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databases and data
warehouseS
Information is powerful. Information tells an organization everything from
how its current operations are performing to estimating and strategizing how
future operations might perform. New perspectives open up when people
have the right information and know how to use it. The ability to understand,
digest, analyze, and lter information is a key to success for any professional
in any industry.
SECTION 6.1 – DATA, INFORMATION, AND DATABASES
The Business Benets of High Quality Information
Storing Information Using a Relational Database Management System
Using a Relational Database for Business Advantages
Driving Websites with Data
SECTION 6.2 – BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
Supporting Decisions with Business Intelligence
The Business Benets of Data Warehousing
The Power of Big Data Analytics
6
CHAPTER
SECTION 6.1
Data, INFORMATION, and databases
This section provides a discussion on the issues found in low quality
information and how to obtain high quality information. The section primarily
focuses on the relational database model. It introduces students to entities,
attributes, primary keys, foreign keys, and data driven websites.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
Learning Outcome 6.1: Explain the four primary traits that
determine the value of information.
Information is data converted into a meaningful and useful context.
Information can tell an organization how its current operations are
performing and help it estimate and strategize about how future operations
might perform. It is important to understand the di.erent levels, formats,
and granularities of information along with the four primary traits that help
determine the value of information, which include (1) information type:
transactional and analytical; (2) information timeliness; (3) information
quality; (4) information governance.
Learning Outcome 6.2: Describe a database, a database
management system, and the relational database model.
A database maintains information about various types of objects (inventory),
events (transactions), people (employees), and places (warehouses). A
database management system (DBMS) creates, reads, updates, and deletes
data in a database while controlling access and security. A DBMS provides
methodologies for creating, updating, storing, and retrieving data in a
database. In addition, a DBMS provides facilities for controlling data access
and security, allowing data sharing, and enforcing data integrity. The
relational database model allows users to create, read, update, and delete
data in a relational database.
Learning Outcome 6.3: Identify the business advantages of a
relational database.
Many business managers are familiar with Excel and other spreadsheet
programs they can use to store business data. Although spreadsheets are
excellent for supporting some data analysis, they o.er limited functionality in
terms of security, accessibility, and 8exibility and can rarely scale to support
business growth. From a business perspective, relational databases o.er
many advantages over using a text document or a spreadsheet, including
increased 8exibility, increased scalability and performance, reduced
information redundancy, increased information integrity (quality), and
increased information security.
Learning Outcome 6.4: Explain the business bene1ts of a
data-driven website.
A data-driven website is an interactive website kept constantly updated and
relevant to the needs of its customers using a database. Data-driven
capabilities are especially useful when the website o.ers a great deal of
information, products, or services because visitors are frequently annoyed if
they are buried under an avalanche of information when searching a website.
Many companies use the Web to make some of the information in their
internal databases available to customers and business partners.
CLASSROOM OPENER
GREAT BUSINESS DECISIONS – Julius Reuter Uses Carrier
Pigeons to Transfer Information
In 1850, the idea that sending and receiving information could add business
value was born. Julius Reuter began a business that bridged the gap between
Belgium and Germany. Reuter built one of the rst information management
companies built on the premise that customers would be prepared to pay for
information that was timely and accurate.
Reuter used carrier pigeons to forward stock market and commodity prices
from Brussels to Germany. Customers quickly realized that with the early
receipt of vital information they could make fortunes. Those who had money
at stake in the stock market were prepared to pay handsomely for early
information from a reputable source, even if it was a pigeon. Eventually,
Reuter’s business grew from 45 pigeons to over 200 pigeons.
Eventually the telegraph bridged the gap between Brussels to Germany, and
Reuter’s brilliantly conceived temporary monopoly was closed.
CLASSROOM OPENER
GREAT BUSINESS DECISIONS – Edgar Codd’s Relational
Database Theory
Edgar Frank Codd was born at Portland, Dorset, in England. He studied
mathematics and chemistry at Exeter College, Oxford, before serving as a
pilot in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War. In 1948, he moved
to New York to work for IBM as a mathematical programmer. In 1953 Codd
moved to Ottawa, Canada. A decade later he returned to the USA and
received his doctorate in computer science from the University of Michigan in
Ann Arbor. Two years later he moved to San Jose, California to work at IBM's
Almaden Research Center.
In the 1960s and 1970s he worked out his theories of data arrangement,
issuing his paper "A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks" in
1970, after an internal IBM paper one year earlier. To his disappointment, IBM
proved slow to exploit his suggestions until commercial rivals started
implementing them.
Initially, IBM refused to implement the relational model in order to preserve
revenue from IMS/DB. Codd then showed IBM customers the potential of the
implementation of its model, and they in turn pressured IBM. Then IBM
included in its Future System project a System R subproject — but put in
charge of it were developers who were not thoroughly familiar with Codd's
ideas, and isolated the team from Codd. As a result, they did not use Codd's
own Alpha language but created a non-relational one, SEQUEL. Even so,
SEQUEL was so superior to pre-relational systems that it was copied, based
on pre-launch papers presented at conferences, by Larry Ellison in his Oracle
DBMS, which actually reached market before SQL/DS — due to the
then-already proprietary status of the original moniker, SEQUEL had been
renamed SQL.
Codd continued to develop and extend his relational model, sometimes in
collaboration with Chris Date. One of the normalized forms, the Boyce-Codd
Normal Form, is named after Codd. Codd also coined the term OLAP and
wrote the twelve laws of online analytical processing, although these were
never truly accepted after it came out that his white paper on the subject
was paid for by a software vendor. Edgar F. Codd died of heart failure at his
home in Williams Island, Florida at the age of 79 on Friday, April 18, 2003.
CLASSROOM EXERCISE
Understanding Quality Information
Break your students into groups and ask them to compile a list of all of the
issues found in the following information. Ask your students to also list why
most low quality information errors occur and what an organization can do to
help implement high quality information.
Custo
mer ID
Custo
mer
First
Name
Custome
r Last
Name
Address City Sta
te Zip Phone
1771 Larry Shimk 143 S. Denver NY 1789
08
911
Custo
mer ID
Custo
mer
First
Name
Custome
r Last
Name
Address City Sta
te Zip Phone
1771 Carolin
e
Shimk 143 N.
West St.
Bu.alo NY 1432
1
716-333-4567
1772 Shimk Caroline 143 N.
West St.
Bu.alo NY 1432
1
716-333-4567
1772 Heathe
r
Schwiter 55 N. W.
S. Miss
LaGran
ge
GA 1432
1
716-333-4567
1772 Debbie Fernande
z
S. Main St. Denver CO 8025
2
333-8965
1772 Debbie Fernande
z
S. Main St. Denver CO 8025
2
333-8965
1773 Justin Justin 34 Kerry
Rd.
Littleton CO 9898
7
716-67-9087
1774 Pam 66 S.
Carlton
North
Glen
CO 9876
5
343-456-6857
CLASSROOM EXERCISE
Building an ER Diagram
Break your students into groups and ask them to create an entity
relationship diagram similar to the one in Figure 6.5 for a company or
product of their choice. If the students are uncomfortable with databases,
you should recommend that they stick to a company similar to the TCCBCE,
perhaps a snack food producer, mountain bike equipment producer, or even
a footwear producer. If your students are more comfortable with databases,
ask them to choose a company that would challenge them such as a fast
food restaurant, online book seller, or even a university’s course registration
system.
The important part of this exercise is for your students to begin to
understand how the tables in a database relate. Be sure their ER diagrams
include primary keys and foreign keys. Have your students present their ER
diagrams to the class and ask the students to nd any potential errors with
the diagrams.
CORE MATERIAL
The core chapter material is covered in detail in the PowerPoint slides. Each
slide contains detailed teaching notes including exercises, class activities,
questions, and examples. Please review the PowerPoint slides for detailed
notes on how to teach and enhance the core chapter material.
