|
October 19, 1999 @ 10:20 am·Filed under Books
By Alexis Leon & Mathews Leon, Tata McGraw-Hill, 1999.
The last few years have seen a growing recognition of
information as a key business tool. Those who successfully gather,
analyze, understand and act upon information are among the winners
in this new information age. Therefore, it is only reasonable, to
expect the rate of producing and consuming information to grow.
We can define information as that which resolves uncertainty.
We can further say that decision-making is the progressive
resolution of uncertainty and is a key to the success in today’s
brutally competitive business environment. In general, the current
business market dynamics make it abundantly clear that, for any
company, information is the very key to survival.
If we look at the evolution of information processing
technologies we can see that while the first generation of
client/server systems brought data to the desktop, not all of
these data was easy to understand, and as such it was not very
useful to the end users. As a result, a number of new technologies
have emerged that are focused on improving the information content
of the data, information sharing, collaborative working, etc. with
the aim to empower the knowledge workers and make them more
effective, efficient and productive. Among these technologies are
groupware, workgroup computing, workgroup automation, on-line
transaction processing (OLTP), on-line analytical processing (OLAP),
data warehousing, data mining and so on.
This book is about the need, the value, and the technological
means of acquiring and using information in the information age.
This book covers the concepts and technologies that are
revolutionizing the field of information technology and the way
business is being conducted. The book gives the readers a detailed
introduction of the concepts like groupware, workgroup computing,
workgroup automation, collaborative computing, information
sharing, on-line transaction processing (OLTP), on-line analytical
processing (OLAP), data warehousing, data mining and so on. These
technologies are changing the way people work and organizations
function.
To survive in today’s information age one needs to understand
and master these technologies and apply them into his/her
profession. This book is indented as a primer on these
technologies. The objective of the book is to provide the readers
a good understanding of the various technologies, the concepts
behind them, the advantages and disadvantages, the options
available and so on.
|
|