C724 Terms & Definitions

Executive Information System (EIS)

A system that provides senior executives with information and tools to support strategic decision-making.

Data

Raw facts and observations that can be processed into meaningful information.

Information

Data that has been processed or organized so that it has meaning and can be useful.

Information System (IS)

A collection of people, processes, data, and technology that work together to collect, process, store, and distribute information.

Knowledge

The understanding gained from information and experience that can be applied to make decisions or solve problems.

Data, Information, and Knowledge Example

Data - The number of people below the poverty line in the region is 50,000;

Information - The number of people below the poverty line increases between 2010 and 2018;

Knowledge - The number of people below the poverty line has increased due to stagnating wages and cuts to social programs.

Decision Support System (DSS)

An information system that uses data, models, and analytical tools to help decision makers solve problems and make decisions.

Management Information System (MIS)

Provides timely and accurate information that enables managers to manage their departments more efficiently; analyzes performance.

Transaction Processing System (TPS)

Information system used for processing patient admissions, employee time cards, and purchase orders.

(An information system that records, processes, and stores routine day-to-day business transactions.)

Information Management

The process of collecting, organizing, storing, maintaining, and using information so that it supports organizational goals and decision-making.

Information Technology (IT)

The hardware, software, data, and networking technologies used to create, store, process, retrieve, and communicate information.

Information Technology Management

The management of hardware, software, data, networks, and people that facilitate access to information and allow the organization to achieve business objectives.

Strategic Information System (SIS)

Skills used to communicate, build relationships, collaborate, and establish professional or social connections through networking.

Social Networking and Interpersonal Skills

Enhances interpersonal and relationship-forming skills.

Porter's 5 Competitive Forces

• Rivalry among existing competitors

• Threat of new entrants

• Bargaining power of buyers

• Bargaining power of suppliers

• Threat of substitute products or services

Network Economics (Network-Based Strategy)

An economic model in which the value of a product or service increases as more participants join the network, often with relatively low costs for adding additional participants.

Business Ecosystems

A network of organizations that interact and cooperate to create and deliver products or services.

Product Differentiation (Business Strategy)

Creating products or services with characteristics that distinguish them from competitors' offerings.

Growth (Business Strategy)

Expanding a business by increasing sales, customers, products, services, markets, or other business activities.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

An integrated system that connects and manages multiple business functions and processes across an organization.

(Involves utilizing computer technology to link various aspects of a business; a very complex resource planning system that spans the entire business; companies often have difficulty implementing the system.)

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

A system and strategy used to manage an organization's interactions and relationships with current and potential customers.

(Allows for personalized communication to customers.)

Knowledge Management (KM)

These systems provide tools to help manage organizational knowledge and create value to meet business requirements and strategic goals.

Chief Executive Officer (CEO)

Responsible for the success or failure of the company, creating the company culture, selecting the senior management team, setting strategy and vision, and selecting projects to fund.

Chief Operations Officer (COO)

Is the director of operations, responsible for the oversight of internal operations on a day-to-day basis and for monitoring production quotas.

Chief Financial Officer (CFO)

The executive responsible for managing an organization's financial activities, including financial planning, reporting, budgeting, cash flow, and financial risk.

Chief Information Officer (CIO)

The executive responsible for an organization's information technology and information systems strategy, ensuring that IT supports the organization's business objectives.

Chief Technology Officer (CTO)

Has ultimate responsibility for all technology implementation, maintaining technology compliance regulations, and identifying technology risks for the company.

Chief Security Officer (CSO)

Is the highest level executive concerned with the overall security functions and policies of a business.

Systems Analyst

A change agent who uses design and analysis techniques to solve organizational problems using information technology; they report about system development and keep others informed; should understand overall business processes; focuses on analysis, design, and implementation.

Information Security Analyst

Their goal is to ensure that data and systems are secure to prevent breaches.

Information Security

The concept of protecting valuable information assets.

Project Manager

They deliver quality systems on time, manage the budget, and plan for the unexpected (they do not train new users).

Gantt Chart

A visual view of tasks scheduled over time; used for planning projects.

(Gantt chart = tasks across a timeline.)

Dashboard

A visual display that combines information from one or more data sources, allowing users to monitor performance, identify trends, and analyze information.

Cultural Particularism

A societal norm that emotionally ties people to local brands or habits.

Network Engineer

Responsible for the layout, installation, and maintenance of all information technology network components.

Success of Strategic Information Systems Projects

The successful implementation of an information system that meets its intended objectives, requirements, schedule, budget, and organizational goals.

Organizational Features That Can Change the Company Direction

Processes, politics, culture, and environment.

Global Business Strategies That Form Their Organizational and Information Systems Structure

Transnational, multinational, franchisers, domestic exporter.

Transnational

A commercial enterprise that operates substantial facilities, does business in more than one country and does not consider any particular country its national home.

Multinational

An organization that owns or controls production of goods or services in one or more countries other than their home country.

Database Management System (DBMS)

Software used to create, store, organize, retrieve, manage, and modify data in databases, allowing authorized users and applications to access the data.

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

The total cost of acquiring, operating, maintaining, and eventually replacing a technology or system over its entire life cycle.

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

Service provider provides server space, the server, virtualization, operating system, database, and development environment in a platform that can be used for application development. An example would be Amazon Web Services.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

A service provider provides a cloud fabric, or pooled services, including server space, servers, storage, and all other aspects of the computing platform, with the exception of the operating system and applications, which the client organization would install and manage.

Analytics as a Service (AaaS)

A cloud-based service that provides tools and computing resources for analyzing data without requiring the organization to build and maintain its own analytics infrastructure.

Software as a Service (SaaS)

Software licensed and hosted on centralized or distributed servers that belong to a service provider. Users access this software using a connection to the Internet and a web browser.

Agile Software Development Methodology

An operational method by which software developers iteratively gather requirements, plan, design, develop, test, and implement software.

Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL)

Common set of best practices widely used by businesses to give guidance to companies on how to use IT as a tool for implementing change.

Pseudocode

An informal, human-readable description of the steps and logic of a program or algorithm that is written without requiring a specific programming language.

Input

Components include devices that provide input into the processing unit. These include peripherals, such as the keyboard, mouse, microphone (audio input), sensors, and document or visual scanners.

Central Processing Unit (CPU)

The brain/microprocessor of the computer.

Output

Components include internal storage devices or processes, as well as external peripherals such as monitor screens (visual output), speakers (audio output), and printers (physical output).

System Bus

Connection between the CPU, memory, storage, expansion slots, and other motherboard components.

Primary Storage

Flash memory chips plugged into memory slots on the motherboard.

Secondary Storage

Accessed only through a system's input/output bus and is generally several orders of magnitude slower than primary technologies; removable media, such as magnetic floppy disks, optical discs (CDs & DVDs), and USB flash drives.

Tertiary Storage

Consists of an automated robotic mechanism to mount and dismount magnetic tape or optical discs.

First and Second-Generation Computer Languages (1GL/2GL)

Were specific to the computer manufacturer (1GL) or to a specific processor or environment (2GL).

Third Generation Computer Languages (3GLs)

High-level programming languages such as FORTRAN, COBOL, C, Java, C++, and C#.

Java

An open-standard software language used for client-server internal applications.

COBOL

The first computer language; developed in the 1950s; still used today.

Fourth Generation Computer Languages (4GL)

Software tools that help reduce the amount of procedural knowledge that is needed about how computers operate and lets end users create programs as needed. (Example: SQL)

Structured Query Language (SQL)

A computing language that is used with relational databases.

Dynamic Random-Access Memory (DRAM)

The main memory of a computer system; requires constant refreshing.

Static Random-Access Memory (SRAM)

Retains memory for as long as power is being supplied; does not need to be constantly refreshed; used to access the most frequently used data, as it is faster.

Horizontal Application

Software that provides solutions based upon the common needs of many businesses.

Vertical Application

Software that is designed for a specific business.

Software

Provides instructions to computers to perform tasks.

Low-Level Programming Language

Basic programming languages that used machine language instruction; they are specific to the hardware and lack portability.

Dumb Terminal / Thin Client

A terminal that depends on the host computer for its processing power.

Optical Character Recognition (OCR)

Reads machine printed text; used for time cards.

Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR)

Reads handwritten text; more advanced form of optical character recognition (OCR).

UNIX

An operating system designed to code computer instructions in a mainframe environment.

Workstation

A powerful computer system that can handle intensive mathematical operations; often used by engineers.

Mashup

Occurs when software is mixed and matched to develop a customized application.

Field

An attribute of an entity, such as name, address, or student ID.

Tuple / Record

A record of data set in a row.

Query Language

Provides instructions and procedures to retrieve data from a database.

Primary Key

A field that uniquely identifies a record, such as customer ID or student ID.

Foreign Key

Field that is a primary key to another table.

Schema

The complete description of the database.

Variable [INCORRECT TERM & DEFINITION]

A data type or simply type is a classification of data which tells the compiler or interpreter how the programmer intends to use the data; can become incompatible with data warehouse design.

Flat File Database

Stores data in plain text, holding one record; cannot contain multiple tables like a relational database.

Online Analytical Processing (OLAP)

Analyze transaction data used for making decisions; multidimensional (cubical) data; requires a lengthy, complex loading and updating phase.

Online Transaction Processing (OLTP)

Database design used for browsing and manipulating business transaction activity; processing of information into the database; don't perform analyses on these databases because it could affect performance.

Relational Database

Type of database in which multiple information files are combined into one database in one location, where data are stored in two-dimensional tables known as relations and contain multiple entities and attributes.

Object-Oriented Database

A database that is designed to store mixed media, as opposed to tables in relational databases.

Conceptual Data Model

A map of concepts and their relationships used for databases.

Logical Data Model

Provides foundation for designing a database.

Physical Data Model

A representation of a data design as implemented, or intended to be implemented, in a database management system.

Pointers

Used to show the relationship between data fields and tables.

Referential Integrity

Table relationships must always be consistent; for an entity or object to exist in a table, an equal value must exist in the referenced table; the primary and foreign keys must be equal.

Types of Relationships in a Relational Database Model

One-to-One, One-to-Many, and Many-to-Many.

Data Manipulation Language (DML)

A language that allows users to easily modify the data in a database.

Data Warehousing

A system used for reporting and data analysis, and is considered a core component of business intelligence; data is stored in one place.

Data Mart

Smaller subset database from a data warehouse typically focused on a single area or function.

Extraction, Transformation, and Loading (ETL)

A process in which data is extracted from a computer, transformed (or cleansed) into a format appropriate for the data warehouse, and then transferred to the data warehouse.

Direct Move

Data that does not need to be transformed being transferred to a data warehouse.

Data Mining

Process of identifying hidden patterns and relationships in structured databases and applying rules to that data in order to predict future behavior.

Web Mining

Process of identifying hidden patterns and relationships in non-structured databases, such as the Internet, and applying rules to that data in order to predict future behavior.