Information Systems (BBA) - Core Concepts & Vocabulary

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering Information Systems (BBA) Sessions 1 through 4, including Strategy & IS Components, Business Intelligence & AI, Hardware, Software & Cloud Computing, and Relational Database Processing.

Information System (IS)

A set of interconnected components (hardware, software, data, procedures, and people) working together to collect, process, store, and distribute data to produce information and support business decision-making.

Information Technology (IT)

The technical hardware, software, and networking components used within an information system.

Five Components of an Information System

Hardware, software, data, procedures, and people. They sit on a scale from the machine side to the human side, with data serving as the bridge between the two, and people being the most important component.

Competitive Advantage

A condition under which a firm earns more than the industry average, achieved primarily through either cost advantage (cost leadership) or differentiation.

Carr's IT Commodity Hypothesis

The argument by Nicholas Carr (2003) that IT has become an infrastructural commodity (like electricity) that does not provide a competitive advantage on its own unless combined with effective management and processes.

Data (DIKW Hierarchy)

Raw, unprocessed facts recorded and stored by a system without context (e.g., 'Room 204, 3 nights, $540$').

Information (DIKW Hierarchy)

Data placed into a meaningful context to make it useful (e.g., 'Occupancy was $62\%$ last month, down $8\%$').

Knowledge (DIKW Hierarchy)

Information that is understood and practically applied to explain or solve problems (e.g., 'Occupancy drops when cruise ships skip the port').

Wisdom (DIKW Hierarchy)

Knowledge combined with practical experience to make sound evaluations and business judgments over time.

Moore's Law

The observation that the number of transistors on a microchip doubles approximately every two years, causing computing power to double while equivalent computing power costs roughly half as much.

Metcalfe's Law

The principle stating that the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users ($V \propto n^2$).

Porter's Five Forces

A framework for assessing industry competitiveness and attractiveness, examining: rivalry among competitors, threat of new entrants, threat of substitutes, bargaining power of buyers, and bargaining power of suppliers.

Primary Activities (Value Chain)

The sequential line activities directly involved in creating, selling, and servicing a product: inbound logistics, operations, outbound logistics, marketing & sales, and service.

Support Activities (Value Chain)

Activities that underpin primary value-chain activities across an organization: firm infrastructure (finance, ERP), human resource management, technology development, and procurement.

Business Intelligence (BI)

The tools and processes that convert stored, raw operational data into actionable insights through reports, dashboards, and visualizations.

Big Data (Four Vs)

The four defining characteristics of big data: Volume (scale of data), Variety (different types of data), Velocity (speed of data arrival), and Veracity (trustworthiness and accuracy of data).

Data Warehouse

A centralized database repository that extracts data from multiple operational databases, cleans and standardizes it, and stores it specifically for enterprise-wide analysis and reporting.

Data Mart

A focused subset of a data warehouse designed for analysis by a single department or topic area.

Key Performance Indicator (KPI)

A quantifiable, measurable value that demonstrates how effectively a business is achieving a specific strategic goal (e.g., revenue per package, occupancy rate, average basket size).

Generative AI

Artificial intelligence models trained on existing data to generate new content, such as text, code, or images, with known risks of bias and 'hallucinations' (confidently stating false assertions).

BI Process

A three-step workflow: 1. Acquire data (gather, clean, organize into data warehouses); 2. Analyze data (reports, pivot tables, data mining, machine learning); 3. Publish results (dashboards, alerts, reports).

Descriptive Analytics

Analytics that summarize historical data to answer the question: 'What happened?' (e.g., sales volume per month).

Diagnostic Analytics

Analytics that investigate historical anomalies and trends to answer the question: 'Why did it happen?' (e.g., investigating why sales dropped during a cruise schedule change).

Predictive Analytics

Statistical methods and machine-learning models used to forecast probabilities to answer the question: 'What will happen?' (e.g., forecasting next season's bookings).

Prescriptive Analytics

Optimization techniques and decision logic that recommend specific actions to answer the question: 'What should we do?' (e.g., recommending optimal hotel room prices per night).

Responsible AI Guardrails

Five ethical principles required before using AI for business decisions: Transparency, Accountability, Bias prevention, Human oversight, and Explainability.

Hardware

The tangible, physical devices of a computing system, including the CPU, RAM, storage, input/output peripherals, and networking equipment.

Central Processing Unit (CPU)

The central processor or 'brain' of a computer system that executes instructions and performs calculations.

Internet of Things (IoT)

Physical everyday objects embedded with sensors and network connectivity (e.g., smart meters, hotel door locks, fleet trackers) that collect and exchange data across the internet.

Open-Source Software

Software whose source code is freely available for anyone to inspect, modify, and redistribute, with technical support primarily supplied by the developer community (e.g., Linux, LibreOffice).

Proprietary Software

Closed-source, commercial software protected by copyright, where use is restricted by a license and technical support is provided by the vendor (e.g., Microsoft 365).

Native App

An application coded specifically for a single mobile operating system platform (iOS or Android), offering fast performance and access to hardware features at a higher development cost.

Web App

An application executed inside a web browser across different platforms and operating systems, which is cheaper to build but has more limited device feature integration.

Cloud Computing

The on-demand delivery of shared computing resources (servers, storage, software) over the internet with pay-as-you-go pricing, utilizing virtualization for scalability and elasticity.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

A cloud service model where the provider supplies fundamental hardware infrastructure (servers, storage, networks) while the client installs, configures, and manages the operating system and applications (e.g., AWS EC2, Azure VMs).

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

A cloud service model where the provider hosts the hardware, operating system, and runtime environments, allowing developers to build, test, and deploy custom applications without maintaining infrastructure (e.g., Google App Engine, Heroku).

Software as a Service (SaaS)

A cloud service model where users run complete, vendor-managed application software directly in a web browser without managing servers or code (e.g., Microsoft 365, Gmail, Salesforce).

Public Cloud

A cloud deployment model where computing infrastructure is owned and operated by a third-party cloud provider and shared multitenantly across multiple customer organizations.

Private Cloud

A cloud deployment infrastructure dedicated exclusively to a single organization, offering enhanced control and security at higher implementation and maintenance costs.

Hybrid Cloud

A cloud deployment architecture combining public and private clouds, allowing sensitive data to remain on private infrastructure while running other workloads in the public cloud.

Community Cloud

A collaborative cloud deployment shared by multiple distinct organizations with shared operational or regulatory requirements (e.g., banks or government agencies).

Database

An organized collection of related data structured into linked tables to prevent duplication, support concurrent multi-user access, and enforce data rules.

Database Management System (DBMS)

Software used to create, manage, secure, and query databases (e.g., MySQL, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, PostgreSQL).

Relational Model

A database design model that stores data in two-dimensional tables (relations) consisting of rows and columns, linked together using primary and foreign keys.

Structured Data

Data that fits cleanly into predefined rows and columns within a relational database table (e.g., numerical transaction records).

Unstructured Data

Data that does not conform to a predefined data model or tabular format (e.g., emails, photos, videos).

Semi-Structured Data

Data containing internal tags, organizational markers, or structural elements that separate content without conforming strictly to a relational table format (e.g., JSON, XML).

Normalization

The formal database design process of organizing tables to eliminate data redundancy, ensuring that each table addresses only one entity and each fact is stored only once.

Table (Entity)

A database object representing a collection of stored data attributes about one single subject or concept (e.g., Customers).

Record (Row)

A horizontal data entry in a database table representing a single individual instance of an entity (e.g., one customer).

Field (Column)

A vertical data element in a database table representing one specific attribute or property of an entity (e.g., Email).

Primary Key (PK)

A unique identifier assigned to each record in a database table that guarantees no two rows are identical (e.g., CustomerID).

Foreign Key (FK)

A field in a relational database table that references the primary key of another table, establishing a relationship between the two tables.

One-to-One (1:1) Relationship

A database relationship where a single record in table A is associated with exactly one corresponding record in table B (e.g., one employee having one company laptop).

One-to-Many (1:N) Relationship

The most common database relationship type, where one record in table A can link to multiple records in table B, requiring the foreign key to reside on the 'many' side (e.g., one customer making many bookings).

Many-to-Many (M:N) Relationship

A relationship where multiple records in table A relate to multiple records in table B (e.g., students and courses), which must be resolved using an intermediate junction table.

Junction Table

An intermediate table containing foreign keys from two distinct parent tables, created to resolve a many-to-many ($M:N$) relationship into two one-to-many ($1:N$) relationships (e.g., Enrollments).

Conceptual Database Design

The high-level phase of database design that identifies essential business entities and relationships to produce an Entity-Relationship (ER) diagram.

Logical Database Design

The intermediate phase of database design where entities are mapped into relational tables, fields, primary and foreign keys, and data types, followed by normalization.

Physical Database Design

The technical phase of database design where the normalized logical schema is constructed in a specific tool or DBMS, defining indexes, physical storage, and security controls.