Chapter 8 : Accessing Organizational Information – Data Warehouse

Data Warehouse – logical collection of information gathered from many different operational databases that supports business analysis activities and decision making activities

Extraction, transformation and loading – a process that extracts information from internal databases, transforms the information using a common set of enterprise definitions, and loads the information into a data warehouse.

Multidimensional analysis and data mining

Cube – common term for the representation of multidimensional information

Data mining – process of analyzing data to extract information  not offered by the raw data alone

Information cleansing or scrubbing – a process that weeds out and fixes or discards inconsistent, incorrect and incomplete information

-          Contact information in an operational system

-          Standardizing customer name from operational system 

-          Information cleansing activities

-          Accurate and complete information

Chapter 7 : Storing Organizational Information

Database – Maintains informations about various types of object, events, people and places.

Database models :

Relational = Nowadays, new installations of database management systems are almost exclusively of the relational type. Organizations that

already have a major investment in hierarchical or network technology

may add to the existing model, but groups that have no need to maintain

compatibility with “legacy systems” nearly always choose the relational

model for their databases.

Hierarchical = Hierarchical databases are aptly named because they have

a simple hierarchical structure that allows fast data access. They suffer

from redundancy problems and a structural inflexibility that makes database modification difficult.

Network = Network databases have minimal redundancy but pay for that

advantage with structural complexity.

  

Entities – a person, place, thing, transaction or event about which information is stored             

Attributes – characteristics or properties of an entity class

Relational Database Advantages

·         Increased flexibility

·         Increased scalability and performance

·         Reduced information redundancy

·         Increased information integrity

·         Increased information security

Database Management Systems (DBMS) – software through which users and application programs interact with a database

Data-driven Web sites – an interactive Web site kept constantly updated and relevant to the needs of its customers through the use of database

Data-driven Web Sites Business Advantages

-          Develoment

-          Content management

-          Future expandability

-          Minimizing human error

-          Cutting production and update costs

-          More efficient

-          Improved stability