INSY 472 : File management and Database Systems

Traditional File processing

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This is a scenario where data is organized,
stored and processed in independent files.
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Data is dependent and tied to the application
that created it.
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The file processing approach became too
cumbersome, costly and inflexible and had the
following major problems:
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Data Redundancy –Independent files contain a
lot of duplicated data due to the same data being
stored in different locations. This caused update
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Lack of Data Integration – having data in
independent files made it difficult to satisfy ad hoc
requests for data from multiple files. Retrieval
required special applications that made it costly,
time consuming and difficult.
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Data Dependence – applications stored files in a
specific format. Thus changes to this format meant
a change had to be done to the applications
referencing the data.
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Lack of data integrity and Standardization –
due to the multiple applications referencing the
data it was possible for data to be referenced
differently in different applications. Also integrity
( accuracy and completeness) of data was hard to
achieve because there was no control over the
 The Database Management
Approach
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The database management approach was
conceived as a solution to problems with the
file processing approach. The database
management approach consolidates data
which was in separate files into a database
that can be accessed by different programs.
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The database is managed by a DBMS
( database management system) that helps in
the creation, interrogation and maintenance of
the database.
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Database development involves defining and
organizing the content and structure of the data
needed to build a database.
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Database interrogation is the process of asking
the database for information using a query or a
report. Queries are ad hoc requests for specific
information from a database. Reports are requests
for predefined data from a database.
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Database maintenance is the process of
changing the state of the database by carrying out
a transaction on the database ( transactions have
to conform to ACID properties).
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Types of databases include :
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Operational Databases ( subject area databases,
transaction or production databases) this store
detailed data needed to support the business
processes and operations of a company.
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Distributed Databases this are databases or
parts of databases that are replicated at various
locations.
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External Databases are databases found outside
the boundaries of an organization and can be
accessed for free or for a fee.
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Hypermedia Databases are databases consisting
of hyperlinked pages of multimedia ( text,
graphics, images, video clips and audio)
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Data warehousing – a data warehouse stores
data that has been extracted from various
operational, external and other databases of
an organization. It is a source of cleaned,
transformed and catalogued data that can be
used for data mining, online analytical
processing and other forms of business
analysis, market research and decision
support.
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Data marts are subsets of a data warehouse
that focus on a specific aspect of the
organization.
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Data mining – this is where data in a data
warehouse is analyzed to reveal hidden
patterns and trends in historical business
activity. Data mining can be used to discover
new correlations, patterns and trends in vast
amounts of business data. Data mining can be
used to:
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Perform market-basket analysis to identify new
product bundles.
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Find root causes of quality or manufacturing
problems.
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Acquire new and retain old customers.
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Cross-sell to existing customers.