Week 3 Project

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Managing Data Resources—Part 1

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An IS manager should understand how to organize, access, and use valuable data ef�ciently. Let us focus on how to manage data resources.

In the top-down approach, a traditional data hierarchy starts with a database. The database contains a number of interrelated and unrelated �les. Let us consider the example of a Sales Order Management database (media/week3/SU_MIS3101_sale_mgmt_form.xls? _&d2lSessionVal=tMO8UB8lK2GctRXeoaaWqV7nV&ou=73907) . This database may contain several individual �les. Each �le in the database contains a list of records. Let us consider the Order Detail File. Each record can be the name of each item. Each record consists of the same set of �elds such as a Part Number of six characters. A �eld is a grouping of characters into a word like a person’s name, a group of words, or a complete number. A character consists of a letter, number, or symbol. Each character is created by a byte. The byte is usually formed by a group of eight bits. The value of a bit can be either 0 or 1 and it is the smallest unit of data a computer can handle. For example the letter J is created by the byte 0100 1010.

Traditionally organizations grew independently within their own areas, which are:

Sales & Marketing

Manufacturing

Accounting & Finance

Human Resources

Over the years, the �le environment process of a database led to the separate departments or divisions in an organization creating, maintaining, and operating multiple master �les.

This traditional �le environment created problems such as data redundancy and inconsistency, program data dependence, in�exibility, poor security, and a lack of data sharing and availability. A Database Management System (DBMS) has the ability to address this problem.

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