Software, data and databases

What is software?

In a computer system, the software is a set of programs that are developed to give instructions to the hardware. Without software, there would be no control over hardware, and hence they will not function at all. Software can either be pre-installed or could be installed later in the system through an external medium.

Primary functions of Operating systems

An operating system is a pre-installed software in the computer which manages the basic functions in a computer, controls the hardware and provides the user interface for the user. It also allows developers to develop applications by giving them a platform for it.

Operating systems and applications

Microsoft Excel, iTunes and Angry Birds are applications (Stephenson, & Renz, 2016). Windows and Android are operating systems. On the other hand, Google Chrome is both an operating system and an application.

My favourite software application

My ideal software application is Microsoft Word. It helps me in typing and modifying documents that can be stored on my computer. I also like Microsoft Excel, which allows me to create my spreadsheets and keep a record of my transactions.

Mobile software categories

Mobile software can be categorized into three main types: Native apps, hybrid apps, and web apps. Native apps are the applications which are developed for exclusive use within an operating system, and cannot function outside it, like Google play store app or Google calendars. Hybrid apps are developed using multi-platform technologies like HTML5 and JavaScript. Sworkit and untappd are two hybrid apps built on PhoneGap platform. Web apps are the applications that use a web browser for functioning and are developed by websites for mobile platforms. They are usually written in HTML5 or JavaScript. Amazon and Facebook are some of the examples of web apps.

Enterprise Resource Planning

ERP is an application that integrates an entire organization under one program. ERP utilizes a single database that is implemented uniformly. Employees who are working with ERP can save their information on the same data source. The company can buy modules for ERP systems depending on its needs.

Open and closed source software

Open-source software is the software whose code is available in the public domain. Users and programmers can copy, download and modify it. Open-source software is developed and expanded rapidly due to multiple users contributing to them. Examples of open-source software include Linux OS and firefox web browser (Hesse et al., 2016).

Closed source software is the software whose main code can only be accessed, copied altered or modified by the authors of the code. Users need to purchase the software and pay to use it. Examples of closed source software include Microsoft Windows and Solaris.

Software license

A software license is a permission given by the software developers to the user to use their software. That means the owner of the software can access limited features of the software through that license. The license agreement of any software would state that the user is given limited control over the software (August, Shin & Tunca, 2018).

Cloud computing in limited funded company

Cloud computing is suitable for a company with a limited budget for information technology. Cloud enables the employees to save their data directly on the cloud, which minimizes the use of physical drives. The company does not need to hire IT personnel. Instead, they can pay a small amount to the cloud service provider, and they can perform their tasks (Kirke Snyder, 2017).

Data, information and knowledge

Data is a piece of raw and unaltered information that can be further processed to obtain necessary insights from it. Information is the meaning of the data which is acquired by processing and studying the data. Knowledge is a concept in the human mind that is relevant in a fixed area.

Relationship of hardware and software components with data

Data stored in a computer can be processed further by using hardware components by the user. The software allows the modification of the data and saves the data in the system. The software also provides the necessary tools to manage data in a system.

Qualitative and quantitative data

Qualitative data are the data that can are scalable. They can be measured, counted or expressed in numbers.  Qualitative data are unstructured data that can be represented through traits.  The number 42 can be defined as qualitative data if the number represents or correlates to another data.

Characteristic of relational database

A relational database has a few sets of characteristics. The data stored in the relational database must be in tables, and values should be in columns. Data stored in columns should have a primary key value and should be accessible by specifying the table name and column. Insert, update and delete options should be available.

Personal DBMS

Using a personal Database management system (DBMS) would make sense when the user is working with a relatively smaller database.

Spreadsheet and database

Databases are easier to use and can be used by any regular user. On the other hand, a database can only be operated by personnel who are equipped in SQL. A database can present data in a tabular format. A spreadsheet can present the data in tabular form, but it would need help from an external database.

Normalization

In a database, normalization is a process of structuring the tabular data. This is done mainly to reduce the data redundancy and to increase the integrity of the data.

Data type in the database

A data type is essential in the database as it defines the use of the data. The database designer can recognize the use of the data by its data type.

Frequently used database

Microsoft Excel is a database that is commonly used by me. Some of the field names are row number, column number and worksheet number,

Metadata

Metadata is the information that is used to define a given data. It also provides other information like access, storage and others.

Advantages of data warehouse

The data warehouse standardizes the data and ensures data consistency. Both of these save time and resources.

Data mining

Data mining is the process of discovering patterns in data. It helps the management in decision making, finding out customer needs, predicting future trends in business (Hofmann & Klinkenberg, 2016).

 Supervised and unsupervised learning

Supervised learning is an algorithm where input and output variables are given, whereas only the input variable is provided in unsupervised learning. The main objective of unsupervised learning is gaining more information about the data, while supervised learning focuses on predicting the output.

Business intelligence

Business intelligence is the practice of collecting consumer data and analyzing it for profits. The main objective behind this is to maximize the benefits by predicting the needs of the customer (Larson, & Chang, 2016).

For example, a travel company may analyze the travelling pattern of an individual and offer him/her incentives on the next travel. This is profitable for both the traveller and the company.

References:

August, T., Shin, H., & Tunca, T. I. (2018). Generating value through open source: Software service market regulation and licensing policy. Information Systems Research, 29(1), 186-205.

Hesse, T. M., Lerche, V., Seiler, M., Knoess, K., & Paech, B. (2016). Documented decision-making strategies and decision knowledge in open source projects: An empirical study on Firefox issue reports. Information and Software Technology, 79, 36-51.

Hofmann, M., & Klinkenberg, R. (Eds.). (2016). RapidMiner: Data mining use cases and business analytics applications. CRC Press.

Kirke Snyder JD, I. G. P. (2017). CLOUD COMPUTING. Information Management, 51(3), 44.

Larson, D., & Chang, V. (2016). A review and future direction of agile, business intelligence, analytics and data science. International Journal of Information Management, 36(5), 700-710.

Stephenson, M., & Renz, J. (2016, September). Procedural generation of complex stable structures for angry birds levels. In 2016 IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games (CIG) (pp. 1-8). IEEE.