ISA 235 Exam 2

MIS infrastructure (Information, Agile, Sustainable)

Good MIS infrastructure supports operations (information MIS infrastructure), Supports change (Agile MIS infrastructure), and Supports the environment (Sustainable MIS infrastructure, and scalable and manageable).

Backup and recovery

A backup is an exact copy of a system's information. Recovery is the ability to get a system up and running in the event of a system crash or failure that includes restoring the information backup.

Disaster recovery

A detailed process for recovering information or a system in the event of a catastrophic disaster. This plan includes such factors as which files and systems need to have backups and their corresponding frequency and methods along with the strategic location of the storage into a separate physical site that is geographically dispersed.

Fault tolerance

the ability for a system to respond to unexpected failures or system crashes as the backup system immediately and automatically takes over with no loss of service.

Failover

a specific type of fault tolerance, occurs when a redundant storage server offers an exact replica of the real-time data, and if the primary server crashes, the users are automatically directed to the secondary server or backup server.

Hot site

A secondary location, equipment at this location, connectivity at this location, and is active before failover. Outage is measured in hours/minutes.

Cold Site

A secondary location, no equipment here, no connectivity here, and not active before failover. Outage measured in weeks.

Warm Site

A secondary location, equipment at location, connectivity at location, inactive before failover. Outage measured in days/hours.

Business Continuity Planning

outlines procedures for keeping an organization operational in the event of a natural disaster or network attack.

Agile MIS infrastructure characteristics

Accessibility, availability, maintainability, portability, reliability, scalability, usability.

Accessibility

Refers to the varying levels that define what a user can access, view, or perform when operating a system.

Availability

Occurs when a system is continuously operational at all times.

Maintainability

Flexibility, refers to how quickly a system can transform to support environmental changes. It helps to measure how quickly and effectively a system can be changes or repaired after a failure.

Portability

Refers to the ability of an application to operate on different devices or software platforms, such as different operating systems.

Reliability

consistency of measurement

Scalability

Describes how well a system can scale up or adapt to the increased demands of growth.

Usability

The degree to which a system is easy to learn and efficient and satisfying to use.

Moore's Law

the observation that computing power roughly doubles every two years.

Multi-core processors

Two or more processors integrated on a single chip
Increases processing speed over a single-core processor
Reduces energy consumption over multiple separate processors
Dual-core (2 processors) and quad-core (4 processors) common on personal computers.

Huang's law describes how the silicon chips that power AI more than double in performance every two years.

Virtualization

creates multiple "virtual" machines on a single computing device.

Cloud computing

A computing infrastructure and software model for enabling ubiquitous access to shared pools of configurable resources, which can be rapidly provisioned with minimal manageable effort, often over the internet.

Cloud delivery models

Private, Public, Community, hybrid

Cloud modes

Software as a service, platform as a service, infrastructure as a service.

SAAS

Software as a service delivers applications over the cloud using a pay-per-use revenue model.

PAAS

Platform as a service Supports the deployment of entire systems including hardware, networking, and applications using a pay-per-use revenue model.

IAAS

Infrastructure as a service is the delivery of a computer hardware capability, including the use of servers, networking, and storage, as a service.

Cloud benefits and issues

Benefits: No software licenses (pay per user or per use instead of per installation), No server hardware (reduces the need for physical space and energy on premise), Less system maintenance (software updates are handled by the cloud provider), Fewer IT staff (only need to staff to maintain end user devices and the internal network), Increased flexibility (access to extra capacity on demand), Increased scalability (can start small and add users and storage as the business grows).

Issues: Vendor dependence (if the vendor or your internet connection goes down, so do you), Competitive advantage (may not meet the needs of businesses with unique requirements), security (extending the orgs network can increase threats), legal and compliance (laws may limit what data can be stored outside the organization).

Cloud bursting

when a company uses its own computing infrastructure for normal usage and accesses the cloud when it needs to scale for peak load requirements, ensuring that a sudden spike in usage does not result in poor performance or system crashes

Sustainable MIS pressures

Companies are acknowledging responsibility to society. Sustainability is about finding ways to enable benefits of technology with less reliance on non-renewable resources like rare earth metals and fossil fuel-based electricity.

Evolution of the MIS infrastructure

Companies are starting to use multiple public clouds and the walls of infrastructure are no longer. The data is becoming distributed all over, which creates opportunities for making infrastructure more near to the customers, but it also creates a lot of challenges for customers. Putting the infrastructure in many different places requires agility and protection. Additionally, data-pipelining and streamlining processes are important in today's age. Another thing that organizations are beginning to do is implement sustainable IS infrastructure to prevent excess carbon emissions (link above).

Preparedness

Ensures a company is ready to respond to an emergency in an organized, timely, and effective manner. The company can look at where data is backed up, whether they have secondary locations available, etc.

The cloud

Stores, manages, and processes data and applications over the internet rather than on a personal computer or server.

The cloud enables them to pay only for what they need (pay per use, etc.). This makes it cheaper and easier to outsource, which has leveled the playing field for innovation.

Sustainable Infrastructure

Sustainability is about finding ways to enable the benefits of technology with less reliance on non-renewable resources like rare earth metals and fossil fuel-based electricity. One way to do this is by having methods that cools computers naturally (under the water, etc.).

Responsive MIS

**You should be able to explain why a company's infrastructure must be able to grow and change as the company grows/changes.

Information granularity

refers to the extent of detail within the information (fine and detailed or coarse and abstract)

Information integrity issues

occur when a system produces incorrect, inconsistent, or duplicate data

Database system components

Physical view, DBMS, logical view

Physical view

the way data are physically arranged and stored in the computer system

DBMS

Database management system, a program that creates, processes, and administers databases. It allowed users to create, read, update, and delete data (access, oracle, etc.). A software used to create databases, use databases, and manage/administer databases.

Logical view

focuses on how individual users logically access information to meet their own particular business needs

Master data management

the practice of gathering data and ensuring that it is uniform, accurate, consistent, and complete. A part of data governance.

ERD data modeling

Entity-Relationship Diagram. (uses relationships between tables, basically connecting SQL tables).

Relational database structures

Tables, primary key, foreign key, metadata

Tables

An arrangement of data made up of horizontal rows and vertical columns.

Primary key

A field (or group of fields) that uniquely identifies a given entity in a table.

Foreign key

A primary key of one table that appears as an attribute in another table and acts to provide a logical relationship between the two tables.

Metadata

Data that describes other data, making databases more useful and easier to use.

Query-by-example

Allows users to graphically design the structure of a database query.

structured query language

Requires users to write lines of code to query the database.

Data warehouse

A logical collection of information - gathered from many different operational databases - that supports business analysis activities and decision-making tasks

Data mart

Contains a subset of data warehouse information.

Data lake

a storage repository that holds a vast amount of raw data in its original format until the business needs it

ETL process

A set of procedures for blending data. The acronym stands for extract, transform, and load data

Information cleansing/scrubbing

A process that weeds out and fixes or discards inconsistent, incorrect, or incomplete data.

Big data characteristics

Volume, velocity, variety, veracity

Data mining techniques

Estimation analysis, affinity grouping analysis, cluster analysis, classification analysis

Estimation analysis

determines values for an unknown continuous variable behavior or estimated future value

Affinity grouping analysis

reveals the relationship between variables along with the nature and frequency of the relationships

Cluster analysis

Allows the analysis process to generate classes from attributes to find interesting groupings.

Classification analysis

Requires all classes be defined prior to the analysis with the goal of grouping the classes.

Data visualization

A term used to describe the use of graphical displays to summarize and present information about a data set.

Database Management Systems

hardware and software systems that allow clients to establish and maintain databases shared by multiple applications

Characteristics of Quality Data

Volume, Velocity, Variety, Veracity. if data is of poor quality, issues can be addressed through things such as data cleansing.

Business Intelligence

Companies go through large amounts of data, extract information, and turn that information into actionable knowledge.

Transactional vs. Analytical Data

Transactional data encompasses all of the data contained within a single business process or unit of work, and its primary purpose is to support the performing of daily operational tasks while analytical data encompasses all organizational data, and its primary purpose is to support the performing of managerial analysis tasks.

Data visualization

Data visualization makes it much easier to read and understand data, and it can show trends that are easy to see.

Data warehousing

Data warehouses extend the transformation of data into information while providing the ability to support the decision making without disrupting the day-to-day operations.

Blockchain (BC)

A type of distributed ledger, consisting of blocks of data that maintain a permanent and tamper-proof record of transactional data.

Local Area Network (LAN)

A group of computers connected within a single physical site (a home, business, or school usually). Generally owned and controlled by a single entity.

Wide area Network (WAN)

Computers connected between two or more separate sites (between cities, between states, between countries, etc.). The connecting infrastructure is owned and controlled by third-party vendors.

Metropolitan area Network (MAN)

A Wide area network for a city or metropolitan area.

Network protocols

The rules of initiating, interrupting, and continuing communication on a computer network.

IP addresses

is an identifier assigned to each computer and other device (e.g., printer, router, mobile device, etc.) connected to a TCP/IP network[1] that is used to locate and identify the node in communications with other nodes on the network

Domain name system

Can map text names to IP addresses.

Dial-up modem

A communication device that converts a
computer's digital signals into analog signals before transmission over telephone lines.

Digital subscriber line (DSL)

provides high-speed digital data transmission over standard telephone lines using broadband modem technology, allowing both Internet and telephone services to work over the same phone lines

Cable Modem

This provides high-speed Internet connections through the cable television network.

Fiber to the home

Broadband service provided via light-transmitting fiber-optic cables.

Network convergence

The efficient coexistence of telephone, video, and data communication within a single network, offering convenience and flexibility not possible with separate infrastructures

Voice over IP (VoIP)

A technology that converts voice into data packets for transmission over a packet-switched IP network. Allows the use of the Internet for real-time voice and video traffic.

Telecommuting

Working at home by using a computer terminal electronically linked to one's place of employment.

Virtual private network (VPN)

Companies can establish direct private network links among themselves or create private, secure Internet access, in effect a "private tunnel" within the Internet

WIFI

Wireless fidelity, a local area network that uses high frequency radio signals to transmit and receive data over distances of a few hundred feet

LIFI

Light fidelity, uses light waves instead of radio waves to transfer data

Cellular service (3G, 4G, 5G)

5 G is the quickest.

Satellite internet

A way to connect to the Internet using a small satellite dish, which is placed outside the home and is connected to a computer with coaxial cable. The satellite company then sends the data to a satellite orbiting the Earth. The satellite, in turn, sends the data back to the satellite dish and to the computer.

Digital divide

A worldwide gap giving advantage to those with access to technology.

Radio frequency identification (RFID) applications

Inventory management, logistics, identification, people tracking, animal tracking, contactless payments, toll collection, mass transit access, race timing, etc.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS)

Visualizing data on maps is a common GIS application. Based on geotagging or attaching location based information to data. Longitude and latitude, zip code.

Benefits and challenges of a connected world

benefits: sharing resources, providing opportunities, reducing travel

challenges: increased challenges in security, social, ethical, and political issues

Business Value of a wireless world

Untethered connectivity, anytime, anywhere, has fueled a major market and technology disruption, which has permeated almost every consumer market worldwide. The domino effect of the success of wireless technology has resulted in a unique opportunity for innovation and creativity in technology, marketing, and business strategy.

Protocols

These are necessary for any group, organization, or situation so that people can communicate together without following different rules.

Wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi)

A means by which portable devices can connect wirelessly to a local area network, using access points that send and receive data via radio waves

How does virtualization work?

Hardware resources are managed by a virtualization software called a "hypervisor". The hypervisor lets you segment a larger resource to run smaller "versions" of that resource.

Virtual machines are computers within computers - each virtual machine thinks like its own computer.

What is the difference between database and a database management system?

A database is a structured collection of data in the form of tables, relationships, and metadata. A DBMS is an application or computer program used to create databases, use databases, and manage/administer databases.

Why do companies need to create data warehouses and data marts?

It takes information from different places and uses it to make decisions. It is more reliable if data comes from more than one place. Data warehouses and data marts help companies make data driven decisions.

Why would a company try to avoid information silos or islands of automation?

These exist because management doesn't believe there's enough benefit from sharing information. Thus, a company that sees the benefit of sharing information would try to stay away from information silos or islands or automation.

What is a data warehouse and what are they used for?

A data warehouse is a large store of data accumulated from a wide range of sources within a company and used to guide management decisions.

Describe the difference between a WAN and a LAN.

A WAN is wider than a LAN. A LAN is a group of computers connected within a single site, whereas a WAN is a group of computers connected between two or more separate sites.

Why was packet switching an important breakthrough in network technology.

Packet switching is a mode of data transmission in which a message is broken into a number of parts which are sent independently, over whatever route is optimum for each packet, and reassembled at the destination.

Packet switching is used to optimize the use of the channel capacity available in digital telecommunication networks, such as computer networks, and minimize the transmission latency (the time it takes for data to pass across the network), and to increase robustness of communication.