Mis 309 Course Work

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b. (5 points) What are the advantages of a relational database?

The advantages of a relational database are increased flexibility, increased scalability and performance, reduced information redundance, increased information integraty and increased information security.

8. Data warehouses and data marts:

a. (5 points) What is a data warehouse and why would a business want to implement one?

A: A data warehouse is a logical collection of information, gathered from many operational databases, that supports business analysis activities and decision-making tasks. The primary purpose of a data warehouse is to combine information, more specifically, strategic information, throughout an organization into a single repository in such a way that the people who need that information can make decisions and undertake business analysis. A key idea within data warehousing is to collect information from multiple systems in a common location that uses a universal querying tool. This allows operational databases to run where they are most efficient for the business, while providing a common location using a familiar format for the strategic or enterprisewide reporting information.

b. (5 points) What is a data mart and why would a department what a data mart instead of just accessing the entire data warehouse?

A: A data mart contains a subset of data warehouse information. To distinguish between data warehouses and data marts, think of data warehouses as having a more organizational focus and data marts as having a functional focus.

15 points) Categorize the five common characteristics of high-quality information, rank them in order of importance to Zillow, and, for each, describe how and why they are important to Zillow.

A: The rank of high quality information by which is relevant to Zillow is:

Timeliness - Newly updated data

Accuracy - A perfect match to the relevant field

Completeness - Complete data characteristics

Consistency - Data are logically sorted in various keyword searches

Uniqueness - The data must be relevant to the category by which it is sorted

10. (10 points) Describe how Zillow uses a data-driven website to run its business and how important this is to Zillow.

A: A data-driven website is an interactive website kept constantly updated and relevant to the needs of its customers using a database. It is important to Zillow in a way that web browsers are much easier to use than directly accessing the database by using a custom-query tool. Also, the web interface requires few or no changes to the database model and it costs less to add a web interface in front of a DBMS than to redesign and rebuild the system to support changes.