Chapter 1
Introduction
During the course of fulfilling the role of system
development, a number of different situation arise, which must be understood to
facilitate decision on the approach, strategy, technology and development. The role of the designer may either be to
develop a smaller system or a complex large system. It may also be to design an integrated
system, covering all the business systems, requiring their operations on the
heterogeneous platform of hardware and software. At times, the system designer is faced with the problem of
developing the additional systems and integrating them with the systems, which
are in operation already. The third
possibility is to change the entire system suitable to meet the current
business information needs. The system
in use may be old in terms of technology, design and lacks flexibility
requiring a higher maintenance cost. Most of such systems catered to the standard operational
needs of the business. The information required for strategic management, competitive
strategy built, customer servicing, and changing the information needs of the
changing dynamics of the business, could not be delivered faster to the users. Due to the use of deficient
information technology and the system development approach for focusing
on the design, the nature and type of the systems were more of a data
processing nature and less of data analysis type. The late eighties and nineties, however, have seen the
exposition of the information technology and now it is offering a number of
functions, facilities and features
which has created a challenge to the System Designer and developer. The distance between the two users or the
sources of data is not a problem now.
The speed and the response is no longer an issue in the advanced
hardware-software configurations. The communication is possible within the
company, across the cities and countries. It is not necessary that the database
should be near to its owner and the user. The distributed database and the
access to it from anywhere is possible. With the fast changing business management practices all over the world, the systems that sought to serve them are also changing faster. At the same time, what is needed is a robust design, easy to change, with the changed components being minimal, user-friendly and easy to learn, and hardware software independent. For the integrity of the information in all respects, the system should have less human intervention, the data input should be once at a valid source and shareable on the selective basis. The systems designed now in the competitive world are intelligent, action triggering, self controlled, demanding the users' attention in extreme cases.
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