3. Utilising Databases

Question 1

What are the various ways we utilize databases?

Answer 1

By using: 
Data warehouses
Data Mart
Data mining
OLAP

Question 2

How are databases used in accounting and auditing?

Answer 2

Accounting software records financial transactions

Used to retrieve and store the data.

Question 3

What problems have data warehouses overcome?

Answer 3

The fact that there may be too many databases in a company or they are too large, therefore the processing may be difficult.

Question 4

What is a data warehouse?

Answer 4

A database populated with current and historical data extracted from the organizations various databases.
May also contain data from external sources.

Question 5

When are the data warehouses updated?

Answer 5

They are usually updated as the source databases are updated.

Question 6

What would you call a data warehouse when it is updated along with database source?

Answer 6

Real-time data warehouse

Question 7

Can data be modified in the data warehouse

Answer 7

No
It can only be update through the source databases.
This means data warehouses can be referred to as “read-only”

Question 8

What database model types are usually used for data warehouses?

Answer 8

Relational or multidimensional

Question 9

What are data warehouses the backbone for?

Answer 9

Data mining and

business intelligence software (BIS)

Question 10

Is security and integrity crucial for data warehouses?

Answer 10

Yes

Question 11

What are the purposes for data marts?

Answer 11

Because data warehouses are so massive they can be slow to process and query, data marts provide a smaller data warehouse that can be processed easier.

Question 12

What is a data mart?

Answer 12

A smaller data warehouse extracted from the main data warehouse that contains specific related data for specific user group
E.g. Finance department and marketing department.

Question 13

What is data mining?

Answer 13

Software used to analyze data sets in order to discover previously unknown trends, patterns and relationships between data.

Question 14

What are data mining analyses usually used for?

Answer 14

1. Decision making
2. Forecasts
3. Predictive modeling
4. Fraud detection
5. Risk management

Question 15

an example that data mining could uncover?

Answer 15

An insurance company can uncover that red cars driven by drivers younger than 25 are more likely to get into an accident

Question 16

Examples of data mining software?

Answer 16

Rapid miner

SAS enterprise Miner

Question 17

What is OLAP?

Answer 17

Online analytical processing

Allows users to interactively and rapidly analyze large data sets from various viewpoints.

Question 18

An example of OLAP?

Answer 18

How many red shoes were sold to persons aged 20 or 30?

Note: multidimensional

Question 19

What is OLAP used in?

Answer 19

Business intelligence
Budgeting
Forecasting
Management reporting

Question 20

What is the similarity between OLAP and data mining?

Answer 20

Both business intelligence tools

Question 21

He is OLAP different from data mining?

Answer 21

OLAP is used to summarize data

E.g. Per month, per region, etc.

Question 22

He is data mining differ from OLAP?

Answer 22

Data mining is used to break down data in order to uncover trends

Question 23

What kind of question would data mining be used to answer instead of OLAP?

Answer 23

What factors resulted in an increase in smart phone sales in Gauteng in September?

Question 24

What is an example of question OLAP would answer instead of data mining?

Answer 24

What value is claimed for women drivers in green cars by month?