Handout: 05

Department of Management and Entrepreneurship

Faculty of Management and Finance
University of Ruhuna
Course Code : BBA 2204
Course Title : Management Information systems
Lecturer
: Mrs. Deepika Dissanayake
Lecture Topic: Database Management Systems

Fundamentals Data Concepts

A conceptual framework of several levels of data has been devised that differentiates among different
groupings, or elements of data. Thus, data may be logically organized into characters, fields, records,
files and databases.
Character- the most basic logical data element is the character which consists of a single
alphabetic, numeric, or other symbol.
Field- the next higher level of data is the field, or data item. A field consists of a grouping of
related characters. A data field represents an attribute (a characteristic or quality) of some entity
(object, person, place or event)
Record- all of the fields used to describe the attributes of an entity are grouped to form a record.
Thus a record represents a collection of attributes that describe a single instance of an entity.
File- a group of related records is a data file (sometimes referred to as a table or flat file). When
it is independent of any other files related to it, a single table may be referred to as a flat file.
Database- is an integrated collection of logically related data elements. A database consolidated
records previously stored in separate files into a common pool of data elements that provides
data for many applications. The data stored in a database are independent of the application
programs using them and of the type of storage devices on which they are stored.
Traditional File Processing
End users can be frustrated when an organization relies on file processing systems in which data are
organized, stored and processed in independent files of data records. There are problems in traditional
processing system.
Data redundancy
Lack of data integration
Data dependence
Lack of data integrity or standardization
The Database Management Approach
The development of databases and database management software is the foundation of modern methods
of managing organizational data. The database management approach consolidates data records and
objects into databases that can be accessed by many different application programs. In addition, an
important software package called a database management system serves as a software interface
between user and the database. This helps users easily access the records in a database. Thus database
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management involves the use of database management software to control how databases are created,
interrogated and maintained to provide information needed by end users and their organizations.
Basic activities of the database management approach are,
Updating and maintaining common databases to reflect new business transactions and other
events requiring changes to an organizations records.
Providing information needed for each end users application by using application programs that
share the data in common databases.
Providing an inquiry/response and reporting capability through a DBMS package so that end
users can easily interrogate databases, generate reports, and receive quick responses to their ad
hoc requests for information.
Types of Databases
1. Operational databases- store detailed data needed to support the operations of the entire
organization. They are also called subject area databases, transaction databases and production
databases.
2. Analytical databases- store data and information extracted from selected operational and external
databases. Analytical databases also called management databases or information databases.
They may also called multidimensional databases since they frequently use a multidimensional
database structure to organized data.
3. Data warehouses- stores data from current and previous years that has been extracted from the
various operational databases of an organization.
4. Distributed databases- many organizations replicate and distribute copies or parts of databases to
network servers at a variety of sites. Distributed databases may be copies operational or
analytical databases, hypermedia or discussion databases or any other type of database.
5. End user databases- these databases consist of a variety of data files developed by end users at
their workstations.
6. External databases- access to a wealth of information from external database is available for a
fee from commercial online services, and with or without charge from many sources on the
Internet, especially the World Wide Web.
Hypermedia Databases on the Web
A Web site stores such information in a hypermedia database consisting of a home page and other
hyperlinked pages of multi-media or mixed media. That is from a database management point of view,
the set of interconnected multimedia pages at a Web site is a database of interrelated hypermedia pages,
rather than interrelated data records.
Data Mining
Data mining is the major use of data warehouse databases and the static data they contain. In data
mining, the data in a data warehouse are analyzed to reveal hidden patterns and trends in historical
business activity. Many companies use data mining to:
Perform market-based analysis to identify new product bundles.
Find root causes of quality or manufacturing problems.
Prevent customer attrition and acquire new customers.
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Cross-sell to existing customers.

Profile customers with more accuracy.

Managerial Consideration of Data Resource Management

Database management is an important application of information systems technology to the management
of firms data resources. Other major resource management efforts are needed in order to offset some of
the problems that can result from the use of database management approach.
1. Database administration- includes responsibility for developing and maintaining the
organizations data dictionary, designing and monitoring the performance of databases and
enforcing standards of database use and security.
2. Data planning- includes responsibility for developing an overall data architecture for the firms
data resources that ties in with the firms strategic mission and plans , and the objectives and
processes of its business units.
3. Data administration- involves establishment and enforcement of policies and procedures for
managing data as a strategic corporate resource.
Database structures
The relationship among many individual data elements stored in databases are based on one of several
logical data structures or models. DBMS packages are designed to use a specific data structure to
provide end user with quick, easy access to information stored in databases.
1. Hierarchical structure- the relationships between records form a hierarchy or treelike structure. In
traditional hierarchical model all records are dependant and arranged in multilevel structures,
consisting of one root record and any number of subordinate levels. All the relationships among
records are one-to-many.
2. Network structure- can represent more complex logical relationships. It allows many-to-many
relationships among records, that is, the network model can access a data element by following
one of several paths.
3. Relational structure- all the data elements within the databases are viewed as being stored in the
form of simple two dimensional tables, sometimes referred to as relations.
4. Multidimensional structure- can visualize multidimensional structures as cubes of data and cubes
within the cubes of data. Each side of the cube is considered as a dimension of data.
5. Object-oriented structure- one of the key technologies of a new generation of multimedia web
applications. An object consists of data values describing the attributes of an entity, plus the
operations that can be performed upon the data. This encapsulation capability allows the objectoriented model to handle complex types of data more easily than other database structures.