COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE

UNIT STANDARDS
14921: Describe the types of computer systems and associated
hardware configurations
14917: Explain computer architecture concepts
14944: Explain how data is stored on computers

© THE EDUCATION HOLDINGS (PTY) LTD 2011 Volume 1

 Computer Architecture

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
MODULE UNIT STANDARD ALIGNMENT 6

PURPOSE, OUTCOMES AND ASSESSMENT CRITERIA 7

ALIGNMENT MATRIX 10

KEY TO ICONS USED IN THIS MODULE 11

LEARNING UNIT 1: TYPES OF COMPUTER HARDWARE

CONFIGURATIONS AND ASSOCIATED APPLICATION
SYSTEMS 12
1. INTRODUCTION 12
1.1 COMPUTER HARDWARE CONFIGURATIONS 12
1.1.1 MICROCOMPUTERS 12
1.1.2 MINICOMPUTERS 15
1.1.3 MAINFRAMES 19
1.1.4 SUPERCOMPUTERS 21
1.1.5 CLIENT-SERVER 24
1.1.6 CPU AND RAM 30
1.1.7 EMERGING SYSTEMS 35
1.1.8 PORTABLE COMPUTING OR STANDALONE 41
1.1.9 HARDWARE ADVANCES 43
ACTIVITY 1 – REVIEWED - US 14921 SO1 43
1.2 CATEGORIES OF COMPUTER SYSTEM APPLICATIONS 43
1.2.1 APPLICATION CATEGORIES 44
1.2.2 PROCESSING METHODS 46
INFORMAL ACTIVITY – VIEWED – US 14921 SO1 49
ACTIVITY 2 – REVIEWED – US 14921 SO1,2 55

LEARNING UNIT 2: COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE 55

2. INTRODUCTION 56
2.1 COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE ELEMENTS 56
2.1.1 HARDWARE 56
2.1.2 SOFTWARE 57
2.1.3 FIRMWARE 59
2.1.4 VIRTUAL MACHINES 59
2.1.5 FUNCTIONAL LEVELS WITHIN A COMPUTER 61
ACTIVITY 3 – REVIEWED – US14917 SO2 63
2.2 THE ORGANISATION OF A COMPUTER 64
2.2.1 COMPUTER BOX 65

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2.2.2 MOTHERBOARD (HOUSES THE CENTRAL PROCESSING

UNIT) 65
2.2.3 CENTRAL PROCESSING UNIT (CPU) 66
2.2.4 MEMORY – RAM (STORAGE UNIT) 66
2.2.5 MEMORY (ROM) 67
2.2.6 BIOS AND BATTERY 68
2.2.7 HARD DISK 68
2.2.8 KEYBOARD 71
2.2.9 MOUSE 72
2.2.10 MONITOR / DISPLAY UNIT 72
2.2.11 POWER SUPPLY UNIT (PSU) 73
2.2.12 PC CARDS 74
2.2.13 CABLES 74
ACTIVITY 4 – REVIEWED – US14917 SO2 77
2.2.14 HOW HARDWARE COMPONENTS RELATE TO EACH
OTHER 77
ACTIVITY 5 – REVIEWED – US14917 SO2 79
2.3 DESIGN CONSTRAINTS IN INSTRUCTION SETS 79
2.3.1 DESIGN CONSTRAINTS IN DETAIL 81
2.3.2 HOW CONSTRAINTS CAN BE OVERCOME 84
ACTIVITY 6 – REVIEWED – US 14917 SO 3 85

LEARNING UNIT 3: STORAGE OF DATA 86

3. INTRODUCTION 86
3.1 COMPUTER DATA TYPES 87
3.1.1 THE BINARY NUMBERING SYSTEM 87
3.1.2 DATA TYPES 88
ACTIVITY 7 – REVIEWED – US14944 SO1 97
3.2 CHARACTER SETS AND CHARACTER ENCODING 97
3.2.1 CHARACTER ENCODING 97
3.2.2 BINARY CODED DECIMAL 99
3.2.3 EXTENDED BINARY CODED DECIMAL INTERCHANGE
CODE (EBCDIC) 100
3.2.4 AMERICAN STANDARD CODE FOR INFORMATION
INTERCHANGE (ASCII) 103
3.2.5 UNICODE 106
ACTIVITY 8 – REVIEWED – US14944 SO 1 118
3.3 DATA MANIPULATION 119
ACTIVITY 9 – REVIEWED – US149442 SO1 122
3.4 COMPUTER DATA STRUCTURES 123
3.4.1 TYPES OF DATA STRUCTURES 123
ACTIVITY 10 – REVIEWED – US14944 SO2 131
3.4.2 COMPUTER FILES AND FILE ORGANISATION 132

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ACTIVITY 11 – REVIEWED – US14944 SO 2 141

3.5 DATABASE SYSTEMS 141
3.5.1 HOW DATABASES ARE USED 142
3.5.2 OVERVIEW OF DATA MODELS 143
3.5.2 TYPES OF DATABASES 155
3.5.3 SQL 158
3.5.4 BENEFITS OF DATABASES 160
ACTIVITY 12 – REVIEWED - US14944 SO 2 165

REFERENCE 166

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MODULE UNIT STANDARD ALIGNMENT

This module is aligned to the following unit standards:

US
Title NQF Credits
Number
Describe the types of computer
14921 systems and associated hardware 4 6
configurations
Explain computer architecture
14917 4 7
concepts
Explain how data is stored on
14944 4 7
computers

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PURPOSE, OUTCOMES AND ASSESSMENT CRITERIA

14921 - Describe the types of computer systems and

associated hardware configurations
This unit standard is intended:
 to provide conceptual knowledge of the areas covered
 for those working in, or entering the workplace in the area of
Information Systems & Technology Management
 as additional knowledge for those wanting to understand the
areas covered
People credited with this unit standard are able to:
 Describe past, present and future computer hardware
configurations.
 Describe categories of computer system applications.
The performance of all elements is to a standard that allows for
further learning in this area.
Outcome 1
 Describe past, present and future computer hardware
configurations.
Assessment Criteria
o The description lists the characteristics of the configurations.
o The description justifies categorisation of examples.
o The description explains performance characteristics of the
configurations.
o The description explains the environmental requirements of
the configurations.
Outcome 2
 Describe categories of computer system applications.
Assessment Criteria
o The description identifies categories of computer system
applications.
o The description justifies categorisation of examples.
o The description explains the performance characteristics of
the categories.

14917 – Explain computer architecture concepts.

Purpose: This unit standard is intended:
 to provide a fundamental knowledge of the areas covered
 for those working in, or entering the workplace in the area of
Information Systems & Technology Management.
 as additional knowledge for those wanting to understand the
areas covered

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People credited with this unit standard are able to:

 Explain computer architecture elements
 Explain the organisation of a computer
 Describe the design constraints in the design of instruction
sets for computers
The performance of all elements is to a standard that allows for
further learning in this area
Outcome 1
 Explain computer architecture elements.
Assessment Criteria
○ The explanation identifies the functions of elements which
make up computer architecture.
○ The explanation outlines the functions of elements which
make up computer architecture.
○ The explanation distinguishes categories of each element
and outlines their features.
○ The explanation identifies examples of the application of
architecture elements.
Outcome 2
 Explain the organisation of a computer.
Assessment Criteria
○ The explanation identifies the purpose of computer
components.
○ The explanation outlines how components achieve their
outcomes in terms of their relationships, and the structure
of the computer.
Outcome 3
 Describe the design constraints in the design of
instruction sets for computers.
Assessment Criteria
○ The description identifies the constraints, and outlines the
issues involved.
○ The description outlines how the constraints have been
accommodated, by using examples.

14944 – Explain how data is stored on computers.

Purpose: This unit standard is intended:
 to provide conceptual knowledge of the areas covered
 for those working in, or entering the workplace in the
area of Information Systems and Technology
Management

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 as additional knowledge for those wanting to understand

the areas covered.
People credited with this unit standard are able to:
 Describe the roles of IS departments in organisations
 Describe the structures of IS departments in
organisations
The performance of all elements is to a standard that allows for
further learning in this area.
Outcome 1
 Demonstrate an understanding of computer data types.
Assessment Criteria
○ The demonstration distinguishes between data types and
includes examples (Range: Bits (0, 1) , Bytes, Numbers ,
Integers (+- values, whole items), Floating point
(temperature, voltage, etc), Boolean (0/1 on/off)).
○ The description of the use of coding systems in a
business environment distinguishes categories of coding
systems and includes examples(Range: BCD, EBCDIC
(IBM mainframes), ASCII (micro & mini computers),
UNICODE).
○ The demonstration illustrates how data manipulation
operations are performed on data types.
Outcome 2
 Describe computer data structures.
Assessment Criteria
○ The description distinguishes types of computer data
structures and identifies examples (Range: Bits, Bytes,
Characters, Fields, Records, Files, Databases).
○ The description distinguishes types of computer files and
identifies examples (Range: Master, Transaction,
Temporary, Document , Serial, Sequential, Indexed,
Direct).
○ The description distinguishes types of computer
databases and identifies examples (Range: Hierarchical,
Network, Relational, SQL (Completeness, Non-
redundancy, Structure).

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ALIGNMENT MATRIX

The above outcomes can be found in the following learning units:

Unit Std Number Specific Outcomes Learning Unit
and Name Number and Name
14921: Describe Specific Outcome 1 Learning Unit 1: Types
the types of Specific Outcome 2 of computer hardware
computer systems Specific Outcome 3 configurations and
and associated Specific Outcome 4 associated application
hardware systems
configurations
14917: Explain Specific Outcome 1 Learning Unit 2:
computer Specific Outcome 2 Computer Architecture
architecture Specific Outcome 3
concepts
14944: Explain how Specific Outcome 1 Learning Unit 3:
data is stored on Specific Outcome 2 Storage of Data
computers

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KEY TO ICONS USED IN THIS MODULE

Group work, but

remember that
Individual activity
you need to
report back.

Questions Role-play

Class discussion Research

Notes and
Case Study
observations

Formative Summative
Assessment Assessment
Activity Preparation

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LEARNING UNIT 1: TYPES OF COMPUTER

HARDWARE CONFIGURATIONS AND ASSOCIATED
APPLICATION SYSTEMS

Learning outcomes to be achieved

 Describe past, present and future computer hardware

configurations.
 Describe categories of computer systems applications.

1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 COMPUTER HARDWARE CONFIGURATIONS

The four major groups of computers are micro-computer, mini-

computer mainframe and supercomputer. This classification of
hardware configurations is largely historical based and an
outgrowth of the different requirements that each computer
generation was created for.

1.1.1 Microcomputers

The term "Microcomputer" came into

popular use after the introduction of the minicomputer which simply
means a small computer. Microcomputer is a desktop sized digital
computer that can serve one user at a time.

The microcomputer is also known as the "Personal Computer “,

stand-alone computer or desktop computer. The name “Personal
Computer” is largely related to IBM who introduced and marketed

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the first widely available, commercialized microcomputer called

“IBM PC” where “PC” stood for Personal Computer. As the most
dominant microcomputer in the introduction of microcomputers the
IBM PC became the standard against which all microcomputers
were compared and the branding that IBM created, the “PC”
helped provide a name for the industry as it grew.

The category is termed “micro” because the fundamental

component that allowed the category’s development was the
micro-processor, a revolutionary design in processors that brought
down the prices of computers and also pushed the envelope on
performance.

The lower and affordable costs in the development and production

of the microprocessor and various components of the
microcomputer allowed microcomputers to become a broad market
general purpose computer. The general appeal or focus of
microcomputers on the individual’s enjoyment and productivity has
been a key factor in the microcomputer’s development and
enhancement over the years. Where other computers were used
by a broad group of people within an Organisation, the
microcomputer was mostly used by the individuals for single
activities that required more processing power than other
technologies of the time had to offer.

Where larger systems were focused on the productivity of the

whole department or company, the microcomputer was often only
effective for a single person’s work.

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One example of how Microcomputers differ is the use of Games. In

many cases, people buy microcomputers that are capable or
running high-end games. Not only does this provide entertainment
value but it also ensures high performance capabilities. If you can
play the latest games, you can probably run the most stringent of
applications.

Microcomputers can be grouped into four smaller groups.

They are workstations (desktops), laptops, notebooks and PDAs.
Each refers to the physical usage of the machines and not
necessarily the power or the size. Workstations generally refer to
machines used for intensive calculations or designs such as
architecture and buildings.

Figure - Workstations

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Workstations also refer to machines used by business people for

word processing, spread sheeting etc., and are physically placed
onto a desk. The laptop and the notebook are portable machines.

Laptops generally are bigger and clumsier due to the power supply
being encased in the box holding the CPU. The notebook is
normally smaller. Notebooks and laptops can work on batteries for
hours allowing the user to work with it in aeroplanes, in the car and
places computers are not normally available. Initially designed as
stand-alone machines the PC and the operating systems popular
on the PCs do not integrate as well into networked environments
as the other computer systems. Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs)
are a very recent enhancement of electronic productivity tools
based on microprocessor technology. Personal Digital Assistants
such as Apple’s Message pad 2000 and later The Apple Message
Pad 2100, with a vastly improved handwriting recognition system,
162 MHz Strong ARM SA-110 RISC processor, Newton OS 2.1,
and a better, clearer, backlit screen, attracted critical plaudits. This
new technology has provided business people, and technocrats,
with common daily Organisation tools (such as a diary, telephone
book, and notepad) in a small packaging usually no larger than a
stenographer/short-hand notepad and many other.

1.1.2 Minicomputers

Minicomputers are a mid-sized computer that is usually placed out

of sight in an air conditioned room. We normally refer to these
computers as servers. They usually store information that’s
relevant to a host of people and they have enough processing

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power to cope with high amounts of processing. They allow for

simultaneous access from multiple users. They are smaller than
mainframe computers, slower and more affordable.

As a rule, these computers are untouched and mostly unseen.

There’s no need for any user interface or input and output devices.
In general, the only requirement is a network connection.

The technology advancement from vacuum tubes to transistors

leads to the ability of manufacturers and designers being able to
create computers smaller than mainframes and consequently more
affordable for a broader range of buyers. The advancement of
technology in microchips and microprocessors have allowed
minicomputers, although more expensive, to maintain a greater
processing power and then the more commonly used
microcomputer.

For Large supermarkets around the world need to have

example their cash register send sales information to the same
computer (so that the data is collected in one place).
This work requires more input devices (cash
registers) and output devices (Screens) than the
microcomputer was designed to have access to.
Some Organisations, like TCF and Morris Hedstrom,
operate the local supermarket using local area
networks and microcomputers, but tie the various
(100’s) supermarkets together to the central office to
a minicomputer. The minicomputer is also required to

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work when the entire sales people key in sales

information at the same time, this requires a powerful
machine that can work with all the input devices at the
same time.

Minicomputers are used by medium sized business and small sites

of large organisations such as Nissan South Africa. They are also
used in factories to control automated assembly lines for
manufacturing or large process control. Where numerous
equipment have to be coordinated and operated in time-critical
sequence, such as a car manufacturing plant, or chemical plant,
minicomputers are found to coordinate the many peripheral
devices, collate and assess input from many other peripheral
devices.

Figure - Minicomputers

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The microcomputer is inadequate in processing power and

peripheral connections to complete the work and mainframe
computers are too expensive for the job to be cost-effective.

An important measure for minicomputers and mainframes is the

reliability of the machine as it generally has to operate 24 hours
where every minute of operation is important to the company. A
minute of downtime, where the computer is not functioning
correctly, is calculated in lost money for organisations.
Microcomputers have not been manufactured nor warranted for
critical operations and many microcomputer manufacturers
explicitly state in their promotional material that the
microcomputers are not designed nor intended for critical
operations.

Terminals used by computer operators to

enter and review data do not have local hard
disks nor floppy disks. A typical minicomputer
may have 20 to 100 terminals connected to
the mini allowing as many people to review
data on screen, as well as from printouts.

Popular makers of minicomputers include DEC - Digital Equipment

Corporation who built the popular VAX minicomputer used in
universities, banks and engineering firms.

IBM also creates a very popular minicomputer range with a

branding of the AS400.

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Hewlett Packard has a popular minicomputer range branded the

HP9000.

1.1.3 Mainframes

Mainframes (often colloquially referred to as Big Iron are powerful

computers used mainly by large Organisations for critical
applications, typically bulk data processing such as census,
industry and consumer statistics, enterprise resource planning, and
financial transaction processing.

Figure - The Mainframe

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The term originally referred to the large cabinets that housed the
central processing unit and main memory of early computers. Later
the term was used to distinguish high-end commercial machines
from less powerful units.

Mainframes have even more access to storage space and to

input/output devices. To work with these extra devices mainframes
also have more powerful 'processors'. This power is useful and
required by large corporations who have large amounts of data to
process.

For Large overseas banks that have millions of customer

example accounts to update regular will need very powerful
machines to process this data. These large banks
would have a mainframe maintain their customer
account records (like their bank book account
balance, how much they withdrew, deposited) so that
the customer can turn-up at any of the branches (local
bank building) to withdraw/deposit money. So Thabo
who has a bank account in ABSA can take a trip from
Pretoria to Cape Town, turn up to the bank in
Khayalitsha, Cape Town to withdraw some money.

Another power of mainframes is that they are designed to connect

input/output devices that span vast distances. Like the above
example, to connect devices that can be as far away from each
other as Pretoria and Cape Town, Khayalitsha. The powerful
hardware and CPU chips that can support the above work can also
be used for making complex calculations, and designs.

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Mainframes are often used by corporations who design jets or

studying aerodynamics effects etc. One major inducement for the
development of these computers originally was the increasing
volumes of data collected by the US Bureau of Statistics during the
US Census. The volume of data was growing rapidly such that the
data required over 9 years collating, compiling, and publishing. As
a consequence the US Census (which is carried out every 10
years) would re-occur before the data from the previous census
was available for the public and the published information was
already significantly inaccurate on the date of release.

Due to the limits of existing technologies of the time, the

components of the “Mainframe” was much larger than they are
today and required vast spaces to store them. Hence one of the
terms synonymous with mainframe computers is “Big Iron” for the
literally BIG space the machines took up and the BIG amount of
metal it required to put a machine together.

The most popular maker of mainframes is I.B.M. International

Business Machines, a large Multi-national Corporation
headquartered in the U.S.A.

1.1.4 Supercomputers

Supercomputers are known as a class of extremely powerful digital

computers. The term is commonly applied to the fastest high-
performance systems available at a given time; current personal
computers are more powerful than the supercomputers of just a
few years ago. Supercomputers are used primarily for scientific

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and engineering work. Unlike

conventional computers, they usually
have more than one CPU, often
functioning in parallel
(simultaneously); even higher-
performance supercomputers are now
being developed through use of
massively parallel processing,
incorporating thousands of individual
processors. Supercomputers have huge storage capacity and very
fast input/output capability, and can operate in parallel on
corresponding elements of arrays of numbers rather than on one
pair of elements at a time Supercomputers have been developed
from the processing requirements of advanced research projects
by engineers, scientists and more recently by other research fields.
The supercomputer is a title generally given to computers with
processing power well exceeding those of the fastest mainframes
and its focus is processing data and manipulation of that data. A
significant difference between mainframes and supercomputers is
the primary focus of super computers on processing capabilities
independent of the many varied input/output devices expected on
mainframes.

The major cause for the development of super-class computers

has been the continuing need in the scientific community for faster
and faster calculations. Scientists working on atomic physics,
computer intensive calculations such as natural speech recognition
continue to require more and more computational speed to test
their theorems. An example of the use of supercomputers is the

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South African Weather Services for national weather analysis and

prediction. The Bureau collects weather information from around
the world and makes instant analysis of this data. This information
is critical for airlines who cannot afford to be late with their
knowledge of what the weather conditions are over their flight
paths. The incredibly large amount of data that needs to be
collected and the requirement for the answers to become available
immediately is why a supercomputer is used. Large oil companies
such as Sasol use supercomputers to analyse their geological
findings and weapons developers use supercomputers to test out
new theories and strategies.
Again, the incredible amounts of data that geologists collect, and
the complexity of matching data with what can be potentially oil or
minerals requires very powerful computing facilities.

Car manufacturers simulate in three dimensions a car design and

the number of probable accidents that can occur to manage the
design safety requirements of vehicles without having to solder any
metal or build an engine. Supercomputers have been required for
this simulation process due to the complex calculations evaluating
a simulated accident and the display in three dimensions. Most
people do not currently need the ability to chart their own world
weather map so the supercomputer is not for everyone.
Supercomputers usually require specially built facilities and a large
staff of computer technicians and computer engineers to maintain
the hardware and software.

The most commonly known Supercomputer brand is the "Cray",

from Cray Research the first company to develop a "Super"

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computer. The distinctive, good looks of the Cray Super Computer

housed elaborate electronics in a look good box that was poured
through with liquid coolant to keep the system cool while it works.

1.1.5 Client-server

In an environment with more than around 6-10 computers, a peer

to peer network begins to become more trouble than it is worth.
Your computers start to slow down. You can never find the file you
are looking for, and security is non-existent.

If this is the case, companies switch to a client-server network by

bringing in a dedicated server to handle the load. The server is
"dedicated" because it is optimized to quickly serve requests from
the clients (other computers on the network) and it can be well
maintained.
It's the purpose of this unit standard to explain how the
"Client/Server" architecture is really a fundamental enabling
approach that provides the most flexible framework for using new
technologies like the World Wide Web, as they come along. The
old paradigm of host centric, time shared computing has given way
to a new client/server approach, which is message based and
modular. The examples below show how most new
Technologies can be viewed as simply different implementation
strategies built on a client/server foundation.

Figure - The diagram below shows a simple client-server

network:

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What is a server? A server is a computer that is running software

that enables it to serve specific requests from client computers For
example, you can have a file server that acts as a central storage
place for your network, a print server that routes print requests and
status information between computers and printers connected on
the network, as well as a multitude of other servers and server
functions.
Even though most people use the term "client/server" when talking
about group computing with PC's on networks, PC network
computing evolved before the client/server model started gaining
acceptance in the late 1980's. These first PC networks were based
on the file sharing metaphor illustrated in the figure entitled FILE
SERVER. In file sharing, the server simply downloads or transfers
files from the shared location to your desktop where the logic and
data for the job run in their entirety. This approach was popularized

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mostly by Xbase style products (dBASE, FoxPro and Clipper). File

sharing is simple and works as long as shared usage is low,
update contention is very low, and the volume of data to be
transferred is low compared with LAN capacity.

As personal computer (PC) LAN computing moved into the 90's

two megatrends provided the impetus for client/server computing.
The first was that as first generation PC LAN applications and their
users both grew, the capacity of file sharing was strained. Multi-
user Xbase technology can provide satisfactory performance for a
few up to maybe a dozen simultaneous users of a shared file, but
it's very rare to find a successful implementation of this approach
beyond that point. The second change was the emergence and
then dominance of the GUI metaphor on the desktop. Very soon
GUI presentation formats, led by Windows and Mac, and became
mandatory for presenting information. The requirement for GUI
displays meant that traditional mini or mainframe applications with
their terminal displays soon looked hopelessly out of date.

The architecture and technology that evolved to answer this

demand was client/server, in the guise of a two-tiered approach.
By replacing the file server with a true database server, the
network could respond to client requests with just the answer to a
query against a relational DBMS (rather than the entire file). One
benefit to this approach, then, is to
significantly reduce network traffic. Also, with a real DBMS, true
multi-user updating is now easily available to users on the PC
LAN. By now, the idea of using Windows or Mac style PC's to front
end a shared database server is familiar and widely implemented.

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A server provides many benefits including:

 Optimisation
 Centralisation
 Security
 Redundancy and Back-up
 Server Hardware
 Server Software

Optimisation
Server hardware (the physical, touchable, material parts of a
computer or other system) is designed to quickly serve requests
from clients.

Centralisation
Files are in one location for easy administration.

Security
Multiple levels of permissions - access privileges associated with a
file or directory can prevent users from doing damage to files.

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Redundancy and Back-up

Data can be stored in redundant ways (for example copied onto
another hard disk on the server using special technology called
RAID), or stored on external media such as tapes, so it can be
restored quickly in case of problems. A server, like any computer,
consists of two parts, the hardware and the software.

Server Hardware
Any normal desktop computer could act as a server, but typically
you want something much more robust. Standard server hardware
includes:
Hot swappable drives to speed up adding or replacing hard disks
(used in RAID) - drives can be changed without having to shut
down the server.
The ability to support multiple processors – in actual fact this is the
brains behind a computer. Processors are responsible for
performing calculations and tasks that make computer programs
work. Multiple processors can be an advantage if you need to run
applications that are processor intensive such as a very large
database. Support for larger amounts of RAM - the more memory
you have the faster your network can run. Faster input and output
- information can travel around the network more quickly. Fast
network cards.

Server Software
Server software comes in two categories, operating systems and
applications:

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Network Operating Systems. A network operating system is an

operating system which includes software to communicate with
other computers via a network. There are many different operating
systems for servers just as there are many different operating
systems for desktop computers. Windows Server 2003, Linux and
Novell Netware are the three main network operating system
competitors, but they are not the only ones.
A Network Operating System has many features built-in. All
include file serving, print serving, backup and some way to secure
those resources. Some Network Operating Systems also include a
web server (to allow you to host your website or intranet yourself)
or an email server (for email distribution around your network),
while others require you to buy these items separately. Research
all the options before making a decision on the Network Operating
System for your server.

Figure out precisely what you want by browsing through websites

and sales pamphlets. Then, try to find a Computer Guru who
knows both your network and your organisation, and ask this
person what they think would work best for your organisation.

If you can, try to make sure that this person is not the person who
would be doing the work or selling you the product, otherwise they
may have some conflicts of interest. This is a big decision, and it
will dramatically affect all of your future computer relationships.

Server Applications

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Server applications can be designed for nearly every purpose

imaginable, from fax servers to remote access servers. Every
application will have specific server requirements, and will be
typically designed to run on either Windows Server 2003 or
Netware and increasingly Linux. Many servers run multiple
applications (e.g. email and faxing) to serve a variety of needs.

1.1.6 CPU and RAM

Since from the beginning of Electronic Numerical Integration and

Calculator (ENIAC), new ideas revolving computer technology
where implemented. Computer technology changes quickly, this
statement does not seem to adequately describe what sometimes
seems to be the breakneck pace of improvements in the heart of
any electronic computing engine, the central processing unit
(CPU). The transistor, invented at Bell Labs in 1947, is the
fundamental electronic component of the CPU chip. Higher
performance CPUs requires more logic circuitry, and this is
reflected in steadily rising transistor densities. Simply put, the
number of transistors in a CPU is a rough measure of its
computational power which is usually measured in floating point
mathematical operations per second (FLOPS). The more
transistors there are in the CPU, or silicon engine, the more work it
can do.

Trends in transistor density over time, reveal that density typically

doubles approximately every year and a half according to a well
know axiom known as Moore’s Law. This proposition, suggested
by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore (Moore 1965), was part

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observation and part marketing prophesy. In 1965 Moore, then

director of R&D at Fairchild Semiconductor, the first large-scale
producer of commercial integrated circuits, wrote an internal paper
in which he drew a line though five points representing the number
of components per integrated circuit for minimum cost for the
components developed between

1959 and 1964 (Source):

http://www.computerhistory.org/semiconductor/ timeline/1965-
Moore.html, accessed 12 January 2008). The prediction arising
from this observation became a self-fulfilling prophecy that
emerged as one of the driving principals of the semiconductor
industry. As is related to computer CPUs (one type of integrated
circuit), Moore’s Law states that the number of transistors packed
into a CPU doubles every 18–24 months.

In 1997, the Pentium II (2) had 7.5 million transistors, in 2000 the
Pentium 4 had 420 million, and the trend continues so that in 2007,
the Dual-Core Itanium 2 processor has 1.7 billion transistors.

In addition to transistor density, data handling capabilities (i.e.

progressing from manipulating 8, to 16, to 32, to 64 bits of
information per instruction), ever increasing clock speeds (Fig.
1.2), and the number of instructions executed per second, continue
to improve. The remarkable thing is that while the number of
transistors per CPU has increased more than 1,000 times over the
past 26 years, and another 1,000 times since 1996, performance
(measured with millions of instructions per second, MIPS) has
increased more than 10,000 times since the introduction of the

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8088 (Source: http://www.jcmit.com/cpu-performance.htm,

accessed 12 January 2008).

Scientific analysts, who use large databases, scientific

visualization applications, statistics, and simulation modelling,
need as many MIPS as they can get. The more powerful
computing platforms described above will enable us to perform
analyses that we could not perform earlier.

In the original edition we predicted that ‘‘Three years from now

CPU’s will be four times faster than they are today and multi-
processor designs should be commonplace.’’ This prediction has
generally proven to be true.

Figure - CPUs

CPU performance has continued to increase according to Moore’s

Law for the last 40 years, but this trend may not hold up in the near
future. To achieve higher transistor densities requires the
manufacturing technology (photolithography) to build the transistor
in smaller and smaller physical spaces. The process architecture
of CPUs in the early 1970s used a 10 micrometer (mm, 10 _6m)

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photolithography mask. The newest chips use a 45 nanometer

(nm, 10_9m) mask. As a consequence of these advances, the cost
per unit of performance as measured in gigaflops has dramatically
declined

It appears that manufacturing technology seems to reach its limits

in terms of how dense silicon chips can be manufactured – in other
words, how many transistors can fit onto CPU chips and how fast
their internal clocks can be run. As stated recently in the BBC
News, ‘‘the industry now believes that we are approaching the
limits of what classical technology – classical being as refined over
the last 40 years – can do.’’ (Source:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4449711.stm, accessed
12 January 2008). There is a problem with making microprocessor
circuitry smaller. Power leaks, the unwanted leakage of electricity
or electrons between circuits packed ever closer together, take
place. Overheating becomes a problem as processor architecture
gets ever smaller and clock speeds increase.

Traditional processors have one processing engine on a chip. One

method used to increase performance through higher transistor
densities, without increasing clock speed, is to put more than one
CPU on a chip and to allow them to independently operate on
different tasks (called threads). These advanced chips are called
multiple-core processors.

Difference between Dual-core processor and Quad-core

processor

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Dual-core processor Quad-core processor

Squeezes two CPU engines Have four engines. Multiple-core
onto a single chip. chips are all 64-bit meaning that
A dual-core processor they can work through
theoretically doubles your 64 bits of data per instruction. That
computing power since a is twice rate of the current standard
dual-core processor can 32-bit processor. A quad-core chip
handle two threads of data can handle four threads of data.
simultaneously. The Progress marches on. Intel
Result is there is less announced in February 2007 that it
waiting for tasks to had a
complete. Prototype CPU that contains 80
processor cores and is capable of 1
teraflop (1012 floating point
operations per second) of
processing capacity.

The potential uses of a desktop fingernail-sized 80-core chip with

supercomputer-like performance will open unimaginable
opportunities (Source: http://www.intel.com/
pressroom/archive/releases/20070204comp.htm, accessed 12
January 2008).

As if multiple core CPUs were not powerful enough, new products

being
developed will feature ‘‘dynamically scalable’’ architecture,
meaning that virtually every part of the processor – including cores,
cache, threads, interfaces, and power – can be dynamically
allocated based on performance, power and thermal requirements

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(Source:
http://www.hardwarecentral.com/hardwarecentral/reports/article.ph
p/3668756, accessed 12 January 2008). Supercomputers may
soon be the same size as a laptop if IBM brings to the market
silicon nanophotonics. In this new technology, wires on a chip are
replaced with pulses of light on tiny optical fibbers for quicker and
more power-efficient data transfers between processor cores on a
chip. This new technology is about 100 times faster, consumes
one-tenth as much power, and generates less heat (Source:
http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/12/06/IBM-researchers-build-
supercomputeron-a-chip_1.html, accessed 12 January 2008).

Multi-core processors pack a lot of power. There is just one

problem: most software programs are lagging behind hardware
improvements. To get the most out of a 64-bit processor, you need
an operating system and application programs that support it.

1.1.7 Emerging systems

The settings on a computer are called computer configuration.

Through different settings different things are achieved (i.e.,
configurations to connect to certain wireless networks; firewall
configuration to deny all unsolicited network requests; graphics
settings that enable high-performance graphics, etc.)
Currently there are 64-bit versions of Linux, Solaris, and Windows
XP, Vista and Windows 7. However, 64-bit versions of most device
drivers are not available, so for today’s uses, a 64-bit operating
system can become frustrating due to a lack of available drivers.

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Another current developing trend is building high performance

computing environments using computer clusters, which are
groups of loosely coupled computers, typically connected together
through fast local area networks. A cluster works together so that
multiple processors can be used as though they are a single
computer. Clusters are usually deployed to improve performance
over that provided by a single computer, while typically being much
less expensive than single computers of comparable speed or
availability. Beowulf is a design for high-performance parallel
computing clusters using inexpensive personal computer
hardware. It was originally developed by NASA’s Thomas Sterling
and Donald Becker. The name comes from the main character in
the Old English epic poem Beowulf.

A Beowulf cluster of workstations is a group of usually identical PC

computers, Configured into a multi-computer architecture, running
an Open Source Unix-like operating system, such as BSD. They
are joined into a small network and have libraries and programs
installed that allow processing to be shared among them. The
server node controls the whole cluster and serves files to the client
nodes. It is also the cluster’s console and gateway to the outside
world. Large Beowulf machines might have more than one server
node, and possibly other nodes dedicated to particular tasks, for
example consoles or monitoring stations. Nodes are configured
and controlled by the server node and do only what they are told to
do in a disk-less client configuration. There is no particular piece of
software that defines a cluster as a Beowulf.

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Commonly used parallel processing libraries include Message

Passing Interface; and Parallel Virtual Machine. Both of these
permit the programmer to divide a task among a group of
networked computers, and recollect the results of processing.
Software must be revised to take advantage of the cluster.
Specifically, it must be capable of performing multiple independent
parallel operations that can be distributed among the available
processors. Microsoft also distributes a Windows Compute Cluster
Server 2003 to facilitate building a high-performance computing
resource based on Microsoft’s Windows platforms.

One of the main differences between Beowulf and a cluster of

workstations is that Beowulf behaves more like a single machine
rather than many workstations.

In most cases client nodes do not have keyboards or monitors, and

are accessed only via remote login or through remote terminals.
Beowulf nodes can be thought of as a CPU + memory package
which can be plugged into the cluster, just like a CPU or memory
module can be plugged into a motherboard.
Beowulf systems are now deployed worldwide as they are simply
to use. Typical Computer configurations consist of multiple
machines built on AMD’s Opteron 64-bit and/or Athlon X2 64-bit
processors. Memory is the most readily accessible large-volume
storage available to the CPU. We expect that standard RAM
configurations will continue to increase as operating systems and
application software become more full-featured and demanding of
RAM.

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For example The ‘‘recommended’’ configuration for Windows

Vista Home Premium Edition and Apple’s new
Leopard operating systems is 2 GB of RAM, 1
GB to hold the operating system leaving 1 GB
for data and application code. Years (1999–
2001) 64–256 megabytes (MB) of Dynamic RAM
where available and machines with 64 MB of
RAM will be typical.

Over the years, advances in semiconductor fabrication technology

have made gigabyte memory configurations not only a reality, but
commonplace. Not all RAM performs equally. Newer types, called
double data rate RAM (DDR) decrease the time it takes for the
CPU to communicate with memory, thus speeding up computer
execution. DDR comes in several flavours. DDR has been around
since 2000 and is sometimes called DDR1. DDR2 was introduced

In 2003 It took a while forDDR2 to reach widespread use, but you

can find it in most new computers today. DDR3 began appearing in
mid-2007. RAM simply holds data for the processor.
However, there is a cache between the
processor and the RAM: the L2 cache. The
processor sends data to this cache. When the
cache overflows, data are sent to the RAM. The
RAM sends data back to the L2
Cache when the processor needs it. DDR RAM
transfers data twice per clock cycle. The clock
rate, measured in cycles per second, or hertz, is
the rate at which operations are performed.

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DDR clock speeds range between 200 MHz (DDR-200) and 400
MHz (DDR-400). DDR-200 transfers 1,600 megabits per second
(Mb s_1:106 bits s_1), while DDR-400 transfers 3,200 MB s_1.
DDR2 RAM is twice as fast as DDR RAM. The bus carrying data to
DDR2 memory is twice as fast. That means twice as much data
are carried to the module for each clock cycle. DDR2 RAM also
consumes less power than DDR RAM. DDR2 speeds range
between 400 MHz (DDR2-400) and 800 MHz (DDR2-800). DDR2-
400 transfers 3,200 MB s_1. DDR2-800 transfers 6,400 MB s_1.
DDR3 RAM is twice as fast as DDR2 RAM, at least in theory.
DDR3 RAM is more power efficient than DDR2RAM. DDR3
speeds range between 800MHz (DDR3-800) and 1,600 MHz
(DDR3-1600). DDR3-800 transfers 6,400 MB s_1; DDR3-1600
transfers 12,800 MB s_1.

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Figure - RAM

As processors increased in performance, the addressable memory

space also increased as the chips evolved from 8-bit to 64-bit.
Bytes of data readily 8 B.A. Megrey and E. Moksness accessible to
the processor are identified by a memory address, which by
convention starts at zero and ranges to the upper limit addressable
by the processor. A 32-bit processor typically uses memory
addresses that are 32 bits wide. The 32-bit wide address allows
the processor to address 232 bytes (B) of memory, which is
exactly 4,294,967,296 B, or 4 GB. Desktop machines with a
gigabyte of memory are common, and boxes configured with 4 GB
of physical memory are easily available. While 4 GB may seem like
a lot of memory, many scientific databases have indices that are
larger. A 64-bit wide address theoretically allows 18 million
terabytes of addressable memory (1.8 1019 B). Realistically 64-bit
systems will typically access approximately 64 GB of memory in
the next 5 years.

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1.1.8 Portable Computing or standalone

Another recent technology is the appearance of powerful portable

computer systems. The first portable computer systems (i.e.
‘‘luggables’’)
Were large, heavy, and often portability came at a cost of reduced
performance.
Current laptop, notebook, and subnotebook designs are often
comparable to desktop systems in terms of their processing power,
hard disk, and RAM storage and graphic display capabilities.
Earlier in 1996 and years after it was not unusual, when attending
a scientific or working group meeting, to see most participants
arrive with their own portable computers loaded with data and
scientific software applications. But today, it is unusual to see
scientists attending technical meetings arrive without a portable
computer like one of those below.

Figure - Portable Computers

Since 1996, the performance and cost gap between notebooks

and desktops capable of performing scientific calculations has
continued to narrow, so much so, that the unit growth rate of
notebook computers is now faster than for desktops. With the

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performance gap between notebooks and desktop systems

narrowing, commercial users and consumers alike are beginning to
use the notebooks more and more as a desktop replacement since
the distinction between the two as far as what work can be
accomplished is becoming more and more blurred. Moreover, the
emergence of notebook ‘‘docking stations’’ allows the opportunity
to plug notebooks into workplace or institution’s network and
internet cafe resources when one is in need to do so and then
unplug the notebook at the end of the day to take it home or on the
road, all the while maintaining one primary location for important
data, software, working documents, literature references, email
archives, and internet bookmarks. We have seen that
miniaturization of large capacity hard disk storage, memory sticks,
printers, and universal access to email made available via a cell
phone and ubiquitous Internet connectivity (see below) all
contribute to a portable computing environment, making the virtual
office a reality.

Figure - Portable Technology

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1.1.9 Hardware Advances

It is difficult not to appreciate at how quickly computer technology

advances. The current typical desktop or laptop computer,
compared to the original monochrome 8 KB random access
memory (RAM), 4 MHz 8088 microcomputer or the original Apple
II, has improved several orders of magnitude in many areas. The
most notable of these hardware advances are processing
capability or we can say the speed, colour graphics resolution and
display technology, hard disk storage, and the amount of RAM.
The most remarkable thing is that since 1982, the cost of a high-
end microcomputer system was fairly demanding in rand’s terms
compared to now.

ACTIVITY 1 – REVIEWED - US 14921 SO1

Divide into groups. Explain what is meant by

Computer Configuration. Complete this activity in your Portfolio of
Evidence Workbooks.

1.2 CATEGORIES OF COMPUTER SYSTEM APPLICATIONS

Here we will have a look at the different categories of computer

system applications. You have come to know computer system
applications as software programs. These are the software
packages we install on our systems in order to have certain
functionalities that we require. The four categories are; Business,
Scientific, Education and Home.

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Remember, computer system applications are

not the same as system software. System
software includes operating systems, which
govern computing resources. Today large
applications running on remote machines such
as Websites are considered to be system
software, because the end-user interface is
generally

You will also learn how the different types of applications perform
as well as the types of processing methods they can use.

1.2.1 Application Categories

Business applications
Business applications are a broad category that includes most
commercially available software packages available today. The
most common applications are spread sheet (MS Excel), word
processing (MS Word), database (MS Access), presentation (MS
Power Point) and project management (MS Project). Some more
examples are web browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox), E-mail
clients (MS Outlook, Thunderbird), computer aided design (Turbo
CAD, Auto CAD), business management (SAP) and point of sales
software (Quickbooks and Pastel).

Scientific applications
Scientific applications are applications used in the fields of
medicine, scientific research, engineering and chemistry. These
applications are highly specialised. They sometimes perform
complex calculations and can therefore not be used on desktop

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computers. They are also difficult to operate and cannot be easily

understood by anyone.

Engineers make use of sophisticated simulators to test in a virtual

environment how their constructions will react under certain
circumstances before they start building or constructing.

Scientists make use of equation editors and flowchart software.

Examples of such applications are Microsoft Visio (Flowchart tool)
and Microsoft Equation Editor.

Home applications
Most of the time, our computers at home and at work have much
the same software setup. However, many companies do not allow
their employees certain privileges such as music, videos, pictures,
web browsing that is non-work related and gaming so we have
these things on our computers at home. For music and movies we
may have Windows Media Player, for pictures we may have
ACDsee and for gaming there may be a variety of gaming
application (games) that we may have installed at any one time.
We may also have an office package installed with Word
processing, spread sheets and so on.

Educational applications
Educational applications are software packages such as digital
encyclopaedias, language learning tools, typing tutors and many
more. Some encyclopaedic software may include Encarta,
Britannica and Wikipedia which is an internet based encyclopaedia

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that is free to be accessed by anyone and contributed to by

anyone.

1.2.2 Processing methods

Different processing methods allow users to obtain different levels

of functionality from a computer. For instance, the sales person at
the sales desk of a company needs to find a specific customer in
order to create an invoice for some goods the customer wants to
buy. The company have literally thousands of customers that all
have accounts there. The sales clerk cannot possibly go through
the whole list of customers in search one single person and what if
there were two people with the same name and surname? So the
company assign customer numbers to all their customers and the
sales clerk only need to enter the customer number into a search
field after which the computer does the searching and calls up the
customer’s account in seconds.

Batch processing
Let’s say you are a professional photographer and you need to
convert 800 images all from RAW format into JPG, resize them
and add a border and a watermark. This will take you forever to do.
You would have to go through every image several times. Some
photo editing applications have a batch processing function that
will allow you to do all of your changes on one image and the
program will apply them to all of the images in the batch you
specify.

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In the mainframe world, batch processing can help user’s process

large amounts of data automatically. Running a batch job on a
mainframe is far more effective than feeding it commands one by
one. This way, the mainframe will know exactly what to do and
complete the task all at once. Batch jobs can also be scheduled to
run at certain times of the day so doing automating your workflow
and saving you time.

Interactive processing
Interactive processing is where user input is required for an
application to perform certain tasks. Compute games are a good
example of this as you need to give the game input for anything to
happen. Another such example may be point of sales systems.
The POS system awaits input from the clerk. Let’s say scanning of
a barcode. Once the system received a barcode it immediately
checks for the product that was scanned and presents the clerk
with all the relevant information regarding the product such as
description, price, stock levels etc. Thus interactive processing
requires input in order to generate output for the user.

Real-time processing
Interactive processing is also real-time processing because your
input immediately results in an output. If you are in your car and
you step on the brake or accelerator you will immediately either
speed up or slow down. This is a real-time reaction. Similarly, if
you are chatting to your friends on MXiT, they immediately see the
text you entered. You also immediately see the text they entered.
Thus the conversation is happening in real-time.

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Process control
“Process control is a statistics and engineering discipline that deals
with architectures, mechanisms, and algorithms for controlling the
output of a specific process. See also control theory.” - Wikipedia

Accelerating your car is a process that has a specific and desired

outcome to reach and maintain a specific speed in accordance to
the national traffic law e.g. 60KM/h and is kept constant for as long
as needed. The speed is referred to here as the controlled variable
but it is at the same time the input variable that you read from your
speedometer in order to decide whether to accelerate or
decelerate. The desired speed is the set point. The state of the
accelerator (pressed in or released) is called the manipulated
variable since it is subject to control actions

“A commonly used control device called a programmable logic

controller, or a PLC, is used to read a set of digital and analog
inputs, apply a set of logic statements, and generate a set of
analog and digital outputs. Using the example in the previous
paragraph, the room temperature would be an input to the PLC.
The logical statements would compare the set point to the input
temperature and determine whether more or less heating was
necessary to keep the temperature constant. A PLC output would
then either open or close the hot water valve, an incremental
amount, depending on whether more or less hot water was
needed. Larger more complex systems can be controlled by a
Distributed Control System (DCS) or SCADA system.” – Wikipedia.

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INFORMAL ACTIVITY – VIEWED – US 14921 SO1

Discuss the question: Where did computers come from, and where
is it going?

Background information

History in the Making

Prior to electronic computers, mechanical devices
used for calculations tabulations used mechanical
gearing to tabulate occurrences of events and were
problematic due to the wear (malfunctions) that occur
with moving pieces of machinery and the problems of
creating accurate finishes on the mechanical devices
to fit the designs.

The First Electric Calculating Machines – Herman

Hollerith
To solve the problem, Herman Hollerith invented a
calculating, tabulating machine that used electricity
rather than mechanical gears. Holes representing
information to be tabulated were punched in cards with
the location of each hole representing a specific piece
of information (male, female, age, etc.) The cards were
then inserted into the machine and metal pins used to
open and close electrical circuits. Hollerith’s machine
was immensely successful and based on its success
and together with some friends they formed a
company that eventually became known as

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International Business Machines (IBM). The first

computer-like machine is generally thought to be the
Mark I, which was built by a team from IBM and
Harvard University. The Mark I used mechanical
telephone relay switches to store information and
accepted data on punched cards, processed it and
then output the new data. Because it could not make
decisions about the data it processed, the Mark I was
not, however, a real computer but was instead a highly
sophisticated calculator. It was, nevertheless,
impressive and has now been dismantled
(decommissioned) with parts of it on display at the
Undergraduate Science building at Harvard University.

The First Electronic Computer – Eniac.

In 1943 work began on the Electronic Numerical
Integration and Calculator, or ENIAC. It was originally
a secret military project which was to be used to
calculate the trajectory of artillery shells. In one of its
first demonstrations it was given a problem that would
have taken a team of mathematicians three days to
solve. It solved the problem in twenty seconds.
ENIAC was different from the Mark I in several
important ways. First, it occupied 63m2 and it weighed
30 tons. Second, it used 17,000 vacuum tubes instead
of relay switches. To be the first true computer. ENIAC
had two major shortcomings. First, it was difficult to
change its instructions to allow the computer to solve
different problems. It had originally been designed only

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to compute artillery trajectory tables, but when it

needed to work on another problem it could take up to
three days of wire pulling, re-plugging and switch
flipping to change instructions. Second, because the
tubes it contained were constantly burning out, the
ENIAC was unreliable.

The mainframe grew out of vacuum tubes and as

technology improved the mainframe became smaller
and less expensive. Correspondingly, the
Organisations who could afford the original expensive
machines had more money to spend on more features,
capabilities so although the mainframe decreased
significantly in size, it still remained a
large creature using up a lot of electricity and space.

The Stored Program Computer – John von

Neumann
In the late 1940’s, John von Neumann considered the
idea of storing computer instructions and data in
memory, which was accessed by a central processing
unit, or CPU.
The CPU would control all the functions of the
computer electronically so that it would not be
necessary to flip switches or pull wires to change the
instructions. Now it would be possible to solve many
different problems by simply typing in new instructions
at the keyboard. Together with other computer

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scientists, von Neumann designed and built the

EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic
Computer) and the EDSAC (Electronic Discrete
Storage Automatic Computer).

With the development of the concept of stored

instructions or “programs”, the modern computer age
was ready to begin. Since then the development of
new computers has progressed rapidly, but von
Newman’s concept has remained, for most part,
unchanged.
The next computer to employ von Neumann’s
concepts was the Universal Automatic Computer,
called UNIVAC, developed in 1951.

Computers at this time continued to use many vacuum

tubes which made them large and expensive. UNIVAC
weighed 35 tons. These computers were so expensive
to purchase and run that only the largest corporations
and the US government could afford them.

Their ability to perform up to 1000 calculations per

second, however, made them popular.
The Transistor – BELL Laboratories.
It was BELL Laboratories’ invention of the transistor
that made smaller and less expensive computers
possible, with increased calculating speeds of up to
10,000 calculations per second. Although the size of
the computers shrank, they were still large and

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expensive.

In 1963, IBM, using ideas it had learned while working

on projects for the military, introduced the first
medium-sized computer named the “model 650.” It
was still expensive, but it was capable of handling the
flood of paperwork produced by the many government
agencies and businesses. These new computers also
saw a change in the way data was stored. Punched
cards were replaced by magnetic tape and high speed
reel-to-reel tape machines. Using magnetic tape gave
computers the ability to read (access) and write (store)
data quickly and more reliably.

Another important advance occurring at the time was

the development of programming languages.
Previously, computers had to be programmed by
setting different switches to their On or Off positions.
The first programming languages were very similar,
being strings of 1’s and 0’s representing the status of
the switches (1 for On, and 0 for Off). These were
called “low-level” languages. Languages such as
FORTRAN (Formula Translator), which was the first
popular “high-level” language, allowed programmers to
use English-like instructions such as READ and
WRITE. With them, it was possible to type instructions
directly into the computer or on punched cards,
eliminating the time consuming task of re-writing.

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A number of high-level languages have been

developed since that time including COBOL (Common
Business Oriented Language), BASIC (Beginner’s All-
purpose Symbolic Instruction Code), Ada, C, and
Pascal. Cobol was commissioned by the US
Department of Defence in 1959 to provide a common
language for use on all computers and the
development committee was chaired by Commodore
Grace Murray Hopper of the US Navy.

The Integrated Circuits and the Microprocessor

The next major technological advancement was the
replacement of the transistor by tiny integrated circuits
or “chips.” Chips are blocks of silicon with logic circuits
etched onto their surface. They are smaller and
cheaper than transistors and can contain thousands of
circuits on a single chip. Integrated circuits also give
computers tremendous speed allowing them to
process information at a rate of 1,000,000 calculations
per second. One of the most important benefits of
using integrated circuits is to decrease the cost and
size of computers. The IBM System 360 was one of
the first computers to use integrated circuits and was
so popular with businesses that IBM had difficulty
keeping up with the demand. Computers had come
down in size and price to such a point that smaller
organisations such as universities and hospitals could
now afford them.

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A very important advance to occur in the early 70’s

was the invention of the microprocessor, an entire
CPU on a single chip. In 1970, Marcian Hoff, an
engineer at Intel Corporation, designed the first of
these chips. As a result, in 1975 the ALTAIR
microcomputer was born which led to the creation of
small software companies such as Microsoft and in
1977 Stephen Wozniak and Steven Jobs designed
and built the first mass market microcomputer, the
Apple. Microcomputers were inexpensive and
engineers, hobbyists were able to take their computers
home.

The computer revolution had finally come home for

many.

ACTIVITY 2 – REVIEWED – US 14921 SO1,2

Complete this activity in your Portfolio of Evidence

Workbooks.

LEARNING UNIT 2: COMPUTER

ARCHITECTURE

Learning outcomes to be achieved

 Explain computer architecture elements.
 Explain the organisation of a computer.
 Describe the design constraints in the design of instruction sets
for computers.

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2. INTRODUCTION

In our modern time of living, we rely on computer systems and

networks all the time, whether you like or know about it or not.
From a simple device such as a calculator, TV remote control, the
TV itself and an electronic parking meter, they are all computerised
to a certain extent. They help automate our sophisticated world to
help free up tedious man hours and save companies money. This
is both a good and a bad thing as people may lose their jobs
because an automated system is taking over. Then again, it may
also create new jobs as specialists are required to operate the new
automated machinery.

Automation is not the only application for computer systems. We

use them to store all our documents and customer data, project
data and any other forms of record you can think of. They help us
to manage huge quantities of data, sort information, solve crimes
and do our general day to day business.

Computer systems consist of Hardware, Software and Networks.

Put together they are referred to as information technology or IT.
This learning unit will focus on the explanation of those concepts
and where they fit into day-to-day life and business infrastructures.

2.1 COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE ELEMENTS

2.1.1 Hardware

Hardware is the physical components of a computer. That means

we can see, touch and hear them. Hardware provides a platform

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for software to work. These are components such as the mouse,

keyboard, processor (CPU), monitor and so on. They are there for
us to interact with the computer or in the case of components such
as the processor and motherboard, they are there to manipulate
data and perform specific functions to our liking. Devices that stand
separate from a computer but are connected to it by means of
cables are called peripheral devices. These are devices such as
printers, keyboards, display units, etc.

Hardware is mechanical in nature. This means that a hardware

device can only perform the task it was designed for. A display unit
cannot be used as a webcam (unless it has one built in) and
neither can a mouse be used to print documents.

2.1.2 Software

Software is intangible (untouchable) and refers to the collection of

programs such as office packages, operating systems, drawing
tools etc. that we use to perform certain tasks. We refer to
computer programs as software because even though the disks
they come on are tangible (hardware) we still cannot touch the
software code itself. We need the hardware to interpret the code
and also to manipulate it and its operation or to create digital
content by use of the programs. Even saved files like spread
sheets can be referred to as software or programs because they
contain data manipulating functions such as formulae.

Software comes in various forms. They are user installable

programs and firmware.

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Software – System
System software is transparent, low level software that provides
interface with the computer’s hardware. All software communicates
with hardware but not as directly as system software. You will learn
about the Kernel later.

An everyday example of system software is an operating system

(OS). A computer cannot function without an operating system
One can make use of operating systems such as Microsoft’s
Windows, One of the Linux flavours or if you are using an Apple
Macintosh, Mac OS.

Software - Application
After you have installed your operating system, your system may
not be very useful. You may have the need to do word processing,
create spread sheets, make videos or play games. Application
software is the type of software that provides you the functionality
you require.

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2.1.3 Firmware

Firmware controls hardware devices. Some hardware devices are

designed to perform complex tasks such as play back audio or
video. In order for these devices to perform their tasks they need
what is called firmware. The device itself may be able to output
audio and video because it has all the right circuitry to do that.
Firmware provides an interface to the hardware and allows you to
browse and select the items you would like to play and sends the
output information to the relevant hardware components.

Applications of firmware:
 Computer BIOS (basic input output system)
 Mobile device software (e.g. cell phones, MP3 players, GPS,
etc.)
 Vehicular control systems (A car’s engine control unit / ECU)
 Game consoles
 Television sets and satellite decoders
 Computer display units

2.1.4 Virtual Machines

Machine virtualisation is a revolutionary technology which saves

companies tonnes of money on hardware, in turn saving a lot of
energy and time consumed through management.

Virtual machines allow for multiple virtual computers to be

operated from one single physical host. It allows for multiple virtual
guests on a single physical host without affecting the performance

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of the physical host too much. A virtual machine behaves exactly

like a physical machine would. Each virtual machine is assigned an
amount of memory that it is allowed to use from the physical host
as well as a fixed amount of disk space that is pre allocated.
Memory usage is dynamic and virtual machine operational data is
cached to the hard drive of the host machine when the virtual
machine is idle for long enough. This frees up resources for other
virtual machines to use.

There are two types of virtual machine. They are a) System virtual
machines and b) Process virtual machines:

a) System virtual machines

The most common function of system virtual machines is server
virtualisation. This application saves companies lots of money by
doing away with bulky hardware. Instead of having one physical
machine for every server application, one can now have several
virtual machines on one physical machine. If you would’ve had (for
example) seven physical machines, you will now only have one
with seven virtual machines. This saves power, cooling costs and
hardware and maintenance cost. Companies can now spend more
money on one good machine rather than multiple machines that all
require upgrades too.

In short, the advantages are:

 System virtual machines requires less hardware
 They cost less to manage
 Can easily be deployed on another machine should its host
fail

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 Virtual machines are scalable

 They are friendlier toward the environment because,
 They consume less energy
 Virtual machines consume less space

b) Process virtual machines

These are also sometime referred to as application virtual
machines. They are used to create a platform independent
programming environment. This allows an application to start and
stop in exactly the same way irrespective of the operating system.
Java is a very good example of application virtual machines. You
will have the same code for an application and only your run-time
environment will be different. This means that you will have a
different version of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) installed
depending on the operating system you are working on. This
means that an application you wrote in Java will be able to run on
virtually any operating system and even hardware platform (e.g.
cell phones, PDAs etc.) because it runs in an application virtual
machine.

2.1.5 Functional levels within a computer

Functional levels are also referred to as abstraction levels or

layers. See them as the organisation of different levels of operation
like that of a business or a university as in the example taken from
Wikipedia.

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Figure: Example of abstraction (Functional levels)

Extract from Wikipedia – Principle of abstraction
This example may seem somewhat out of context but it’s a good
University
way of Faculty
understanding
of Science
how abstraction works. Similarly, a computer
also has abstraction
Departmentlevels or to get back into context, functional
of Physics
levels. There are Subject
5 main- Physics
functional
101 levels demonstrated by this

illustration. Topic - Fluid dynamics

Department of Earth Sciences
Department of Biology
The figure shows the abstraction levels from the least abstract
Faculty of Arts
(bottom) to the most abstract (top). We say that hardware is the
Department of History
least abstract (or concrete) because it is tangible. We can touch
Australian History
hardware and we know 1850-1854
for a factVictorian
that it isGold
there.
rush Software on the

other hand isDepartment of Philosophy

the most abstract element of computer architecture.

This example may seem somewhat out of context but it’s a good
way of understanding how abstraction works. Similarly, a computer
also has abstraction levels or to get back into context, functional
levels. There are 5 main functional levels demonstrated by this
illustration.
Figure: Functional
Levels
The figure shows the abstraction levels from
the least abstract (bottom) to the most
abstract (top). We say that hardware is the
least abstract (or concrete) because it is
tangible. We can touch hardware and we
know for a fact that it is there. Software on
the other hand is the most abstract element
of computer architecture.

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Because hardware and software are so different in their levels of

abstraction, they need a little help to communicate or to work
together and therefore we have the Kernel, the assembler and
firmware. The firmware is part of the hardware helps the hardware
communicate with the assembler and vice versa.

Assembler language is easy for hardware to understand and

therefore it is necessary for an assembler to translate user written
programs into assembly language. The type of assembly language
used depends on the type of architecture used by the system.

The Kernel is considered the common component of an operating

system because all programs need the kernel in order to work. The
kernel controls hardware resources as well as provide an inter
process communication facility or IPC. This allows programs to
communicate with both the hardware and other programs or
processes.

ACTIVITY 3 – REVIEWED – US14917 SO2

Complete this activity in your Portfolio of Evidence

Workbooks.

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2.2 THE ORGANISATION OF A COMPUTER

Computers don’t just work. They need to be highly organised in

order to function correctly. Computers are very complex machines
with lots of things going on and huge amounts of technology
incorporated into very small spaces. For instance a typical
processor such as an AMD Athlon dual core processor can have
as many as 233 million silicon transistors. There’s also a specific
way for information to flow through the hardware.

At input you could have a keyboard or CD drive. From there the

info can either be stored directly onto the hard drive or sent to the
Central Processing Unit that consists of the control unit and
arithmetic logic unit (ALU) for processing before it is either stored
again to the hard drive or sent for output to one of the peripheral
devices such as the display unit or printer. The diagram below
demonstrates the process.

Figure: Data flow process

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The most common hardware devices you will encounter are

discussed below.

2.2.1 Computer box

The computer box can be referred to as the skin of the computer. It

holds all of the computer’s essential components such as the
motherboard, processor, storage devices, power supply unit
(PSU), etc.

2.2.2 Motherboard (Houses the Central Processing Unit)

Whenever you have a number of components that have to work

together, you need something to keep them together and help
them communicate. A motherboard does just this. It is the
component that connects everything together. Processor, memory,
hard drives, display cards, sound cards, network adapter,
keyboard, mouse and all other protocol adapters plug in to the
motherboard. Nowadays, a lot of these components are actually
built into the motherboard. It also incorporates what is known as
the north and south bridges. The north bridge is also known as the
Memory Controller Hub (MCH) or Integrated Memory Controller.
The collective of the north and south bridge is referred to as the
chipset. The chipset also performs the duty of the system bus
which you will learn about later in this unit.

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2.2.3 Central Processing Unit (CPU)

In order to work at all, a computer needs a CPU (also referred to

as a processor). This is the component responsible for taking
decisions, manipulating data and creating output for us to use. A
processor chip contains a processor core that consists of millions
of silicon transistors. It is an extremely complex device beyond the
comprehension of a normal human being. Processors are one of
the main deciding factors for computer speed and are normally the
first component to be replaced if more speed is required. They are
normally rated in MHz (megahertz) and nowadays GHz
(gigahertz). There are also other measuring units such as MIPS
(Million instructions per second), Cycles per second and FLOPS
(Floating point Operations per Second). These are normally used
to rate the performance of mainframe processors but can be used
for other processors as well.

2.2.4 Memory – RAM (Storage Unit)

RAM or random access memory are there for the processor to

temporarily store data while it is processing instructions. RAM is
the first line of storage and is referred to as primary storage. For
instance while converting or compiling video files, the computer
stores frame by frame information in the memory while it is being
converted. Only after a frame is converted will the conversion
software instruct the processor to write the information to the hard
drive (secondary storage). Once a program or process is
terminated the memory it used is freed up for other processes to
use. This is why we are always asked whether we would like to

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save our documents or any changes we’ve made to them. If we

don’t save them the information will be removed from memory
never to be seen again. RAM is primary memory since all
information the computer works with is located in the RAM. Only
non-essential information or information that won’t be needed for
some time is stored on the hard drive.

There are different types of memory which is beyond the scope of

this course for discussion. I will mention the names so that you can
at least recognise it when you have to do with it.
They are:
 DRAM (Dynamic RAM)
 SDRAM (Synchronous Dynamic RAM)
 DDR (Double Data Rate Synchronous Dynamic RAM)
 RDRAM (Rambus Dynamic RAM)

2.2.5 Memory (ROM)

ROM or Read Only Memory is memory that can only be read but
not changed. The contents are fixed. The most common form of
ROM is CDs and DVDs with the latest addition being Blu-Ray.
These are disks you can write to and maybe add info to it later but
it cannot be erased with the exception of rewritable disks (CD-
RW/DVD-RW).They have a dissolvable chemical film inside that
can be smoothed out in order to erase the data so doing creating a
once again clean writable disk. This cannot be done on the fly
though. The disks need to be erased and formatted first.

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2.2.6 BIOS and Battery

Another occurrence of ROM is computer BIOS. The first

motherboards’ BIOS chips were ROM. It was possible to change
the settings but it was necessary to have an on-board battery in
order to power the BIOS while the computer was switched off to
prevent the settings from being lost. Then a clever guy invented
flash memory. This meant that BIOS settings could be stored
without the need for a battery. Nowadays the battery you see on a
motherboard is merely to keep the system clock running. Making
sure that the time is always correct.

2.2.7 Hard disk

Hard disks are an essential component. Before they existed people

had loads of tapes and floppy diskettes to make their computers
work. In the era of the ZX spectrums one would have a small
device with only a keyboard built into it and a tape recorder
connected via an audio cable to the ZX spectrum. Then one would
have to play back the data stored on an audio cassette. It sounded
much like a fax machine or dialup modem. This would then load
the program into the 64KB of memory the machine had and display
it on your television set.

Thanks to the hard disk, we can now easily access all of our
applications from one place in an instant. And what’s more, you
can store your documents and other information on it too.

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Hard disks are sensitive devices. A fall or bump can easily damage
the device. They have another limitation. Due to its mechanical
nature, the laws of physics are its greatest enemy. Its data seek
times are greatly affected because of inertia. Spindle speeds affect
the performance of a hard drive since the faster they spin, the
more durable the material it is made of need to be. Nevertheless,
the technology came a long way and today we can see speeds of
up to 300MB/s for normal desktop computer hard disks and spindle
speeds of up to 15 000RPM.

We use hard disk drives as a permanent mode of storage. We

store files that we will need in the long term. The computer itself
uses the hard drive for this very same purpose. Any information
that resides in the RAM that the computer won’t need soon is
written to the hard drive and then read only when the computer
really needs the information. Any information in the RAM is lost as
soon as power to the system is removed. We can thus say the
hard drive is a long term storage device.

There are different hard drive technologies. We won’t be going into

much detail now but you should at least know about them. The
types are classified by type of drive and then the type of interface.

Types of drive:
 Mechanical
 Solid State

Mechanical hard drives have motors that drive spindles or platters

on which data is magnetically stored, quite similar to floppy

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diskettes and tapes. Every hard drive’s worst nightmare is

exposure to magnets or being dropped or bumped too hard. Newer
mechanical drives can resist up to 320 G-Forces when parked
(when the needle is put away safely). Some vendors like Seagate
come up with ingenious ways of protecting hard drives but truth be
told, mechanics always fail sooner or later.

Solid state drives have no moving parts thus promises to be less

fragile than its counterpart. It is designed to mimic normal hard
drives using SRAM or DRAM rather than flash memory. These
drives are still very expensive but will definitely become more
affordable as its popularity increase over the next few years.

Types of drive interfaces:

 IDE / Parallel ATA - ATA is acronym for Advanced
Technology Attachment, Parallel refers to the way devices
are connected.
 SCSI - Pronounced as Scuzzy and used in servers for its
improved performance. SCSI is an acronym for Small
Computer Systems Interface
 S-ATA (Serial ATA) - Replaces IDE and has improved
transfer rates of up to 300MB/s. Serial refers to the way
devices are connected.
 SAS Serial Attached SCSI – SAS is the Serial counterpart
of normal SCSI. It makes use of the S-ATA principles to
improve performance.
 Fibre channel – Used in data centres for its high data
transfer rates. You won’t see these drives inside a compute

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or server but in storage racks and they are remotely

accessed via the FCP protocol (Fibre Channel Protocol)

2.2.8 Keyboard

Most computers have one of these. It is one of the primary

methods of inputting information into a computer. It’s also one of
the primary ways of interacting with your computer and making it
do things.

Keyboards have different key layouts depending on the region of

the world they are used in. In South Africa, we mostly use U.S.
International keyboards. These keyboards have what we call a
QWERTY (pronounced kwertie) layout. This refers to the first 5
alphabetic keys found in the top left corner.

Figure: QWERTY Keyboard

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2.2.9 Mouse

Another way of interacting with a computer is by means of a

mouse. There are several types of mice or pointing devices. The
first of these were the mechanical mice that had a ball inside which
role over two wheels connected to motion sensors. This mouse’s
are now nearly obsolete.

The second is the optical or laser mouse. Figure: Trackball

Optical mice have any of several types of Mouse
lights. They are either a red, blue or infra-
red laser. There’s a photo sensor that
takes hundreds of pictures every second
using the light from these lasers. The
computer then compares every picture and
moves the mouse pointer according to the displacement in the
imagery. Lastly, one of the other common devices is called a
trackball and they are normally used for graphics designs. A
trackball is almost the upside down of a mechanical mouse. The
figure shows one such mouse.

2.2.10 Monitor / Display Unit

There are two types of display units. The first is a cathode ray tube
display or CRT for short (also known as rear projection display).
Though it’s quite interesting to know, we are not going into the
detail of how these units work. For many years they have been the
main display type but now there are two new successors, LCD and
LED with LCD being the older of the two technologies. Once again

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Figure: A dead pixel

we won’t be going into the

detail of the working of these
units. The basic benefits of
LCD and LED are clarity and
contrast ratios also being
the inspiration for HD
technology. They use far
less power than CRT and
may even exceed the expected lifetime. They are also radiation
free and LED displays are environmentally friendly because they
use no harmful chemicals to achieve their display, unlike LCD.

LCD is an acronym for Liquid Crystal Display and LED an acronym

for Light Emitting Diode.

They are extremely complicated to manufacture and therefore one

can sometimes expect to find dead pixels on a brand new screen.

2.2.11 Power Supply Unit (PSU)

An electronic device cannot operate without a proper power input

or supply of power. The power supply unit or PSU is responsible
for this. They come in several power configurations and the type
you buy may depend on the type of hardware you are using. High
end PCs may sometimes have PSUs as strong as 750Watt or
more. Not everyone needs that much power, though you cannot
determine the type of PSU required by the type of workload you
plan on placing your computer under. You’d much rather consider
the type of Processor, Motherboard and Graphics adapter because

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those are the components that consume power. Also keep in mind
the amount of hard drives you will be using.

2.2.12 PC Cards

Also known as PCMCIA cards, PC cards were originally designed

for laptop computer storage expansion but soon after its invention
all kinds of devices such as modems and network cards was
available in this form factor. Some early digital cameras also made
use of these devices for storage. PCMCIA is an acronym for
Personal Computer Memory Card International Association and
was to provide a competing standard for the Japanese JEIDA
memory card. Later the faster express card slot was introduced
and provided better performance. PCMCIA dissolved because of
this therefore no modern computer makes use of the original
PCMCIA slots.

Today common uses for the express card are 3G cards, network
adapters (wired and wireless), USB controllers and many more.

2.2.13 Cables

There are so many different types of cables used in computers.

Luckily someone had the bright idea of giving them uniquely
shaped plugs so we cannot get all confused when setting up our
hardware. Figure: IDE Strap

IDE (P-ATA)

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You need cables to connect your hard drives to the motherboard.

There are a few types of cable but your PC will only use either an
IDE or S-ATA cable. An IDE drive (really known as P-ATA or
parallel ATA) uses a flat, belt like cable with 40 connectors on each
end of the cable.

S-ATA
Figure: S-ATA Cable
The faster replacement for IDE is S-ATA
and they use a much more compact
cable to carry data from the drive to the
motherboard. It has two small flat plugs
on each end.

USB 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0

USB or Universal Serial Bus is really what the name says it is,
universal. Whe connect our Keyboards, Mice, Printers, Cameras,
Scanners, Cellphones and who knows what else via this protocol.
USB have come a long way sinve its insvention.

Figure: USB 1.1, 2.0 and 3.0 cables

USB1.1 USB2.0 USB3.0

VGA Cables

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Computer displays have come a long way since the monochrome

display and so has the cables they use. The most common now is
the 15-pin S-VGA cable though there are two new standards, DVI
and HDMI.

S-VGA (Super Video Graphics Array) is more of an analogue

interface used for CRT displays and for some LCDs though
hampering the quality of the display. Therefore the DVI interface
was designed to provide a better visual experience. For high
definition technology there’s the HDMI interface which does pretty
much what DVI does except for incorporating audio into the
interface providing an all-round mind numbing audio visual
experience.

Figure: Display cables

S-VGA DVI HDMI

PS2 Figure: PS2

Cable
Prior to the invention of USB we used to have
PS2 ports into which keyboards and mice
plugged in to. They are normally coloured green
for mice and purple for keyboards.

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COM / Serial
Figure: Serial Cable
Before PS2 we connected our mice via
COM or Communications ports better
known as serial ports. You will still find
these ports on most computers today
since they are still used for dialup
modems, shell access to servers or
hardware routers and switches.

Figure: LPT
LPT Cable
LPT, an abbreviation for Line Print Terminal
and also known as a Parallel port, are
commonly used for printing.

ACTIVITY 4 – REVIEWED – US14917 SO2

Complete this activity in your Portfolio of Evidence

Workbooks.

2.2.14 How hardware components relate to each other

The figure below shows the basic interconnectivity of devices in a

computer by means of busses.

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Figure: Bus Diagram

In the early days, processors were responsible for controlling

devices and reading and writing to and from them. This took up
precious CPU time. Another problem was that all devices were
required to talk at the same speed which in turn affected to growth
of CPU speed. This was a huge limitation. Another limitation was
that devices were not able to communicate with each other
directly. All communications had to be handled by the processor
itself. The introduction of busses meant that there was now a “post
office” to which devices could send their data. Devices could then
send data to other devices on either the same or other busses
without the necessity of the processor.

Busses lead to the increase of performance for both processors

and memory because they were now isolated from other devices.
There was only one similarity between non-bus and bus systems.
All of the devices on a bus had to talk at the same speed. This was
a problem for high performance devices and lead to motherboard
manufacturers incorporating AGP (accelerated graphics port) ports

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on their boards. This was the case for many other bus types such
as P-ATA (Parallel Advanced Technology Attachment) which was
replaced by S-ATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment).
AGP was replaced again in 2004 by PCI-Express.

Devices on the same bus would communicate with each other via
that bus. Though when they need to communicate with other
devices on other busses they would need to make use of the
bridge which would send the communications to the relevant
busses e.g. from the USB to the CPU on the System bus.

ACTIVITY 5 – REVIEWED – US14917 SO2

Complete this activity in your Portfolio of

Evidence Workbooks.

2.3 DESIGN CONSTRAINTS IN INSTRUCTION SETS

A computer needs a heart just like a human does. The only

difference is that these hearts need to do more than just shove
blood around the system. In order for a processor to do its job
right, software engineers need to design an instruction set
architecture and they do so by use of Register Transfer Language
or RTL for short. RTL is a programming language used to tell the
processor how every operation will work for every instruction in the
instruction set architecture. In short, it describes what the
processor is capable of doing. By establishing the capability of the
processor one also establishes its limitations or the constraints.

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A constraint is something that keeps something else from

happening or puts a limit on how that something happens.
A design constraint of an instruction set determines how
instructions in the particular set are constrained.

The six typed of design constraints are:

 Instruction length
 Memory transfer
 Instruction format
 Operand specification
 Instruction fetch
 Word length

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2.3.1 Design constraints in detail

Instruction length
Depending on design, processors can only handle certain lengths
of instructions. This is obviously determined by the system
architects. If an instruction is longer or more complex than what the
processor supports, it won’t be able to execute it. Instruction length
is determined by the amount of operands in the instruction. The
longer the instruction the more complex it is. For instance, an
instruction with 3 operands will be more complex than an
instruction with 1 operand. An operand is the part of an instruction
that the processor will be working on or that will be changed.

Memory transfer
As we discussed earlier, memory is the workbench of the
processor. The processor needs to be able to move data in and
out of memory in the correct places. This ability is a very essential
part of a processor’s instruction set architecture.

Instruction format
Computer instructions in the smallest level are
made up of binary digits or bits. A bit is a “1” or a
“0” value that is represented by a specific point on
a storage medium (such as a hard drive or DVD)
by the presence (“1”) or absence (“0”) of an
electronic charge. A bit also represents the presence (“1”) or
absence (“0”) of electronic charges in all digital devices. This
includes bit is not limited to the processor, mice, keyboards,
printers, etc.

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Bits are put together in specific ways to make up instructions.

Different types of instructions are obviously formatted differently
and if an instruction is formatted incorrectly the processor won’t be
able to understand the instruction and therefore it won’t be able to
perform the instruction.

Operand specification
An operand is that part of an instruction that tells the processor
what it needs to do in order to correctly complete the instruction.
The more operands in an instruction the longer and more complex
the instruction become. Instruction set architecture or ISA for short
makes use of memory addresses and registers. A memory
address is the address where the processor can put information
about a process it is working on. A register is one single piece or
area of memory that the processor uses to store an instruction
while it is being processed. It is important that you know the
difference between the memory address and a register because
they are not located in the same place. Processors have what we
call cache memory and the cache memory contains the registers
we are talking about. The operands in the instructions tell the
computer what areas of memory it should use while the instruction
is processed. Operands also indicate to the computer where
processed information should be stored in order for it to be easily
accessed later.

An instruction should therefore indicate to the processor what

operands are to be used in order for the instruction to be
processed. We call this operand specification.

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Instruction fetch
For a computer to process an instruction it needs to transfer the
instruction from wherever it is stored into the correct areas of
memory inside the memory’s work space. Along with the
instruction there’s other information about how the instruction is to
be executed and this too needs to be transferred. This is referred
to as the fetch cycle so when a computer placed the instruction
and its data into the correct places in memory a fetch cycle is
completed. Instruction fetch can be defined as a machine cycle
used by the processor to obtain instructions from memory.

Word length
Processors are normally rated in bits. For instance modern day
computers all have 64bit processors. This refers to the word
length. Word length is the amount of bits that are strung together
when sent to the processor for processing. For instance a 32bit
processor cannot handle 64bit strings. The more bits are grouped
together the more complicated the instruction becomes. Though, a
64bit processor is much faster than a 32bit processor. 64bit
processors can process more instructions because it is capable of
processing larger quantities of data.

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2.3.2 How constraints can be overcome

Make use of a RISC processor

Using a processor built based on RISC principles
means that the processor spends less time trying to
perform one complex operation but instead performs
a sequence of simple operations that do the same
thing, only much more efficiently. RISC is an acronym
for Reduced Instruction Set Computing. The
principles of RISC determine that a processor be built not with a
reduced amount of instructions but with instruction sets that is
reduced in their complexity. An example of a processor based on
RISC principles would be Intel’s x86 and x64 ranges of processors.
These processors are in our everyday desktop and laptop
computers. Using RISC will ensure that work is done more
efficiently and promptly.

Increase processor speed

In order to compensate for the performance deficiencies a certain
instruction set may have, engineers may increase the speed of the
processor in order to help speed up the processing of more
complex instructions and so doing overcoming constraints.

Here’s a practical real world example which isn’t computer related.

If a car accelerates from 0 – 100KM/h in 6 seconds and another
car does so in 5.5 seconds, the manufacturer of the first car may
try to increase the top speed of the car in order to compensate for
the 0.5 seconds lost at acceleration.

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ACTIVITY 6 – REVIEWED – US 14917 SO 3

Complete this activity in your Portfolio of Evidence Workbooks.

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LEARNING UNIT 3: STORAGE OF DATA

Learning outcomes to be achieved

 Demonstrate an understanding of computer data types.

 Describe computer data structures.

3. INTRODUCTION

Data types are important to all computer programming languages.

It would be difficult to maintain information within a computer
program. Since the major duty of computer programming is to take
information, process it, and deliver the information in a different
form to the user, data types play a significant part in determining
how this goal is achieved.

Different programming languages have different constraints upon

the data types that they provide.

It should also be noted that some languages are strongly typed,

meaning that the data type of a piece of information has to be
declared before that variable (or slot) can be used. Weakly typed
languages, on the other hand (like many BASIC variants) do not
require that a variable's data type is declared before use, but it
should always maintain the same data type throughout its lifespan.

Languages usually allow the possibility to cast (convert) between

compatible types.

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3.1 COMPUTER DATA TYPES

3.1.1 The binary numbering system

The binary numbering system consists of two digits called binary

digits (bits): zero and one. A switch in the off state represents zero,
and a switch in the on state represents one. Today’s computers
are built from transistors (Electronic Switches). This means that a
transistor can only represent one of the two digital switches.

However, two digits don’t provide sufficient data to do anything but

store the number zero or one in memory. We store more data in
memory by logically grouping together switches. For example, two
switches enable us to store two binary digits, which give us four
combinations, as shown below and these combinations can store
numbers 0 through 3. Digits are zero-based, meaning that the first
digit in the binary numbering system is zero, not 1. Memory is
organized into groups of eight bits called a byte, enabling 256
combinations of zeros and ones that can store numbers from 0
through 255.
Table: Combination of Switches
Switch Switch Decimal
1 2 Value
0 0 0
0 1 1
1 0 2
1 1 3

Binary, Octal and Hexadecimal numbers

 Computers can input and output decimal numbers but they
convert them to internal binary representation.

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 Binary is good for computers, but is hard for people to read

o Use numbers easily computed from binary
 Binary numbers use only two different digits: {0,1}
o Example: 120010 = 00000100101100002
 Octal numbers use 8 digits: {0 - 7}
o Example: 120010 = 042608
 Hexadecimal numbers use 16 digits: {0-9, A-F}
o Example: 120010 = 04B016 = 0x04B0
o One does not distinguish between upper and lower
case

3.1.2 Data types

Abstract data types are divided into two categories namely

primitive data types and user-defined data types.

3.1.2.1 Primitive data types

Bit
A bit or binary digit is the basic unit of information in computing
and telecommunications; it is the amount of information that can be
stored by a digital device or other physical system that usually
exist in only two distinct states.

In computer science, a bit is also defined as a variable or

computed quantity that can have only two possible values which
are often interpreted as binary digits and are usually denoted by
the Arabic numerical digits 0 and 1. The term "bit" is a contraction

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of binary digit. The two values may also be understood as logical

values (true/false, yes/no), algebraic signs (+/−), activation states
(on/off), or any other two-valued attributes. In some programming
languages, numeral 0 is equivalent (or convertible) to logical false
and 1 equals true. The correspondence between these values and
the physical states of the underlying storage or device is a matter
of convention, and different assignments may be used even within
the same device or program.

The symbol for bit, as a unit of information, is either "bit"

(recommended by the ISO/IEC standard 80000-13 (2008)) or
lowercase "b" (recommended by the IEEE 1541 Standard (2002)).

Byte
The byte is a unit of digital information in computing and
telecommunications. It is an ordered collection of bits, in which
each bit denotes the binary value of 1 or 0. Historically, a byte was
the number of bits (typically 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, or 16) used to encode a
single character of text in a computer and it is for this reason the
basic addressable element in many computer architectures. The
size of a byte is typically hardware dependent, but the modern de
facto standard is 8 bits, as this is a convenient power of 2. Most of
the numeric values used by many applications are representable in
8 bits and processor designers optimize for this common usage.
Signal processing applications tend to operate on larger values
and some digital signal processors have 16 or 40 bits as the
smallest unit of addressable storage (on such processors a byte
may be defined to contain this number of bits).

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Word
In computing, word is a term for the natural unit of data used by a
particular computer design. A word is simply a fixed sized group of
bits that are handled together by the system. The number of bits in
a word (the word size or word length) is an important
characteristic of computer architecture.

The size of a word is reflected in many aspects of a computer's

structure and operation; the majority of the registers in the
computer are usually word sized and the amount of data
transferred between the processing part computer and the memory
system, in a single operation, is most often a word. The largest
possible address size, used to designate a location in memory, is
typically a hardware word (in other words, the full sized natural
word of the processor, as opposed to any other definition used on
the platform).

Modern computers usually have a word size of 16, 32 or 64 bits

but many other sizes have been used, including 8, 9, 12, 18, 24,
36, 39, 40, 48 and 60 bits. The slab is an example of a system with
an earlier word size. Several of the earliest computers used the
decimal base rather than binary, typically having a word size of 10
or 12 decimal digits and some early computers had no fixed word
length at all.

Integer (int), Short integer, Long integer

Integers are whole numbers, and integer variables are used when
you know there will not be anything after the decimal point, e.g. if
you're writing a lottery ball generator, all the balls have whole

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numbers on them. The difference between short integers, integers

and long integers is the number of bytes used to store them. This
will vary according to the operating system and hardware you're
using, but these days you can assume that an integer will be at
least 16 bits, and a long integer is probably at least 32. In a 32-bit
environment, it is more efficient to use long integers (i.e. a whole
word), and so many compilers will automatically use long integers
unless you specify a short one.

Important Integer information:

 sbyte (-128 to 127): signed 8-bit
 byte (0 to 255): unsigned 8-bit
 short (-32,768 to 32,767): signed 16-bit
 ushort (0 to 65,535): unsigned 16-bit
 int (-2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,647): signed 32-bit
 uint (0 to 4,294,967,295): unsigned 32-bit
 long (-9,223,372,036,854,775,808 to
9,223,372,036,854,775,807): signed 64-bit

 ulong (0 to 18,446,744,073,709,551,615): unsigned 64-bit

Float, Single, Double

Floating point numbers contain fractional parts - i.e. they are not
whole numbers. The single and double quantifiers are similar to
the short and long quantifiers used with integers. They indicate
how many bits are being used to store a variable. Floating point
arithmetic can lead to problems with rounding and accuracy, so
when dealing with a limited number of decimal places, it is better to
use integers and multiply all your values by a power of 10. For

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example, if you're dealing with money, it's better to work in cents

and use integers than to work in rand and use floating point
variables.

Important Floating point information:

 Floating-point types are:
float (±1.5 × 10−45 to ±3.4 × 1038): 32-bits, precision of 7
digits
double (±5.0 × 10−324 to ±1.7 × 10308): 64-bits, precision
of 15-16 digits
 The default value of floating-point types:
Is 0.0F for the float type
Is 0.0D for the double type

Fixed-Point number
In computing, a fixed-point number representation is a real data
type for a number that has a fixed number of digits after (and
sometimes also before) the radix point (e.g., after the decimal point
'.' in English decimal notation). Fixed-point number representation
can be compared to the more complicated (and more
computationally demanding) floating point number representation.

Fixed-point numbers are useful for representing fractional values,

usually in base 2 or base 10, when the executing processor has no
floating point unit (FPU) or if fixed-point provides improved
performance or accuracy for the application at hand. Most low-cost
embedded microprocessors and microcontrollers do not have an
FPU.

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Characters
In computer terminology, a character is a unit of information that
roughly corresponds to a grapheme, grapheme-like unit, or
symbol, such as in an alphabet or syllable in the written form of a
natural language.

Examples of characters include letters, numerical digits, and

common punctuation marks (such as '.' or '-'). The concept also
includes control characters, which do not correspond to symbols in
a particular natural language, but rather to other bits of information
used to process text in one or more languages. Examples of
control characters include carriage return or tab, as well as
instructions to printers or other devices that display or otherwise
process text.

Characters are typically combined into strings.

Strings
 Fixed-length string
Strings are variables that contain text, and they come in two sorts.
With a fixed-length string, you declare how many characters the
string is going to hold. Certain API calls in Windows require the
use of fixed-length strings, but generally they are not used in
BASIC. In C they are implemented as an array (or vector) of chars.
 Variable-length string
A variable-length string is one where you don't define the length.
This is the default type in BASIC, and is useful for taking user input
where you don't know what the response will be. The maximum

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length of the string will depend on your environment, but it should

be at least 255 characters.

Rational
A Rational number is a number that can be written in the form
a/b, where a and b are integers, with b ≠ 0 (b is not equal to 0).
The set of all rational numbers is usually denoted by Q. Rational
numbers cannot be represented natively in a computer.

Some programming languages provide a built-in (primitive)

rational data type to represent rational numbers like 1/3 and -
11/17 without rounding, and to do arithmetic on them. Examples
are the ratio type of Common Lisp, and analogous types provided
by most languages for algebraic computation, such as
Mathematica and Maple. Many languages that do not have a built-
in rational type still provide it as a library-defined type.

Boolean
A Boolean variable can store one of two values - either TRUE or
FALSE. Like char, this is usually an integer - in Visual BASIC, for
example, FALSE is 0 and TRUE is -1, and the TRUE and FALSE
values themselves are constants.

In computer science, the Boolean or logical data type is a primitive

data type having one of two values: true or false, intended to
represent the truth values of logic and Boolean algebra.

In programming languages with a built-in Boolean data type, like

Pascal and Java, the comparison operators such as '>' and '≠' are

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usually defined to return a Boolean value. Also, conditional and

iterative commands may be defined to test Boolean-valued
expressions.

Languages without an explicit Boolean data type, like C may still

represent truth values by some other data type. C uses an integer
type, with false represented as the zero value, and true as any
non-zero value (such as 1 or -1). Indeed, a Boolean variable may
be regarded (and be implemented) as a numerical variable with a
single binary digit (bit), which can store only two values.

Variables
A variable is a placeholder of information that can usually be
changed at run-time. Variables allow you to:
 Store information
 Retrieve the stored information
 Manipulate the stored information

Variable Characteristics
A variable has:
 Name
 Type (of stored data)
 Value
Example:
– int count = 5;
– Name: counter
– Type: int
– Value: 5

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3.1.2.1 User defined data types

This is a group of primitive data types defined by the programmer.
For example, if a programmer wanted to store students’ grades in
memory. She will need to store 4 data elements: the student’s ID,
first name, last name, and grade. She could use primitive data
types for each data element, but primitive data types are not
grouped together; each exists as separate data elements.

Another approach is to group primitive data types into a user-

defined data type to form a record. Remember that a database
consists of one or more tables. A table is similar to a spread sheet
consisting of columns and rows. A row is also known as a record.
A user-defined data type defines columns (primitive data types)
that comprise a row (a user-defined data type).

The format used to define a user-defined data type varies

depending on the programming language used to write the
program. Some programming languages, like Java, do not support
user-defined data types but instead, attributes of a class are used
to group together primitive data types.

In the C and C++ programming languages, you define a user-

defined data type by defining a structure. Think of a structure as a
stencil of the letter A. The stencil isn’t the letter A, but it defines
what the letter A looks like. If you want a letter A, you place the
stencil on a piece of paper and trace the letter A. If you want to
make another letter A, you use the same stencil and repeat the
process. You can make as many letter A’s as you wish by using
the stencil.

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ACTIVITY 7 – REVIEWED – US14944 SO1

Complete this activity in your Portfolio of Evidence

Workbooks.

3.2 CHARACTER SETS AND CHARACTER ENCODING

3.2.1 Character encoding

Computer systems process characters using numeric codes not

the graphical representation of the character. For example, when a
database stores the letter X, a numeric code that is interpreted by
software as the letter is stored. These numeric codes are useful in
a global environment because of the potential need to convert data
between different character sets.

You specify an encoded character set when you create a computer

program or a database. Choosing a character set determines
languages that can be represented in the program or the
database. It will affect:
 How you develop applications that process character data
 How you create the database schema
 How the database works with the operating system

A group of characters (for example, alphabetic characters,

ideographs, symbols, punctuation marks, and control characters)
can be encoded as a character set. An encoded character set
assigns unique numeric codes to each character in the character
repertoire (available characters). The numeric codes are called
code points or encoded values.

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The computer industry has various encoded character sets.

Character sets differ in the following ways:
 The number of characters available
 The available characters (the character repertoire)
 The scripts used for writing and the languages they
represent
 The code values assigned to each character
 The encoding scheme used to represent a character

A character encoding system consists of a code that pairs each

character from a given repertoire with something else, such as a
sequence of natural numbers, octets or electrical pulses, in order
to facilitate the transmission of data (generally numbers and/or
text) through telecommunication networks or storage of text in
computers.

Other terms like character encoding, character set(char set),

and sometimes character map or code page are used almost
interchangeably, but these terms now have related but distinct
meanings

To represent numeric, alphabetic, and special characters in a

computer's internal storage and on magnetic media, we must use
some sort of coding system. In computers, the code is made up of
fixed size groups of binary positions. Each binary position in a
group is assigned a specific value; for example 8, 4, 2, or 1. In this
way, every character can be represented by a combination of bits
that is different from any other combination.

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In this section you will learn how the selected coding systems are
used to represent data.

3.2.2 Binary coded decimal

In computer science and electronic systems, binary-coded

decimal (BCD) (sometimes called natural binary-coded decimal,
NBCD) or, in its most common modern implementation, packed
decimal, is an encoding for decimal numbers in which each digit is
represented by its own binary sequence. Its main virtue is that it
allows easy conversion to decimal digits for printing or display, and
allows faster decimal calculations. Its drawbacks are a small
increase in the complexity of circuits needed to implement
mathematical operations. Uncompressed BCD is also a relatively
inefficient encoding—it occupies more space than a purely binary
representation.

In BCD, a digit is usually represented by four bits which, in

general, represent the decimal digits 0 through 9. Other bit
combinations are sometimes used for a sign or for other
indications (e.g., error or overflow).
Although uncompressed BCD is not as widely used as it once was,
decimal fixed-point and floating-point are still important and
continue to be used in financial, commercial, and industrial
computing.

Recent decimal floating-point representations use base-10

exponents, but not BCD encodings. Current hardware

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implementations, however, convert the compressed decimal

encodings to BCD internally before carrying out computations.
Software implementations of decimal arithmetic typically use BCD
or some other 10n base, depending on the operation.

3.2.3 Extended binary coded decimal interchange code

(EBCDIC)

Using an 8-bit code, it is possible to represent 256 different

characters or bit combinations. This provides a unique code for
each decimal value 0 through 9 (for a total of 10), each uppercase
and lowercase letter (for a total of 52), and for a variety of special
characters. In addition to four numeric bits, four zone bit positions
are used in 8-bit code as illustrated in figure below. Each group of
the eight bits makes up one alphabetic, numeric, or special

Format for EBCDIC and ASCII codes

When you look at the table, you will notice that the four rightmost
bits in EBCDIC are assigned values of 8, 4, 2, and 1. The next four
bits to the left are called the zone bits.
Table: Format for EBCDIC Codes

The EBCDIC coding chart for uppercase and lowercase alphabetic

characters and for the numeric digits 0 through 9 is shown in the
next table, with their hexadecimal equivalents. Hexadecimal is a

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number system used with some computer systems. It has a base

of 16 (0-9 and A-F). A represents 10; B represents 11; C
represents 12; D represents 13; E represents 14; and F represents
15. In EBCDIC, the bit pattern 1100 is the zone combination used
for the alphabetic characters A through I, 1101 is used for the
characters J through R, and 1110 is the zone combination used for
characters S through Z. The bit pattern 1111 is the zone
combination used when representing decimal digits. For example,
the code 11000001 is equivalent to the letter A; the code
11110001 is equivalent to the decimal digit 1. Other zone
combinations are used when forming special characters. Not all of
the 256 combinations of 8-bit code have been assigned
characters.

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Table: Eight-bit EBCDIC coding chart

(Including hexadecimal equivalents)

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Since one numeric character can be represented and stored using

only four bits (8-4-2-1), using an 8-bit code allows the
representation of two numeric characters (decimal digits) as
illustrated in the table below. Representing two numeric characters
in one byte (eight bits) is referred to as packing or packed data.
By packing data (numeric characters only) in this way, it allows us
to conserve the amount of storage space required, and at the
same time, increases processing speed.
Table: Packed Data

DECIMAL VALUE 92 73
EBCDIC 10010010 01110011
BIT PLACE VALUES 84218421 8421
8421 BYTE1 BYTE2

3.2.4 American standard code for information interchange

(ASCII)

Another 8-bit code, known as the American Standard Code for

Information Interchange (ASCII) (pronounced ASS-KEY), was
originally designed as a 7-bit code. Several computer
manufacturers cooperated to develop this code for transmitting
and processing data. The purpose was to standardise a binary
code to give the computer user the capability of using several
machines to process data regardless of the manufacturer: IBM,
HONEYWELL, UNIVAC, BURROUGHS, and so on. However,
since most computers are designed to handle (store and
manipulate) 8-bit code, an 8-bit version of ASCII was developed.
ASCII is commonly used in the transmission of data through data

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communications and is used almost exclusively to represent data

internally in microcomputers.

The concepts and advantages of ASCII are identical to those of

EBCDIC. The important difference between the two coding
systems lies in the 8-bit combinations assigned to represent the
various alphabetic, numeric, and special characters. When using
ASCII 8-bit code, you will notice the selection of bit patterns used
in the positions differs from those used in EBCDIC. For example,
let's look at the characters DP3 in both EBCDIC and ASCII to see
how they compare.

Table: ASCII / EBCDIC Comparison

Character D P 3
EBCDIC 1100 0100 1101 0111 1111 0011
ASCII 0100 0100 0101 0000 0011 0011

In ASCII, rather than breaking letters into three groups, uppercase

letters are assigned codes beginning with hexadecimal value 41
and continuing sequentially through hexadecimal value 5A.
Similarly, lowercase letters are assigned hexadecimal values of 61
through 7A.

The decimal values 1 through 9 are assigned the zone code 0011
in ASCII rather that 1111 as in EBCDIC. The table below is the
ASCII coding chart showing uppercase and lowercase alphabetic
characters and numeric digits 0 through 9.

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Table: Eight-bit ASCII coding chart

(Including hexadecimal equivalents)

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At this point you should understand how coding systems are used
to represent data in both EBCDIC and ASCII. Regardless of what
coding system is used, each character will have an additional bit
called a check bit or parity bit.

Parity Bit
This additional check or parity bit in each storage location is used
to detect errors in the circuitry. Therefore, a computer that uses an
8-bit code, such as EBCDIC or ASCII, will have a ninth bit for parity
checking.

The parity bit (also called a check bit, the C position in a code)
provides an internal means for checking the validity, the
correctness, of code construction. That is, the total number of bits
in a character, including the parity bit, must always be odd or
always be even, depending upon whether the particular computer
system or device you are using is odd or even parity. Therefore,
the coding is said to be in either odd or even parity code, and the
test for bit count is called a parity check.

3.2.5 Unicode

Unicode provides a unique number for every character, no matter

what the platform, no matter what the program, no matter what the
language.

Design Principles. Here we will start from the proclaimed design

principles of Unicode. Later there will be some critical notes and

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considerations. We will first consider the very general, slogan-like

expressions of the goals, and then the more technical principles.

Goals of Unicode: Universality, Efficiency, Unambiguous

The Unicode standard itself says that it was designed to be

universal, efficient, and unambiguous. These slogans have real
meaning here, but it is important to analyze what they mean and
what they do not mean. Let us first see how they are presented in
the Unicode standard, and then analyze each item:

The Unicode Standard was designed to be:

 Universal The repertoire must be large enough to
encompass all characters that are likely to be used in
general text interchange, including those in major
international, national, and industry character sets.
 Efficient Plain text is simple to parse: software does not
have to maintain state or look for special escape sequences,
and character synchronisation from any point in a character
stream is quick and unambiguous. A fixed character code
allows for efficient sorting, searching, display, and editing of
text.
 Unambiguous Any given Unicode code point always
represents the same character.

Universality means much more than just creating a superset of

sets of characters. Practically all other character codes are limited
to the needs of one language or a collection of languages that are
similar in their use of characters, such as Western European

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languages. Unicode needs to encompass a variety of essentially

different collections of characters and writing systems. For
example, it cannot postulate that all text is written left to right, or
that all letters have uppercase and lowercase forms, or that text
can be divided into words separated by spaces or other
whitespace.

Moreover, Unicode has been designed to be universal among

character codes. That is, it assigns code points to the characters
included in other codes, even if the characters could be treated as
variants or combinations of other characters. The reason is that
Unicode was also designed for use as an intermediate code. You
can take character data in any character code and convert it to
Unicode without losing information. If you convert it back, you get
the exact original data. You can also convert it to a third character
code, provided that it is capable of representing all the characters.
If the source and destination codes treat, say, £ (pound sign) and ₤
(lira sign) as different, they will appear as different after the
conversion that used Unicode as an intermediate code.

Thus, universality implies complexity rather than simplicity.

Unicode needs to define properties of characters in a manner that
makes explicit many things that we might take for granted because
they are not evident at all across writing systems.

Efficiency refers here to efficient processing of data. When all

characters have unique identifying numbers, and they are
internally represented by those numbers, it is much easier to work
with character data than in a system where the same number may

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mean different characters, depending on encoding or font or other

issues. However, efficiency is relative. In particular:
 Efficiency of processing often requires presentation that is
wasteful in terms of storage needed (e.g., using four octets
for each character). This in turn causes inefficiency in data
transfer.
 The representation forms of Unicode are not always efficient
in processing. In particular, the common UTF-8 format
requires linear processing of the data stream in order to
identify characters; it is not possible to jump to the nth
character in a UTF-8 encoded string.
 Unicode contains a large amount of characters and features
that have been included only for compatibility with other
standards. This may require pre-processing that deals with
compatibility characters and with different Unicode
representations of the same character (e.g., letter é as a
single character or as two characters).
 For a specific data-processing task, Unicode can be less
efficient than other codes. The efficiency goal needs to be
understood with the implicit reservation "to the extent
possible, given the universality goal."

Unambiguity may look like a self-evident principle, but not all

character codes are unambiguous in the Unicode sense. For
example, ISO 646 permits variation in some code points, allowing
the use of a single code point for either # or £ by special
agreement. Moreover, in Unicode, unambiguity also means
unambiguity across time and versions: a code point, once
assigned, will never be re-assigned in a future version.

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Sometimes a fourth fundamental principle, uniformity, is

mentioned. It has been described as a principle of using a fixed-
length character code, to allow efficient processing of text.
However, as currently defined, Unicode does not use a fixed-
length code in a simple sense. In some Unicode encodings, all
characters are represented using the same number of octets (or
bits), but in many important encodings, such as UTF-8, the lengths
may vary.

The 10 Design Principles

The Unicode standard describes "The 10 Unicode Design
Principles,” where the first two are the same as those quoted in the
previous section, universality and efficiency. The unambiguity
principle is not included. Obviously, the principles are meant to
describe how Unicode was designed, whereas the slogan
"Universality, Efficiency, Unambiguity" is meant to describe the
ultimate goals.

The standard admits that there are conflicts between the

principles, and it does not specify how the conflicts are resolved.
As a whole, the set of principles describe ideas of varying levels
(from fundamentals to technicalities), and it should be read
critically. It is however important to know the underlying ideas, so
we will discuss them briefly:

Universality
Unicode defines a single repertoire of characters for universal use.
(See the previous section for other aspects of universality.)

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Efficiency
Unicode text is simple to process. (See the previous section for the
complexity of this issue.)

Characters, not glyphs

Unicode assigns code points to characters as abstractions, not to
visual appearances. Although there are many borderline cases,
and although the compatibility characters can be seen as violating
this principle, it is still one of the fundamentals of Unicode. The
relationship between characters and glyphs is rather simple for
languages like English: mostly each character is presented by one
glyph, taken from a font that has been chosen. For other
languages, the relationship can be much more complex e.g.
routinely combining several characters into one glyph.

Semantics
Characters have well-defined meanings. In fact, the meanings are
often defined rather indirectly or implicitly, if at all but Unicode are
generally much more explicit about meanings than other character
code standards, including ISO 10646. When the Unicode standard
refers to semantics, it often means (mostly) the properties of
characters, such spacing, combinability, and directionality, rather
than what the character really means. This is largely intentional:
the ultimate meaning may vary by language, context, and usage;
think about the various uses of the comma in English and other
languages e.g., as thousands separator or as a decimal separator.

Plain text

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Unicode deals with plain text i.e. strings of characters without

formatting or structuring information (except for things like line
breaks). In practice, Unicode text is mostly used along with some
formatting or structuring information, such as a word processor's
formatting commands or some markup; but that is treated as a
separate layer in data, above the character level and outside the
scope of the Unicode standard.

Logical order
The default representation of Unicode data uses logical order of
data, as opposed to approaches that handle writing direction by
changing the order of characters. The ordering principles also put
all diacritics after the base character to which they are applied,
regardless of visual placement. For example, the Greek capital
letter omega with tonos has the tonos (stress mark) visually on the
left of the omega, but the decomposed form of this character still
consists of omega followed by combining tonos.

Unification
Unicode encodes duplicates of a character as a single code point,
if they belong to the same script but different languages. For
example, the letter ü denoting a particular vowel in German is
treated as the same as the letter ü in Spanish, where it simply
indicates that the "u" is pronounced, in a context where it would
otherwise be mute.

Dynamic composition
Characters with diacritic marks can be composed dynamically,
using characters designated as combining marks. You can take

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almost any character and combine it with any diacritic; for

example, you can create, (comma with tilde) by using the normal
comma character and a combining tilde. Therefore, you can write
many more characters using Unicode than there are characters in
Unicode (i.e., code points allocated to characters) You can also
use multiple combining marks on a character (e.g., you can just
make up "a" with both a tilde and an acute accent: ), although
good rendering of such combinations often requires advanced
techniques.

Equivalent sequences
Unicode has a large number of characters that are pre-composed
forms, such as é. They have decompositions that are declared as
equivalent to the pre-composed form. An application may still treat
the pre-composed form and the decomposition differently, since as
strings of encoded characters, they are distinct. However, usually
such distinctions are not made, and should not be made. The
Unicode standard does not declare either the pre-composed form
or the decomposed form as preferred; they are just two different
forms. So-called normalisation may make either form preferred in
some contexts.

Convertibility
Character data can be accurately converted between Unicode and
other character standards and specifications. As explained earlier,
this can be regarded as part of the universality principle.

Somewhat surprisingly, the list does not mention stability or

continuity. Yet, one of the leading principles in Unicode strategy

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(as described in the goals as "unambiguity") is that a code point

assignment once made will never be changed. When a number
and a name have been given to a character, they will remain in all
future versions, though the properties of the character may be
changed.

Unicode Terms
Deprecated and Obsolete Characters
A deprecated character is a character that has been included in
Unicode but declared as deprecated in the Unicode standard. This
indicates a strong recommendation that the character not be used.
It remains in Unicode, though, due to the stability principle. For
example, a character may be declared deprecated if it turns out
that it was introduced into Unicode in error.

Digraphs
A digraph is a combination of two successive characters treated as
a unit in some sense, such as "ch" in many languages (e.g., when
used to indicate one sound) or "ll" in Spanish, where it denotes a
particular sound and might be treated in sorting as if it were a
single character. Thus, a digraph is a pragmatic concept, not a
formal one, and it is an example of a text element.

Text Elements
The concept of text element is informal: it means a sequence of
characters (including the special case of one character) that is
treated as a unit in some processing. In typical character input and
output, characters are text elements. In layout processes, syllables
might be treated as text elements, since line breaks are usually

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allowed between syllables but not within them. When you form a
text concordance (a list of occurrences of words e.g., in alphabetic
order), a word is a text element.

Unicode Strings
The term "Unicode string" has a more technical meaning than you
might expect. It does not refer to a string (sequence) of Unicode
characters (code points) but to a sequence of code units. Thus, the
components of the string are of fixed size in bits (in practice, 8, 16,
or 32 bits). In many programming languages, Unicode strings have
a code unit size of 16 bits. This does not limit the range of
characters, since such a string could be interpreted according to
UTF-16.
Table: Unicode Chart

Range Decimal Name

0x0000-0x007F 0-127 Basic Latin
0x0080-0x00FF 128-255 Latin-1 Supplement
0x0100-0x017F 256-383 Latin Extended-A
0x0180-0x024F 384-591 Latin Extended-B
0x0250-0x02AF 592-687 IPA Extensions
0x02B0-0x02FF 688-767 Spacing Modifier Letters
0x0300-0x036F 768-879 Combining Diacritical Marks
0x0370-0x03FF 880-1023 Greek
0x0400-0x04FF 1024-1279 Cyrillic
0x0530-0x058F 1328-1423 Armenian
0x0590-0x05FF 1424-1535 Hebrew
0x0600-0x06FF 1536-1791 Arabic
0x0700-0x074F 1792-1871 Syriac
0x0780-0x07BF 1920-1983 Thaana
0x0900-0x097F 2304-2431 Devanagari
0x0980-0x09FF 2432-2559 Bengali

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0x0A00-0x0A7F 2560-2687 Gurmukhi

0x0A80-0x0AFF 2688-2815 Gujarati
0x0B00-0x0B7F 2816-2943 Oriya
0x0B80-0x0BFF 2944-3071 Tamil
0x0C00-0x0C7F 3072-3199 Telugu
0x0C80-0x0CFF 3200-3327 Kannada
0x0D00-0x0D7F 3328-3455 Malayalam
0x0D80-0x0DFF 3456-3583 Sinhala
0x0E00-0x0E7F 3584-3711 Thai
0x0E80-0x0EFF 3712-3839 Lao
0x0F00-0x0FFF 3840-4095 Tibetan
0x1000-0x109F 4096-4255 Myanmar
0x10A0-0x10FF 4256-4351 Georgian
0x1100-0x11FF 4352-4607 Hangul Jamo
0x1200-0x137F 4608-4991 Ethiopic
0x13A0-0x13FF 5024-5119 Cherokee
Unified Canadian Aboriginal
0x1400-0x167F 5120-5759
Syllabics
0x1680-0x169F 5760-5791 Ogham
0x16A0-0x16FF 5792-5887 Runic
0x1780-0x17FF 6016-6143 Khmer
0x1800-0x18AF 6144-6319 Mongolian
0x1E00-0x1EFF 7680-7935 Latin Extended Additional
0x1F00-0x1FFF 7936-8191 Greek Extended
0x2000-0x206F 8192-8303 General Punctuation
0x2070-0x209F 8304-8351 Superscripts and Subscripts
0x20A0-0x20CF 8352-8399 Currency Symbols
Combining Marks for
0x20D0-0x20FF 8400-8447
Symbols
0x2100-0x214F 8448-8527 Letterlike Symbols
0x2150-0x218F 8528-8591 Number Forms
0x2190-0x21FF 8592-8703 Arrows
0x2200-0x22FF 8704-8959 Mathematical Operators
0x2300-0x23FF 8960-9215 Miscellaneous Technical

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0x2400-0x243F 9216-9279 Control Pictures

Optical Character
0x2440-0x245F 9280-9311
Recognition
0x2460-0x24FF 9312-9471 Enclosed Alphanumerics
0x2500-0x257F 9472-9599 Box Drawing
0x2580-0x259F 9600-9631 Block Elements
0x25A0-0x25FF 9632-9727 Geometric Shapes
0x2600-0x26FF 9728-9983 Miscellaneous Symbols
0x2700-0x27BF 9984-10175 Dingbats
0x2800-0x28FF 10240-10495 Braille Patterns
0x2E80-0x2EFF 11904-12031 CJK Radicals Supplement
0x2F00-0x2FDF 12032-12255 Kangxi Radicals
Ideographic Description
0x2FF0-0x2FFF 12272-12287
Characters
CJK Symbols and
0x3000-0x303F 12288-12351
Punctuation
0x3040-0x309F 12352-12447 Hiragana
0x30A0-0x30FF 12448-12543 Katakana
0x3100-0x312F 12544-12591 Bopomofo
0x3130-0x318F 12592-12687 Hangul Compatibility Jamo
0x3190-0x319F 12688-12703 Kanbun
0x31A0-0x31BF 12704-12735 Bopomofo Extended
Enclosed CJK Letters and
0x3200-0x32FF 12800-13055
Months
0x3300-0x33FF 13056-13311 CJK Compatibility
CJK Unified Ideographs
0x3400-0x4DB5 13312-19893
Extension A
0x4E00-0x9FFF 19968-40959 CJK Unified Ideographs
0xA000-0xA48F 40960-42127 Yi Syllables
0xA490-0xA4CF 42128-42191 Yi Radicals
0xAC00-0xD7A3 44032-55203 Hangul Syllables
0xD800-0xDB7F 55296-56191 High Surrogates
0xDB80-0xDBFF 56192-56319 High Private Use Surrogates
0xDC00-0xDFFF 56320-57343 Low Surrogates

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0xE000-0xF8FF 57344-63743 Private Use

0xF900-0xFAFF 63744-64255 CJK Compatibility Ideographs
Alphabetic Presentation
0xFB00-0xFB4F 64256-64335
Forms
0xFB50-0xFDFF 64336-65023 Arabic Presentation Forms-A
0xFE20-0xFE2F 65056-65071 Combining Half Marks
0xFE30-0xFE4F 65072-65103 CJK Compatibility Forms
0xFE50-0xFE6F 65104-65135 Small Form Variants
0xFE70-0xFEFE 65136-65278 Arabic Presentation Forms-B
0xFEFF-0xFEFF 65279-65279 Specials
Halfwidth and Fullwidth
0xFF00-0xFFEF 65280-65519
Forms
0xFFF0-0xFFFD 65520-65533 Specials

ACTIVITY 8 – REVIEWED – US14944 SO 1

Complete this activity in your Portfolio of

Evidence Workbooks.

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3.3 DATA MANIPULATION

Data manipulation refers to changes that can be made onto the

different data types for example manipulating integers.
For example many programming languages have several routines
that are useful for manipulating data types. They may include:

Arithmetic Operators
Routines which performs arithmetic operations on decimal, float,
money, numeric, and real data types.

These operators are likely to be the operators most familiar to you

because these are math operators that you are used to using for
normal math. There are seven common arithmetic operators.

Comparison Operators
Routines which compares date, time, decimal, float, money,
numeric, and real data types Comparison operators are used to

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compare two things. You will find that when you get to working with
code and its structure these will be really useful.

There are six comparison operators. Each of these returns is either

true or false, depending on whether the outcome of the
comparison is true or false.

Assignment Operators
Assignment operators are used to assign a value. These will be
used extensively when using variables. There are six assignment
operators. In the preceding examples, x and y are both variables.
Variables need to have unique names (unless you are reusing
them).

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Logical Operators
Logical operators enable you to introduce logic to the code you
write and enable you to make combinations of the preceding
operators. There are three logical operators.

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String Operators
String operators are operators that work on strings. Strings are
usually snippets of text. Here are two sample strings:
string1 = “Hello”
string2 = “World ”

Using string operators, you can join (or concatenate) strings

together.
string3 = string1 + string2

The variable string3 will now hold the value Hello World!

One thing that newcomers to strings seem to find hard to cope with
is spaces. That is, keeping track of spaces between strings and
making sure that the end string makes sense.

ACTIVITY 9 – REVIEWED – US149442 SO1

Complete this activity in your Portfolio of Evidence

Workbooks.

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3.4 COMPUTER DATA STRUCTURES

3.4.1 Types of data structures

Data structure is a way of organising data that considers not only

the data items stored but also the relationship to each other.

Figure: Types of data structures

3.4.1.1 Primitive Data Structure

Primitive Data types are those not defined in terms of other data
types. The primitive data types of a language, along with one or
more type constructors provide structured types.

Numeric Types
Integer
The integer is the most common primitive data type. The integer is
almost always an exact reflection of the hardware, so the mapping
is trivial. There may be as many as eight different integer types in a

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language. For example java has four integer types i.e. byte, short,
int and long. Some languages use unsigned integers which are
integer values without signs and are used for binary data. Integer
types are supported by the hardware.

Floating-point
These model real numbers, but are only approximations for most
real values. For example TT cannot be represented in floating-
point notation. On most computers, floating-point numbers are
stored in binary, which exacerbates the problem. Another problem
is the loss of accuracy through arithmetic operations.

Languages for scientific use support at least two floating-point

types; sometimes more (e.g. float, and double.) The collection of
values that can be represented by a floating-point type is defined
in terms of precision and range.

Precision: is the accuracy of the fractional part of a value,

measured as the number of bits. Figure below shows single and
double precision.
Range: is the range of fractions and exponents.

Decimal
The majority of larger computers that are designed to support
business applications have hardware support for decimal data
types. Decimal types store a fixed number of decimal digits, with
the decimal point at a fixed position in the value.

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Figure: Decimal types store

 Advantage: accuracy of decimal values.

 Disadvantages: limited range since no exponents are
allowed, and its representation wastes memory.

Boolean Types
Introduced by ALGOL 60, Boolean types are perhaps the smallest
of all data types. Their range of value is made up of only two
elements: True and False.

They are used to represent switched and flags in programs, but

other values like integers can be used for this purpose. Booleans
can be stored in a bit but are usually stored in the smallest
efficiently addressable cell of memory usually a byte. The use of
Booleans enhances readability.

Character Types
Char types are stored as numeric coding (ASCII / Unicode).

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3.4.1.2 Non-Primitive Data Structures

An array
An array is a way to reference a series of memory locations using
the same name. Each memory location is represented by an array
element. An array element is similar to one variable except it is
identified by an index value instead of a name. An index value is a
number used to identify an array element.

For example an array called grades. The first array element is

called grades[0]. The zero is the index value. The square bracket
tells the computer that the value inside the square bracket is an
index.
grades[0]
grades[1]
grades[2]

Each array element is like a variable name. For example, the

following variables are equivalent to array elements. There are
similarities between array elements and variables—here are three
integer variables:
int maryGrade;
int bobGrade;
int amberGrade;

You store a value into a memory location by using an assignment

statement. Here are two assignment statements. The first assigns
a value to a variable, and the other assigns a value to an array
element. Notice that these statements are practically the same

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except reference is made to the index of the array element in the

second statement:
int grades[1];
maryGrade = 90;
grades[0] = 90;

Suppose you want to use the value stored in a memory location.

There are a number of ways to do this in a program, but a common
way is to use another assignment statement like the ones shown in
the next example. The first assignment statement uses two
variables, the next assignment statement uses two array elements,
and the last assignment statement assigns the value referenced by
a variable name and assigns that value to an array element:
bobGrade = maryGrade;
grades[0] = grades[1];
grades[0] = bobGrade;

A stack
When you hear the term “stack” used outside the context of
computer programming, you might envision a stack of dishes on
your kitchen counter. This organisation is structured in a particular
way: the newest dish is on top and the oldest is on the bottom of
the stack.

Each dish in a stack is accessed using FIFO: first in, first out. The
only way to access each dish is from the top of the stack. If you
want the third dish (the third oldest on the stack), then you must
remove the first two dishes from the top of the stack. This places

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the third dish at the top of the stack making it available to be

removed.

There’s no way to access a dish unless the dish is at the top of the
stack. You might be thinking stacks are inefficient, and you’d be
correct if the objective was to randomly access things on the stack.
There are other data structures that are ideal for random access,
which you’ll learn about throughout this book.

However, if the object is to access things in the order in which they

were placed on the stack, such as computer instructions, stacks
are efficient. In these situations, using a stack makes a lot of
sense.

Note: Stacks and arrays are often bantered about in the same
discussion, which can easily lead to confusion, but they are really
two separate things. An array stores values in memory; a stack
tracks which array element is at the top of the stack. When a value
is popped off the stack, the value remains in memory because the
value is still assigned to an array element. Popping it only changes
the array element that is at the top of the stack.

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Figure: Stacks and arrays

A queue
A queue is a sequential organization of data. Data is accessible
using FIFO. That is, the first data in the queue is the first data that
is accessible by your program.

Programmers use one of two kinds of queues depending in the

objective of the program, a simple queue or a priority queue. A
simple queue organises items in a line where the first item is at the
beginning of the line and the last item is at the back of the line.
Each item is processed in the order in which it appears in the
queue. The first item in line is processed first, followed by the
second item and then the third until the last item on the line is
processed. There isn’t any way for an item to cut the line and be
processed out of order.

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A priority queue is similar to a simple queue in that items are

organized in a line and processed sequentially. However, items on
a priority queue can jump to the front of the line if they have
priority. Priority is a value that is associated with each item placed
in the queue. The program processes the queue by scanning the
queue for items with high priority. These are processed first
regardless of their position in the line. All the other items are then
processed sequentially after high priority items are processed.

A linked list
A linked list is a data structure that makes it easy to rearrange the
data without having to move data in memory. Sound a little
confusing? If so, picture a classroom of students who are seated in
no particular order. A unique number identifies each seat, as
illustrated. We’ve also included the relative height of each student,
which we’ll use in the next exercise.

Figure: Linked list is a data

Let’s say that a teacher needs to place students’ names in

alphabetical order so she can easily find a name on the list. One
option is to have students change their seats so that Adam sits in

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seat 1, Bob sits in seat 2, and Mary in seat 3. However, this can be
chaotic if there are a lot of students in the class.

Another option is to leave students seated and make a list of seat

numbers that corresponds to the alphabetical order of students.
The list would look something like this: 3, 1, and 2, as shown in
illustration. The student in seat 3 is the first student who appears in
alphabetical order, followed by the student seated in seat 1, and so
on. Notice how this option doesn’t disrupt the class.

Suppose you want to rearrange students in size order. There’s a

pretty good chance that you won’t move students about the
classroom. Instead, you’d probably create another list of seat
numbers that reflect each student’s height. Here’s the list: 1, 3, and
2, which is illustrated. The list can be read from bottom to top for
the shortest to tallest or vice versa for tallest to shortest.

ACTIVITY 10 – REVIEWED – US14944 SO2

Complete this activity in your Portfolio of Evidence

Workbooks.

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3.4.2 Computer files and file organisation

3.4.2.1 Terminology
Field Each named unit of information to which one can make
reference. Examples: Person No, Name, Age etc. Field length may
be either fixed (e.g. Person No) or variable (Name). If variable, one
may treat it as an adequately long fixed-length field. If an actual
value is shorter, the rest of the field may be padded with spaces. If
it is too long, one would need to truncate the field. This is possible
as long as no essential information is lost in trimming the value.
There is some waste of storage space though. One may allow the
field to take variable length values by ending each field with an
end-of-field character. This eliminates wasted storage but
complicates processing.

Record (Logical Record). Is a grouping of fields as viewed by the

user. Example: Personnel Record = (Person No, Name, Age, Sex,
Date appointed). The key field in a record is the field or the
collection of fields which can be used to uniquely identify a record.
E.g. Person No in Personnel record. Like fields, records may also
have fixed or variable lengths. Fixed-length records comprise a
fixed number of fixed-length fields, whereas variable-length
records usually comprise a fixed number of fields some of which
are of variable length.

File A file is a collection of records, all of the same type, i.e.

comprising the same collection of fields.

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Block (Physical Record). Is the physical unit of transfer between

the backing store and the main store. This is the smallest amount
of information that can be transferred. A physical record usually
contains more than one whole logical record. The precise number
depends on the block size and the logical record size. For
example, a 2400 byte block will contain nine 256 byte records. On
a magnetic disc, a sector is usually a block.

Bucket Is the logical unit of transfer between the backing storage

and main memory. Bucket size is limited by the size of the main
memory buffer available for input/output. If an 8k buffer is
available, then a bucket may contain as many as three 2400 byte
blocks. On a magnetic tape, the physical and the logical units of
transfer are usually the same, i.e., a bucket contains precisely one
block. On a magnetic disc, a bucket usually contains more than
one sector or block.

Hit In a processing run, a record that is required is a hit. For

example, if the record for Person No = A111 needs to be updated,
it will be hit. The hit rate is the fraction of records which is required
for processing.
Hit rate = No of records required / Total records in file.
The kind of file organisation best suited for an application is
determined largely by the typical hit rate.

3.4.2.2 File organisation

File organisation is the methodology which is applied to structured
computer files. Files contain computer records which can be
documents or information which is stored in a certain way for later

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retrieval. File organisation refers primarily to the logical

arrangement of data (which can itself be organised in a system of
records with correlation between the fields/columns) in a file
system.

The four main kinds of file organization are

i) Serial (Heap or Pile)
ii) Sequential (Ordered)
iii) Random (Direct), and
iv) Indexed sequential.

The main characteristics of these organisations as follows;

i) Serial files
Records in a serial file are inserted as they arrive. The file is
usually read serially from beginning to end. Searching individual
records is difficult because in each case the entire file must be
read. On average, one half of the file must be read if the record is
present and all of the file must be read if it is not present.
Serial files are usually used for temporary storage of transaction
data. They can be constructed on serial or direct access media.

ii) Sequential files

In a sequential file, records are arranged in key value order,
usually ascending but it can equally well be descending. The file is
usually read in the order in which it is written, from beginning to
end. (Although it is possible to read serial and sequential files in
other-than-serial order, this would be slow due to mechanical
movement involved, irrespective of the nature of the storage
medium.

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Sequential file organisation is best for high hit rate applications, i.e.
when in a typical run a high proportion of the records are required.
Sequential files can be constructed on magnetic tape as well as
magnetic disc. If constructed on a magnetic tape, searching for
individual records is very slow. On average, one must look through
half the file whether the record is there or not. In this sequential
organisation is only marginally better than serial organisation. If the
file is on magnetic disc, searching is much more efficient because
one can employ binary search. This is like looking for a word in a
dictionary. One probes the file a number of times and at each
probe halves the search interval. This process continues till one
either finds the required record, or is able to decide that the record
is not in the file.

In a file with N buckets, the maximum number of binary probes

required to retrieve a record is proportional to N log N, where the
logarithm is to base 2. In spite of the much higher efficiency of
binary searching, retrieving individual records from a sequential file
is not economical because each probe requires mechanical
movement and is therefore slow.

The greatest strength of sequential files is that two sequential files

which share a key field and are ordered in the same way can be
merged very efficiently. In a typical application, a transaction file
which is initially built as a serial file is sorted into a sequential file
and then used to update an old sequential master file.

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Figure: Sequential files

iii) Random or Direct files

The records are not in ascending or descending key value order,
but appear to be random. In fact, the storage address for a record
(the bucket address) is calculated from the value of the key field by
using a hash function. (One makes a hash of the key to produce a
storage address).
Bucket address = Hash(Key).

Direct files are created on direct access media. In order to retrieve

a record given its key value, one applies the hash function to
obtain a bucket address, retrieves the bucket and examines its
contents to see if the required record is there. Retrieval of
individual records is therefore quick and direct files are ideal for
low hit-rate applications. For example, if the balance in a
customer’s account is to be updated as soon as a transaction is
completed (a deposit or a withdrawal is made at the counter), one
would organize the Customer Account file as a direct file on a
magnetic disc.

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iv) Indexed sequential files

Many applications require a mixture of low and high hit rate
processing. In these cases, neither sequential nor direct
organisation is adequate. Indexed sequential files are ideal for
such applications. Because the records are organised sequentially,
high hit rate processing is well supported. Direct access of
individual records for low hit rate applications is provided by an
index.

Consider a file of customer accounts held by a credit card agency.

It contains three fields: Acct No, Credit Limit and Balance. Every
time a customer wants to make a purchase, his credit limit and
balance must be checked; this requires individual access to his
record. Every month, a statement must be produced for each
customer; this requires sequential access to the whole file.

Figure: Indexed sequential files

Index -- is a special file of records with two attributes, key value

and the storage address of the corresponding record in the

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indexed file. A dense index contains an entry for each record in

the main file. If the main file is organised sequentially, a dense
index is not necessary. A partial index containing the highest (or
the lowest) key value in each bucket is quite sufficient. The index
itself would be organised sequentially.

Ideally, one would like to be able to hold the index in main

memory. Then one can search the index quickly (perhaps using
binary search which is fast in main memory) to obtain the storage
address, and then retrieve the required record in a single disc
access. However, if the main file is very large, even a partial index
may be too large to be held in main memory. In this case one may
consider constructing a multi-level index, i.e. an index to the index
which may be small enough to be held in main memory.

The most common form of indexing is dynamic. This allows

changes to the index as records are added to or deleted from the
main file.

An index is usually constructed as a tree. The construction and use

of various tree indexes will be taken up later.

3.4.2.3 Types of computer system files

Transaction files. These files represent a group of transactional
data, such as sales transactions, waiting posting (updating) to the
master files affected by the transaction. Examples would be sales
transaction file, payroll transaction file, collections-on-account
transaction file, receiving transaction file.

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Open transaction files represent in-process transactions that do

not yet represent a completed accounting transaction. Examples
would be the open purchase order file, which represents
purchases on order but have not yet been received. When the
goods are received, additional data will be entered to reflect that
receipt, and the transactions in the open file will move to a
completed transaction file that will be posted to all master files
impacted by the transactions.

Master files. Represent on-going information pertaining to an

entity that is carried over from one period to the next. Examples
would be the accounts receivable master file, inventory master file,
and general ledger master file.

History files. Contain transactions that have been previously

posted to the master files affected by the transaction. After
transactions are posted, they are appended to history files, so that
the firm will have an "audit trail" record of all transactions
undertaken. These files are used to generate a number of reports
analysing past transactions, such as sales analysis reports.

3.4.2.4 Types of computerised processing

Data Entry The process of getting transactional or master file data
entered into files in the system. This could consist of keying the
data from a terminal, or scanning a bar code or other scanable
document. Many web-based businesses are using the customers
themselves to enter data pertaining to the sales.

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Editing The process of applying control procedures to data. At this

point of data entry and subsequently to data entry in an attempt to
identify data entry errors or other incorrect data.

Updating This process is the same as posting in a manual system,

which simply represents the updating of account balances and
other cumulative fields in master files to reflect transactional data.

Appending (merge)the process of adding posted transactions to

history files.

Deleting - the process of deleting transactions from transaction

files after they have been posted to the master files and appended
to the history files. This prepares the transaction file for the next
day of activity.

Sorting The process of ordering data in a file based on a specified

field or fields
 Sorting of transaction files was required in older sequential
access, magnetic tape supported systems, since the
transaction file had to be put in the same order as the master
file being updated.
 Sorting is now primarily used to arrange data in a desired
order for query or report generation.

Report generation The process of generating pre-defined or ad

hoc reports from files or combinations of files in the system. The
reports made commonly be displayed on the screen or output to a
printer.

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Maintenance Processing The processing of non-transactional

changes in master file (database) records that do not affect the
balance in an account. This processing encompasses adding new
records to a file, deleting records, making non-transactional
changes such as changing the address, marital status, pay rate,
etc. of an employee in the employee master file.

ACTIVITY 11 – REVIEWED – US14944 SO 2

Complete this activity in your Portfolio of Evidence

Workbooks.

3.5 DATABASE SYSTEMS

A database is a collection of related data. By data, we mean

known facts that can be recorded and that have implicit meaning.
For example, consider the names, telephone numbers, and
addresses of the people you know. You may have recorded this
data in an indexed address book, or you may have stored it on a
hard drive, using a personal computer and software such as
Microsoft Access, or Excel. This is a collection of related data with
an implicit meaning and hence is a database.

A database may be generated and maintained manually or it may

be computerised. For example, a library card catalogue is a
database that may be created and maintained manually. A
computerised database may be created and maintained either by a
group of application programs written specifically for that task or by

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a database management system. Of course, we are only

concerned with computerised databases in this course.

3.5.1 How databases are used

You now realize the use of databases for supporting the core
business of an organisation and enabling day-to-day operations.
These are production databases that support the operational
systems of an enterprise. More recently, with increasing demand
for information, databases fulfil another important function.
Databases provide support for strategic decision making in an
organisation. Such decision support databases are designed and
implemented separately and differently. Production databases and
decision-support databases are large-scale databases for the
several users within organisations.

Individuals and single departments may also use private

databases. For example, a specialty department may want to send
targeted mailings to specific customers and to keep these
customers in a separate database. Individual business analysts
may keep data and research results in a separate database just for
their use. These are mass deployment individual databases. The
figure below shows the separation of databases by their uses and
describes some of the features.

Figure: Use of databases

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3.5.2 Overview of data models

A data model represents the data requirements of an organisation.

You can diagrammatically show a data model with symbols and
figures. Data for an organisation resides in a database. Therefore,
when designing a database, you first create a data model. The
model would represent the real-world data requirements. It would
show the arrangement of the data structures. Database software
has evolved to support different types of data models. As we try to
represent real-world data requirements as close as possible in a
data model, we come up with a replica of the real-world information
requirements. It turns out that we can look at data requirements
and create data models in a few different ways. At this stage, let us
survey a few leading data models. Over time, different vendors
have developed commercial database management systems to
support each of these common data models.

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3.5.1.1 Flat file

A flat file database describes any of various means to encode a
database model (most commonly a table) as a singular file (such
as .txt or .ini).

A "flat file" is a plain text or mixed text and binary file which usually
contain one record per line or 'physical' record (example on disc or
tape). Within such a record, the single fields can be separated by
delimiters, e.g. commas, or have a fixed length. In the latter case,
padding may be needed to achieve this length. Extra formatting
may be needed to avoid delimiter collision. There are no structural
relationships between the records.

Typical examples of flat files are /etc/password and /etc/group on

Unix-like operating systems. Another example of a flat file is a
name-and-address list with the fields Name, Address, and Phone
Number.

It is possible to write out by hand, on a sheet of paper, a list of

names, addresses, and phone numbers; this is a flat file database.
This can also be done with any typewriter or word processor. Many
pieces of computer software are designed to implement flat file
databases.

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Figure: Flat file

3.5.1.2 Hierarchical model

Let us examine the data requirements for a typical manufacturing
company. Typically in manufacturing, you have major assemblies,
with each major assembly consisting of subassemblies, each
subassembly consisting of parts, each part consisting of subparts,
and so on. In your database for the manufacturing company, you
need to keep data for the assemblies, subassemblies, parts, and
subparts. And the data model for manufacturing operations must
represent these data requirements.

Think about this data model. This model should show that an
assembly contains subassemblies, a subassembly contains parts,
and a part contains subparts. Immediately you can observe that
this data model must be hierarchical in nature, diagramming the
assembly at the top with subassembly, part, and subpart at
successive lower levels.

In the business world, many data structures are hierarchical in

nature. You can notice a hierarchy in department, product
category, product subcategory, product line, and product. You can

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trace a hierarchy in division, subdivision, department, and

employee. The next figure illustrates one such model showing the
hierarchy of customer, order, and order line item. A customer may
have one or more orders, and an order may have one or more line
items, perhaps one line item for each product ordered.

Key features of the hierarchical model

Level: Each data structure representing a business object is at
one of the hierarchical levels.

Parent-Child Relationships: The relationship between each pair

of data structures at levels next to each other is a parent-child
relationship. CUSTOMER is a parent data segment whose child is
the ORDER data segment. In this arrangement, a child segment
can have only one parent segment but one parent segment may
have multiple child segments. You may want to separate orders
into phone orders and mail orders. In that case, CUSTOMER may
have PHONE ORDER and MAIL ORDER as two child segments.

Root Segment: The data segment at the top level of the hierarchy
is known as the root data segment (as in an inverted tree).

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Figure: Root Segment

3.5.1.3 Network model

The hierarchical data model represents well any business data that
inherently contains levels one below the other. We have just
discussed how the manufacturing application deals with
hierarchical levels of plant inventory with assemblies broken down
into lower-level components. The hierarchical data model suits this
application well. However, in the real world, most data structures
do not conform to a hierarchical arrangement. The levels of data
structures do not fall into nice dependencies one below another as
in a hierarchy. In the hierarchical data model, you have noticed
that each data segment at any level can have only one parent at
the next higher level. In practice, many sets of related elements
may not be subjected to such restrictions.

Let us consider a common set of related data elements in a typical

business. The data elements pertain to customers placing orders
and making payments, salespersons being assigned, and

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salespersons being part of sales territories. All of these data

elements cannot be arranged in a hierarchy. The relationships
cross over among the data elements as though they form a
network. Refer to the next figure and note how it represents a
network arrangement and not a hierarchical arrangement. Observe
the six data elements of sales territory, salesperson, customer,
order, order line item, and payment as nodes in a network
arrangement.

The network data model overcomes some of the limitations of the

hierarchical data model. The network data model is more
representative of real-world information requirements than the
hierarchical model. The network data model can represent most
business information.

Key features of the network model

Levels: As in most real-world situations, no hierarchical levels
exist in the network model. The lines in a network data model
simply connect the appropriate data structures wherever
necessary without the restriction of connecting only successive
levels as in the hierarchical model. Note the lines connecting the
various data structures with no restrictions.

Record Types: In the network data model, each data structure is

known as a record type. For example, the CUSTOMER record type
represents the data content of all customers. The ORDER record
type represents the data content of all orders.

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Relationships: The network data model expresses relationships

between two record types by designating one as the owner record
type and the other as the member record type. For each
occurrence of an owner record type, there are one or more
occurrences of the member record type. The owner record type
may be reckoned as the parent and the member record type as the
child. In a sense, the owner record type “owns” the corresponding
member record type. Each member type with its corresponding
owner record type is known as a set. A set represents the
relationship between an owner and a member record type.

Multiple Parents: Look at the ORDER member record type. For

ORDER there are two parents or owner records, namely,
CUSTOMER and PAYMENT. In other words, for one occurrence of
CUSTOMER, one or more occurrences of ORDER exist. Similarly,
for one occurrence of PAYMENT there are one or more
occurrences of ORDER. By definition, a hierarchical data model
cannot represent this kind of data arrangement with two parents for
one child data structure.

Physical Pointers: Just as in the case of the hierarchical data

model, related occurrences of two different record types in a
network model are connected by physical pointers or physical
storage addresses embedded within physical records in the
database. Physical pointers link occurrences of an owner record
type with the corresponding occurrences of the member record
type. Within each record type itself the individual occurrences may
be linked to one another by means of forward and backward
pointers.

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Figure: Physical Pointers

3.5.1.4 Relational model

This data model is superior to the earlier models. Dr. E. F. Codd,
the celebrated father of the relational model, stipulated the rules
and put this model on a solid mathematical foundation. At this
stage, however, we want to introduce the relational model as a
superior data model that addresses the limitations of the earlier
data models.

The earlier hierarchical data model is suitable for data structures

that are naturally hierarchical, with each data structure placed at a
certain level in the hierarchy.

However, in the business arena, many of the data structures and

their relationships cannot be readily placed in a hierarchical
arrangement. The network data model evolved to dispense with
the arbitrary restriction of the hierarchical model. Nevertheless, in
both of these models, you need physical pointers to connect
related data occurrences. This is a serious drawback because you

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have rewrite the physical addresses in the data records every time
you reorganise the data, move the data to a different storage area,
or change over to another storage medium. The relational model
establishes the connections between related data occurrences by
means of logical links implemented through foreign keys.

Key features of the relational data model

Levels: Just like the network data model, no hierarchical levels are
present in the relational model. The lines in a relational data model
simply indicate the relationships between the appropriate data
structures wherever necessary without the restriction of connecting
only successive levels as in the hierarchical model. As in the
network model, note the lines connecting the various data
structures with no restrictions.

Relations or Tables: The relational model consists of relations. A

relation is a two-dimensional table of data observing relational
rules. For example, the CUSTOMER relation represents the data
content of all customers. The ORDER relation represents the data
content of all orders.

Relationships: Consider the relationship between CUSTOMER

and ORDER. For each customer one or more orders may exist. So
this customer occurrence must be connected to all the related
order occurrences. In the relational model, physical pointers do not
establish these connections. Instead, a foreign key field is included
in the ORDER data structure. In each of the order occurrences
relating to a certain customer, the foreign key contains the
identification of that customer. When you look for all the orders for

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a particular customer, you search through the foreign key field of

ORDER and find those order occurrences with identification of that
customer in the foreign key field.

No Physical Pointers. Unlike the hierarchical or the network data

models, the relational model establishes relationships between
data structures by means of foreign keys and not by physical
pointers.

Figure: Data relationships

3.5.1.5 Object-oriented model

Object DBMSs add database functionality to object programming
languages. They bring much more than persistent storage of
programming language objects. A major benefit of object-oriented
model is the unification of the application and database
development into a seamless data model and language
environment. As a result, applications require less code, use more
natural data modelling, and code bases are easier to maintain.

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Object developers can write complete database applications with a

modest amount of additional effort.
The object-oriented database (OODB) paradigm combines object-
oriented programming language (OOPL) systems and persistent
systems. The power of the OODB comes from the seamless
treatment of both persistent data, as found in databases, and
transient data, as found in executing programs.

In contrast to a relational DBMS where a complex data structure

must be flattened out to fit into tables or joined together from those
tables to form the in-memory structure, object DBMSs have no
performance overhead to store or retrieve a web or hierarchy of
interrelated objects. This one-to-one mapping of object
programming language objects to database objects has two
benefits over other storage approaches: it provides higher
performance management of objects, and it enables better
management of the complex interrelationships between objects.
This makes object DBMSs better suited to support applications
such as financial portfolio risk analysis systems,
telecommunications service applications, World Wide Web
document structures, design and manufacturing systems, and
hospital patient record systems, which have complex relationships
between data.

3.5.1.6 Object-relational
Take the case of the State of Minerals which manages the mines
in the country. It maintains a library of more than half a million
pictures. Users access this library several times a day. A user

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requests a picture by content: “Show me Anglo Platinum Mine”.

Despite an index system of captions and keywords, retrieval of the
right picture within a reasonable time is virtually impossible with the
current relational database systems. Nor are purely object-oriented
data systems totally adequate to handle the challenge.

As the demand for information continues to grow, organizations

need database systems that allow representation of complex data
types, user-defined sophisticated functions, and user-defined
operators for data access.

Object-relational database management systems (ORDBMS)

present viable solutions for handling complex data types. The
object-relational model combines the ability of object technology to
handle advanced types of relationships with features of data
integrity, reliability, and recovery found in the relational realm.

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Figure: Object-relational

3.5.2 Types of databases

The corporate database that holds an organisation’s data is the

underlying foundation for corporate information. Organisations are
also faced with questions regarding how and where to hold the
corporate data. Where should an enterprise hold its data? Should
all the corporate data be kept centrally in one place? If so, what
are the advantages and disadvantages? Or should the corporate
data be divided into suitable fragments and the pieces kept at
different locations? What are the implications of this arrangement?

Organisations primarily adopt one of two approaches. If the entire

database is kept in one centralized location, this type of database
is a centralised database. On the other hand, if fragments of the
database are physically placed at various locations, this type of
database is a distributed database. Each type has its own benefits
and shortcomings. Again, whether an enterprise adopts a

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centralised or a distributed approach depends on the

organisational setup and the information requirements.

3.5.2.1 Centralised
Personalised databases are always centralised in one location. If
your company has a centralised computer system, then the
database must reside in that central location. In the client/server
architecture, the database resides on a server machine. The entire
database may be kept on a single server machine and placed in a
central location.

Figure: Centralized database

When all corporate data is in one place in a centralised database,

companies find it easier to manage and administer the database.
You can control concurrent accesses to the same data in the
database easily in a centralised database. You can maintain
security controls easily. However, if your company’s operations are
spread across remote locations, these locations must access the
centralised database through communication links. Here, data

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availability depends on the capacity and dependability of the

communication links.

3.5.2.2 Distributed
Shows how fragments of a corporate database are spread across
remote locations. Global organisations or enterprises with
widespread domestic operations can benefit from distributed
databases. In such organisations computer processing is also
distributed, with processing done locally at each location. A
distributed database gets fragmented into smaller data sets.
Normally, you would divide the database into data sets on the
basis of usage. If a fragment contains data that are most relevant
to one location, then that data set is kept at that location. At each
location, a fragment of the enterprise data is placed based on the
usage.

Each fragment of data at every location may be managed with the

same type of database management system. For example, you
may run Oracle DBMS at every location. In that case, you run your
distributed database as a homogenous database. On the other
hand, if you elect to manage the data fragments at different
locations with different DBMSs, then you run your distributed
database as a collection of heterogeneous database systems.
Heterogeneous arrangement provides extra flexibility. However,
heterogeneous distribution is difficult to coordinate and administer.
Figure: Distributed database

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3.5.3 SQL

SQL is an industry standard database language that includes

statements for database definition, database manipulation, and
database control. SQL is based on a mathematical theory. This
theory, which consists of a set of concepts and definitions, is called
the relational model. The relational model was defined by E. F.
Codd in 1970, when he was employed by IBM.

This relational model provides a theoretical basis for database

languages. It consists of a small number of simple concepts for
recording data in a database, together with a number of operators
to manipulate the data. These concepts and operators are
principally borrowed from set theory and predicate logic.

SQL is a relational database language. Among other things, the

language consists of statements to insert, update, delete, query,

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and protect data. The following is a list of statements that can be

formulated with SQL:
 Insert the address of a new employee.
 Delete all the stock data for product ABC.
 Show the address of employee Johnson.
 Show the sales figures of shoes for every region and for
every month.
 Show how many products have been sold in London the last
three months.
 Make sure that Mr. Johnson cannot see the salary data any
longer.
SQL has already been implemented by many vendors as the
database language for their database server. For example, IBM,
MySQL, and Oracle are all vendors of SQL products.
We call SQL a relational database language because it is
associated with data that has been defined according to the rules
of the relational model.

Examples of SQL statements

As you already know by now, SQL is the language used to
communicate with database systems. To execute commands on a
database, you will compose SQL statements and send to a
database or database server. The database system will parse the
SQL statement and execute.

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What is an SQL statement?

An SQL statement represents a set of commands that can be
executed by a database system. Here is a sample SQL statement:
select name from employee where age > 20

The above SQL statement will find the name of all employees from
the EMPLOYEE table who’s Age is above 20. The words marked
in blue colour are keywords. Let us break the statement into 3
sections:
select name - SELECT is a keyword and NAME represents
the database field to select.
from employee - FROM is a keyword and EMPLOYEE
represents the database table to select data from.
where age > 20 - WHERE a keyword and AGE > 20 is the
condition based on which the records are selected from
the table.

Basically, the select statement has the following syntax:

SELECT [FIELD 1, FIELD 2, ...] FROM [TABLE NAME] WHERE
[CONDITION]

The WHERE condition is optional. If there is no WHERE condition,

then the SQL statement will return all the records from the table.

3.5.4 Benefits of databases

Minimal Data Redundancy: Unlike file-oriented data systems

where data are duplicated among various applications, database
systems integrate all the data into one logical structure. Duplication

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of data is minimized. Wastage of storage space is eliminated.

Going back to the bank example, with a database, customer data
is not duplicated in the checking account, savings account, and
loan account applications. Customer data is entered and
maintained in only one place in the database.

Sometimes, in a database, a few data elements may have to be

duplicated. Let us say that product data consist of product number,
description, price, and the corresponding product line number. All
the fields relating to product line data are kept separately.
Whenever the details of products and product lines are needed in
applications, both data structures are retrieved from the database.
Suppose a heavily used product forecast application needs all the
details of the product from product data and just the product line
description from the product line data. In that case, it will be
efficient for the product data to duplicate the product line
description from the product line data. Thus, in some instances,
data duplication is permitted in a database for the purpose of
access efficiency and performance improvement. However, such
data duplications are kept to a minimum.

Data Integrity: Data integrity in a database means reduction of

data inconsistency. Because of the elimination or control of data
redundancy, a database is less prone to errors creeping in through
data duplication. Field sizes and field formats are the same for all
applications. Each application uses the same data from one place
in the database. In a bank, names and addresses will be the same
for checking account, savings account, and loan applications.

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Data Integration: In a database, data objects are organised into

single logical data structures. For example, in file-oriented data
systems, data about employees are scattered among the various
applications. The payroll application contains employee name and
address, social security number, salary rate, deductions, and so
on. The pension plan application contains pension data about each
employee, whereas the human resources application contains
employee qualifications, skills, training, and education. However,
all data about each employee are integrated and stored together in
a database.

So, in a database, data about each business object are integrated

and stored separately as customer, order, product, invoice,
manufacture, sale, and so on. Data integration enables users to
understand the data and the relationships among data structures
easily. Programmers needing data about a business object can go
to one place to get the details. For example, data about orders are
consolidated in one place as order data.

Data Sharing: This benefit of database systems follows from data

integration. The various departments in any enterprise need to
share the company’s data for proper functioning. The sales
department needs to share the data generated by the accounting
department through the billing application. Consider the customer
service department. It needs to share the data generated by
several applications. The customer service application needs
information about customers, their orders, billings, payments, and
credit ratings. With data integration in a database, the application

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can get data from distinct and consolidated data structures relating
to customer, orders, invoices, payments, and credit status.

Data sharing is a major benefit of database systems. Each

department shares the data in the database that are most pertinent
to it. Departments may be interested in data structures as follows:
Sales department: Customer/Order
Accounting department: Customer/Order/Invoice/Payment
Order processing department: Customer/Product/Order
Inventory control department: Product/Order/Stock
Quantity/Back Order Quantity

Database technology lets each application use the portion of the

database that is needed for that application. User views of the
database are defined and controlled. We will have more to say
about user views in later chapters.

Uniform Standards: We have seen that, because of the spread of

duplicate data across applications in file-oriented data systems,
standards cannot be enforced easily and completely. Database
systems remove this difficulty. As data duplication is controlled in
database systems and as data is consolidated and integrated,
standards can be implemented more easily. Restrictions and
business rules for a single data element need to be applied in only
one place. In database systems, it is possible to eliminate
problems from homonyms and synonyms.

Security Controls: Information is a corporate asset and,

therefore, must be protected through proper security controls. In

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file-oriented systems, security controls cannot be established

easily. Imagine the data administrator wanting to restrict and
control the use of data relating to employees. In file-oriented
systems, control has to be exercised in all applications having
separate employee files. However, in a database system, all data
about employees are consolidated, integrated, and kept in one
place. Security controls on employee data need to be applied in
only one place in the database. Database systems make
centralised security controls possible. It is also easy to apply data
access authorizations at various levels of data.

Data Independence: Remember the lack of data independence in

file-oriented systems where computer programs have data
structure definitions embedded within the programs themselves. In
database systems, file or data definitions are separated out of the
programs and kept within the database itself. Program logic and
data structure definitions are not intricately bound together. In a
client/server environment, data and descriptions of data structures
reside on the database server, whereas the code for application
logic executes on the client machine or on a separate application
server.

Reduced Program Maintenance: This benefit results primarily

from data independence in applications. If the customer data
structure changes by the addition of a field for cellular phone
numbers, then this change is made in only one place within the
database itself. Only those programs that need the new field need
to be modified and recompiled to make use of the added piece of

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data. Within limits, you can change programs or data

independently.

Simpler Backup and Recovery: In a database system, generally

all data are in one place. Therefore, it becomes easy to establish
procedures to back up data. All the relationships among the data
structures are also in one place. The arrangement of data in
database systems makes it easier not only for backing up the data
but also for initiating procedures for recovery of data lost because
of malfunctions.

ACTIVITY 12 – REVIEWED - US14944 SO 2

Complete this activity in your Portfolio of Evidence

Workbooks.

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REFERENCE

 Computer hardware and software. by Angela Du Preez, Vaughan Van

Dyk, Adrian Cook
 Bernard A. Megrey and Erlend Moksness. Past, Present and Future
Trends in the Use of Computers in Fisheries Research. 2009.
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/foci/publications/2009/megr0679.pdf
 http://www.ready.gov/america/_downloads/computerinventory.pdf.
 Data Structures Demystified by Jim Keogh and Ken Davidson, 2004
 Databases Demystified by Andy Oppel 2004
 Character set encoding basics -
 http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=IWS-
Chapter03
 A tutorial on character code issues
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/chars.html
 Unicode Chart. http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~tomw/java/unicode.html
 www.wikipedia.org and Wiki answers.
 Wikipedia.org
 Computer hardware and networks By Angela Du Preez, Vaughan Van
Dyk, Adrian Cook (Unit1, Unit3)
 http://wapedia.mobi/en/Kernel_%28computers%29

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