Week-14

Data and knowledge Management

Importantance of Databases to Modern
organizations?
 Overview of Databases
Database Technology

A collection of related data organized in a
way that makes it valuable and useful

Allows organizations to retrieve, store, and
analyze information easily

Is vital to an organization’s success in
running operations and making decisions
Entities

Things we store information about. (i.e.
persons, places, objects, events, etc.)

Have relationships to other entities (i.e. the
entity Student has a relationship to the entity
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Grades in a University Student database
Attributes
• These are pieces of information about an entity
(i.e. Student ID, Name, etc. for the entity Student)

Primary Key
• The key that uniquely identifies rows of records of
table from other tables. (e.g. Student-ID in the student
table.

Foreign Key
The primary key of one table which is implanted in
another table to implement the relationships between
them. (for e.g. Student-ID is the foreign key of
Student-Address table).

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Normalization
− Database normalization relates to the level of redundancy in a
database's structure.
Or
Normalization is the process of designing database tables to
ensure that the fields in each table do not repeat, are fully
identified by a unique KEY, and are not dependent on any
non-key ATTRIBUTEs.

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 DBMS
− DataBase Management System. Used to store, process and
 manage
Click dataan
to add in aoutline
systematic way. May use a variety of
underlying storage methods, including relational, network and
hierarchical.
− Examples of legacy flat-file DBMS systems are: dBase, Clipper,
FoxPro and DataEase. Some of the specialized DBMS types in
existence are: RDBMS (most popular), ODBMS, ORDBMS etc.

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 Types of Databases/DBMS

A hierarchical database is a kind of DBMSthat links records
together in a tree data structure such that each record type has
only one owner, e.g. an order is owned by only one customer.

Network database is a kind of DBMS, that is organized in
multiple tree structures, each record having one parent record
and many children, the network model allows each record to
have multiple parent and child records. Navigation to individual
records takes place through predetermined access paths.

A relational database system in which the database is
organized and accessed according to the relationships between
data items without the need for any consideration of physical
orientation and relationship. Relationships between data items
are expressed by means of tables.
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 Levels of a Database Management System (DBMS)
Level Term Term Definitions
Lowest
Individual characteristics about an ENTITY.
Field Fields are also called attributes or columns
depending on the type of DBMS

A group of fields or attributes to describe a single

Record instance of an ENTITY. These are also called
rows depending on the DBMS

A collection of records or instances for a given

File ENTITY. These are also called tables depending
on the DBMS

A collection of files or entities containing

Database information to support a given system or a
particular topic area
Highest 9
Relationship of DBMS Concepts to Others?

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 Knowledge Management Definitions
Knowledge Management
“The system and managerial approach to collecting, processing,
and organizing enterprise-specific knowledge assets for business
functions and decision making”

Knowledge Assets
All underlying skills routines, practices, principles, formulas,
methods, and intuitions ("ability to sense or know immediately
without reasoning") whether explicit or tacit
Explicit Knowledge
Anything that can be documented, archived, or codified often with
the help of information systems

Tacit Knowledge
The processes and procedures on how to effectively perform a
particular task stored in a persons mind (is knowledge that people
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carry in their minds and is, therefore, difficult to access).

Knowledge Management System (KM System)' is a system
for managing knowledge in organizations, supporting creation,
capture, storage and dissemination of expertise and knowledge.

The idea of a KM system is to enable employees to have
access to the organization's knowledge of facts, sources of
information, and solutions.

For example, an engineer could know the metallurgical
composition of an alloy that reduces sound in gear systems.
Sharing this organization wide can lead to more effective engine
design and it could also lead to ideas for new or improved
equipment.

A KM system could be any of the following: 1. Document based
i.e. any technology that permits creation/management/sharing
of formatted documents such as Oracle Notes, Web, RDBMS
etc 2. Based on AI technologies which use a customized
representation scheme to represent the problem domain. 12
 Knowledge Management System (KMS)
Best Practices
Procedures and processes that are widely accepted as being
among the most effective and/or efficient

Primary Objective
How to recognize, generate, store, share, manage this tacit
knowledge (Best Practices) for deployment and use

Technology
Generally not a single technology but instead a collection of
tools that include communication technologies (e.g. e-mail,
groupware, instant messaging), and information storage and
retrieval systems (e.g. database management system) to meet
the Primary Objective

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 Benefits of KMS
1. Sharing of valuable organizational knowledge.
2. Avoids re-inventing the wheel, reduces redundant work.
3. Reduces training time for new employees
4. Frees the experts
5. Shortest product development time
6. Enhanced innovation (newness) and creativity

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 Challenges of KMS

Getting employee buy-in

Focusing too much on technology

Forgetting the goal

Dealing with knowledge overload and obsolescence (Loss in
value due to reduced desirability and usefulness of a structure
because it has become old fashioned and not in keeping with
modern needs)

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