Systems Analysis and Design

Chapter 2 Information System Building Blocks

The Product Information Systems

Data: raw facts about the organization and its business transactions. Information: data that has been refined and organized by processing and purposeful intelligence. Data are by product of doing business. Information is a resource created from the data to serve the management and decision making needs of the business.

IT and IS
Information System: an arrangement of people, data, processes and interfaces that interact to support and improve day to day operations in a business. Information Technology: combination of computer and telecommunications technology. The fundamental building blocks of Information System includes People, Data, Processes and Interfaces.

Classes of Information System

Transaction Processing System Management Information System Decision Support System Expert System Office Automation System

Transaction Processing System (TPS)

These are information system application that capture and process data about business transactions. It can either:
Respond to business transactions (orders, time cards, payments), or; Initiate transactions (invoices, paychecks, receipts)

Examples:
Airline Reservations Bank deposits and withdrawal Course Registrations Payroll

Transaction Processing System (TPS, cont)

Data Maintenance: provides for custodial updates to stored data. Business Process Redesign (BPR): is the study, analysis and redesign of fundamental business processes to reduce costs and / or improve value added to the business

Management Information System (MIS)

It is an information system applications that provide management oriented reporting. It is normally produced from a shared database that stores data from various sources which includes TPS. It can present detailed information, summary information or exception information. Examples:
Financial Reporting Schedule of Classes Sales forecasting Sales Reporting

Decision Support System (DSS)

An information system application that provides its users with decision oriented information whenever a decision making situation arises. Also known as Executive Information System (EIS) when used by the executive managers. It does not solve the problem, but it only gives information that will support the decision process.

Expert System (ES)

It is a programmed decision making information system that captures and reproduces the knowledge and expertise of an expert problem solver. Expert Systems are implemented with Artificial Intelligence technology.

Office Automation System (OAS)

It supports the wide range of business office activities that provide for improved work flow and communications between workers. It helps users to create and share documents and communicate with one another. It includes word processing, electronic messages, workgroup scheduling and workgroup computing.

Data Building Blocks

System Owners View of Data
The average system owner is not interested in raw data. They are interested in information that adds new business knowledge.
Business Knowledge: it is the insight that is gained from timely, accurate and relevant information.
e.g Customers, Products, Equipment, Buildings, Orders and Payments A customer can place orders - an ORDER must be placed by a customer

System Users View of Data

The users of an information system are the experts about the data that describe the business. They define data requirements for an IS.
Data Requirements: these are the representation of users data in terms of entities, attributes, relationships and rules.

Data Building Blocks

System Designers View of Data
They translate data requirements into computer databases that will be made available via IS.
Database Schema: the transformation of the data requirements into a set of data structures that can be implemented by a DBMS.

System Builders View of Data

They are the one who works closely with the DBMS.

Process Building Blocks

System Owners View of Processes
System Owners are usually interested in the big picture groups of high level processes called business functions.
Business Functions: on going activities that support the business.
e.g sales, services, manufacturing, shipping, receiving , accounting

System Users View of Processes

Users are concerned with business processes.
Business Processes: are activities that respond to business events. Process Requirements: representation of the users business processes in terms of activities, data flows or work flow.

Process Building Blocks

Policy: set of rules