Download BSAD 141, Spring 2014 Test #1 Study Guide

BSAD 141, Spring 2014
Test #1 Study Guide
NOTE: you are responsible for the material in any chapters, chapter extensions, handouts, and
online reading. It would be beneficial to read everything prior to the test. It could be beneficial
to reread the chapters and focus on specific definitions. It really depends on your comfort level.
The notes do not exactly mirror the chapters. I didn’t just reproduce the material in the
chapter. Some lectures more closely mirror the book than others.
Lecture 1 – 1/21 (BDIS 1.1: pages 2-12): Business Driven Management Information Systems –
Data, Information, Business Intelligence, and Knowledge AND Appendix A: Hardware and
Software Basics
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Define IT and IS – and in relationship to the five components of the IS model
Hardware versus software
Describe what the CPU is and identify the two components of the CPU and what their
responsibilities are
Define a bit and a byte
Clock speed, word length, and bus width
Parallel versus serial bus
Define / describe the 3 components of primary storage (RAM, ROM, cache)
Define / describe Virtual Memory, why it is important, how it works, what a page file is,
and what a fragmentation error is
Define / describe secondary storage and give examples of magnetic and optical
secondary storage devices
What is the difference between BluRay and a DVD?
Storage/size units of storage definitions – which term represents the largest size?
Example, MB vs GB
Define / describe the three types of system software (OS, utility, drivers) and provide
some examples
What are three different OS?
Define / describe application software and some examples
Define / describe data versus information
Define MIS
Lecture 2 – 1/23: (BDIS 7.1 and 7.2: pages 241-274) Networks and Connectivity AND Appendix B:
Networks and Telecommunications from the back of the book
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Define LAN and WAN and state the differences between a LAN and WAN
Define networking technology and give examples
What are the most popular LAN technologies?
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Differences between Bluetooth, wireless and Wi-Fi
What are some of the drawbacks to WiFi (wireless network connectivity)?
Define what a router does
Define what a switch does
What is the difference between a router and a switch?
Define / discuss what a network interface card is
Define and differentiate between bandwidth and throughput
Explain what your ISP means when they use the term broadband
Identify and differentiate between the 3) network access technologies for corporate
connectivity and the 3 for home connectivity
What are the differences between shared and dedicated networks and between public
and private networks?
The basics of how VPN works and why it is a popular remote networking connectivity
option
Define what a network protocol is and what networking standards are
What are the two most popular protocols in the Internet protocol stack? Describe the
basic characteristics of each
What is the format of an IP address and can you identify one?
How is the Internet different from the WWW?
What is a URL?
What does network convergence refer to?
Lecture 3 – 1/28 (BDIS 6.1: pages 207-217) Data, Information, and Databases
 What is meant by granularity?
 Discuss the 5 characteristics of high quality information and define each
 Identify examples of how data can be of low quality
 Differentiate between a database (DB) and a database management system (DBMS) –
slides related to DBMS and RDBMS
 Define and differentiate between an entity set and an entity (rows contain entities)
 Differentiate between attribute and record
 Define and differentiate between primary key and foreign key
 Describe four advantages of RDBMS
 What is a DB schema and how does it impact the user view of the data?
 Define and differentiate between data redundancy and information integrity – give
examples of each and how problems can occur
 Define the lost-update problem in general. Why would this be an issue? How is it
addressed?
Lecture 4 – 1/30 (online reading) Data modeling, Entity-relationship Diagrams (ERDs),
characteristics of relationships
 You are responsible for the online reading
 Define a data model
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Define ERD
Describe relational databases and what the benefits of RDBMS are. What is the
fundamental component of an RDBMS? What is the programming or query language
used in RDBMS?
Review terminology for RDBMs
Identify requirements for primary keys
Types of attributes – composite, simple, primary key, single valued, multi-valued
Define attribute domain
Define relationship degree, relationship connectivity, and relationship existence
Differentiate between mandatory and optional existence – what are implications when
entering data?
Interpret relationship connectivity: 1:1, 1:M, M:M
Primary key, foreign key, and linking two tables using a FK in a 1:M relationship
Lecture 5 – 2/4: More on data modeling, ERDs – 1:M and M:M examples
This lecture provided detailed examples on relationship connectivity, re-emphasized
definitions, how PKs and FKs work, and I walked you though a 1:M and M:M example using
tables. I explained the consequences of implementing a M:M incorrectly using the student –
class section example
Lecture 6 – 2/6: Introduction to MS Access, building tables, creating keys, linking tables, using
MS Access built-in relationships GUI, discussion (examples) of integrity issues
 Building an ERD using basic information
 Know the ERD notation used in the class and be able to draw an ERD using CORRECT
notation
 Describe 2 types of integrity – entity and referential. When does a violation of each
occur? Why is each important?
 You might want to go through the Project-Manager example and build these tables in
Access
 Make sure you can interpret error messages in Access
 Define normalization
 As DB becomes more normalized, what are some of the potential implications with
respect to performance (query processing speeds)?
 We went through working examples of both types of integrity in Access and we looked
at a flat file simple data problem and converted it through a first level normalization
processing into two tables with a relationship between those 2 tables using M:M
Employee-Project example
Lecture 7 – 2/11: in-class normalization exercise where I gave you some data associated with
the M:M Employee-Project example. Given some small set of data in a flat file format (like a
giant Excel spreadsheet), be able to identify the entities in the table and convert those entities
into tables. Be able to place attributes in the appropriate table. We worked through Employee-
Project example in detail. We used data to build an ERD and then implemented the ERD in
Access  this was a M:M example
Lecture 8 – 2/13: in-class exercise