REMEMBER: DATA ACTION FIRMS ARE DATA RICH AND INFORMATION POOR

Transcription

1 ARTICLES (CHRISTODOULOU-DIMITRAKOPOULOU) REMEMBER: DATA ACTION FIRMS ARE DATA RICH AND INFORMATION POOR Agents decide to act; a decision is a Communicated as a commitment Processed into a useful Message to an to act & meaningful form Intelligent Agent Data Information Knowledge Activities Judgment Raw Facts Often about Transactions Data in a Useful and Meaningful Form Often the Answer to a question posed by an intelligent agent A Capacity to Act. Messages (Info) are interpreted and assimilated by an intelligent agent to become knowledge. Knowledge resides in agents. Knowing when, where and how to act to achieve good results Often gained through experience 1

2 BIG DATA A general term referring to the massive amounts of DATA available to today s managers. Data on corporate hard drives doubles every 6 months. BIG DATA can represent a COMPETITIVE ASSET when combined with ANALYTICS and BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE CAPABILITIES to improve MANAGERIAL DECISIONMAKING Remember Zara s use of POS, PDAs and Manager Input data to drive new product decisions MANAGERIAL HIERARCHY & INFORMATION SYSTEM TYPES Value Chain Primary Value adding Activities 1.Transaction Processing Systems Operational Management 2.Management Information (Reporting) Systems Middle Management Knowledge Workers Senior Management 3.Decision Support Systems 4.Executive Support Systems 2

3 Database Management Systems (DBMS) support other systems data needs A DATABASE (DB) is organized data stored on a computer (often called a server). A DATABASE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (DBMS) is the SOFTWARE that permits an organization to centralize data, manage them efficiently, and provide access to the stored data by application programs. Examples, Oracle server, Microsoft Access DATA STRUCTURES Table Set of Attributes about a single entity, Row in a table A single Attribute of multiple entities, Column in a table 8 bits, 2 8 characters 0 or 1, Yes or No, On or Off 3

4 Database management systems (DBMS): Two Main Types 1. Relational DBMS have two important features: key fields and indexing. This makes them very efficient for alphanumeric business data. Almost all corporate business data reside in relational DBMS s. Microsoft Access, Oracle, SAP are examples. Key fields are the same in different tables allowing joining or linking of the data in the tables. Indexing of fields, including key fields and others, allows rapid sorting, searching and joining. 2. Object-oriented DBMS use objects and tags rather than keyed and indexed fields and are more efficient for multimedia files. Google and Facebook use object-oriented databases for their web-based services. 4

5 Human Resources Database with Multiple Views (Queries) A single human resources database provides many different views of data, depending on the information requirements of the user. Illustrated here are two possible views, one of interest to a benefits specialist and one of interest to a member of the company s payroll department. Data Warehouses A data warehouse is a database of aggregated data from different information systems both inside and outside of the organization Data warehouses have two key benefits: 1. Analysis of data without interrupting production TPSs. 2. Linking of data from disparate systems for analysis. Data warehouses require extraction, scrubbing, and transformation of the data; along with metadata of the source data. Metadata is descriptive data about data. Online analytical processing (OLAP) is software that takes data that have been aggregated into a data warehouse and preconfigures them across fields of interest (data cubes) to enable more rapid analysis 5

6 Components of a Data Warehouse The data warehouse extracts current and historical data from multiple operational systems inside the organization. These data are combined with data from external sources and reorganized into a central database designed for management reporting and analysis. The information directory provides users with information about the data (called metadata) available in the warehouse. Networks, DBMSs and Distributed Databases A distributed database is a database that partitioned or replicated across a network. There are alternative ways of distributing a database. The central database can be partitioned (a) so that each remote processor has the necessary data to serve its own local needs. The central database also can be replicated (b) at all remote locations. 6

7 Managing Data Quality: Garbage in = garbage out Extracting and transforming data for analysis is expensive and data has differing quality. Enabling high-quality business intelligence requires establishing an information policy Rules for sharing, disseminating, acquiring, standardizing, classifying and inventorying information. Requires ensuring data quality Eliminate duplicates and inconsistencies Standardize and enforce data entry and storage rules Data scrubbing Quality auditing HOMEWORK 1: PROGRAM HOMEFINANCE DATABASE STRUCTURE FOR ENTERING DATA Create an Access database called HomeFinance. Create 3 Tables with the associated Fields: 1. The Funds table with 1 Field: Fund (the key field) 2. The Accounts table with 2 Fields: 1) Account (the key field) and 2) MonthlyBudget 3. The TrxDetail table with 7 Fields: 1) Fund, 2) Account, 3) PayeePayer, 4) TrxDate, 5) Amount, 6) TrxDoc, and 7) Description. This table should have no key 7

8 HOMEWORK 1: PROGRAM HOMEFINANCE DATABASE STRUCTURE FOR ENTERING DATA Enter the following data as three Records into the Fund Field of the Funds Table: Checking, Savings, Credit Card. Enter the following data as nine records into the Account Field of the Accounts Table: Income, Home, Food, Transportation, Health, Clothing, Entertainment, BeginningBalance, and Transfers. Enter a fictitious monthly budget for each account in the MonthlyBudget field, positive for expenditure accounts, negative for income accounts, zero for BeginningBalance and Transfers. HOMEWORK 1: PROGRAM HOMEFINANCE DATABASE STRUCTURE FOR ENTERING DATA Create a Lookup Combo Box for the Fund field of the TrxDetail Table pulling the list of funds from the Funds Table Create a Lookup Combo Box for the Account field of the TrxDetail Table pulling the list of accounts from the Accounts Table Export the TrxDetail table structure to pdf format via the Database Tools: Database Documenter (version 2007) menu. Homework: the structure to Dr. Davenport as an attachment by Saturday, Oct 24:00 8

9 PRIOR TO MONDAY S CLASS! Prior to Monday s Class: Enter 3 Beginning Balance records in the TrxDetail table, one for each Fund: Checking, Savings and Credit card. Negative amounts indicate credits, income or equity balances Positive amounts indicate expenses, debits or liability (debt) balances Enter 37 transactions in the TrxDetail Table spanning at least 4 months using at least two accounts each month, i.e. food purchases for each month. Make a credit card payment entry for at least one month which will require two transactions, a credit for the credit card fund and a debit for the checking fund, both using the transfers account. These can be real if you want to start tracking your personal finances or fictitious if you want privacy. Bring this database of data to class to learn queries with on Monday Do not me these records. 9