Transcript BICS263 Introduction to Computer Information Systems

ISYS 363
Information Systems for
Management
David Chao
Technology
• Changing the way of doing business
• Example: Travel
– Searching for flights, hotels
• Yahoo Travel, Expedia
– Making reservations
• US Aiways -- http://www.usairways.com/awa/
– Select your seats
– Web check-In
– Tour information
Faster Airport Security Check-in Process
Introduced - For a Price
• The Clear Registered Traveler Program, also known as
"Clear Pass"
– http://www.flyclear.com/
• Passengers willing to pay an annual $128 fee will be
able to pre-register. A scan of their hands and fingers,
as well as an electronic "read" of their irises will be
recorded.
• If the applicant passes scrutiny, a small clear card with
an imbedded microchip will be sent to the traveler from
Transportation Security Administration allowing him
or her to bypass the traditional screening area.
Supermarket Smart Cart
• Stop & Shop, a chain based in the Boston area, is
seeking to change the whole way we shop for
groceries — including the dreaded check-out lane.
– Shopping Buddy: a wireless touch-screen device that is
attached to a shopping cart and scans in items placed in
the cart by shoppers.
– IBM Everywhere Display: Beamed from the
supermarket ceiling, this device transforms surface into
an interactive computer. In a supermarket, you will be
likely to confront it on the floor, where you can access
information by tapping your foot on the display.
• Video: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/5465603#5465603
Technology Life Cycle
• Technology pushes itself to progress.
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Problem
Solution
Service
Competition
Obsolete
• Companies that develop technologies and
companies that use technologies.
Information Age
• Information Age/society:
– the majority of workers are involved in the creation,
distribution, and application of information.
• Should the President Use E-mail?
– http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/07/should-thepresident-use-e-mail/
– The MUM Effect:The effect in which subordinates routinely fail
to deliver important bad news to their superiors.
– e-mail may be a powerful antidote to the MUM effect by
stripping away the social cues that make delivering bad news
unpleasant for the messenger.
– Businesses depend on information technology to get
their work done.
Digital Entrepreneur
• People who develop new technologies.
– Search engines, map, browser, etc.
• People who use the technologies
innovatively.
– Many interesting Internet websites.
• SecondLife: http://secondlife.com/
– Linden dollar, buying virtual land
Examples of Small On-Line Stores
• Amazon Associates:
– Amazon.com's affiliate marketing program. By linking to
Amazon products and services you can add compelling
content for your site visitors enjoyment and receive up to
10% in referral fees for doing so.
– aStore
• eBay Stores:
– An eBay Store helps you get more out of eBay's access to
millions of shoppers worldwide. By showcasing all of your
merchandise in one central location, an eBay Store creates
a central shopping destination where buyers can learn
more about you, your products, and your policies.
Why study information systems?
• An end-user perspective
– Enhance personal productivity, and the
productivity of their work groups and
department.
– Increase your opportunities for success:
• be aware of the management problems and
opportunities presented by the information
technology.
Why study information systems?
• An enterprise perspective: Information
systems play a vital role in the success of
an enterprise.
– Efficient operations
– Effective management
– Competitive advantage
Business Are Becoming Internetworked
Enterprises
• The internet and Internet-like networks (intranets and
extranets) have become the primary information
technology infrastructure that supports the business
operations of many organizations.
• Electronic commerce:
– The buying and selling, and marketing and servicing of
products, services, and information over a variety of computer
networks.
• Globalization:
– Global markets, global production facilities, global partners,
global competitors, global customers.
Techies might finally be able to
move into top management
• More Chief Information Officers (CIOs)
are reporting directly to CEOs.
• More CIOs are being included on
management committees.
• In a recent survey of executives at capital
market firms, 89% believed that
technology managers would assume
greater responsibilities.
Course Introduction
• IT – Introduction to information technology
– Computer hardware, software, network
– IT management
• IS – Introduction to information systems
– Information system components
– Types of information systems
• PC – personal computing
– Advanced spreadsheet techniques in decision support.
– Introduction to database and database application
development
– Internet techniques
What is Information Technology?
• A term used to refer to a wide variety of items and
abilities used in the creation, storage, and dispersal
of data, information and knowledge.
– Data: Raw facts, figures, and details.
• Numerical, text, multimedia
– Information: An organized, meaningful, and useful
interpretation of data.
– Knowledge: Insight of a subject matter.
• Its three main components are computers,
communications networks, and know-how.
Hardware
• Input devices
• CPU and primary storage
– RAM - temporary storage
– Processor
• Control Unit - decoder
• Arithmetic & Logic Unit (ALU)
• Output devices
• Secondary storage devices
• Communication devices
Computer System Concept
Types of Computer Systems
• Microcomputers
– personal computing, workstation,network server.
• Minicomputers
– Departmental and workgroup systems, network server,
workstation.
• Mainframes
– Enterprisewide systems, transaction processors
– Data mining and warehousing
• Supercomputers
– Billions to trillions of operations per second (gigaflops and teraflops)
– Parallel processing
– Scientific calculations
• Networked computer systems
– WAN, LAN, PAN
Personal Area Network
• A personal area network (PAN) is a computer
network used for communication among computer
devices (including telephones and personal digital
assistants) close to one person. The devices may or
may not belong to the person in question. The reach
of a PAN is typically a few meters.
• BlueTooth: It is an industrial specification for
wireless PANs. Bluetooth provides a way to connect
and exchange information between devices such as
mobile phones, laptops, PCs, printers, digital
cameras and video game consoles via a short-range
radio frequency.
Land Warrior
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_Warrior
• The Helmet Subsystem (HSS) combined a lightweight
advanced helmet with a computer and OLED display
• The Navigation Subsystem (NSS) provided positional
information, it integrates a GPS receiver and a Dead
Reckoning Module (DRM) that maintains accurate
location when GPS signal becomes unavailable.
• The Communication Network Radio Subsystem (CNRS)
provided communications capabilities for the Land
Warrior.
• Land Warrior's software system was powered by a variant
of the Linux operating system and has a modular, open
architecture for further improvement.
Social Networking
• Application that works on bluetooth enabled
mobile phone:
• Imity:
– detect and notifies you of other Imity users as
well as bluetooth enabled phones in your
vicinity by vibrating your phone.
– deliver alerts for select people/friends whenever
you come across them.
Hardware Trends
• CPU: Parallel processor systems.
– Intel’s Dual-Core processors: two processors built into a single chip.
• Storage:
– RAID (Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks): Arrays of disk
drives that provides a fault tolerant capability by storing multiple
copies of data on several disks.
• RAID hardware/RAID software, Mirroring.
– Erasable optical disk.
– Terabyte hard drive:
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terabyte
– Flash memory:
• non-volatile
• Camera, PDA
• Input/output: video and multimedia input/output, voice recognition
and response, optical and magnetic recognition, biometric scanner.
• Hand-held devices
– PDA, Smart phone
Radio Frequency Identification
• RFID is a system for tagging and identifying
objects.
– Antenna to send and receive signals.
– RFID reader
• Applications:
– An alternative to bar code
• Supermarket
– Tracking objects
– Digital watermark to prevent counterfeit
Moore’s Law
• A doubling in the number of transistors per
integrated circuit every 18 to 24 months
– Originally observed in 1965, it holds true today
• Common corollary of Moore’s Law…
– Computing prices will be cut in half every 18 to
24 months
– This has been consistently accurate
– Applies to cost of storage as well
Software
• System software
– Operating system
• Application software
– University’s registration system
• Application development software
Operating system functions
– User interface
– Resource management (managing hardware)
– Task management (managing the
accomplishment of tasks)
– File management (managing data and
program files)
– Utilities (providing a variety of supporting
services)
Today’s Operating Systems
• Personal computers:
– IBM PC compatible:
• Microsoft windows, Unix-like systems such as
Linux.
– Apple Macintosh:
• Mac OS, Linux
• Mainframe computers:
– IBM z/OS, Linux
Linux and Open Source
• A Linux system is sometimes referred to as
GNU/Linux.
– GNU – free software
• Linux has been more widely ported to different
computing platforms than any other operating
system.
• Linux is the most prominent example of free
software and of open source development. Its
underlying source code is available for anyone to
use, modify, and redistribute freely, and in some
instances the entire operating system consists of
free/open source software.
Free Software: GNU.Org
• “Free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand
the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech”, not
as in “free beer”.
• Free software is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy,
distribute, study, change and improve the software. More
precisely, it refers to four kinds of freedom, for the users of the
software:
• The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
• The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to
your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a
precondition for this.
• The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your
neighbor (freedom 2).
• The freedom to improve the program, and release your
improvements to the public, so that the whole community
benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition
for this.
Operating Systems for Mobile
Devices
• Mobile devices:
– Pocket PC/PDA
– Smartphones
– Portable media center
• Operating systems:
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Windows Mobile, Windows CE
Palm OS
Symbian OS for Nokia
OS X for iPhone
Virtualization
• Virtualization is a technology that makes it possible to run
multiple operating systems and multiple applications on
the same computer at the same time, increasing the
utilization and flexibility of hardware.
• A virtual machine is a software container that can run its
own operating systems and applications as if it were a
physical computer. A virtual machine behaves exactly like
a physical computer and contains it own virtual (ie,
software-based) CPU, RAM hard disk and network
interface card (NIC). An operating system can’t tell the
difference between a virtual machine and a physical
machine, nor can applications or other computers on a
network.
• Vendors: VMware, Parallels, etc.
Application development
software
• Low level language
• High level language
– third generation
– fourth generation
• Word processing, desktop publishing, spreadsheet,
database management, graphic presentation, etc.
Compiler
• Translator: Translate the source program to
machine executable code.
• Interpreter: Translate one command at a
time.
– VBScript, JavaScript
Object-oriented development tools
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Graphical user interface
Component programming
Event-driven programming
Code generator/Wizard
• Object example:
– Excel’s cell, chart
• Object-oriented tool example:
• VB.Net
• Java
Portability
Java: Write Once Run Anywhere
Java Byte Code
Java Source Code
Java Virtual Machine
(JVM)
Java Byte Code
(Intermediate Code)
Executable Code
Microsoft’s .Net
• Language must compliance with Common
Language Specification, CLS.
• Compile the language into Microsoft Intermediate
Language (MSIL) code.
• The MSIL code is then executed in the
Common Language Runtime (CLR), which
conceptually is same as the JVM, where it is
translated into machine code by a compiler.
• Microsoft .Net is a server-side technology. It runs
on any servers that implement the .Net system.
Client-Side VS Server-Side
• Client-side technology has the browser
compatibility problem.
• Example:
• Using FireFox, Tools/Options/Web Features
– Enable Java, Enable JavaScript
• Google Maps: Draggable because of AJAX,
which is a JavaScript technique. If we
disable JavaScript, it is not draggable.
IT and Business Process
Reengineering
• Information technology provides the means to
rethink/recreate/reengineer conventional business
processes.
– Business Processes: Collections of activities, often
spanning several departments, that take one or more
kinds of input and create a result that is of value to a
company’s customers.
– Reengineering: The reshaping of business processes to
remove barriers that prohibit an organization from
providing better products and services and to help the
organization capitalize on its strengths.