Sept.8, Replacement Blog for Online Discussion

     It is amazing to me how fast technology is growing.  Within the last 20 years technology has allowed us to collect, sort, manipulate and report with great sophistication.  Technology has become our main source of communication in our day to day lives as well.  Everything is more instant with text messages, email, instant messages and even through social networking sites society has a need to now mentality. 

     Millions of dollars are being spent evry year by schools, corporations, and by the governmet to expand and improve their computer based information systems.  The vast majority of money spent is going into data base management which, electronic spreadsheets, and office automation to manage text and communications.
The most expensive to maintain and improve is the databases because the more information to be evaluated, sorted, collected, verifed or reported the more expensive it is to maintain and manage. 

     Many times technology for me becomes confusing because of all the tech talk so i wanted to discuss the different terms to increase my own understanding and Chapter 4 was helpful in that regard.  Database is merely a collection of files that can be managed, created, updated or accessed quickly.  What I didnt realize is that these databases had a hierarchy from basic to complex.  The entire database managnment system is a package of computer programs that allow the user to create, maintain, access, or manipulate data.  The data can be a data record (a collection of data for a single person or entity), a data file (a collection of related records (a collection of records for all employees) or data element  (field of data that groups people, places, or things together).  All of these elements should be organized or documented in a data element dictionary to assist someone in decoding or understanding the data provided. 

I hope this helps you in understanding the database management system because it definitely increased by awareness. 

Have a blessed & productive week!

                                                           Reference

Picciano, A. G. (2011).  Educational leadership and planning for technology (5th ed.).   

 

              Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson.