Book chapter 2 Vivian

2.1 Components of a Business

Business: formal organization whose aim is to produce products or provide services for a profit.
Strategic choice: decision of what to produce
- Determines your likely customers, the kinds of employees you will need, the production
methods and facilities needed, the marketing themes, and many other choices.
Senior management: makes long-range strategic decisions about products and services as well as
ensures financial performance of the firm
- Needs summarized information
Middle management: carries out the programs and plans of senior management
- Need more specific information
Operational management: responsible for monitoring the daily activities of the business
- Need transaction-level information
o Number of parts in inventory each day, or hours logged on by each employee
Knowledge workers: engineers, scientists, architects -> design products or services and create new
knowledge for the firm.
Data workers: secretaries, clerks -> assist with administrative work at all levels of the firm
Production or service workers: produce the product and deliver the service.

2.2 Types of Business Information Systems

Transaction processing systems (TPS): system that keeps track of the elementary activities and
transactions of the organization, such as sales, receipts, cash deposits, payroll, credit decisions and
the flow of materials in a factory.
- A computerized system that performs and records the daily routine transactions necessary to
conduct business.
Business intelligence: data and software tools for organizing, analyzing and providing acces to data
to help managers and other enterprise users make more informed decisions.
- Addresses the decision-making needs of all levels of management
Management information systems (MIS): designates a specific category of information systems
serving middle management.
- Provide middle managers with reports on the organization’s current performance, used to
monitor and control the business and predict future performance
Decision/support systems (DSS): focus on problems that are unique and rapidly changing, for which
the procedure for arriving at a solution may not be fully predefined in advance.
Executive support systems (ESS): help senior management make these decisions. Present graphs and
data from many sources through an interface that is easy for senior managers to use.

Enterprise applications: systems that span functional areas, focus on executing business processes
across the firm and include all levels of management.
- Enterprise systems / enterprise resource planning (ERP): integrate business processes in
manufacturing and production, finance and accounting, sales and marketing, and human
resources into a single software system.
- Supply chain management systems (SCM): to help manage relationships with their suppliers
- Customer relationship management systems (CRM): to help manage their relationships with
their customers
- Knowledge management systems (KMS): enable organizations to better manage processes
for capturing and applying knowledge and expertise.

E-business
Electronic business: refers to the use of digital technology and the Internet to execute the major
business processes in the enterprise.
Electronic commerce: deals with the buying and selling of goods and services over the Internet.
Electronic government: digitally enable government and public sector agencies relationships with
citizens, businesses, and other arms of government.

2.3 Systems for Collaboration and Teamwork

Collaboration: working with other to achieve shared and explicit goals.

Book chapter 2 Leo

2.1 Components of a Business
Business a formal organizations whose aim is to produce products or provide
services for a profit

The four major functions of a business:

- manufacturing and production
- sales and marketing
- finance and accounting
- human resources

The five basic entities that make up a business:

- suppliers
- customers
- employees
- invoices/payments
- products and services

Business processes: The actual steps and tasks that describe how work is organized in a business.

Hierarchy of management:
- senior management: makes long-range strategic decisions
- middle management: carries out the programs and plans of senior management
o knowledge workers: design products or services and create new knowledge for
the firm (engineers, scientists, architects)
- operational management: monitoring the daily activities of the business
o data workers: assist with administrative work at all levels of the firm (secretaries,
clerks)
o production or service workers: produce the product and deliver the service

The business environment includes specific groups like:

- customers
- suppliers
- competitors
- regulations
- stockholders

Besides these groups, the broader general environment also influences the business like:
- economy
- politics
- international change (stock-exchange)
- technology and science
2.2 Types of Business Information Systems
Transaction processing systems that performs and records the daily routine transactions
systems (TPS) necessary to conduct business (sales order entity, payroll, shipping)
Business intelligence systems data and software tools for organizing, analyzing, and providing
access to data to help managers make more informed decisions
Management information the study of information systems in business and management
systems (MIS)
Decision-support systems focus on problems that are unique and rapidly changing, for which
(DSS) the procedure for arriving at a salutation may not be fully predefined
in advance
Executive support systems systems that help senior managers make decisions about strategic
(ESS) issues and long-term trends, both in the firm and in the external
environment

Often the information from an ESS is delivered to senior executives through a portal, which uses a
Web interface to present integrated personalized business content.

Digital dashboards (graphs and charts of key performance indicators on a single screen) are
becoming an increasingly popular tool for management decision makers.

Enterprise applications systems that span functional areas, focus on executing business
processes across the business firm, and include all levels of management

The four major enterprise applications are:

- Enterprise Systems (ERP)
o to integrate business processes in manufacturing and production, finance and
accounting, sales and marketing, and human resources into a single software
system
- Supply Chain Management Systems (SCM)
o to help manage relationships with their suppliers
o one type of inter-organizational systems because they automate the flow of
information across organizational boundaries
- Customer Relationship Management Systems (CRM)
o to help manage their relationships with their customers
- Knowledge Management Systems (KMS)
o enable organizations to better manage processes for capturing and applying
knowledge and expertise

Intranets and extranets are alternative tools for increasing integration and expediting the flow of
information within the firm, and with customers and suppliers.

Electronic business / the use of digital technology and the internet to execute the major
e-business business processes in the enterprise

Electronic commerce / part of e-business that deals with the buying and selling goods and
e-commerce services over the internet, it also encompasses activities such as
marketing, customer support, security, delivery, and payment

E-government the use of digital technology and the internet to enable government
relationships with citizens, businesses, and other arms of
government
2.3 Systems for Collaboration and Social Business
Collaboration working with others to achieve shared and explicit goals
Teams have a specific mission that someone in the business assigned to
them

Collaboration and teamwork are more important today than ever for a variety of reasons:
- changing nature of work
- growth of professional work
- changing organization of the firm
- changing scope of the firm
- emphasis on innovation
- changing culture of work and business

Social business the use of social networking platforms, including Facebook, Twitter,
and internal corporate social tools, to engage their employees,
customers and suppliers

Business benefits of collaboration and social business:

- productivity
- quality
- innovation
- customer service
- financial performance
Tools and technologies for collaboration and social business:
- E-mail and Instant Messaging (IM)
- Wikis
- Virtual Worlds
- Collaboration and Social Business Platforms
o Virtual Meeting Systems (videoconferences)
 telepresence: an integrated audio and visual environment which allows a
person to give the appearance of being present at a location other than his
or her true physical location
o Cloud Collaboration Services: Google Tools and Cyberlockers
 Cyberlockers: online file-sharing services that allow users to upload files to
secure online storage sites from which the files can be shared with others
o Microsoft SharePoint
 browser-based collaboration and documents management platform,
combined with a powerful search engine that is installed on corporate
servers
o Lotus Notes
 a collaborative software system with capabilities for sharing calendars,
collective writing and editing, shared database access, and electronic
meetings, with each participant able to see and display information from
others and other activities

Enterprise Social create business value by connecting the members of an

organization
Networking Tools through profiles, updates, and notifications, similar to Facebook
features, but tailored to internal corporate uses
To choose the right collaboration technology you can use the matrix which focuses on time/space
(pg. 86).
2.4 The Information Systems Function in Business
Information system formal organizational unit responsible for information technology
department services

The information systems department consists:

- programmers: who write the software instructions for computers
- systems analysts: translate business problems and requirements into information
requirements and systems
- information systems managers: leaders of teams of programmers and analysts, project
managers, physical facility managers, telecommunication managers, or database specialists

The information systems department is headed by:

- chief information officer (CIO): oversees the use of information technology in the firm
- chief security officer (CSO): in charge of information systems security for the firm
- chief privacy officer (CPO): responsible for ensuring that the company complies with existing
data privacy laws
- chief knowledge officer (CKO): responsible for the firm’s knowledge management program

End users representatives of departments outside of the information systems

group for whom applications are developed

Services provided by the information systems department include the following:

- computing platforms
- telecommunications services
- data management services
- application software services
- physical facilities
- IT management services
- IT standards services
- IT educational services
- IT research and development services

Book chapter 6 Leo

6.1 The Database Approach to Data Management
Database a collection of related files containing records on people, places, or
things
Entity generalized category representing a person, place, or thing on
which we store and maintain information
Attributes specific characteristic from an entity
Relational database organized data into two-dimensional tables (called relations) with
columns and rows
Field a field represents an attribute for the entity

Rows in relational database tables are commonly referred to as records or tuples.

Key-field, 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
Foreign key a field that refers to another relational database table
Entity-relationship diagram used to clarify table relationships in a relational database
Normalization the process of streamlining complex groups of data to minimize
redundant data elements, many-to-many relationships, and
increase stability and flexibility

Relational database systems enforce referential integrity rules to ensure that relationships
between coupled tables remain consistent.

6.2 Database Management Systems

Database management a specific type of software for creating, storing, organizing, and
system (DBMS) accessing data from a database

The logical view presents data as end users or business specialists would perceive them, whereas the
physical view shows how data are actually organized and structured on physical sto rage media, such
as a hard disk.

Three basic operations of a relational DBMS:

- select operation: creates a subset consisting of all records in the file that meet stated criteria
- join operation: combines relational tables to provide the user with more information than is
available in individual tables
- project operation: creates a subset consisting of columns in a table, permitting the user to
create new tables that contain only the information required

Capabilities of database management systems:

- data definition: capability to specify the structure of the content of the database
- data dictionary: an automated or manual file that stores definitions of data elements and
their characteristics
- data manipulation language: this language contains commands that permit end users and
programming specialists to extract data from the database to satisfy information requests
and develop applications

Most prominent data manipulation language today is Structured Query Language (SQL). Report
generators are used to display the data of interest in a more structured and polished format.

Non-relational database use a more flexible data model and are designed for managing large
management systems data sets across many distributed machines and for easily scaling up
or down

6.3 Using Databases to Improve Business Performance and Decision Making

Big data datasets with volumes so huge that they are beyond the ability of
typical DBMS to capture, store and analyze
Data warehouse a database that stores current and historical data of potential
interest to decision makers throughout the company.
Data mart a subset of a data warehouse in which a summarized or highly
focused portion of the organization’s data is placed in a spate
database for a specific population of users
Hadoop an open-source software framework that enables distributed
parallel processing of huge amounts of data across inexpensive
computers
In-memory computing way of facilitating big data analysis which relies primarily on a
computer’s main memory (RAM) for data storage
Commercial database vendors have developed specialized high-speed analytic platforms using both
relational and non-relational technology that are optimized for analyzing large datasets.

Analytical tools:
- online analytical processing (OLAP): supports multidimensional data analysis, enabling
users to view the same data in different ways using multiple dimensions
- 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:
 associations
 sequences
 classification
 clustering
 forecasting
- text-mining: tools to help business analyze text data
 sentiment analysis: software which is able to mine text comments in an e-mail,
message to detect favorable and unfavorable opinions about specific subjects
- Web-mining: the discovery and analysis of useful patterns and information from the internet

Database server a computer where the DBMS resides on

6.4 Managing Data Resources

Information policy specifies the organization’s rules for sharing, disseminating,
acquiring, standardizing, classifying and inventorying information
Data administration responsible for the specific policies and procedures through which
data can be managed as an organizational resource
Database administration responsible for defining and organizing the structure and content of
the database, and maintaining the database
Data quality audit a structured survey of the accuracy and level of completeness of
the data in an information system
Data cleansing / consists of activities for detecting and correcting data in a database
data scrubbing that are incorrect, incomplete, improperly formatted, or redundant

Reader information modeling chapter 3

Specialization = IS_A relationship (e.g. a cardiologist is a doctor). The subclass is a special instance, or
specialization of the superclass. A superclass can have multiple subclasses, but the criterion used for
specialization is the same for all of the subclasses.
Generalization = several classes generalized into a higher level class (e.g. doctor and nurse are both
part of the superclass employee). Commonality that is abstracted.
- Generalization/specialization is represented by an arrow pointing from subclass to
superclass.
Inheritance of attributes = a subclass inherits every attribute of its superclass (not repeated in the
rectangle of subclass). Common attributes and relationships for a set of classes is an indication for
the possibility to generalize these classes in a superclass. Multiple inheritance occurs when a
subclass has multiple superclasses and inherits attributes from all superclasses.
Class hierarchy = starting with the most generalized root class it shows the relevant subclasses of a
generalised superclass. It must not contain inheritance loops (suggesting that a class inherits
attributes from itself). There should always be a most general and unique root class.
Disjoint constraint = a special constraint for generalization relationships, implies that objects from
the subclasses of a superclass can’t be instances of more than one subclass (e.g. nurse cannot be
doctor).
 - Disjoint constraint is represented by {disjoint} through a dashed line to the relevant
generalization arrows.
Complete constraint = in combination with disjoint constraint, indicates that the subclass forms
complete partition of a superclass, no other subclass of this superclass exists in the problem domain
(e.g. every employee is either a nurse or a doctor).
- Completeness constraint is represented by {disjoint, complete} through a dashed line to the
relevant generalization arrows.
Association class = association class is created when an association has one or more properties that
need to be included in the model. It represents a relationship type. ! An association class does not
allow for more than one link between the same instances of the participating classes (e.g. if more
than one appointment between person A, an instance of person, and doctor 1, an instance of doctor,
must be allowed, appointment is made into a regular object class).
- An association class has a normal class rectangle, connected with a dashed line to the
relevant association.
Ternary association = an association between three or more classes at the same time. A ternary
association only occurs when all classes are associated simultaneously to each other, otherwise
binary associations can be used (e.g. accommodation booking is association simultaneously with the
season, the resort and accommodation type). Multiplicity constraints are interpreted as follows: for
each combination of class object A
- Represented by a diamond linking all the associations to all involved classes.
Aggregation = a special relationship between two classes where the instances of one of them are
considered to be aggregates, and the instances of the other one are considered to be their parts
(isPartOf, consistsOf). An object may be part of many aggregates that share the object (e.g. a person
may be part of many teams, team is the aggregate class while person is the part class).
- Aggregation is represented as a connection line with a hollow diamond at the aggregate side.
Composition = a composition is a special type of aggregation where a component object belongs
exclusively to a whole object. Exclusive ownership of a component object by a composite object is
accompanied by life cycle dependency: when the composite object is destroyed, the component
objects are all destroyed. Example: a team is part of an organisation.
- Composition is represented as a connection line with a solid diamond at the composite side.

Reader information modelling chapter 4

Modeling patterns = standard solution for modeling general, domain-independent concepts.
A sequence, or specific order of objects, is represented by a specific recursive association: follows
(e.g. for the sequence of wagons on a train). On each side is given a multiplicity constraint 0..1 to
indicate one predecessor and one successor. To indicate that doctors replace each other when sick,
the recursive association: replace, is used. It is not a sequence because every doctor is linked to every
other doctor. On each side is given a multiplicity constraint 1 to indicate every doctor
interconnected. Trees and hierarchies have yet other multiplicity constraints. To indicate a division
manager is subordinate to the CEO, the employee class has a recursive association: isSubordinateTo.
This recursive association is labelled on each side: subordinate and boss. At the subordinate side of
the isSubordinateTo association of employee a multiplicity constraint * is given (boss has zero or
more subordinates), and on the side of the boss a multiplicity constraint 0..1 is given (each
subordinate has zero or one boss). In general, when multiplicity is not given, an association of a class
with itself represents a network/graph where each node can have several successors and
predecessors (e.g. railway connection between stations -> isConnectedWith. It has multiplicity
constraint 1..* at each end. An association class, connection, is used when, for example the distance
between two stations needs to be recorded (it is an attribute of the isConnectedWith association).
Reader information modelling chapter 5
Analysis of an information system consists of a Requirements analysis phase:
- Requirements specification documents = a comprehensive description of the tasks which
the system should be able to execute, and the information needed to execute these tasks.
- Interviewing key users and domain experts.
And it consists of an Domain analysis phase:
- One or more class diagrams containing all relevant concepts of the domain and their
relationships. In order to obtain this: (1) the relevant object classes have to be identified, (2)
the relevant relationships between object classes (incl. associations and generalization
hierarchies) have to be identified, and (3) all relevant constraints need to be added. This is an
iterative incremental process: it is constantly evaluated and gets a little better each time.

Step 1: make a list of potential entity types (candidate object classes), a list of nouns.
Step 2: summary description of domain model by writing a summary for each candidate object class.
Step 3: determine attributes of each class by examining summary, determine natural IDs.
Step 4: identify generalization relationships (look for X is a Y). -> B ⸦ A, C ⸦ D, etc.
Step 5: identify relevant associations between classes. -> A-name-B, name(A,B,C, …), A-B
Step 6: identify association classes by checking if associations have attributes e.g. date.
Step 7: draw a first version class diagram using all classes, generalizations and associations.
Step 8 : add multiplicity constraints, disjoint or complete constraints, determine which attributes are
unique/mandatory, define free text constraints.

Class vs. Attribute. Model an information element as object class when it has its own attributes which
are to be represented in the model. Model an information element as an object class when the
system must distinguish and manipulate its instances. Model an information element as an object
class when its instances may be linked to multiple instances of another object class.
Class vs. Roles. A student role modelled as an association between person and university is simpler
than a student as a separate object class. It must be determined how much complexity is needed.
Single vs. Multiple attributes. Address can be modelled as address: ‘hoogstraat Eindhoven’ or
separated so that the computer can handle it better.
A good information model is correct (represents information in the problem domain correctly, and
also its constraints), complete, has no redundant elements, has a good style (easy to read and
understand), and facilitates collection and storage of consistent data.
Web lecture week 2
Lecture 2
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