Managing Information Technology, 7e (Brown)
Chapter 2 Computer Systems
1) All computers, including desktop and notebook microcomputers, midrange systems,
mainframes, and supercomputers, are made up of the same six basic components. Which of the
following lists is entirely made up of some of these basic components?
A) bytes, bits, and input
B) output, memory, and modem
C) control unit, memory, and output
D) controller, arithmetic/logical unit, and speakers
2) Which of the following is not an example of a computer output device?
A) printer
B) voice response unit
C) COM recorder
D) MICR reader
3) Which method of input can recognize characters from typed, printed, or handwritten material?
A) OCR
B) MICR
C) mouse
D) COM
4) In computer memory, a cell that can store two or more characters of data is called a:
A) partition.
B) word.
C) bit.
D) byte.
5) Which of the following is not an advantage of secondary storage devices compared to main
memory?
A) low cost
B) fast speed
C) high capacity
D) nonvolatility
6) DASD refers to:
A) digital-analog signal distortion.
B) direct analysis system development.
C) direct access storage device.
D) delayed access sequential device.
7) Machine language is the form of a computer program that the control unit of the computer has
been built to understand. In general, a machine language instruction consists of two parts, which
are:
A) bits and bytes.
B) operation code and address(es).
C) sequential and direct access files.
D) RISC and data channel.
8) Evaluating how well various computers will handle an organization’s workload by running a
representative set of real jobs on the different machines is called:
A) benchmarking.
B) virtualizing.
C) compiling.
D) testing.
9) What is a commonly used rating of a computer’s speed that is based on the number of
instructions per second executed by the computer’s control unit?
A) MFLOPS
B) MIPS
C) CPU
D) MPP
10) Which type of computer is often used for numerically intensive scientific calculations or to
act as an extremely large Web server?
A) microcomputers
B) midrange systems
C) mainframes
D) supercomputers
11) Which type of computer serves as the heart of the computing systems for many, perhaps
most, major corporations and government agencies? This type of computer system also can act
as a large Web server, as a server in a client/server application, and has the widest range of
available applications.
A) microcomputers
B) midrange systems
C) mainframes
D) supercomputers
12) Which of the following computer storage devices is not an example of a direct access storage
device?
A) hard drive
B) CD/DVD drive
C) magnetic tape drive
D) flash drive
13) What microcomputer vendor is not producing an IBM-compatible PC?
A) Apple
B) Dell
C) Hewlett-Packard
D) Lenovo
14) In the 2000s, a new way of handling multiple servers in a computing center became popular,
in which multiple server modules are housed in a single chassis, saving space in the computing
center, reducing the required cabling, and improving system management. What are these servers
called?
A) blade servers
B) shared servers
C) mini servers
D) razor servers
15) Which of the following is a computer programming language developed in the 1960s that is
still commonly used for older (“legacy”) business applications?
A) C
B) COBOL
C) FORTRAN
D) FOCUS
16) Assembly language programs are converted to machine language using an assembler. The
resulting machine language program is called a(n) ________ program.
A) source
B) output
C) final
D) object
17) The language translator program which translates an entire 3GL or 4GL program into
machine language before any of the program is executed is called a(an):
A) control unit.
B) interpreter.
C) compiler.
D) converter.
18) Which of the following is not an advantage of 4GL programs over 3GL programs?
A) fewer lines of code
B) easier to write
C) more efficient execution on the computer
D) easier to understand and modify
19) What are the two major categories of computer software?
A) applications software and support software
B) applications software and database management software
C) word-processing software and spreadsheet software
D) word-processing software and database management software
20) Which of the following is not an example of applications software?
A) operating systems software
B) inventory record-keeping programs
C) spreadsheet packages
D) word-processing software
21) The collection of applications programs commonly used by office workers–including word
processing, spreadsheets, electronic mail, presentation graphics, and so on–are referred to as
________ software.
A) management
B) support
C) personal productivity
D) systems
22) Each response below lists two operating systems in common use today. In which response
are both of the operating systems listed open systems?
A) Linux and UNIX
B) Windows 7 and UNIX
C) z/OS and z/VM
D) Linux and Windows Vista
23) On large computers, the operating system switches back and forth among multiple programs
stored in memory in order to overlap input and output operations with processing time; the
purpose of this switching is to maximize the work done by the CPU. What is this concept of
switching among multiple programs in memory called?
A) virtual memory
B) multiprogramming
C) job control
D) multiprocessing
24) Which of the following is not a benefit associated with the procedural language COBOL?
A) The language resembles English.
B) It is standardized.
C) COBOL programs are shorter than those written in other languages.
D) It is relatively easy to learn.
25) HTML uses ________ placed within a document to tell the Web browser how to display
various elements on a Web page.
A) marks
B) keys
C) tags
D) comments
26) The metalanguage standard that is used to facilitate data interchange among applications on
the Web is ________; this is really a standard for specifying a document markup language based
on plain-text tags.
A) HTML
B) HTTP
C) JavaScript
D) XML
27) An object-oriented, platform-independent programming language, developed by Sun
Microsystems and frequently used for Web-based applications, is:
A) FORTRAN.
B) Visual Basic .NET.
C) Java.
D) C++.
28) A 4 GL, nonprocedural language–often provided with the database management system–
which is used to retrieve data from a database is called a ________ language.
A) query
B) search
C) lookup
D) retrieval
29) Which of the following is a collection of software tools to help automate all phases of the
software development life cycle?
A) COBOL
B) CASE
C) XML
D) UNIX
30) Which of the following is an example of communications interface software that is used to
transfer files from one computer system to another?
A) CICS
B) FTP
C) UML
D) Apache
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31) The CPU is made up of two components, the control unit and memory.
32) When a data item is retrieved from a memory cell, either to print out the item or to use it in a
computation, the contents of the cell are unchanged.
33) The stored-program concept allows users to specify a list of operations that can be carried
out at electronic speeds, rather than waiting for the user to specify each operation separately.
34) Encapsulation is one of the important features of objects (in object-oriented programming) in
which a subclass inherits the properties, methods, and events of the class to which it belongs.
35) Virtual memory is a procedure by which the operating system switches portions of programs
between main memory and direct access files so that portions of enough programs are stored in
main memory to enable efficient multiprogramming; to the user, it appears as though an
unlimited amount of main memory is available.