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Introduction to Computer Science

Introduction

Introduction to Computer ScienceIntroduction
Figure 8.1 Big data taxonomy includes data providers, data consumers, data owners, and data viewers while providing the data flow between them. (credit: modification of “DARPA Big Data” by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)

Chapter Outline

Introduction

Managing data today requires an end-to-end perspective and the ability to combine the use of various types of data. For example, Amazon needs to run its day-to-day businesses and sell products to customers, handle returns, pay commissions to retailers and wholesalers, and develop and price new products. This is all part of day-to-day operations, and most retail companies strive to achieve operational excellence as it is a key driver of customer satisfaction. For that purpose, retailers typically use traditional relational databases and structured data to run their operations. At the same time, retailers need to remain competitive and develop with pricing strategies that attract and retain customers. Doing so requires being able to analyze market prices accordingly before advertising products to their customers. For that part, businesses generally rely on datasets and big data analytics to predict competitive prices in order to optimize sales. Overall, businesses and organizations that deliver products to customers need to leverage insights coming from metadata to transform as they perform and remain competitive while sustaining their operations. It is no longer possible to rely on operational excellence to ensure continued success.

In this chapter, we will cover the spectrum of data management activities, including the storage and retrieval of various types of data. In other words, the chapter is about how big data are managed today from an end-to-end standpoint.

As an example, TechWorks is a start-up company that is 100% committed to leveraging innovative technologies as part of its repeatable business model and as a business growth facilitator. TechWorks has multiple departments including human resources, finance, sales, marketing, operation management, and information technology. Each department has its own information system and database; they do not share any resources. TechWorks has many success stories in the market. However, they have a huge problem with integrating their reports to aid in decision-making. TechWorks has many challenges that impact their competitiveness and survival in the market, including their traditional database not working properly; their practices in collecting, managing, and analyzing data not promoting better business decision-making; and their servers being old and sometimes unable to sufficiently handle the company data. The chief executive officer (CEO) of TechWorks decides to develop a new database management system with the following objectives:

  • Integrate all of the departments’ practices into one system.
  • Use the cloud to store, manage, analyze, and maintain the data.
  • Hire a data scientist, computer scientist, and information architect to work as a team with the database designer and the database administrator.
  • Apply the extraction, transformation, and loading process to the data.
  • Use business intelligence and machine learning tools to make decisions based on the data.
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