Essay Example on Identify the main components of an information System

What is a mission critical system Information System consists of hardware software people and data Examples of Information System ATM Online Reservation System A mission critical system is an Information System that is important to a company's day to day operations Examples of mission critical system includes An order processing system without which a company cannot function properly b Compare enterprise computing systems to transaction processing systems with example Enterprise computing Transaction processing TP systems Enterprise computing systems support company wide operations and data management requirements A company's day to day business operations generates data this data is processed by Transaction processing TP systems Enterprise computing integrates a company s primary functions such as production sales services and inventory control This integration will increase efficiency decrease costs and also help managers make key decisions TP systems are usually employed when there are large amounts of data This huge pile of data needs to be processed so that the company can function smoothly TP system is a mission critical system The enterprise cannot work properly without it Eg TP systems in Automatic Toll System Enterprise resource planning ERP systems provide a cost efficient support for all the employees like users and managers of the company TP systems process a set of commands which are transaction related as a group but not individually 

These systems are efficient because of that Security and Reliability is achieved in Enterprise computing by using a framework for accessing data and storing data that is company wide In TP systems to ensure data integrity the transaction is considered as a single block If a single element in a transaction fail then the whole transaction is rolled back 2 a Briefly explain the difference between various Systems Development Methods The various systems development methods are structured analysis object oriented analysis agile methods Structured Analysis Object Oriented Analysis Agile Methods Description The system is represented as data and the processes that process the data The development of the system is divided into several phases The waterfall model consists of five phases requirements design construction testing and maintenance evolution It is quite possible to iterate among the phases The whole system is considered as an object that consists of data and processes People things transactions and events are viewed as objects Object Oriented Analysis is more interactive than structural analysis In Agile methods intense effort from the whole team is required The development is broken down into cycles or iterations or new functionality It reduces the major risks as the main tasks are divided into incremental steps The cycles are designed and built and tested Modelling Tools Process descriptions and Data flow diagrams Diagrams of object oriented analysis shows actors of system functions and messages Tools that can improve communication like collaborative software whiteboards and brainstorming Example Business process modelling Pros Iteration provides more flexibility compared to other methods It is best suited for traditional project management techniques It can easily be integrated to object oriented programming languages like java It divides code into modules and makes code reusable Modular and reusable code greatly reduces cost and development time 

Analysis CASE analysis tools can check for incorrect specification in diagrams inconsistency and incompleteness 2 Design In this phase CASE tools are used to design a system model by graphically creating a model with GUI and database Technical architecture is also designed to create a technical blueprint of the system 3 Code generation CASE Tool also have the functionality to generate program code and database definition code like DDL directly from documents and diagrams 4 Documentation At various stages of system development life cycle case tools help to improve the quality of generated documents It also improves the uniformity and completeness Testing Automatic checking speeds up the testing process and also improves the quality 3 What is a SWOT analysis Prepare a SWOT analysis of your school or your employer SWOT stands for strengths weaknesses opportunities and threats A SWOT analysis can be done on a product project or even a company The main objective of doing SWOT analysis is to avoid pursuing the goals that are not profitable and unachievable A SWOT analysis also examines technical human and financial resources of a firm