MIS Chapter 6

Describe characteristics about relational databases:

A customer's name would not make a good primary key. A primary key cannot be duplicated. A foreign key can be duplicated. The entity-relationship diagram depicts the relationships among tables in a database. Tables can have one-to-many relationships or one-to-one relationships.

What is a data audit?

A data audit is a method using a survey to determine the accuracy of a data set. Data quality audits can be performed by surveying entire data files or samples from data files.

What does this describe: "an automated or manual tool for storing and organizing information about the data maintained in a database"

A data dictionary

What is a data manipulation language?

A data manipulation language is a language associated with a database management system that end users and programmers use to manipulate data in the database.

What does this describe: "A structured survey of the accuracy and level of completeness of the data in an information system"

A data quality audit

What do most larger corporations utilize to consolidate data from a business along with external data?

A data warehouse. The data is stable and typically not changed once it is put into the data warehouse.

What is a collection of integrated records?

A database is a collection of integrated records.

A spreadsheet is great to manage information about on thing, but what is preferred to manage information about more than one thing?

A database is preferred to manage information about more than one thing, such as items for sale and suppliers of items.

What is a database management system, DBMS, for?

A database management system is a software program for creating, processing, and administering a database.

What does this describe: "Represented as a column in a database table that represents things like a person's first name, last name, and age"

A field is represented as a column in a database table; a field is a group of characteristics formed into a word, a group of words, or a complete number, such as a person's name or age.

What is used to link the supplier and part tables by entering SupplierID in the part table?

A foreign key is used to link tables. In the supplier table, supplier number is the primary key. When the field supplier number appears in the part table, it is called a foreign key.

What is a non-relational database management system?

A non-relational database management system is a system for working with large quantities of structured and unstructured data that would be difficult to analyze with a relational model.

What uniquely represents a record or row?

A primary key uniquely represents a record or row. This key field is the unique identifies for all the information in any row of the table, and a primary key cannot be duplicated.

What is an example of DBMS desktop system geared toward smaller business data needs?

Access; Microsoft Access is a DBMS for desktop systems, whereas DB2, Oracle Database, and Microsoft SQL Server are DBMS for large mainframes and midrange computers. MySQL is a popular open-source DBMS. All of these products are relational DBMSs that support a relational database.

What is entity another name for?

An entity is another name for a table in a relational database.

What is an entity-relationship diagram?

An entity-relationship diagram is a methodology for documenting a database illustrating the relationship between various entities in the database.

What would an organization use to specify rules for sharing, disseminating, acquiring, standardizing, classifying, and inventorying information?

An information policy; an information policy identifies who can share information, where it can be distributed, and who is responsible for updating and maintaining the information.

What is an intrusion detection system?

An intrusion detection system is a computer program that senses when another computer is attempting to scan the disk or otherwise access a computer.

What is a data dictionary?

As part of a DBMS, a data dictionary documents information about a database. The data dictionary describes the details about the database.

Why is a relational DBMS so powerful?

Because relational database products are available as cloud computing services.

What is the term for data sets with volumes so huge that they are beyond the ability of typical DBMS to capture, store, and analyze?

Big data; big data consists of unstructured or semistructured data not suitable for relational database products that organize data in the form of columns and rows.

What term describes data sets like Google's database that are too big for traditional DBMS to handle?

Big data; big data is used to describe data sets with volumes so huge that they are beyond the ability of typical DBMS to capture, store, and analyze.

What is a specific software for creating, storing, organizing, and accessing data from a database?

DBMS; the DBMS relieves the user of having to understand where and how the data are stored by separating the logical and physical views of the data.

Which of the following can be used to automatically enforce consistency among different sets of data? Data administration, data cleansing, data quality audit, data governance

Data cleansing

What is data cleansing?

Data cleansing is used to detect and correct inaccurate day in a database; not only corrects data, but enforces consistency among different sets of data that originated in separate information systems.

What is data definition?

Data definition is a DBMS capability that specifies the structure and content of the database.

What does data governance deal with?

Data governance deals with the overall policies and processes for managing the availability, usability, integrity, and security of the data employed in an enterprise.

Define data:

Data is a DBMS capability that specifies the structure and content of the database.

What is data mining?

Data mining is the application of statistical techniques to find patterns and relationships among data and to classify and predict future behavior.

What is a term used by companies looking to detect and correct incomplete, redundant, or incorrect data?

Data scrubbing; data scrubbing consists of activities for detecting and correcting data in a database.

What is this scenario about: "David creates a central database by extracting, transforming, and loading metadata from various internal and external sources of info. He plans to use this database for executing various functions."

Data warehouse

What is a database whose content focuses on historical organizational data?

Data warehouse; a data warehouse is a database that stores current and historical data of potential interest to decision makers throughout the company. The data originate in many core operational transaction systems, such as systems for sales, customer accounts, and manufacturing, and can include data from website transactions.

What are examples of managing and controlling data within a company?

Firms may set policies about passwords for accessing data. Large companies may have several departments handling specific tasks involving data assurance for the firm.

What is hadoop used for?

Hadoop is used to process large quantities of structured and transactional data (Ex. Facebook)

What is the most popular open-source program that allows for storage of big data?

Hadoop; hadoop is an open-source software framework, managed by the Apache Software Foundation that enabled distributed parallel processing of huge amounts of data across inexpensive computers.

What is a key field?

In a database, a key field is used to uniquely identify each record for retrieval or manipulation.

In a database, what does each column represent?

In a database, each column represents an attribute or a field.

What does each row in a database represent?

In a database, each row represents a record.

Describe how an entity and attributes relate to relational databases:

In a relational database generalized categories represent an entity, and each category has characteristics called attributes.

Describe how rows and columns are related in a relational database:

In a relational database, each row is a unique record for one of the items in the table and each column is an attribute of the item.

If Megan sends out unauthorized data to another organization, she has likely violated the company's?

Information policy

What does metadata describe?

Metadata describes characteristics of each field in a database table; thus, they are data that describe data.

Describe Microsoft Access:

Microsoft Access is a DBMS that has rudimentary data dictionary capabilities. It has capabilities for developing desktop system applications. It works with Crystal Reports, because it has report generation capabilities.

What SQL would an organization interested in the most popular open source DBMS on the market adopt?

MySQL; MySQL supports a relational database and is popular because it runs easily on Macintosh systems.

What is normalization?

Normalization involves the process of creating small, stable, yet flexible data structures from complex groups of data when designing a relational database.

What does this define: "The capability for manipulating and analyzing large volumes of data from multiple perspectives"

Online analytical processing, OLAP.

What is a formal name for questioning or making a data request from the database?

Query; a query is a request for data from a database. In most DBMS, you would type a series of statements to access data.

What is the most common type of database?

Relational database; the relational database is the primary method for organizing and maintaining data today in information systems.

How do relational databases organize data?

Relational databases organize data in two-dimensional tables with rows and columns called relations.

What does the process of server virtualization entail?

Server virtualization is the process of running two or more operating system instances on the same server. The host operating system runs virtual operating system instances as applications.

What software is used for data cleansing?

Specialized data cleansing software are used to automatically survey data files.

Who actually works with the databases, creating relations between tables and implementing controls that would minimize data issues and provide security for the data?

The data administration; they integrate the information policy into the database.

The database administration functions of an organization are responsible for defining and maintaining a database. What performs these functions?

These functions are performed by a database design and management group.

What are individuals involved in data administration responsible for?

They are responsible for information policy, data planning, data dictionary development, and monitoring data usage in a firm.

Why do organizations perform data quality audits?

To determine accuracy and level of completeness of data.

What are examples of steps firms may take to make sure they have a high level of data quality?

Using enterprise-wide data standards, performing data quality audits, and using databases designed to minimize inconsistent and redundant data.

If a firm wants to learn more about its users, behaviors, and marketing effectiveness, what might they turn to?

Web mining, which relies on the huge amounts of data available through the Internet. It is possible to discern buying and social marketing patterns through the web data.