Historical Perspectives
Chapter 1
Data: The New Corporate Resource
BLCN-534: Fundamentals of Database Systems
Chapter Objectives
- Explain why humankind’s interest in data goes back to ancient times.
- Describe how data needs have historically driven many information technology developments.
- Describe the evolution of data storage media during the last century.
- Relate the idea of data as a corporate resource that can be used to gain a competitive advantage to the development of the database management systems environment.
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Data
- Data - the foundation of technological activity
- Database - a highly organized collection of assembled data
- Database Management System - sophisticated software that controls the database and the database environment
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What is Data?
- A single piece of data is a single fact about something that interests us.
- A fact can be any characteristic of an object.
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History of Data
- People have been interested in data for at least the past 12,000 years.
- Non-computer, primitive methods of data storage and handling.
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History of Data
- Shepherds kept track of their flocks with pebbles.
- A primitive but legitimate example of data storage and retrieval.
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History of Data
- Dating back to 8500 B.C., unearthed clay tokens or “counters” may have been used for record keeping in primitive forms of accounting.
- Tokens, with special markings on them, were sealed in hollow clay vessels that accompanied commercial goods in transit.
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Data Through the Ages
- Record-keeping - the recording of data to keep track of how much a person has produced and what it can be bartered or sold for.
- With time, different kinds of data were kept
- calendars, census data, surveys, land ownership records, marriage records, records of church contributions, family trees, etc.
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History of Data
- Double-entry bookkeeping - originated in the trading centers of fourteenth century Italy.
- The earliest known example is from a merchant in Genoa and dates to the year 1340.
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Early Data Problems Spawn Calculating Devices
- People interested in devices that could “automatically” process their data.
- Blaise Pascal produced an adding machine that was an early version of today’s mechanical automobile odometers.
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Punched Cards - Data Storage
- Invented in 1805 by Joseph Marie Jacquard of France.
- Jacquard’s method of storing fabric patterns, a form of graphic data, as holes in punched cards was a very clever means of data storage.
- Of great importance for computing devices to follow.
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Era of Modern Information Processing
- The 1880 U.S. Census took about seven years to compile by hand.
- Basing his work on Jacquard’s punched card concept, Herman Hollerith arranged to have the census data stored in punched cards and invented machinery to tabulate them.
- In 1896 Hollerith formed the Tabulating Machine Company to produce and commercially market his devices -- this later became IBM.
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Era of Modern Information Processing
- James Powers developed devices to automatically feed cards into the equipment and to automatically print results.
- In 1911 he established the Powers Tabulating Machine Company -- this later became Unisys Corporation.
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The Mid-1950s
- The introduction of electronic computers.
- Witnessed a boom in economic development.
- From this point onward, it would be virtually impossible to tie advances in computing devices to specific, landmark data storage and retrieval needs.
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Modern Data Storage Media
- Punched paper tape - The earliest form of modern data storage, introduced in the 1870s and 1880s.
- Punched cards were the only data storage medium used in the increasingly sophisticated electromechanical accounting machines of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s.
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Modern Data Storage Media
- Middle to late 1930s saw the beginning of the era of erasable magnetic storage media.
- By late 1940s, early work was done on the use of magnetic tape for recording data.
- By 1950, several companies were developing the magnetic tape concept for commercial use.
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Modern Data Storage Media
- Magnetic Tape - commercially available units in 1952.
- Direct Access Magnetic Devices - began to be developed at MIT in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
- Magnetic Drum - early 1950s; forerunners of magnetic disk technology.
- Magnetic Disk - commercially available in mid 1950s.
- Compact Disk (CD) – introduced as a data storage medium in 1985.
- Solid-state technology – Flash drives.
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Using Data for Competitive Advantage
- Data has become indispensable to every kind of modern business and government organization.
- Data, the applications that process the data, and the computers on which the applications run are fundamental to every aspect of every kind of endeavor.
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Using Data for Competitive Advantage
- Data is a corporate resource, possibly the most important corporate resource.
- Data can give a company a crucial competitive advantage.
e.g., FedEx had a significant competitive advantage when it first provided access to its package tracking data on its Web site.
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Problems in Storing and Accessing Data
- Difficult to store and to provide efficient, accurate access to a company’s data.
- The volume of data that companies have is massive.
- Wal-Mart estimates its data warehouse contains hundreds of terabytes (trillions of characters) of data.
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Problems in Storing and Accessing Data
- Larger number of people want access to data:
- Employees
- Customers
- Trading partner
- Additional issues include: data security, data privacy, and backup and recovery.
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Data Security
Involves a company protecting its data from theft, malicious destruction, deliberate attempts at making phony changes to the data.
- e.g., someone trying to increase his own bank account balance.
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Data Privacy
Ensuring that even employees who normally have access to the company’s data are given access only to the specific data that they need in their work.
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Backup and Recovery
The ability to reconstruct data if it is lost or corrupted.
- e.g., following a hardware failure
- e.g., following a natural disaster
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Data Accuracy
The same data is stored several, sometimes many, times within a company’s information system.
- When a new application is written, new data files are created to store its data.
- Data can be duplicated within a single file and across files.
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Data as a Corporate Resource
- Data may be the most difficult corporate resource to manage.
- We have tremendous volume, billions, trillions, and more individual pieces of data, each piece of which is different from the next.
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Data as a Corporate Resource
- A new kind of software is required to help manage the data.
- Progressively faster hardware is required to keep up with the increasing volume of data and data access demands.
- Data management specialists need to be developed and educated.
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The Database Environment
- Database Management System (DBMS)
- New Personnel - database administrator and data management specialist
- Fast hardware
- Massive data storage facilities
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The Database Environment
- Encourages data sharing
- Helps control data redundancy
- Has important improvements in data accuracy
- Permits storage of vast volumes of data with acceptable access.
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The Database Environment
- Allows database queries
- Provides tools to control:
- data security
- data privacy
- backup and recovery
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