MIS 3305 Study Material

Data vs Information

Data: raw facts

Information: processed data with meaning

Knowledge: insights from analyzing information

Characteristics of Quality Information

Timely

Information System

Set of interrelated components (people

Main Roles of IS

Manage operations

Components of IS

People

CPU

Brain of the computer

executes program instructions

RAM

Temporary volatile working memory used by CPU

Cache

Very fast memory near CPU to speed up access to RAM data

HDD

Mechanical secondary storage with platters

cheaper but slower and prone to failure

SSD

Flash-based secondary storage

faster

quieter

Database

Collection of related tables storing structured data

Entity

Noun representing something with multiple instances (person

Attribute

Characteristic or property of an entity (field)

Primary Key

Attribute(s) that uniquely identifies each record/instance

Foreign Key

Attribute in one table that references the primary key in another table to link them

Instance/Record

Single occurrence of an entity (a row in a table)

Data Warehouse

Central repository of data from multiple sources

Big Data

Extremely large

3 Vs: Volume

Velocity

FMS

Financial Management System

tracks income

expenses

includes procurement

AR/AP

HCM

Human Capital Management

manages employee lifecycle (HR

payroll

SCM

Supply Chain Management

manages flow of goods/services from suppliers to customers (Plan

Source

CRM

Customer Relationship Management

builds and maintains customer relationships (marketing

sales

ERP

Enterprise Resource Planning

integrated system combining FMS

HCM

SEO

Search Engine Optimization

techniques to improve website visibility in search engine results

Search Engine Spiders

Also called crawlers or bots

software that scans and copies website content for indexing

robots.txt

File that tells search engine spiders which pages/folders they may or may not access

PageRank

Google’s algorithm that ranks pages based on quantity and quality of incoming links

Link Farm

Group of sites linking to each other artificially to boost rank (penalized by search engines)

Impression

Single instance of an ad being displayed to a user

CTR

Click-Through Rate = (Clicks / Impressions) x 100

CPC

Cost Per Click

advertiser pays when user clicks the ad

CPM

Cost Per Mille (thousand impressions)

Cookies

Small files stored on user’s computer used for tracking and personalization (1st party vs 3rd party)

Browser Fingerprinting

Technique to identify users based on device

URL

Uniform Resource Locator

web address including protocol

domain

IP Address

Unique numerical identifier for every device on the internet (IPv4 or IPv6)

HTML

Hypertext Markup Language

defines structure and content of web pages

CSS

Cascading Style Sheets

controls visual styling and layout of web pages

SDLC

Systems Development Life Cycle

structured process for planning

creating

Waterfall Model

Sequential SDLC approach where each phase completes before next begins

best when requirements are clear

Scrum

Agile framework using short sprints (usually 2 weeks)

User Story

As a [role]

Acceptance Criteria

3-5 specific conditions that define when a user story is “done”

Product Owner

Prioritizes product backlog and represents stakeholder needs

Scrum Master

Facilitates Scrum process

Sprint

Time-boxed iteration (usually 2 weeks) to complete selected work

Product Backlog

Prioritized list of all desired features/user stories

Sprint Backlog

Subset of product backlog items selected for the current sprint

Increment

Sum of all completed product backlog items at end of sprint (potentially shippable)

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Capability of machines to mimic human intelligence (learning

Narrow AI

AI designed for one specific task

General AI

Theoretical AI with broad human-like intelligence across many domains

Generative AI

AI that creates new content (text

LLM

Large Language Model

neural network trained on vast text data to understand and generate human language

Hallucination

When LLM produces plausible but factually incorrect information

Business Intelligence (BI)

Tools

Dashboard

Visual display of key performance indicators and metrics for monitoring and decision support

Descriptive Analytics

Summarizes what happened in the past (reports

Predictive Analytics

Forecasts what is likely to happen using statistics and ML

Prescriptive Analytics

Recommends actions to achieve desired outcomes (optimization)

OLAP

Online Analytical Processing

multidimensional analysis using data cubes for slice

dice

Data Mining

Discovering unknown patterns and relationships in large datasets

Market Basket Analysis

Finds items frequently purchased together (cross-selling opportunities)

Text Mining

Extracts insights from unstructured text (sentiment analysis

What-If Analysis

Changes input variables to see effect on output

Goal Seek

Sets desired output and finds required input value

Optimization

Finds best solution (max profit / min cost) under constraints using linear programming