CHAPTER 4

Databases and Information Management

4.1. THE DATABASE APPROACH TO DATA MANAGEMENT

A database is a collection of related files containing records on people, places, or things.

ENTITIES AND ATTRIBUTES

Typically, you will be using data on categories of information, such as customers, suppliers,
employees, orders, products, shippers, and perhaps parts. Each of these generalized
categories representing a person, place, or thing on which we store and maintain
information is called an entity. Each entity has specific characteristics, called attributes.

ORGANIZING DATA IN A RELATIONAL DATABASE

In an information system, a database organizes the data much the same way, grouping
related pieces of data together. 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 individual element of data is stored as a separate field within the table. Each field
represents an attribute for the entity. Fields in a relational database are also called columns.
The actual information about a single supplier that resides in a table is called a row. Rows
are commonly referred to as records, or, in very technical terms, as tuples.

There is a field that uniquely identifies each record so that the record can be retrieved,
updated, or sorted, and it is called a key field. Each table in a relational database has one
field designated as its primary key. When a key field in one table appears in another table
it is called a foreign key and is essentially a look-up field to find data.

Fig. 4.1. A Relational Database Table

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 Fig. 4.2.
Example of another table

ESTABLISHING RELATIONSHIPS

A schematic called an Entity Relationship Diagram is used to clarify table relationships in a

relational database. Tables in a relational database may have one-to-one, one-to-many,
and many-to-many relationships.

Fig. 4.3.
A Simple Entity-
Relationship
Diagram

Whenever a many-to-many relationship exists between two tables, it is necessary to link

these two tables in a table that joins this information. Creating a separate table for a line
item in the order would serve this purpose. This table is often called a join table or an
intersection relation.

Fig. 4.4. Sample Order Report

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 Fig. 4.5. Final Database design with sample records

Fig. 4.6. Entity-Relationship Diagram for the Database with Four Tables

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

4.2. DATABASE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

A Database Management System (DBMS) is a specific type of software for creating, storing,
organizing, and accessing data from a database.

The DBMS relieves the end user or programmer from the task of understanding where and
how the data are actually stored by separating the logical and physical views of the data.
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 storage media, such as a hard disk.

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 Fig. 4.7. Database with multiple views

OPERATIONS OF A RELATIONAL DBMS

In a relational database, three basic operations are used to develop useful sets of data:

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

Fig. 4.8.
The Three Basic Operations of a
Relational DBMS

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CAPABILITIES OF DATABASE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

DBMS have a data definition capability to specify the structure of the content of the
database. A data dictionary is an automated or manual file that stores definitions of data
elements and their characteristics.

Fig. 4.9. Example of a Data Dictionary

Most DBMS have a specialized language called a data manipulation language that is used
to add, change, delete, and retrieve the data in the database. The most prominent data
manipulation language today is Structured Query Language, or SQL.

OBJECT-ORIENTED DATABASES

An object-oriented DBMS stores the data, and procedures that act on those data, as
objects that can be automatically retrieved and shared. Hybrid object-relational DBMS
systems are now available to provide capabilities of both object-oriented and relational
DBMS.

4.3. USING DATABASES TO IMPROVE BUSINESS PERFORMANCE AND DECISION

MAKING

In a large company, with large databases or large systems for separate functions, such as
manufacturing, sales, and accounting, special capabilities and tools are required for
analyzing vast quantities of data and for accessing data from multiple systems. These
capabilities include:

 Data Warehouses
A data warehouse is a database that stores current and historical data of potential
interest to decision makers throughout the company. The data warehouse
consolidates and standardizes information from different operational databases so
that the information can be used across the enterprise for management analysis
and decision making.

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 Fig. 4.10.
Components of a Data Warehouse

 Data Marts
A 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.

TOOLS FOR BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE: MULTIDIMENSIONAL DATA ANALYSIS AND DATA MINING

Business intelligence tools enable users to analyze data to see new patterns, relationships,
and insights that are useful for guiding decision making.

 Online Analytical Processing (OLAP)

Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) supports multidimensional data analysis,
enabling users to view the same data in different ways using multiple dimensions.

Fig. 4.11.
Multidimensional
Data Model

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  Data Mining
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.

The types of information obtainable from data mining include:

 Associations are occurrences linked to a single event.

 In sequences, events are linked over time.
 Classification recognizes patterns that describe the group to which an item
belongs by examining existing items that have been classified and by
inferring a set of rules.
 Clustering works in a manner similar to classification when no groups have
yet been defined.
 Although these applications involve predictions, forecasting uses predictions
in a different way. It uses a series of existing values to forecast what other
values will be.

Predictive analytics use data mining techniques, historical data, and assumptions
about future conditions to predict outcomes of events

 Text Mining and Web Mining

Text mining tools are now available to help businesses analyze unstructured data.
These tools are able to extract key elements from large unstructured data sets,
discover patterns and relationships, and summarize the information.

The discovery and analysis of useful patterns and information from the World Wide
Web is called Web mining.

Web mining looks for patterns in data through:

 Web content mining is the process of extracting knowledge from the

content of Web pages, which may include text, image, audio, and video
data.
 Web structure mining examines data related to the structure of a particular
Web site.
 Web usage mining examines user interaction data recorded by a Web
server whenever requests for a Web site’s resources are received.

4.4. MANAGING DATA RESOURCES

ESTABLISHING AN INFORMATION POLICY

An information policy specifies the organization’s rules for sharing, disseminating, acquiring,
standardizing, classifying, and inventorying information.

If you are in a small business, the information policy would be established and implemented
by the owners or managers. In a large organization, managing and planning for information
as a corporate resource often requires a formal data administration function.

Data administration is responsible for the specific policies and procedures through which
data can be managed as an organizational resource. In close cooperation with users, the

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design group establishes the physical database, the logical relations among elements, and
the access rules and security procedures. The functions it performs are called database
administration.

ENSURING DATA QUALITY

Analysis of data quality often begins with a data quality audit, which is a structured survey
of the accuracy and level of completeness of the data in an information system. Data
cleansing, also known as data scrubbing, consists of activities for detecting and correcting
data in a database that are incorrect, incomplete, improperly formatted, or redundant.

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