Chapter 4: Data and Knowledge Managment

1. What are some of the difficulties in managing data?

Some of the difficulties with managing data include:
* the sheer amount of data available, on different things, at different times, from a variety of sources.
* different people collect data contributing to duplication of data and information in a business
* Data collection methods are different and vary, contributing to the replication of data.
* different sources of data-overseas, internal, external and personal.
* New sources of data as technology advances. This has created information available on blogsites and other interactive means eg: podcasts.
* Data decays over time
* data integrity, redundancy, validity and quality can be under or overestimated which creates error and bias.

2. What are the various sources for data?

Some of the sources where data comes from include:
* internal- corporate directors, corporate studies
* personal- data developed from thoughts, feelings, experiences, opinions, knowledge
* External- government databases like Census, other corporation databases

3. What is a primary key and a secondary key?

A primary key is the identifier field or attribute that uniquely identifies a record.
Secondary key are identifier fields or attributes that have some identifying information, but typically does not identify the file with complete accuracy.

4. What is an entity and a relationship?

An entity is a person, place, thing, or event about which information is maintained in a record.

5. What are the advantages and disadvantages of relational databases?

Relational databases are a collection of tables which allows the accessibility of data to be gained from a variety of sources without having to reorganise the database.
Some of the advantages of a relational database include:
* sorts data into a concept into commonalities recording records and attributes
* Joins data that is related and shows the relationships among them
* Provides great flexibility of the data to be used by the user
* end users can access needed data quickly and easily via Web browsers
Some of the disadvantages of a relational database include:
* Larger size databases can confuse and muddle information gathered by the user
* depending upon the size of the data, it can slow down the processing time of retrieving data.
* People in one department might be reluctant to share data with other departments as they have been the ones who have contributed to the collaboration of the data.

6. What is knowledge management?

Knowledge management involves a process that helps organisations identify, select, organise, disseminate, transfer and apply information that is in the organisations memory and that exists in the organisation in an unstructured way.

7. What is the difference between tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge?

Tacit knowledge is the subjective and experiential learning of a person or a group of persons that can be applied to management and decision making. Some examples of this type of knowledge include: intellectual property, know-how, expertise.
Explicit knowledge is a more objective, rational and technical type of knowledge. This knowledge is applied to business decision making in respect to ensuring that the strategies and objectives of the business are adequate reflections of valid data.