CISSE Intermediate Level
Data Management Information Systems cheat sheet
Every chapter's key points, formulas and definitions on one page, for the last week before the exam. Each heading links to the chapter that explains it.
Introduction to data management information systems
- Data management collects, stores, organises and maintains data so it stays accurate, accessible and secure throughout its life.
- The DIKW pyramid climbs from data (raw facts) to information (data given context), knowledge (patterns understood) and wisdom (judgement on how to act).
- An MIS captures, processes, stores and retrieves data, reports to every management level and controls performance against plans.
- A DBMS is layered into physical, logical and view layers, and is built from a query processor, storage manager, transaction manager and data dictionary.
- Relational databases suit structured data needing strict consistency; document and key-value stores suit varying or widely scaled data; graph databases suit data where the relationships are the point.
Key terms
- Data
- Raw, unprocessed facts with no context on their own, e.g. the number 42.
- Information
- Data given context and meaning through processing, e.g. "42 units sold today".
- Knowledge
- Information combined with understanding of patterns and relationships, e.g. recognising that sales rise every Friday.
- Wisdom
- Applied judgement, knowing how to act on that knowledge, e.g. deciding to increase Friday staffing based on the pattern.
- Query processor
- Interprets and executes queries, written in SQL.
- Storage manager
- Manages how data is physically stored and retrieved.
- Transaction manager
- Ensures transactions complete reliably (see the chapter on transaction processing).
- Data dictionary / catalog
- Stores metadata, the schema, constraints and structure describing the data itself.
The rest of the sheet covers
- Management information systems
- Data management
- Database design and the entity-relationship model
- Relational database design
- Structured Query Language (SQL)
- Database storage and querying
- Transaction processing
- Data integration
- Object-based databases and XML
- OLTP, OLAP and data warehousing
- Data mining for business intelligence
- Business processes, innovation and process re-engineering
- Emerging issues
- Exam technique and revision
- Glossary