Imagine trying to operate a business without knowing who your customers are, what products you are selling, who is
working for you, who owes you money, and whom you owe money. All businesses have to keep this type of data and
much more; and just as importantly, they must have those data available to decision makers when they need them. It
can be argued that the ultimate purpose of all business information systems is to help businesses use information as
an organizational resource. At the heart of all of these systems are the collection, storage, aggregation, manipulation,
dissemination, and management of data.
Depending on the type of information system and the characteristics of the business, these data could vary from a few
megabytes on just one or two topics to terabytes covering hundreds of topics within the business’s internal and external
environment. Telecommunications companies such as Sprint and AT&T are known to have systems that keep data on
trillions of phone calls, with new data being added to the system at speeds up to 70,000 calls per second!1 Not only
do these companies have to store and manage these immense collections of data, they have to be able to find any given
fact in that data quickly. Consider the case of Internet search staple Google. While Google is reluctant to disclose many
details about its data storage specifications, it is estimated that the company responds to over 91 million searches per
day across a collection of data that is several terabytes in size. Impressively, the results of these searches are available
nearly instantly.
How can these businesses process this much data? How can they store it all, and then quickly retrieve just the facts
that decision makers want to know, just when they want to know it? The answer is that they use databases. Databases,
as explained in detail throughout this book, are specialized structures that allow computer-based systems to store,
manage, and retrieve data very quickly. Virtually all modern business systems rely on databases; therefore, a good
understanding of how these structures are created and their proper use is vital for any information systems
professional. Even if your career does not take you down the amazing path of database design and development,
databases will be a key component underpinning the systems that you work with. In any case, it is very likely that, in
your career, you will be making decisions based on information generated from data. Thus, it is important that you
Imagine trying to operate a business without knowing who your customers are, what products you are selling, who is
working for you, who owes you money, and whom you owe money. All businesses have to keep this type of data and
much more; and just as importantly, they must have those data available to decision makers when they need them. It
can be argued that the ultimate purpose of all business information systems is to help businesses use information as
an organizational resource. At the heart of all of these systems are the collection, storage, aggregation, manipulation,
dissemination, and management of data.
Depending on the type of information system and the characteristics of the business, these data could vary from a few
megabytes on just one or two topics to terabytes covering hundreds of topics within the business’s internal and external
environment. Telecommunications companies such as Sprint and AT&T are known to have systems that keep data on
trillions of phone calls, with new data being added to the system at speeds up to 70,000 calls per second!1 Not only
do these companies have to store and manage these immense collections of data, they have to be able to find any given
fact in that data quickly. Consider the case of Internet search staple Google. While Google is reluctant to disclose many
details about its data storage specifications, it is estimated that the company responds to over 91 million searches per
day across a collection of data that is several terabytes in size. Impressively, the results of these searches are available
nearly instantly.
How can these businesses process this much data? How can they store it all, and then quickly retrieve just the facts
that decision makers want to know, just when they want to know it? The answer is that they use databases. Databases,
as explained in detail throughout this book, are specialized structures that allow computer-based systems to store,
manage, and retrieve data very quickly. Virtually all modern business systems rely on databases; therefore, a good
understanding of how these structures are created and their proper use is vital for any information systems
professional. Even if your career does not take you down the amazing path of database design and development,
databases will be a key component underpinning the systems that you work with. In any case, it is very likely that, in
your career, you will be making decisions based on information generated from data. Thus, it is important that you
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