Database System In Organizations And Its Management Essay. (70 Characters)

Your task is to write a reflective essay based on the following topics discussed in the class: 
Database, Big Data and Business Intelligence  
How Information systems support decision making in organisation  
The protection and safeguarding of databases in an organisation.  
 
A typical process in developing your essay might comprise: 
1. Sourcing and reviewing relevant literature on the above subjects. 
2. Finding a relevant, published case study and analysing it critically. 
3. Synthesising the outcomes of the two activities above to provide findings and recommendation.

Types of Databases

This should show that you have fully understood the brief and that you are going to cover everything required.

There are various organizations that mainly deals with a large set of data which makes it organized and useful in decision making process in various organizations.

Therefore a database is a collection of data which is well organized; this database consists of various components such as table, query, report and views.

The database of any organization is managed by a database management system that is a software that interacts with the users and other applications among the databases management systems are mysql, sql server and  oracle.

The database storages information avails it anytime quickly, however the database has eradicated the use of the manual way of storage of the data which highly lead to cutting in operation costs in the organizations and also increase on the efficiency of data retrieval which in returns increase on level of service delivery to the clients.

The organizations uses information management systems that are linked with the database these mainly helps in storing, retrieving and updating of data, therefore it allows management do analyze the trend of the organization hence enable good decision making.

Since the database holds  sensitive information about any given organization its is required to be  secure from any malicious attackers and from access by some un authorized users ,however the data should be protected from loss and this is achieved by use of backup of the data often.

The database is the correction of data in any given organization this data is stored and managed by the database management systems .

The management system is made using some applications like the mysql ,sql servers and oracle which manages a large set of data that describes the activities carried by the organization.

Business intelligence is a set of software that is used for efficient analysis of the data that is used by the organizations

Below is the in depth analysis of database, big data and business intelligence:

• Databases .

Database is an organized information which is easily accessed, managed, updated and retrieved ,it  can appear in many formats which includes audios, and text.

The database is used in many places like companies to store names of the employees and even some can be complex such that they have various data formats.

Below are some few examples of databases in our real life situation:

• Employees contacts details.
• The employees address details.
• The census Bureau data.

However the databases are dived into units called tables where table is collection of cells which consists of columns and rows where rows are given an index field that enables the quick retrieval of information required .

The are various operations that can be done to the data stored in tables of database these are like updating, expansion, deletion and addition of data. These databases do querying of its data and also allow some software to execute and use its stored data.

The database also has other features that are very useful which includes schema, table, query ,reports and the view ,the operation and modeling of database enable the formation of models that process the required information for instance checking whether a certain restaurant has a vacant room for a visitor.

Relational Databases

The database is managed by the database management system which is software that enables the users and some other applications to interact and do analysis of the data.However it is mainly used to create, query, update,and administer the database. The,PostgreSQL ,and MongoDB are types of database management systems that  enables applications to work with the database there are standards like the SQL,ODBC and  JDBC that creates an interface for that.

Currently there are many types of databases these databases includes relational, distributed ,and cloud databases.

1. Relational databases.

The relational database was developed in late 1970 and is organized in a tabular form using many forms ,however these database has tables which has a set of columns and rows where the data is stored.

One of the most standard application in relational databases are the SQL databases,however  this database is able to accommodate changes to original one without making any changes to the applications that do exist.

1. Distributed databases.

The distributed database is a database whose portions are saved in various physical locations and  its processes are duplicated in many portions of  the network.

This database is classified as heterogeneous or homogeneous where the  heterogeneous type  has same hardware, operating system and the database software in all locations while the homogeneous type all  areas have a distinct database.

1. Cloud databases.

The cloud database is located in either hybrid,public or private  locations which are all in virtualized environments therefore it provides many organizations with storage capacity which are  scalable and are always available where they also gives applications support services.

This is type of database that is used while using very huge set of data which is distributed over networks, however they make it more efficient in performance while using distributed data therefore it is also used in analysis of data of organizations stored in many series of servers.

• Big Data.

This is a term referring to a data that appears in large volumes, the data is in structure or unstructured in nature, this keeps record of all organization’s business daily transactions, through appropriate analysis of this data the organizations are able to make good decisions and strategize on how to improve their businesses.

The importance of the big data is to minimize costs, time, generation of new products and give better quality, and making of smart decisions in business.

Through big data analysis the organizations are able to achieve the following:

• Know their cause of failure, issues and fault in their time of operation.
• Coupon generation while selling a product depending on the trend of buying by the customers.
• Will be able to make calculations in terms of risks within a short time.
• Able to determine any attempt of fraud early enough before it has impact on the organization.

The  business intelligence  entails the strategy, process, application, data, and the technology that are used for collecting ,analyzing, presenting, and disseminating the information related to the businesses .

The following are some few functions of the business intelligence:

1. Mining of data.
2. Performing analysis online.
3. Managing of performance of business.
4. Processing the events that are complex.
5. Doing analysis to predict.

All this is used in order to ease the big data analysis and interpretation. The following are the components of business intelligence:

• Aggregation and allocations in multiple dimensions.
• Renormalizing, tagging and standardizing.
• Reporting and analysis alerts which are timely.
• Interfacing of data that is not structured.

2. Information Systems Support Decision Making In Organization

The information system is the integration of the hardware, software and some networking items these give the management the information and data that is good to analyze, monitor, make a decision and do a report on the organization trend (Jeffrey, 2012).

This system is used for collecting, storing, and availing data to the intended users who uses it during decision making process.

Distributed Database

The information system assists in decision making through the following ways:

1. Information Access

Since the management need quick accessing of information in order to make a decision concerning various operations like finances, market, and strategic plans, the information system therefore give the management information about finance, manufactures, marketing and therefore the information system enables speedy and simplified retrieval of information by storing it in a centralized location through the network and assist to make quick and accurate decisions.

1. Data Collection

The data in and out of organization is brought together by information system , this is established by joining  the centralized databases with the other partners like distributors, sales persons where a data of transactions is taken to database every day and the management use the updated information to make their decision (Ralph , 2015).

1. Collaboration

The management system enable group to make a decision ,however this will allow the approved members to view the data in case some are at a different places.

1. Interpretation

The information system will enable the  management to know the outcomes of the decisions they make ,this is where it converts the data from raw form to information and this can give the trend and the possible effects to the organizations after the changes ,for instance the sales mangers determines the effects of changing of price to the sales units (Peter, 2013).

1. Presentation

The information system has a special tool used to report ,this allow the decision makers to know the required information ,this is where the managers are able to extract the information required and this enhances the quick making of decision (Vladimir, 2014).

3. Databases Protection And Safeguarding In An Organization.

The data is most important in an organization and therefore it is required to be protected from unauthorized access ,there are four ways that the data can be protected as below:

1. Automating Back-Up and Building a Redundancy

This is required to be a compulsory exercise to all organizations, this is by banking the data in a different location apart from the hard disk  this can be in a remote servers ,this will enable you to recover the lost data in case there is a disaster or the computer is stolen ,there are various back up like cloud computing like the dropbox and the carbonites,(Jane , 2016).

1. Servers Virtualization

This is done by virtualizing servers this is by using server machine for running various environments of the real server like the emailing, web services and databases in it, however this allows in making recovery easy when the disaster arises  (Saunders, 2013).

1. Running  Full Suites of  Services Security

The data is safeguarded, this is by protecting it from the viruses ,intrusions that can end up compromising data and put systems into risk (Ronald, 2014).

This is achieved where one do fix the firewalls hardware and it protects both the software and hardware ,however any intrusion attempt is blocked from getting into the network.

The data that either get into system or get out of system is protected by the anti viruses and spam’s filter Anti-virus and spam filters, where the content filters give protection to computers from being attacked by the malwares or website that could be having any harm (Marakas, 2015).

1. Disasters Preparedness  Planning  

The disasters are very serious threat since it can bring an organization to an end  ,therefore it is very critical to ensure that data is secured and measure to counter disaster are put in  place ,this is done by creating a plan to recover from a disaster in order to reduce its effect to the organization (Alan, 2013).

The database is very important in any organization and I recommend that all types of organizations to adopt it for data storage.  The following are some of recommendations that will enable the database highly useful and maintain high security level  (Quaddus, 2013).

1. Installation of only required components: This is achieved while doing the custom installation where only the required products are selected for storage.
2. Locking and expiring default user accounts: The databases like oracle has many default accounts after creating instances of database, through configuration one can be able to lock and expire all those accounts which are default.
3. Changing default user password: The database is vulnerable if the default password are not changed and this can be fixed by changing of administrator password immediately after installation.
4. Enabling protection of data dictionary: This is done in order to block any system user that has access privileges as any user.
5. Enforcing effective access controls: This is done by client’s authentication where the remote controls are put off in order to have secure installation process.   
6. Restriction to network access: The only few people who are allowed to have access to network are given the login password while un authorized user are restricted from access.
7. Applying  security patches and workarounds: This is done by sealing the any security holes and perform appropriate action ,the patches are both applicable in the operating system and in the database .

Conclusions

The database being the collection of data that is vital in the organization, it is very useful in terms of decision making where it is integrated with the organization information system, however knowing the impact of database information system there is need to ensure that the system is always safe to ensure no intrusion to the data or the data get lost any time due to disasters. Therefore I recommend all organization to take much attention to databases and information systems for improvement in their services and their output level.

References:

J.Marakas, (2015), "Management Information Systems", 10th edition, USA, New York: McGraw-Hill.

D.Alan, (2013), “System analysis and design”,1^st edition, Paris, Europe: Federation of Europe Publishers.

J.Quaddus,(2013), "Managing information systems: Ten essential topics", 1st edition, Holland,Amsterdam: Springer & Atlantis Press.

Ronald, (2014), “design and analysis of lean production system”,2^ndedition, chenai, India:K.A publishers.

,Saunders,( 2013), "Managing and using information systems: A strategic approach", 5th edition, USA, Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons Inc.

L.Jane ,(2016), “essential of business information system”,2^nd edition, , USA, New York: McGraw-Hill.

Vladimir, (2014), “Information system analysis and modeling”,3^rdedition,chenai, India:K.A publishers.

R.Peter, (2013), “Database systems”,1^st edition, USA, Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons Inc.

S.Ralph ,(2015),  “Fundamentals of information system”,1^st edition, Paris, Europe: Federation of Europe Publishers.

W.Jeffrey,(2012), “systems Analysis and design methods”,2^nd edition, chenai, India:K.A publishers.