INFO 340 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Animal Husbandry, Relational Model, Information Management
INFO 340 – Lecture 1 Notes
Elements of data – 47
Metadata – age
Information – Julie is 47 years old
Knowledge/Understanding – once you have enough information (learning)
- Experiment, refine process, get better results
- Data is the crux of competitive advantage; can take advantage of limited resources
o E.g., paying for convenience or price
Systems
Information management
- Organize or die - urgency; that we can understand and learn from data, and be able to
optimize and adapt for a competitive advantage
o Human learning based on organizing + analyzing
o Those who effectively build systems survive
o Example – Starbucks vs Tully’s
▪ Understand competitors, customers (motives, experience)
▪ Understanding and learning from it; collecting data + optimizing
▪ If there was no competitive advantage gained from data, there would be
no need for databases
o Example – farming → animal husbandry → specialization of labor → industrial
revolution, assembly line, internet…
▪ Specialization of labor leads to emergence of experts, which allows for
optimization and organization
o Example – Amazon; understands customers very well and can predict behavior
Databases
- Freethrow percentage
- Paperbase vs electronic systems
o Paperbase – hierarchical model
▪ A top-down model; inefficient
o Electronic – relational model
▪ Each business object has its own table
▪ Students, separate from classes, separate from departments, etc.
