Chapter 6

bit

A bit represents the smallest unit of data a computer can handle.

byte

A group of bits, called a byte, represents a single character, which can be a letter, a number, or another symbol.

record

A group of related fields, such as a student's identification number (ID), the course taken, the date, and the grade, comprises a record; a group of records of the same type is called a file.

field

A grouping of characters into a word, a group of words, or a complete number (such as a person's name or age) is called a field.

normalization

The process of streamlining complex groups of data to minimize redundant data elements and awkward many-to-many relationships and increase stability and flexibility is called

entity

Each of these generalized categories representing a person, place, or thing on which we store information is called an entity

relational database

The relational database is the most common type of database today. Relational databases organize data into two-dimensional tables (called relations) with columns and rows. Each table contains data about an entity and its attributes. For the most part, there is one table for each business entity, so, at the most basic level, you will have one table for customers and a table each for suppliers, parts in inventory, employees, and sales transactions.

primary key

This key field is the unique identifier for all the information in any row of the table, and this primary key cannot be duplicated.

file

a group of records of the same type is called a file.

entity-relationship diagram

clarifies table relationships in a relational database. The most important piece of information an entity-relationship diagram provides is the manner in which two tables are related to each other. Tables in a relational database may have one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many relationships.

A data warehouse

is a database that stores current and historical data of potential interest to decision makers throughout the company.

Blockchain

is a distributed database technology that enables firms and organizations to create and verify transactions on a network nearly instantaneously without a central authority. The system stores transactions as a distributed ledger among a network of computers. The information held in the database is continually reconciled by the computers in the network.

data lake

is a repository for raw unstructured data or structured data that for the most part have not yet been analyzed, and the data can be accessed in many ways.

A database management system (DBMS).

is a specific type of software for creating, storing, organizing, and accessing data from a database

data mart

is a subset of a data warehouse in which a summarized or highly focused portion of the organization's data is placed in a separate database for a specific population of users.

data dictionary

is an automated or manual file that stores definitions of data elements and their characteristics.

Hadoop

is an open source software framework managed by the Apache Software Foundation that enables distributed parallel processing of very large amounts of data across inexpensive computers. It breaks a big data problem down into subproblems, distributes them among up to thousands of inexpensive computer processing nodes, and then combines the result into a smaller data set that is easier to analyze

Data mining .

is more discovery-driven. Data mining provides insights into corporate data that cannot be obtained with OLAP by finding hidden patterns and relationships in large databases and inferring rules from them to predict future behavior

distributed database

is one that is stored in multiple physical locations. Parts or copies of the database are physically stored in one location and other parts or copies are maintained in other locations.

data manipulation language

is used to add, change, delete, and retrieve the data in the database. This language contains commands that permit end users and programming specialists to extract data from the database to satisfy information requests and develop applications.

in-memory computing

relies primarily on a computer's main memory (RAM) for data storage. (Conventional DBMS use disk storage systems.) Users access data stored in system's primary memory, thereby eliminating bottlenecks from retrieving and read-ing data in a traditional, disk-based database and dramatically shortening query response times.

data definition capability

specify the structure of the content of the database. It would be used to create database tables and to define the characteristics of the fields in each table.

OLAP

supports multidimensional data analysis, enabling users to view the same data in different ways using multiple dimensions.

A computer system organizes data in a hierarchy that starts with bits and bytes and progresses to fields, records, files, and databases

true

Crystal Reports is a popular report generator for large corporate DBMS, although it can also be used with Microsoft Access.

true

For handling unstructured and semistructured data in vast quantities, as well as structured data, organizations are using Hadoop.

true

In-memory processing makes it possible for very large sets of data, amounting to the size of a data mart or small data warehouse, to reside entirely in memory. Complex business calculations that used to take hours or days are able to be completed within seconds, and this can be accomplished even on handheld devices.

true

Standardization of recording transactions is aided through the use of smart contracts. Smart contracts are computer programs that implement the rules governing trans-actions between firms,

true

The NoSQL database can handle structured, semistructured, and unstructured information without requiring tedious, expensive, and time-consuming database mapping to normalize all data to a rigid schema, as required by relational databases.

true

Nonrelational database management systems

use a more flexible data model and are designed for managing large data sets across many distributed machines and for easily scaling up or down. They are useful for accelerating simple queries against large volumes of structured and unstructured data, including web, social media, graphics, and other forms of data that are difficult to analyze with traditional SQL-based tools.