A key concept to understand about information system design is that a single information system may contain multiple interrelated or interdependent information elements. A single system may contain information that is stored in a variety of different data storage systems.
A system is a collection of interrelated information elements that are stored in a variety of different data storage systems.
This sounds really confusing, isn’t it? But if you’re familiar with the word “information,” then you know exactly what I’m talking about here. A “system” is a collection of interrelated information elements that are stored in a variety of different data storage systems.
Elements are a collection of data elements (sometimes referred to as “data nodes”) that are used to store information. For example, a system may contain information stored via a database system (like Microsoft SQL Server), a file system (like C: drive on Windows), or a web page (like the home page of Google). Elements are also used in a variety of other forms, such as spreadsheets. A spreadsheet, for example, may contain data elements such as cells, records, and formulas.
The data flow from one element to another is called a relationship. This is really the concept of data flow that we’ve been talking about. In an information system, we may be able to describe each element or relationship as a sequence of statements, like a sentence or a paragraph, but in an information system, data elements may be organized using a variety of methods.
We can talk about the relationship between the cell and the record (the cell has no value) as a sequence of statements, but we can also talk about the relationship between the cell and the formula (the cell has a value).
You can think of the cell of an information system as a sequence of statements because each cell is a statement in itself. Each cell represents a piece of data or information, but each statement represents the relationship between the cell and the rest of the information system.
It’s good to keep in mind that you can’t get the information flow or the data you’d like to within an information system. You can get the data out, but the information flow is going to remain within the information system. For example, if you want to transfer the data in an information system from one cell to another you would use the information flow because the cell you’re working through won’t change or the data it represents won’t change.
The information flow is also called the flow of data. In an information system, data flows from cell to cell, and the information flow is the process by which the data flows. If you want to transfer data from one cell to another, you would use the information flow, because that cell wont change or your data wont change.
Data flows are also called flow of data.
