Information system building blocks

Learning 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 at
information systems and applications.
1) Review the fundamentals of information systems.
Data are raw materials about the organization and business transactions. Information is those data, which
are refined and organized by processing and purposeful intelligence. People, data, processes, interfaces and
geography that are involved in daily business operations are collectively called information system.
Information technology, which is the combination of computer technology and telecommunications
technology support modern information system.

Table 2.1 The types of Information systems (IS)

Type of Information Description

System

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

Management Information provide management oriented reporting in predetermined, fixed format. These help
systems managers on planning, monitoring and controlling business operations.

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

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

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

Personal and Work Group are typically built using personal computer technology and software. Personal
Information Systems information system is for individual’s productivity and designed to support a single
user’s needs. While work group information system meets the needs of a work group
and to increase the group’s productivity.

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 2) Understand the framework for information systems architecture

Unifying framework into which various people with different perspectives can organize and view the
fundamental 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 broadly
classified groups of stakeholders of information system. Information systems framework with each group
of stakeholders and their own view of the information system are shown in the figure 2.1.

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 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 use
of information. They can be further divided into 4 groups: system owners, system users, and system
designers

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

System Users System users are those people who use the information system more often than any other
information workers are. Their main tasks are capturing, validating, entering, responding
to, storing, and exchanging data and information. They are mainly concerned with
business requirements of the system
Internal users: The majority of system users are often internal users who are employees
of the business. Examples of those users are:
Clerical and service workers
Technical and professional workers
Knowledge workers
Supervisors, middle managers and executive managers
Remote and mobile users: Mobile users are the employees who work outside of their
office. Similarly remote users are the internal users who work from home and are
connected to the company’s information system. All of these new classes of system users
are supported by the modern telecommunication technology.

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

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

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

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

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

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

4.a) Building Blocks of Data

Data are raw facts about the organization and business transactions that are used to produce useful
information. 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.

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

System Users are very familiar with data capturing, storing, processing and editing. They
Users’ View manipulate data of the system on the regular basis and they are concerned with current
data implementation.

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

System Designer’s view of the data is limited by the technology used by their business
Designers’ information system. Chosen Technology has to be used and the designers are responsible
View on translating users’ data requirements into computer files and databases schema, data
structures fields, indexes etc.

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

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

4.b) Building Blocks of Processes

Processes are defined as tasks to be performed to complete the mission of the business. These can be
performed by people, or automated by machines. The main objective of the process focus in the
information 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’ System owners are concerned with Business Function.

View 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 system
to cross-functional information system.

System Users’ Contrarily to system owners, the system users view processes in terms of discrete
View business processes.
Business Processes are the discrete activities with have input and output, starting
times and stopping time. These can be repeating processes, occasional processes or
rarely occurring processes. This term is independent of the information technology.
Specific rules and procedures are given to business processes.

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

System Builders’ System builders represent processes using precise computer programming
View languages that write application programs. They often use a technique called
prototyping to build quickly a functional model of an application and to test the
application.

4.c) Building Blocks of Interfaces

Interfaces are about how a system is connected to other systems and how the system is presented to the
user. 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 productive
information systems.

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

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

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

System Builders’ System builders construct user and system interface. System builders also
View perform installation and testing. User interfaces technology is often come with
the same programming language environments used to construct the computer
processes. Constructing system interfaces is somehow more complex.
Middleware system interface technology is popular. Middleware sites in
between applications software and integrate different technologies so that they
can interoperate.

4.d) Building Blocks of Geography

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 Information systems geography defines how the data, processes and interfaces are distributed to different
business locations and how these data and information are moved between those locations. Decentralizing
applications and databases to different computers across the network is called distributed computing. One
of the popular distributed computing is client/server computing, which information is shared by clients
and servers machines.

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

System Users’ Similar to system owners, system users’ view of geography is as operating
View locations, but closer to day-to-day locations. Communication requirements are
important for system users. Communication requirement is the information
resource requirements for operating locations and how different operating locations
need to communicate with one another.

System System designers define geography in terms of network schema, which supports
Designers’ View the business network.

Network schema is also called a network configuration or topology. It identifies

all the computer centers, computers and networking hardware that are involved in a
computer application in a technical model.

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

System Builders’ System builders implement network programs using telecommunication languages
View and standards. Network programs are machine-readable specifications of computer
communications parameters such as node addresses, protocols, line speeds, flow
controls, security, privileges and other complex, networking parameters.

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