CHAPTER 4: The Data Resource

Data Resource

• Consists of the facts and information an organization gathers while conducting business and in
order to conduct business at all levels of the organization.
• Components:
§ Numeric § Audio § Graphical Data
§ Text § Video

Business Manager

• Often called “Data Stewards”

• Responsible for managing organizational data
• Data or database administration – special management unit

Why Manage Data?

• It is important for the cost-effective development and operation of information systems.

• Systems development time is greatly enhanced by the reuse of data and programs as new
applications are designed and built.

Technical Aspects of Managing the Data Resource

Data Model

• A key element in the effective management of data is an overall map for business data
• Involves:
§ Methodology – steps that are followed to identify and describe organizational data entities
§ Notation – a way to show these findings, usually graphically

Entity Relationship Diagram

• Captures entities (i.e., customer, order, product) and their relationships (i.e., submits, includes).
• Most commonly accepted notation for representing the data needs in an organization.
• Entities – the things about which data are collected
• Attributes – the actual elements of data that are to be collected
• Relationships – the relevant associations between organizational entities

Metadata

• An erd is only part of metadata

• Metadata documents the meaning and all the business rules that govern data.
• “Data about data”
Two Approaches of Data Modeling

• Modeling (top-down) – involves describing the organization and its data requirements at a very
high level, independent of particular reports, screens, or detailed descriptions of data processing
requirements.
• View Integration (bottom-up) – each report, computer screen, form, document, and so on to be
produced from organizational databases is identified (usually starting from what is done today).

Corporate Data Model

• Based on general business policies and rules of operation, relationships between the entities are
identified, and this model is drawn

View Integration

• Each report, computer screen, form, document, and so on to be produced from organizational
databases is identified (usually starting from what is done today. Each of these is called a user
view.
• The data elements in each user view are identified and put into a basic structure called a normal
form.
• Normalization, the process of creating simple data structures from more complex ones, consists
of a set of rules that yields a data structure that is very stable and useful across many different
requirements.

Data Modeling Methods: Guidelines

• Objective – The modeling effort must be justified by some clear overriding need, such as
coordination of operational data processing, flexibility to access data, or effectiveness of data
systems.
• Scope – The coverage for a data model must be carefully considered. Generally, the broader the
scope, the more difficult the project is to manage. Scope choices include corporate- wide,
division, areas with particular high- impact needs, and a particularly important or willing business
function (e.g., sales).
• Timing – Few organizations can put all systems development on hold while a complete data
model is developed.
• Outcome – The more uncertain the outcome, the lower the chances for success.

Database Programming

• Data processing activity with a database can be specified in either procedural programs written in
a 3 GL or via special- purpose languages developed for database processing.
• 3GL PROGRAM – Additional and more powerful instructions are added to the vocabulary of the
programming language.

Two Special-Purpose Languages

• Structured Query Language (SQL) – a nonprocedural special-purpose language which is for

posing queries to the database
• eXTENSIBLE Markup Language (XML) - Describe the structure of data and to label data being
exchanged between computer programs. XML has essentially become a standard for e-
 commerce data exchange because neither system (e.g., one in your compa ny and one in one
of your suppliers) needs to know anything about the database technology each is using.
§ The basis for Web services, which is a scheme for sharing programs and data across the
Internet.

Managerial Issues in Managing Data

• As with any business resource, quality sources for data must be identified and the data acquired;
enough space must be available for data storage; obsolete data must be identified, disposed of,
or archived; and usage of data must be accounted for, and, if appropriate, usage fees should be
charged to those utilizing the data.

Principles in Managing Data

The Need to Manage Data is Permanent

• Any organization has customers or clients, whether these are other organizations, individual
consumers, or patients.
• Whether a company makes to stock or to order, there are vendors or suppliers, orders or
reservations, products or services, and employees.
• Further, irrespective of how accounting, selling, billing, or any other management activity is
performed, there still will be data about customers, vendors, orders, products, and employees.
• Data remain over time and need to be managed over time.

Data can Exist at Several Levels

• Although the business retains vast amounts of data, there might be relatively few basic classes of
data on which to base most information. One way to organize data is called the data pyramid (as
depicted in Figure 4.3).
• One such scheme focuses on scope of influence for data, based on the following:
a. Local – are those that have relevance to only a single user or small group of organization
members
b. Shared – are those that are exchanged between different user groups, and hence there must
be agreements on the definition, format, and timing for exchange of these data among those
sharing the data
c. Core – are those that require an organization wide definition and sourcing (in other words,
core data is enterprise- shared data).
• Final scheme for levels of data we discuss is based on the differences between data and
metadata:
a. Physical – exist in databases and other file systems
b. Logical – is the view or understanding of data needed to use data
c. Semantic – metadata that describe organizational data

Application Software should be Separate from the Database

• One goal of data management is application independence, the separation, or decoupling, of data
from applications systems
 • The central point of Figure 4.4 is that data and
applications software must be managed as separate
entities. When treated separately, data are not locked
inside applications, where their meaning and structure
are hidden from other applications that also require
these data.

Application Software can be Classified by How they Treat Data

• The concept of application independence suggests that different data processing applications can
be classified into three groups, based upon their role in managing data: data capture, data
transfer, and data analysis and presentation.
• Data Captured – gather data and populate the database. They store and maintain data in the
data pyramid of Figure 4.3. Ideally, each datum is captured once and fully tested for accuracy and
completeness.
• Data Transfer – move data from one database to another or otherwise bring together data from
various databases to meet some processing need. These applications are often called bridges or
interfaces because they connect related databases.
• Data Analysis and Presentation – provide data and information to authorized persons. Data
might be summarized, compared to history, reformulated into graphs, or inserted into documents
being developed using a word processor.

Application Software should be Considered Disposable

• With application independence a company can replace the capture, transfer, and presentation
software modules separately when necessary. Presentation systems are often the most volatile
types of applications, and these types of systems provide management with business value

Data should be Captured Once

• Another implication of the separation of data from applications is that data ideally should be
captured at one source and, even when not shared from one common database, synchronized
across different databases. It is simply too costly for an organization to capture the same data
multiple times and reconcile differences across applications
• The data architecture of an organization should contain an inventory of the uses of data across
the business units. The architecture should also include a plan to distribute data to various
databases to support the analysis and presentation needs of different user groups.

There should be Strict Data Standards

• Five types of data standards that must be established for a business

§ Identifier: Unique value for each business entity
§ Naming: Unique name or label for each type of data
 § Definition: Unambiguous description for each type of data
§ Integrity Rule: Specification of legitimate values for a type of data
§ Usage Rights: Security clearances for a type of data

Master Data Must Conform

• Master data management (MDM) refers to the disciplines, technologies, and methods to ensure
the currency, meaning, and quality of reference data within and across various subject areas
(White and Imhoff, 2006). MDM ensures that everyone knows the current description of a
product, the current salary of an employee, and the current billing address of a customer. MDM
does not address sharing transactional data, such as customer purchases
• Three Popular Architectures for Master Data Management:
§ Identity registry: the master data remains in their source systems, and applications refer to
the registry to determine where the agreed-upon source of the particular data (such as
customer address) resides.
§ Integration hub: data changes are broadcast through a central service to all subscribing
databases.
§ Persistent approach: one consolidated record is maintained, and all applications draw on
that one actual “golden record” for the common data.

Data Management Process

• Examines each of these functions within the context of data management

Plan

• Develops a blueprint for data and the relationships among data across business units and
functions
• Enterprise Data Model – used to identify entities and relationships among the entities
• The plan identifies which data are required, where they are used in the business, how will they be
used, and how much data are expected

Source

• Decisions must be made about the timeliest and highest- quality source for each data element
required
• For data to be acquired from sources external to the organization, the quality, cost, and timeliness
of these sources need to be considered
• Master Data Management Program – often drives decisions about data sources

Acquire and Maintain

• Once the best sources for data are identified and selected, data capture systems must be built to
acquire and maintain these data
• Appropriate applications systems need to be built to track data acquisition and transfer
• A system is need to confirm that all files were sent and received.

Define/Describe and Inventory

• A basic step in managing any resource is defining what is being managed.

 • In managing data, each data entity, data element, and relationship must be defined, a format for
storage and reporting established, and the organization of data described so users know how to
access data.
• Metadata inventory catalog - where all data definitions and descriptions are kept, volume
statistics on data are maintained, and other data about data

Organize and Make Accessible

• Databases need to be designed so that data can be retrieved and reported efficiently and in the
format that business managers require.
• The two aspects of data usage necessary for proper organization are: what data are required and
how the data are to be selected.
• Data warehouse – a highly popular method for making data accessible to many people in an
organization for decision making and business intelligence
• Data warehouse was created whereby certain data from each existing system and data from
new systems that were built were extracted on a regular basis and put in the operational store

Control Quality and Integrity

• The concept of application independence implies that such controls must be stored as part of the
data definitions and enforced during data capture and maintenance
• Data quality is an especially critical issue when data are considered a corporate asset

Protect and Secure

• Privileges for use of data might include definition, retrieval, insertion, deletion, update, and
retrieval of the datum itself or in combination with other values
• Privileges can be assigned to programs, databases, files, individual records or data elements,
terminals, and workstations

Account for Use

• There is considerable cost to capture, maintain, and report data, these costs must be identified
and an accounting system developed to report them
• Two conditions make accounting for the use of data especially difficult as compared to other
information resources
§ Frequently the organizational unit responsible for acquiring data is not the primary user of
data
§ Usage shared because data are not consumed from usage

Recover/Restore and Upgrade

• When a database is damaged because of some hardware or software malfunction, procedures

must be in place to restore the database to a clean and uncontaminated condition
• The business manager must anticipate what needs to be done in the business when a database
is not accessible because of a recovery or upgrading that temporarily takes the database out of
action

Determine Retention and Dispose

• Business managers must decide how much data history needs to be kept
 • Every organization should have a policy on data retention that is consistent with the
organization’s strategy and use of data

Train and Consult for Effective Use

• What data are stored in databases, what they mean, what presentation systems report these
data, and how they can be accessed all have to be explained to business managers who might
want to use the data.

Data Management Policies

• Implementation of these concepts and processes for data management occurs differently in each
organization

Data Governance

• Organizational process for establishing strategy, objectives, and policies for organizational data
• Goal of data governance is to create and maintain an enterprise view of data through
collaboration and a common agenda
• Data governance happens through a data governance council, whose members come from IT
and a variety of key business areas.

Two Key Policy Areas of Data Governance

Data Ownership

• Business managers can become very possessive about data, for both business and personal
reasons such as the following:
§ the need to protect personal privacy
§ the need to protect trade secrets the requirement to allow only those with a need to know to
see sensitive business or product plans
§ the desire to promote internal competition and to justify the use of scarce resources
§ the desire to show commitment to one’s job and ownership of the data needed to carry out
one’s job
§ the desire to use information as power for political gain
• A commitment to quality data, cost control of data management and use of data for strategic
advantage are essential for obtaining the greatest benefits from managing the data resource
• On the other hand, possessiveness about data can stifle data sharing, which can limit access to
data.
• Corporate Information Policy – is the foundation for managing ownership of data
• Transborder data flows – electronic movements of data that cross a country’s national boundary
for processing, storage, or retrieval of that data in a foreign country

Data Administration

• To better manage data, many organizations have created a unit to lead the efforts in data
management
• Policies that assign the data administration group both operational and limited planning
responsibilities work best
• Database Administrator
§ Primary person responsible for the management of computer databases
 § The DBA is concerned with the following:
o tuning database management systems selection and evaluation of and training on
database technology
physical database design
o design of methods to recover from damage to databases
physical placement of databases on specific computers and storage devices
o the interface of databases with telecommunications and other technologies
• Key Functions of the Data Administration Group
§ Promote and Control Data Sharing – the group should encourage all business units to
define data and to increase the use of common sources of data for different application
systems
§ Analyze the impact of changes to application system when data definitions change –
the application independence concept is usually not fully implemented, so evolution and
change to databases might require programming modifications.
§ Maintain metadata – when a metadata repository and data dictionary are started, data
administration must clean up existing data definitions and write definitions where they do not
exist
§ Reduce redundant data and processing – the group should encourage dropping
unnecessary copies of data and programs that maintain them
§ Improve quality and security of data – the group should take leadership in this area,
helping business managers and the data governance council to define data quality
standards, set security clearances, and work with data center operations to implement these
guidelines
§ Reduce system maintenance costs and improve systems development productivity –
data administration should work to create database organizations that are easy to use, select
database technology that reduces the amount of programming, and train database analysts
and programmers in the most current methods
§ Insure Data Integrity – data administration must actively review databases to insure that the
integrity of data has not been compromised

CHAPTER 5: Enterprise Systems

Functional Information System

• Simply an alternative way of classifying applications

• The overall IS (Information System) is composed of multiple subsystems, each providing
information for various tasks within the function

Vertical Integration of System

• A system that serves more than one vertical level in an organization or an industry

Distributed System

• Refers to a mode of delivery rather than a traditional class of applications like transaction
processing or decision support systems
• Local area networks (LANs) and wide area networks (WANs) are both used to support distributed
systems

Client/Server System
 • The processing power is distributed between a central server computer, such as a midrange
computer or a powerful workstation, and a number of client computers, which are usually desktop
microcomputers.
• Three Building Blocks:
§ The Client Building Block
§ The Server Building Block
§ Middleware
o Server Operating Systems
o Transport Stack Software
o Service-Specific Software
• Had only two tier:
§ Client tier – fat client or thin server model
§ Server tier – thin client or fat server
• Three-tier client/server systems
§ PC ( tier1)
§ Application Server (tier 2)
§ Database Tier (tier 3)
• Virtualization
§ Increasingly popular way of delivering IT services
§ Comes in several flavors
o Server Virtualization
o Desktop Virtualization

Service-Oriented Architecture and Web Services

• Service- Oriented Architecture – is an application architecture based on a collection of

functions, or services, where these services can communicate (or be connected) with one
another.
• Web Services – a particular collection of technologies built around the XML (eXtensible Markup
Language) standard of communicating.

Transaction Processing Systems

• Transaction Processing Systems process the thousands of transactions that occur every day in
most organizations, including sales; payments made and received; inventory shipped and
received; hiring, firing, and paying employees; and paying dividends.
• These systems produce a variety of summarized reports that are useful to upper-level
management.
• These systems are able to process transactions more rapidly and economically (and certainly
more accurately) than a manual (human) system.

Two Types of Transaction Processing Systems

• Batch Processing – the organization accumulated a batch of transactions and then processed
the entire batch at one time.
• Online Processing - each transaction is entered directly into the computer when occurs

Two Representative Transaction Processing Systems for Single Business Functions

 • Payroll System – at first glance, a payroll system seems fairly simple. Operators input the
number of hours worked for each employee (usually employing online data entry), and the system
batch processes these transactions to produce payroll checks.
§ The payroll processing subsystem also must keep year-to-date totals of gross income, social
security income, individual deductions, various categories of taxes, and net income.
§ It also must incorporate the ability to compute federal, state, and local taxes, as well as
social security contributions, and it must handle both mandatory and voluntary deductions.
• Sales Order Entry System – the basic idea behind an online order entry system is simple. As
orders are received (whether in person, by mail, or by telephone), the sales representative enters
the information into the system.
§ The data entry might be via a microcomputer on the sales representative’s desk or possibly
through a point-of-sale transaction recording system (a sophisticated cash register that
doubles as a terminal).
§ The computer then updates the appropriate files and prints an invoice, either at the pointof-
sale terminal, the sales representative’s desk, or in the computer center.

Enterprise Resource Planning Systems

• Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are also transaction processing systems, but they
go well beyond traditional transaction processing system functionality— and thus deserve
treatment as a separate application area.

Data Warehousing

• In order to create a data warehouse, a firm pulls data from its operational systems—the
transaction processing systems we have just discussed—and puts the data in a separate “data
warehouse” so that users may access and analyze the data without endangering the operational
systems.
 • Establishing a data warehouse is time-consuming and expensive.

Customer Relationship Management Systems

• A CRM system attempts to provide an integrated approach to all aspects of interaction a

company has with its customers, including marketing, sales, and support.
• The goal of a CRM system is to use technology to forge a strong relationship between a business
and its customers.

Office Automation

• Refers to a far- reaching set of office-related applications including telephony, voicemail,

videoconferencing, desktop publishing, storage, sharing, and etc.
• Unified Communications (UC) - integration of real time communication services

Videoconferencing

• Permits face-to-face, or more properly, image-to-image meetings and conferences without the
need for costly and time consuming travel.
• Desktop Videoconferencing – good for one-on-one and small group conferences

Electronic Mail

• Permits rapid and asynchronous communication between workstations on a network.

• Variants of email include:
§ Electronic Bulletin Boards – permits a repository (a disk on a computer) on which anyone
with access to the bulletin board can post messages and read other messages
§ Listservs – computerized mailing list that accepts a message sent to the listserv address
and forwards it to everyone on the particular mailing list.
§ Computer Conferencing – similar to a bulletin board, but it is set up around a particular
topic.
§ Chat Rooms – real-time versions of computer conferencing (synchronous communication)
con
§ ducted on the Internet, with an incredibly wide array of topics
 § Instant Messaging (IM) – synchronous communication system that enables the user to
establish a private chat room with another individual to carry out text-based communication
in real time over the Internet.
§ Blogs – User-generated Web site where entries are made in journal style, typically displayed
in reverse chronological order
§ Twitter (X) - a social networking and microblogging application thatenables its users to send
and read short messages known as tweets

Email Systems

• Mainframe or minicomputer based systems

• Designed to run under proprietary operating systems like IBM’S PROFS (Professional Office
System)
• Systems like PINE and ELM
§ designed to run UNIX servers.
§ POP-mail and POP-servers
• LAN-based client/server software systems.
§ Has well designed GUI interfaces
§ Mail by Lotus and Microsoft Mail
§ Internet mail

Groupware and Collaboration

Groupware

• An industry term that refers to software designed to support groups by facilitating collaboration,
communication, and coordination
• Lotus Notes (from IBM) and Microsoft Exchange
• IBM Lotus Sametime – provides integrated, real-time communications services including
presence awareness and IM, voice and video conferencing
• IBM Lotus Quickr
• Microsoft Office SharePoint Server – workspaces, shared calendars, presence awareness and
IM, document management, workflow routing, wikis, and blogs
• Microsoft Office Communications Server – Microsoft’s primary UC offering

Intranets and Portals

• A network operating within an organization that employs the TCP/IP protocol, the same protocol
used on the Internet
• General announcements, benefits information, news releases, organizational policies, and
employee manuals, as well as a calendar of activities
• E-mail addresses and telephone numbers
• Blogs and wikis as well as forums on particular topics
• Updating personal address and withholding information, requesting vacation time
• IBM’S intranet “w3 on Demand Workplace”
§ personalization of news based on § a robust employee directory
self-created profiles § a facility for blogging
§ Portlets § accessibility
• Portal – software that provided a structure and thus easier access to internal information via a
Web browser
Factory Automation

• Numerically controlled machines

• Material Requirements Planning
• Computer-integrated manufacturing - one of the primary ways by which manufacturers are facing
the challenges of global competition.
• CIM systems fall into three major categories: engineering systems, manufacturing administration,
and factory operations.

Engineering Systems

• CAD – involves the use of computer graphics—both two-dimensional and threedimensional—to

create and modify engineering designs.
• Computer-aided engineering (CAE) – analyze the functional characteristics of a design
• Group technology (GT) systems – logically group parts according to physical characteristics,
machine routings through the factory, and similar machine operations
• Computer-aided process planning (CAPP) – systems plan the sequence of processes that
produce or assemble a part.

Manufacturing Administration

• Master Production Schedule – sets the overall production goals based on forecasts of demand
• Materials Requirement Planning – develops a detailed production schedule to accomplish the
master schedule
• Shop Floor Control – releases orders to the shop floor based on the detailed production
schedule and the actual production accomplished

Factory Operations

• Computer-aided Manufacturing (CAM) – use of computers to control manufacturing processes

§ uses Automated Guided Vehicles(AGV)
§ a CAM system is very sophisticated and requires a great deal of input data from other
systems.
• Manufacturing Automation Protocol (MAP) – a communications protocol (a set of rules) to
ensure an open manufacturing system.

Robotics

• Robotics is, in fact, one branch of the artificial intelligence tree

• For over two decades, robots have been important in manufacturing to accomplish simple but
important tasks, such as painting and welding

Supply Chain Management

• designed to deal with the procurement of the components a company needs to make a product or
service and the movement and distribution of components and finished products throughout the
supply chain
• Five Basic Components of SCM: plan, source, make, deliver, and return