Information System Building Blocks

1

Information system building blocksLearning objectives:1). Review the fundamentals of information systems.2). Understand the framework for information systems architecture.3). Describe four groups of stakeholders in information systems development and their perspectives.4). Describe four building blocks of information systems framework- data, processes, interfaces and

geography.Introduction:This chapter describes the fundamental aspects of information systems and takes an architectural look atinformation systems and applications.1) Review the fundamentals of information systems.Data are raw materials about the organization and business transactions. Information is those data, whichare refined and organized by processing and purposeful intelligence. People, data, processes, interfaces andgeography that are involved in daily business operations are collectively called information system.Information technology, which is the combination of computer technology and telecommunicationstechnology support modern information system.

Table 2.1 The types of Information systems (IS)

Type of InformationSystem

Description

Transaction ProcessingSystems

also called data processing system. These are information system applications,which get the data and process them for business transactions. Transaction processingsystems can initiate transactions, respond to transactions and also are involved in datamaintenance. Response time, throughput, accuracy, consistency, and service arecritical aspects of transaction processing systems. When business process redesigntakes place, underlying transaction processing system must be redesigned.

Management Informationsystems

provide management oriented reporting in predetermined, fixed format. These helpmanagers on planning, monitoring and controlling business operations.

Decision Support Systems help users to make decisions by providing useful information that supportsunstructured decisions. DSS identifies problems, propose possible solutions, access toinformation needed, analyze possible decisions and simulate their likely results.Users and manager using DSS tools access data warehouse. This read-onlyinformational database is to support unstructured decisions using detailed, summaryand exception information.

Expert Systems simulate thinking of experts. These applications are implemented with artificialintelligence technology. These applications capture the knowledge and expertise ofexperts to help users with less expertise

Office Information Systems support the wide range of business office activities.These applications improve workflow and communications between workersregardless of their physical locations

Personal and Work GroupInformation Systems

are typically built using personal computer technology and software. Personalinformation system is for individual’s productivity and designed to support a singleuser’s needs. While work group information system meets the needs of a work groupand to increase the group’s productivity.

Created by PDF Generator (http://www.alientools.com/), to remove this mark, please buy the software.

http://www.alientools.com/

2

2) Understand the framework for information systems architecture

Unifying framework into which various people with different perspectives can organize and view thefundamental building blocks of information is called information systems architecture. System owners,system users, system designers and builders, each having different views of the system, are the broadlyclassified groups of stakeholders of information system. Information systems framework with each groupof stakeholders and their own view of the information system are shown in the figure 2.1.



3

3) Describe four groups of stakeholders of information systems development and their perspectives.

Information workers are those people involving in creation, collection, processing, distribution, and useof information. They can be further divided into 4 groups: system owners, system users, and systemdesigners

The role of the systems analyst is to facilitate information systems development by analyzing differentviews of each stakeholder and ease the communication between the various other stakeholders.

4) Describe four building blocks of information system framework- data, processes, interfaces andgeography.

Even if two stakeholders are within the same row in the figure 2.1, they each can focus on different aspectsof the system. Four different focuses in a system are data, processes, interfaces and geography.

4.a) Building Blocks of DataData are raw facts about the organization and business transactions that are used to produce usefulinformation. Therefore data is considered one of the fundamental building blocks of an information system.The main goal of the data building block is to capture and store business data using database technology.

SystemOwners

System owners are whose people who are responsible for budgeting the money and time todevelop, operate, maintain the IS, system’s justification and acceptance. They are moreinterested in general terms, and not in details.

System Users System users are those people who use the information system more often than any otherinformation workers are. Their main tasks are capturing, validating, entering, respondingto, storing, and exchanging data and information. They are mainly concerned withbusiness requirements of the systemInternal users: The majority of system users are often internal users who are employeesof the business. Examples of those users are:Clerical and service workersTechnical and professional workersKnowledge workersSupervisors, middle managers and executive managersRemote and mobile users: Mobile users are the employees who work outside of theiroffice. Similarly remote users are the internal users who work from home and areconnected to the company’s information system. All of these new classes of system usersare supported by the modern telecommunication technology.

Today, businesses redesign their information system such that external users can alsoaccess to their information system. This redesign enhances the activities connecting theirbusiness and trading partners, suppliers, customers and even to the end customer

SystemDesigners

Bridge the gap between users’ business requirements and builders’ technicalimplementation of the system. Designing the computer files, databases, inputs, outputs,screens, networks and programs which response to users’ requirements and constraints aretheir main tasks. Integrating technical aspects of the system back into the daily business isalso their job.

SystemBuilders

Implement the information system components based on the design specifications. Oftensystem designers and system builders for the same component are the same.



4

SystemOwners’View

Owners are often concerned with their business resources needed for the system’s missionor must be managed to achieve the business objectives such as customers, products,equipment, buildings, orders and payments. He is interested in the global view of businessentities and relationships.

SystemUsers’ View

Users are very familiar with data capturing, storing, processing and editing. Theymanipulate data of the system on the regular basis and they are concerned with currentdata implementation.

System users are responsible on defining the data requirements, which are thepresentation of user’s data in terms of entities, attributes, relationships, and rules. Datarequirement has to be independent of the underlying technology. Since the system usersare the experts about the system’s data, additional entities and relationships can beidentified along with system owners’ view of data E/R diagram.

SystemDesigners’View

Designer’s view of the data is limited by the technology used by their businessinformation system. Chosen Technology has to be used and the designers are responsibleon translating users’ data requirements into computer files and databases schema, datastructures fields, indexes etc.

Systems designers use database schema, transformation of the data model into a set ofdata structures that can be implemented using the chosen database technology, to translateusers’ data requirement and to provide builders with sufficient details to build a consistentsystem.

SystemBuilders’View

They implement data in details and in precise language. Their view of the data is the mosttechnology-oriented way and closest to the database technology foundation such as SQL.

4.b) Building Blocks of Processes

Processes are defined as tasks to be performed to complete the mission of the business. These can beperformed by people, or automated by machines. The main objective of the process focus in theinformation system is to automate appropriate processes with computer technology. Similar to data focuses,each category of the information workers views system processes with different perspectives.

System Owners’View

System owners are concerned with Business Function.Business Functions are the set of on-going activities that support the business.These functions are not detailed discrete processes. These are the main processes,which can further subdivided into many specific tasks.

Today, information system has the trend that goes from function-centered systemto cross-functional information system.

System Users’View

Contrarily to system owners, the system users view processes in terms of discretebusiness processes.Business Processes are the discrete activities with have input and output, startingtimes and stopping time. These can be repeating processes, occasional processes orrarely occurring processes. This term is independent of the information technology.Specific rules and procedures are given to business processes.



5

SystemDesigners’ View

Application architecture specifies which specific technology system designersmust use. Designers’ view of processes is often limited by the chosen technology.System designers work on application schema, a model showing translation of theselected business processes into computer programs.

System Builders’View

System builders represent processes using precise computer programminglanguages that write application programs. They often use a technique calledprototyping to build quickly a functional model of an application and to test theapplication.

4.c) Building Blocks of InterfacesInterfaces are about how a system is connected to other systems and how the system is presented to theuser. Interfaces must be effective and efficient to the system’s users and to other information systems.Human engineering and ergonomics are also considered to produce more usable and productiveinformation systems.

4.d) Building Blocks of Geography


As other focuses, system owners are not interested in details, but in overallcontext of the system as it relates to the business as whole and other systems.They are concerned with simple context model. Context model represents aconceptual view of how the system’s input and output is interacting with otherbusiness.

System Users’View

System users are very interested in user interface, which is how the systemusers directly interact with the information system. Interface deals with inputs,queries, receiving outputs and help. GUI and it "look and feel" for informationsystem application make users easy to learn and easy to use new application.


System designers are interested in both user interfaces and system interfaces.They take a consideration of other aspects of user interfaces such asconsistency, completeness, user dialogs, error messages, etc. System designers,view the interface in terms of interface schema, which deals with systemstates, events changing the system states and responses to events. Integratingdifferent systems to interoperate and designing the system-to-system interfacesthat allow new information system to be added to the existing one, are otheraspects that system designers deal with.


System builders construct user and system interface. System builders alsoperform installation and testing. User interfaces technology is often come withthe same programming language environments used to construct the computerprocesses. Constructing system interfaces is somehow more complex.Middleware system interface technology is popular. Middleware sites inbetween applications software and integrate different technologies so that theycan interoperate.



6

Information systems geography defines how the data, processes and interfaces are distributed to differentbusiness locations and how these data and information are moved between those locations. Decentralizingapplications and databases to different computers across the network is called distributed computing. Oneof the popular distributed computing is client/server computing, which information is shared by clientsand servers machines.


System owners view the geography as operating locations. Deciding the degree ofcentralizing, distributing or duplicating systems are system owners’ concern.

System Users’View

Similar to system owners, system users’ view of geography is as operatinglocations, but closer to day-to-day locations. Communication requirements areimportant for system users. Communication requirement is the informationresource requirements for operating locations and how different operating locationsneed to communicate with one another.


System designers define geography in terms of network schema, which supportsthe business network.

Network schema is also called a network configuration or topology. It identifiesall the computer centers, computers and networking hardware that are involved in acomputer application in a technical model.

Distributing data, processes and interfaces across the network, collectively calledactivities partitioning, are performed by those system designers.


System builders implement network programs using telecommunication languagesand standards. Network programs are machine-readable specifications of computercommunications parameters such as node addresses, protocols, line speeds, flowcontrols, security, privileges and other complex, networking parameters.



Documents

Information System Building Blocks