, and perhaps also to the general public.
When you bring your data warehouse to the Web, from the point of view of the users, the key
requirements are: self-service data access, interactive analysis, high availability and
performance, zero-administration client (thin client technology such as Java applets), tight
security, and unified metadata. Bringing the Web to the warehouse essentially involves
capturing the clickstream of all the visitors to your company’s Web site and performing all
the traditional data warehousing functions. And you must accomplish this, near real-time, in
an environment that has now come to be known as the data Webhouse. Your effort will
involve extraction, transformation, and loading of the clickstream data to the Webhouse
repository. You will have to build dimensional schemas from the clickstream data and deploy
information delivery systems from the Webhouse.
5. What are expert systems? Mention the working principles of expert systems. Also
discuss how knowledge can be represented in expert systems.
Ans.: Expert system, a computer program that uses artificial-intelligence methods to solve
problems within a specialized domain that ordinarily requires human expertise. The first
expert system was developed in 1965 by Edward Feigenbaum and Joshua Lederberg of
Stanford University in California, U.S. Dendral, as their expert system was later known, was
designed to analyze chemical compounds. Expert systems now have commercial applications
in fields as diverse as medical diagnosis, petroleum engineering, and financial investing.
In order to accomplish feats of apparent intelligence, an expert system relies on two
components: a knowledge base and an inference engine. A knowledge base is an organized
collection of facts about the system’s domain. An inference engine interprets and evaluates
the facts in the knowledge base in order to provide an answer. Typical tasks for expert
systems involve classification, diagnosis, monitoring, design, scheduling, and planning for
specialized endeavours.
Facts for a knowledge base must be acquired from human experts through interviews and
observations. This knowledge is then usually represented in the form of “if-then” rules
(production rules): “If some condition is true, then the following inference can be made (or
some action taken).” The knowledge base of a major expert system includes thousands of
rules. A probability factor is often attached to the conclusion of each production rule and to
the ultimate recommendation, because the conclusion is not a certainty. For example, a
system for the diagnosis of eye diseases might indicate, based on information supplied to it, a

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90 percent probability that a person has glaucoma, and it might also list conclusions with
lower probabilities. An expert system may display the sequence of rules through which it
arrived at its conclusion; tracing this flow helps the user to appraise the credibility of its
recommendation and is useful as a learning tool for students.
Human experts frequently employ heuristic rules, or “rules of thumb,” in addition to simple
production rules, such as those gleaned from engineering handbooks. Thus, a credit manager
might know that an applicant with a poor credit history, but a clean record since acquiring a
new job, might actually be a good credit risk. Expert systems have incorporated such
heuristic rules and increasingly have the ability to learn from experience. Expert systems
remain aids to, rather than replacements for, human experts.
Two major stages comprise the consulting process of the system: During the “search” stage
relevant knowledge in the semantic network is activated, and search and evaluation rules are
applied in order to find appropriate vocabulary terms to represent the user's problem. During
the “suggest” stage those terms are further evaluated, dynamically rank-ordered according to
relevancy, and suggested to the user. Explanations to the findings can be provided by the
system and backtracking is possible in order to find alternatives in case some suggested term
is rejected by the user. Expert systems are meant to solve real problems which normally
would require a specialized human expert (such as a doctor). Building an expert system
therefore first involves extracting the relevant knowledge from the human expert. There are
several purposes to emphasis on knowledge-based methods rather than other formal
representations and associated analytic methods.
The main goal of the expert system research is to get very quick answers for the technicians
and the markers who use this kind of expertise. That answers are not available always at the
right place and right time because there is no enough expertise to looking for by them. .
Portable with computers loaded with in-depth knowledge of specific subjects can bring
decade’s worth of knowledge to a problem. Many of the supervisors and managers use the
same system to help them with situation assessment and long-range planning. During these
times, many small systems exist that bring a narrow slice of (in-depth knowledge) to specific
problems, and that prove to us that the broader goal is achievable.
Expert systems (the knowledge based systems) of AI (artificial intelligence) have enhanced
productivity in business, science, engineering, and the military with some advances in the last
decade. Expert systems today can be chosen from dozens of commercial software packages
which is easy to use interfaces.
AI researches provide even better applications of expert systems because each new
deployment of an expert system yields valuable data for what works in what context.
Knowledge-based system is a more general than the expert system. As the below diagram
will illustrate the difference, knowledge based are a verse domain than an expert system.
Expert systems are a specified domain of a knowledge based as expert system uses the
representation of knowledge to solve problems.

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As simple as it looks, expert systems are well known to solve complex problems. Computers
are good in representing numbers, words and even maps but the greatest difficulty it faces is
representing knowledge.
Knowledge can be distinguished from mere facts by the way it is used in decision processes.
There are two approaches leading to successful knowledge based system. The approaches can
be by obtaining expert knowledge on a specific problem and breaking the facts into rules
which can be applied to solve a problem. The other method is through learning through
experience. As a system functions, whatever could be seen as a malfunction or an extra
requirement is filled in. These seem simple methods to address, but they are indeed obtaining
through much effort.
Types of Expert systems and knowledge-based systems
(a) Rule Based: “Instead of representing knowledge in a relatively declarative, static way
(as a bunch of things that are true), rule-based system represent knowledge in terms of
a bunch of rules that tell you what you should do or what you could conclude in
different situations. A rule-based system consists of a bunch of IF-THEN rules, a
bunch of facts, and some interpreter controlling the application of the rules, given the
facts. ”
(b) Object-Oriented: In programming, object-oriented is a computer programming
paradigm. Many programming languages support object-oriented programming.
Many programming frameworks, like the Java platform and the .NET Framework, are
built on object-oriented principles. Object-oriented programming is often abbreviated
as OOP.”
Information can be termed as raw data waiting to be processed to attain a goal. Knowledge
based system on the other hand is the engine which uses such information processes it in to
rules and facts which can be used in archiving a specified goal. The figure below illustrates
clearly the Information verses Knowledge based system.
6. Write short notes on any three of following:
(a) Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID)
Ans.: RAID, or “Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks” is a technique which makes use of
a combination of multiple disks instead of using a single disk for increased performance, data
redundancy or both. The term was coined by David Patterson, Garth A. Gibson, and Randy
Katz at the University of California, Berkeley in 1987.
Data redundancy, although taking up extra space, adds to disk reliability. This means, in case
of disk failure, if the same data is also backed up onto another disk, we can retrieve the data
and go on with the operation. On the other hand, if the data is spread across just multiple
disks without the RAID technique, the loss of a single disk can affect the entire data.
The benefits of RAID come from a technique called "striping," which splits up the stored data
among the available drives. The "stripes" of data are usually a couple of megabytes large and
are interleaved between the drives. The striping system also increases the mean time between
failure (MTBF), when reading data. This allows more data to be read accurately in a short

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Disclaimer: All material prewritten or custom written is intended for the sole purpose of research and examplary
purposes only. We encourage you to use our material as a research and study aid only. Plagiarism is a crime,
and we condone such behavior. Please use our material responsibly, and avoid academic fraud. 

period of time. The benefits of the RAID system are especially noticeable when storing large
amounts of data. Therefore, many Web hosting and Internet Service Providers use RAID to
store data for their clients.
Key evaluation points for a RAID System:
• Reliability: How many disk faults can the system tolerate?
• Availability: What fraction of the total session time is a system in uptime mode, i.e.
how available is the system for actual use?
• Performance: How good is the response time? How high is the throughput (rate of
processing work)? Note that performance contains a lot of parameters and not just the
two.
• Capacity: Given a set of N disks each with B blocks, how much useful capacity is
available to the user?
RAID is very transparent to the underlying system. This means, to the host system, it appears
as a single big disk presenting itself as a linear array of blocks. This allows older technologies
to be replaced by RAID without making too many changes in the existing code.
(b) Polymorphic viruses
Ans.: A polymorphic virus is a complicated computer virus that affects data types and
functions. It is a self-encrypted virus designed to avoid detection by a scanner. Upon
infection, the polymorphic virus duplicates itself by creating usable, albeit slightly modified,
copies of itself.
Polymorphism, in computing terms, means that a single definition can be used with varying
amounts of data. In order for scanners to detect this type of virus, brute-force programs must
be written to combat and detect the polymorphic virus with novel variant configurations.
It is a general knowledge that malware come with variations so that the antimalware software
solutions cannot detect them. When it is detected, the antimalware software solution
blacklists that malware. Only a particular variation is banned because antimalware software
cannot guess the malware will come back – in a different variation. If it is found, it is
blacklisted by companies monitoring malware. Most antivirus relies on these blacklists to
protect your computer or any other device. This is the main reason why any antimalware
cannot be 100% effective. A polymorphic virus is a piece of code that is characterized by the
following behavior – Encryption, Self-multiplication and changing of one or more
components of itself so that it remains elusive. It is designed to avoid detection as it is
capable of creating modified, copies of itself.
Thus, a polymorphic virus is a self-encrypted malicious software that has the tendency to
change itself in more than one way before multiplying onto the same computer or to
computer networks. Since it changes its components properly and is encrypted, the
polymorphic virus can be said to one of the intelligent malware that is hard to detect. Because
by the time your anti-virus detects it, the virus has already multiplied after changing one or
more of its components (morphing into something else).

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Disclaimer: All material prewritten or custom written is intended for the sole purpose of research and examplary
purposes only. We encourage you to use our material as a research and study aid only. Plagiarism is a crime,
and we condone such behavior. Please use our material responsibly, and avoid academic fraud. 

The thing which stands out between normal virus and the polymorphic virus is that the latter
changes its components to look like a different software before multiplying. This morphing
activity makes it hard to be detected.
(e) Online Analytical Processing (OLAP)
Ans.: Stands for "Online Analytical Processing." OLAP allows users to analyze database
information from multiple database systems at one time. While relational databases are
considered to be two-dimensional, OLAP data is multidimensional, meaning the information
can be compared in many different ways. For example, a company might compare their
computer sales in June with sales in July, then compare those results with the sales from
another location, which might be stored in a different database.
In order to process database information using OLAP, an OLAP server is required to
organize and compare the information. Clients can analyze different sets of data using
functions built into the OLAP server. Some popular OLAP server software programs include
Oracle Express Server and Hyperion Solutions Essbase. Because of its powerful data analysis
capabilities, OLAP processing is often used for data mining, which aims to discover new
relationships between different sets of data.
Until recently, data mining required expensive and cumbersome data mining software or a
database expert who could accurately translate a request for information into a functional,
preferably efficient, query. Database warehouses and online analytical processing (OLAP)
offer an attractive and readily available alternative.
As compared to a database, a data warehouse has faster retrieval time, internally consistent
data, and a construction that allows users to slice and dice (ie, extract a single item (slice) and
compare items in a cross-tabulated table (dice)). The primary difference between a data
warehouse and a traditional transaction database lies in the volatility of the data. The
information in a transaction database is constantly changing, whereas data in a data
warehouse is stable; its information is updated at standard intervals (monthly or weekly). A
perfect data warehouse would be updated to add values for the new time period only, without
changing values previously stored in the warehouse. Thus, microarray databases can be data
warehouses, because the data in them is consistent and stable. Gene expression values in any
given experiment remain the same and usually only new data from new experiments is added.
Data warehousing software is incorporated in most of the major relational database
management systems such as SQLServer2000 and Oracle 9i.
In relational database systems, OLAP cubes are constructed from a fact table and one or more
dimension tables. A fact table is the relational table in the warehouse that stores the detailed
values for measures (the thing you are measuring). For example, this could be the values for
the relative change in gene expression. The dimension tables however are more abstract,
containing only one row for each leaf (lower) member in the fact table. They are used to
create summaries and aggregates of the data in the fact table. Ad hoc calculations and
statistical analysis can also be achieved, but are vendor specific. Analysis Services 2000
(used here) is capable of such ad hoc calculations on complex data.

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