Data are a vital organizational resource that need to be managed like other important
business assets. Today’s e-business enterprises cannot survive or succeed without
quality data about their internal operations and external environment. That’s why organizations and their managers need to practice data resource
management, a managerial activity that applies information systems technologies
like database management, data warehousing, and other data management tools to the
task of managing an organization’s data resources to meet the information needs of
their business stakeholders. This chapter will show you the managerial implications
of using data resource management technologies and methods to manage an organization’s
data assets to meet business information requirements. Just imagine how difficult it would be to get any information from an information
system if data were stored in an unorganized way, or if there was no systematic way
to retrieve it. Therefore, in all information systems, data resources must be organized
and structured in some logical manner so that they can be accessed easily, processed
efficiently, retrieved quickly, and managed effectively. Thus, data structures and access
methods ranging from simple to complex have been devised to efficiently organize
and access data stored by information systems. In this section, we will explore these
concepts, as well as more technical concepts of database management. |