Microlink Information Techonology and Business College

Postgraduate Program (MBA)

Course Name: Information Processing Management

Assessment Type: Individual Assignment (50%)

Name of Instructor: Dr. Kahsu Mebrahtu Areaya (Assistant Professor)

Due date:- To be submitted on November 15/2020 (Send in soft coy to

kahsuaray@gmail.com and in hard copy to Dean’s office)

Instruction: Attempt All of the Following Questions

1. For this assignment, each student will submit an analysis of the business scenario for the
ABC Corporation. The ABC corporation business scenario is based on a fictitious company
that is developing a database management system (DBMS) for storage of product, customer,
and sales data. Audience: upper-level business students.

Project Prompts

The ABC corporation business scenario provides a foundation in which to examine the
components of a database management system (DBMS), development of a system for
business purposes and data collection, manipulation, and storage. The ABC corporation
analysis should discuss the use of database management systems in business and examine
how a DBMS presents a centralized view of data that can be accessed by multiple users.
The written essay should be a minimum of 1,000 words in length and follow the APA
formatting standards.

Business Scenario

The ABC corporation is a newly established company and the owner is looking for an
efficient method of collecting, storing, and manipulating data. The corporation offers a
variety of pet supplies and is initially a retailer that is currently selling products only

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 online. As the corporation grows, it plans to also include physical retail locations in
which to add services to the company's offerings.

As a startup business, the ABC Corporation needs to implement a database management

system to allow the collection and sharing of business data among the employees; thus,
the database management system should allow for multiple users. The corporation is
currently gathering information about database management systems and seeking a
contractor to create and implement the system. Business data will be organized in a
logical manner and will be retrieved using a client-server network.

In your analysis provide the ABC Corporation with information on database management
systems and a recommendation from a contractor's perspective. Information you are
providing the ABC Corporation should include the following:

 Provide a definition of a database management system (DBMS) and discuss the

purpose(s) in business.
 Introduce the business scenario to analyze and discuss the benefits of
implementing a database management system.
 Describe what business data the company would benefit from collecting and
manipulating.
 Explain how a company uses a database management system to manage data
collection, manipulate data and realize benefits from usage of a database
management system.
 Discuss the components of a DBMS and the process of developing a DBMS for
implementation.
 Discuss why companies utilize various systems for domestic and global business
functions.

Solution; - A database management system (DBMS) is a collection of programs that manages

the database structure and controls access to the data stored in the database".  The DBMS serves
as the intermediary between the user and the database. The database structure itself is stored as a
collection of files, so, we can access the data in those files through the DBMS.

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Besides, the purpose of a database management system (DBMS is improved decision-making, by
providing up-to-date, accurate data on a variety of organizational assets. Hence, the business data
the company would benefit from collecting and manipulating is including: Financials, Inventory,
Personnel, Project timelines, Manufacturing, Real estate, Marketing and Raw material to the
minimum.

A DBMS is a collection of programs that allows data to be stored in, reformed, and extracted
from a database. There are several kinds of database management systems, four of the most
popular database management systems advised here for a company uses a database management
system to manage data collection, manipulate data and realize benefits from usage of a database
management system. The terms hierarchical, relational, object-oriented, and network all denote
the way database management software organizes data internally. The right DBMS tools are
necessary to have for the maximum efficiency of database management.

Whereas, the benefits of implementing a database management system by the ABC Company is,

 Improved data sharing.

 Improved data security.
 Better data integration.
 Minimized data inconsistency.
 Improved data access.
 Improved decision making.
 Increased end-user productivity. 

Components of DBMS;- The database management system can be divided into five major
components, they are: 1. Hardware, 2. Software, 3. Data, 4. Procedures and 5. Database Access
Language

Hardware;- When we say Hardware, we mean computer, hard disks, I/O channels for data, and
any other physical component involved before any data is successfully stored into the memory.
When we run Oracle or MySQL on our personal computer, then our computer's Hard Disk, our

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Keyboard using, which we type in all the commands, our computer's RAM, ROM and all
become a part of the DBMS hardware.

Software; - This is the main component, as this is the program which controls everything. The
DBMS software is more like a wrapper around the physical database, which provides us with an
easy-to-use interface to store, access and update data. The DBMS software is capable of
understanding the Database Access Language and interpret it into actual database commands to
execute them on the DB.

Data: - Data is that resource, for which DBMS was designed. The motive behind the creation of
DBMS was to store and utilize data.

Procedures; - Procedures refer to general instructions to use a database management system.

This includes procedures to setup and install a DBMS, to login and logout of DBMS software, to
manage databases, to take backups, generating reports etc.

Database Access Language:- Database Access Language is a simple language designed to write
commands to access, insert, update and delete data stored in any database

Database Implementation Procedure;-are

 Stage 1: Define Scope of the Database Project

 Stage 2: Organize Database Project
 Stage 3: Select Database Management System Products
 Stage 4: Develop Initial Implementation Plan and Schedule
 Stage 5: Design Database
 Stage 6: Perform Training
 Stage 7: Install and Test Database
 Stage 8: Develop Detailed Conversion Plan
 Stage 9: Convert Existing Applications
 Stage 10: Fine-Tune Database
 Stage 11: Periodically Review Database Performance

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While the reason why companies utilize various systems for domestic and global business
functions is,

 Keep track of all transactions.

 Provide information that will help the company to run the business more
efficiently.
 Better management of people matters.
 Efficient inventory tracking.
2. What are the three most important factors you would use in evaluating computer hardware?
Computer software?

The three most important factors that I would use in evaluating computer hardware are;

Reliability – An unreliable hardware is not acceptable in any business which depends on it.
Scalability – The hardware cannot justify its cost for a business if it cannot handle the
processing demands of a wide range of end users, transactions, and other processing
requirements.
Software – The hardware is useless without software that can best use it

The three most important factors that I would use in evaluating computer software are:

Quality – Any software serving a business must be bug free and have as little as or no errors at
all.
Security – Cyber security is a big deal these days. Any software which lacks in security features
should not be considered as an option for any business.
Hardware – The software is useless unless it can be supported by the existing hardware.
Otherwise, a new hardware will also have to be considered (additional investment).

3. What are your major concerns about computer crime and privacy on the Internet? What can
you do about it? Explain.

One of the major concerns that I have regarding the internet is harassment or cyber-bullying. An
example of harassment is when someone makes derogatory remarks or comments about another
person. A girl in her teens recently committed suicide because some other girls at school posted

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hurtful comments about her on a popular social networking website. I think there needs to be
rules and consequences regarding this type of behavior.

Another issue I see with computer and internet use is safety in regards to sexual predators. There
are people who use the internet as a way to find underage males and females to engage in illegal
activity with. This is very dangerous. 

So, most of our information is all over the internet through the services that we need to access
online. There is really no way to safeguard the information but what we can all do is be keen on
the sites that require our personal information. We should also develop the habit of reading terms
and condition before sharing our personal and other sensitive information online. We also need
to check the history and credibility of any given site before feeding in our personal information.

4. What potential security problems do you see in the increasing use of intranets and extranets
in business? What might be done to solve such problems? Give several examples.

The rationale behind setting up an intranet or extranet is to protect the information being

dispensed in the organization to make sure that it rests and lands on the right hands of authorized

personnel. According to (Tipton and Nozaki 86), the networks are prone to security threats,

security breaches, network attacks and unauthorized access to the network connection which

jeopardizes the safety of the information in the organization. Such threats are presents due to the

organizations’ failures to encrypt its network systems. Use of weak passwords and codes also

subjects an organization to such threats. Deployment of Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) and

Intrusion Detection Prevention System (IDPS) would help mitigate the harm caused by cracking

the security codes to an organization’s network connection ( Tipton and Nozaki 87). Organizations

should be keen to encrypt their network systems to save themselves from the security dangers.

5. How are Internet technologies affecting the structure and work roles of modern organizations? For
example, will middle management wither away? Will companies consist primarily of self-directed
project teams of knowledge workers? Explain your answers.

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Communication between the subordinate and the strategic management is currently easy and
effective as compared to the period when internet application was not popular. All the
organizational systems can be integrated; hence the relevance of the operation management is
slowly declining since employees do not need much of the operational management directives
when they can still have direct from the top management through employee portals, emails and
customized applications (Schwarzmüller et al., 2018).

Besides there are other new internet enabled technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and
the knowledge work systems that enables employees acquire expertise knowledge reserved in the
organizational systems based on the past data and trends (Schwarzmüller et al., 2018). These
makes the companies engage in self-directed project teams of the knowledge workers