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Chapter 6 Foundations of Business Intelligence: Databases and Information Management 243

FIGURE 6.2 TRADITIONAL FILE PROCESSING

The use of a traditional approach to file processing encourages each functional area in a corporation
to develop specialized applications. Each application requires a unique data file that is likely to be a
subset of the master file. These subsets of the master file lead to data redundancy and inconsistency,
processing inflexibility, and wasted storage resources.

program-data dependence, inflexibility, poor data security, and an inability to
share data among applications.

Data Redundancy and Inconsistency
Data redundancy is the presence of duplicate data in multiple data files so
that the same data are stored in more than one place or location. Data redun-
dancy occurs when different groups in an organization independently collect
the same piece of data and store it independently of each other. Data redun-
dancy wastes storage resources and also leads to data inconsistency, where
the same attribute may have different values. For example, in instances of
the entity COURSE illustrated in Figure 6.1, the Date may be updated in
some systems but not in others. The same attribute, Student_ID, may also
have different names in different systems throughout the organization. Some
systems might use Student_ID and others might use ID, for example.
Additional confusion might result from using different coding systems
to represent values for an attribute. For instance, the sales, inventory, and
manufacturing systems of a clothing retailer might use different codes to
represent clothing size. One system might represent clothing size as “extra
large,” whereas another might use the code “XL” for the same purpose. The
resulting confusion would make it difficult for companies to create customer
relationship management, supply chain management, or enterprise systems
that integrate data from different sources.

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