Information Systems for Business and Beyond

What are the five components that make up an information system?

Hardware, software, data, people, and process

What are three examples of information systems hardware?

Computers, keyboards, disk drives

Microsoft Windows is an example of which component of information systems?

Software

What is application software?

A set of applicable or useful instructions that tells the hardware what to do

What roles do people play in Information systems?

They use information technology in various roles for example front-line help-desk workers, to system anaylsts, to programmers, all the way up to the chief information officer(CIO).

What is the definition of a process?

A series of steps undertaken to achieve a desired outcome or goal

What was invented first, the personal computer or the Internet (ARPANET)?

The internet was invented in 1969 while the personal computer was invented in 1975 or announced on 1975 making the internet come first

In what year were restrictions on commercial use of the Internet first lifted? When were eBay and Amazon founded?

In 1991, the National Science Foundation, lifted restrictions on its commercial use.

The year 1994 saw the establishment of both Amazon and Ebay

What does it mean to say we are in a “post-PC world?

In a post-pc world we have moved on from PCs to interact and do business and moved towards cloud computing which allows for storage, sharing, and backup of information on a massive scale. Involving new levels of thinking and innovation

What is Carr's main argument about information technology?

That information technology has become a commodity and businesses can't separate themselves or create a advantage by simply implenting technology to their business as it's become like a requirement like electricity. Business should manage information technology with low costs, it’s running, and is safe and risk free.

What is the impact of Moore's Law on the various hardware components described in this chapter?

Overtime computers and technology have gotten more efficient, faster, and powerful and the constant rebuilding of new systems and hardware to improve computers has made the growth of computer power that Moore predict come true.

What are the functions of the operating system?

1. Managing the hardware resources of the computer

2. providing the user-interface components

3. Providing a platform for software developers to write applications

Which of the following are operating systems and which are applications: Microsoft Excel, Google Chrome, ITunes, Windows, Android, Angry Birds.

Operating systems: Microsoft Windows, Android,

Applications: Google Chrome, Itunes, Angry birds

What is your favorite software application? What tasks does it help you accomplish?

My favorite software application is YouTube. YouTube is the ultimate resource for guidance on questions you may have and there tons of videos and helpful guides on how to do stuff on YouTube.

What is a “killer” app? What was the killer app for the PC?

One that becomes so essential that large numbers of people will buy a device just to run that application. For the personal computer, the killer application was the spreadsheet. In 1979, VisiCalc, the first personal-computer spreadsheet package, was introduced

Explain what an ERP system does.

A software application utilizing a central database that is implemented throughout the entire organization. Includes functionality they covers all of the essential components of a business

What is open source software? How does it differ from closed-sourced software? Give an example of each

A software that makes the source code available for anyone to copy and use. Closes source software is a source code that is not made available for others. Open source software has the benefit of being freely available while closed-source software has technical support from the company that developed the software

What is the difference between data, information, and knowledge?

Data are the raw bits and pieces of information with no context. Data can be quantitative or qualitative. Information is just data with context. Knowledge is obtained when you have analyzed, put into context, and aggregated the information to make decisions for your organization.

What is the difference between quantitative data and qualitative data? In what situations could the number 42 be considered qualitative data?

Quantitative data is descriptive while Quantitative data is numeric, the result of a measurement, count, or some other mathematical calculation. If your favorite number is 42 then that would be qualitative data because it gives us information beyond the data when know already.

What are the characteristics of a relational database?

Relation database is one which data is organized into one or more tables. Each table has a set of fields, which define the nature of the data stored in the table. A record is one instance of a set of fields in a table.

What is the difference between a spreadsheet and a database? List three differences between them.

Spreadsheet does allow you to define what kind of values can be entered into its cells, a database provides more intuitive and powerful ways to define the types of databases to go into each field, reducing possible errors and allowing for easier analysis. A database allows from several entities(such as students, club, memberships, and events) to be all releated together in one whole. A spreadsheet is more problematic when it comes to include multiple listing of events and names of members. Spreadsheets are limited to basic data types and formats while database can support a wide range of data types and formats.

Describe the term normalization means.

It means to design a database to reduce duplication of data between tables and gives the table as much flexibility as possible

Why is it important to define the data type of a field when designing a relational database?

So that you can connect all the tables in the databse through the fields they have in common. For each table, one of the fields is identified as a primary key. This key is the unique indentifier for each record in the table.

What is metadata?

“data about data.” It helps gives additional information about a particular piece of data, helping to organize, manage, and understand the information.

Name three advantages of using a data warehouse.

• The process of developing data warehouse forces an organization to better understand the data that it is currently collecting and, equally important, what data is not being collected.

• A data warehouse provides a centralized view of all data collected across the enterprise and provides a means for determining data that is inconsistent

• Once all data is identified as consistent, an organization can generate one version of the truth. This is important when the company wants to report consistent statistics about itself, such as revenue or number of employees.

What is data mining?

The process of analyzing data to find previously unknown trends, patterns, and associations in order to make decisions.

What were the first four locations hooked up to the Internet (ARPANET)

UCLA, Stanford, MIT, and the University of Utah

What does the term packet mean?

The fundamental unit of data transmitted over the Internet. When a device intends to send a message to another device(for example, your PC sends a request to YouTube to open a video), it breaks the message down into smaller pieces, called packets. Each packet has the sender's address, the destination address, a sequence number, and a piece of the overall message to be sent

What came first, the Internet or the World Wide Web?

The birth of the internet was in the 1960s while the World Wide Web project was introduced in the 1990s

What was revolutionary about Web 2.0?

It provided people with a website framework for people who wanted to create content online but didn’t have the webmaster skills or specific set of knowledge to create and putting a website. It allowed companies like Facebook, MySpace, Tumblr, and Twitter to be created.

What was so-called killer app for the Internet?

The spreadsheet was the killer app for the personal computer: people bouth PCs just so they could run spreadsheets. As soon as electronic mail was invented, it began driving demand for the Internet. This wasn’t what the developers had in mind, but it turned out that people connecting to people was the killer app for the internet.

What makes a connection a broadband connection?

A broadband connection is defined as one that has speeds of at least 256,000 bps, though most connections today are much faster, measured in million of bits per second(megabits or mbps) or even billions (gigabits).

What does the term VoIP mean?

Enables sound to be converted to a digital format for transmission over the internet and then recreated at the other end.

What is a LAN?

A local network, usually operating in the same building or on the same campus. It allowed computers to connect to each other and to peripherals. These same networks also allowed personal computers to hook up to legacy mainframe computers.

What is the difference between an intranet and an extranet?

Web pages on the intranet are not accessible to those outside the company and only provide information about the organization to the employees. Extranet is the company’s way in disclosing information to customers into their network while still having maintained their own security.

What is the difference between an operating system and middleware?

They rely upon different underlying providers of lower-level services. An operating system provides the services in its API by making use of the features supported by the hardware. Middleware, on the other hand , provides the services in its API by making use of the features supported by an underlying operating system.

What do operating systems and middleware have in common?

Both are software used to support other software, such as the application programs you run. Both provide a similar range of services centered around controlled interaction. Like an operating system, middleware may enforce rules designed to keep the computations from interfering with one another.

What is the relationship between threads and processes?

The process is a container that holds the thread or threads that you started running and protects them from unwanted interactions with other unrelated threads running on the same computer.

What is one way an operating system might isolate threads from unwanted interactions, and what is one way that middleware might do so?