Can you believe that the authors present this chapter on databases already? We have’t even had time to explore hardware and software to the level that we want or need! (

Now are able to move into a specific application, databases! How exciting, right? I will be asking some time this week what experience everyone has with databases, but we will not be expecting people to create one or work with one. But, first, let’s examine why this is valuable to us and to our organizations.

Organizing Data and Information…now that is a challenge for us today given the overwhelming amount of data available today. One could read the title of this chapter and not anticipate that the theory of database design and management would be included. Some authors consider this to be a key element and have clearly indicated the role and influence of database theory and practice is essential. A well-managed organization and IS department can be compared with a well-designed and functioning database.

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Source: http://www.datawarehouse4u.info/images/data_warehouse_architecture.jpg

The effort this week will not attempt to present the entirety of database analysis, design, maintenance, and management, but will present an overview of it. For those of you who are not experienced or expert in any programming languages, our treatment will be a huge sigh of relief, because we will not create any databases. We will leave that for those other courses. But I would ask that everyone post as part of their notes how much experience you have in creating databases (and if you don’t have any, what you’d like in a database that would be created for you).

With the explosion of data, the challenge already exists of accessibility, interpreting, and changing DATA into INFORMATION. Once we have accomplished this feat, we can then move onto the next stage and that is KNOWLEDGE. Since we