Spreadsheets and Databases

During week 4 you will also understand and experience the difference between spreadsheet and database technologies. Spreadsheets are very important for the analysis of computational links among the parts of the spreadsheet model allowing to see the effects of changes of various variables on the large group of dependent variables.
This is especially important in DSS systems. One of the crucial parts of building such formula connections is the ability to productively use absolute and relative references – which is the topic of the exercise.
But databases can also be used for situational analysis. The main tool here is the SQL language allowing to create “Views” of the whole database or big tables by formulating what has to be in such views and how it should be presented. Views can serve as the basis for further enhancements in charts, further queries, or special “relational operations” on data. Although systems manipulating SQL in order to create interesting and important views cost a lot of money, the basic knowledge and experience in SQL handling allows you to do such analysis with corresponding supporting data and charts for free.

More on Week 4 Concepts

This week we goes beyond understanding of information systems as a bunch of technologies allowing to move information between several points and/or create intermediate stocks of data to be properly collected and delivered somewhere later. The systems of the described type are usually classified as Transaction Processing Systems (TPS) but in a more general case can be seen as systems extending information connectivity among systems entities and processes. Such systems are like well trained sportsmen with quick reactions adequate to the changing situation.
Although this is important, there could and should be something else even more powerful with a totally different goal. This something else different from quick connectivity reactions is… intelligence. Very often it is not about being “well connected” and the speed of reactions but intelligent decisions in a more strategic sense. The class of systems attempting to aid this area includes Information Systems (as the verr-ry beginning), Decision Support Systems, Knowledge Management Systems, and Intelligent Information Systems (using artificial intelligence, or AI, algorithms and approaches).

The Web 2.0 technologies combined with social network functionality (if properly designed) create a link between these two classes of systems. They add elements of collective intelligence based on peer-to-peer and peer-to-crowd spiral improvement of the intelligence of ideas and solutions. But they are not enough…

We are back to the systems directly designed for organizational intelligence enhancements either by empowering people or using AI. Of course the combination of Collective Intelligence and such systems might prove to best bet.

This week you will explore the aspects, mechanisms, promises, and real uses of such systems.

Week 4. Various Systems

So far you’ve learned various aspects and components of information systems (IS) as well as tried various tools that together can form a small IS or be a part of a large one. For example, blogs, as you realized by now, can be used as mash-ups or tools of combining the live results from many other products and sources in a way that if the source changes – the embedded result in the blog also changes (they maintain the live link). You also learned ways of determining the boundary of your IS by controlling permissions and collaborations in your blog as well as how controlling sharing parameters in various tools. This knowledge will empower you in your personal life and at work allowing to support your knowledge with your own small IS serving you diligently and increasing your powers and abilities. This week we are looking not at the parts of systems and IS but at their types. Although there could be limitless types of IS depending on their design and application, some important classes are important to know and recognize since they have many features and methods of use in common. Thus information systems (a vague term since all of them could be called “information systems,” but in this case we use the name as the book determines it) increase your ability of seeing things in a more advanced way since the real world is not what you directly see with your eyes but the numbers, features, and parameters hidden from such direct view. Here come IS allowing you to see (like in those sci-fi movies) the entities of the real world as they really are in all their properties, changing views and angles and focuses as you need to inspect some features closer and some from a bigger perspective. Decision Support Systems serve not as much as vision enhancers but as enhancers of your abilities of making decisions. Human abilities to juggle numbers and keep various relationships among multiple parameters in mind are severely limited. Here come DSS. They allow you to use such tools as scenarios (when you change some assumptions and see what will happen to ALL parts you are interested in by providing formulas of the corresponding relationships), optimization (when the system quickly finds for you the best decision among many possible), and many others. Armed with such tools you become super beings (cyborgs, if you wish, as part human and part systems) far more advanced in your mental abilities than those who doesn’t use special supporting systems. And you can use this power throughout all your life experiences no matter what you do and where you work. Although many industrial systems of this kind are very expensive, there are some simple tools that already upgrade your abilities significantly and some of them we are learning in this course. This is kung fu of modern life. The more you put in work and understanding of the material of this week – the more you will get out of it.

More on CI and Enterprise 2.0

Since some of you study psychology, it might be interesting to know the origins of the Social Cognition. Russian psychologists Lev Vygotsky discovered something which can be seen as a sci-fi plot. Every child has so called zone of proximal development (ZPD) as ability to solve problems for particular age. For example, there are problems that a 3-year old cannot solve but a 4-year old can. Then he placed a bunch of kids of a certain age in a situation when they actively socialize (like in a collective game). Then he gave then a problem outside of their ZPD, but they were able to solve it. Once separated, their problem solving ability went down again to the one corresponding to their ZPD and not beyond. He called this phenomenon “Mind of Society,” which means that some higher intelligence arises from collective interactions that is bigger than anyone’s in that group, and that exists only when the group exists.

Today, when there are no more ways to compete by simply using more resources, the Collective Intelligence (CI) is becoming an extremely hot issue. The task is in finding such method of connecting group members and such forms of interactions that allow creating higher organizational intelligence without hiring more people, or seeking much smarter people. This is the edge of competition by using all technologies that we study in our course and some others. As a result of this course you will not only know about systems and IS, but also about ways of creating Enterprise 2.0 that uses these new forms of resources (CI and its variations).

Web 2.0 and CI

The best way of learning systems, and IS features in particular, includes the design of a small information system versus just learning buttons for the current version of Excel and Access. Normally, the development of an IS ,even of a small size, is quite expensive and/or requires a lot of man/hour investments of highly skilled systems developers. Only organizations with sufficient capital were able to develop and use IS...The evolution of software as a service (SAAS) and various types of accompanying web services created a possibility of new methods in IS development – assembly of systems out of existing services LEGO – style. This simplicity has led to a dramatic increase in end-user creativity and development capabilities.

In this course I want you to learn the most simple but effective ways of such system development for personal and organizational use. Become a one-person army, hmm... The basic services we were using so far included free blog development and support services, Zoho sheet, Zoho db for database development and, what is most important, services allowing sharing and collaboration. Already this set of tools, if learned a bit deeper than you've down so far, allows for some basic IS development.The new, mostly free, and easy to use services that can be incorporated in any custom IS design/redesign led to a new phenomenon: social networks. But the most important effect goes beyond increased activity of emerging social structures. This new unleashed power is studied in Collective Intelligence (CI) dealing with creation of super intelligences out of rather simple processing performed by its parts. Example include ant societies, various swarm intelligence examples, and... effective teams and organizations. This possibility of acquiring enhanced intelligence is the biggest asset and advantage an organization can dream about nowadays, which comes not as much from the mere infrastructure presence, but its proper architecture and processes in accordance with this new Web 2.0/CI developments. Web 2.0 technologies released the power and creativity of regular IT users making them producers/users (produsers). These Web 2.0 technologies paired with proper CI organization (where effective collaboration is the key) are the main and the most fascinating developments in modern IS.

Week 2 Databases

Although a database table might look like a spreadsheet, the capabilities of a database management system (software engine behind the databases) are quite different. For better understanding you might go to the Featured Samples (while on the Home page in your Zoho Reports site) to see that after the initial tables are created and filled with data, the rest of the database consists of various queries (that could be saved for future easy customer use), reports, charts, etc. All other database products, created from the data tables by using simple and effective tools, allow to SEE and ANALYZE a LOT of DATA form MULTIPLE POINTS OF VIEW, as compared to the relatively small amount in typical spreadsheets.

Well designed and developed (in terms of convenient analysis) databases - is what create added value to the initial data collection often stored in some input “flat” files. Data warehouses (or smaller data marts) are systems enhancing this analytical and decision support function of organizational (and even personal) data.

In my professional capacity, I was often asked by organizations that invested a lot of money into collection of valuable data – to help them make better use of this information (bang for the invested buck, if you want). This usually results into the development of an information system with a database at its core (this is why they call them “information systems” :)

More points to learn :)

Keeping your critical thinking ON, you still might benefit from some commonality of conceptual knowledge among people allowing for productive discussions and work.
So here I want to emphasize that not only IS are systems, but that they make systems out of non-systems by connecting things and processes together in a new mutually beneficial way. This is a new power of business growth: not by using more resources, but including more stuff in the orbit of their networks.

The reason why we use quite a few software-as-a-service (SaaS) tools in this course is that many of them are free, easy to use, and are very powerful mechanisms of connecting things, processes, and people over the Internet. They are the modern resources of organizational and individual power. Simple hardware, like smartphones and publically available software services can allow individuals to have full office support on the run (go mobile, like you can do with this course). Mafia understood the benefits of being connected long ago :)