help for an assessment

[hourn]

allright, if anyone can give me some help on this it would be greatly appreciated as i have gone through this whole assessment without to much trouble but now i'm stuck with three questions to do and my parents are out and i've got no idea.

the subject is information process and technology - basically a computing/business management subject.

the assessment is on Transaction Processing Systems. We have to answer a number of essay questions on a particular area of the comercial industry. i chose banking.

the questions i still have to do are:

1. how has technology changed the role of employees in collecting and processing data in the area of your choice (banking)?

For this question i have dont two paragraphs basically explaining how employees now spend less time collecting data and more time processing it into information, which is what a company and its customers are really after.

2. How can the collection of data be biased in the area of your chioce?

I'm up **** creek for this question. Got nothing done and don't have any ideas for it

3. How can the integrity of data change in the area of your choice? What inernal and external influences can affect this change in integrity?

Only done one paragraph to explain what data integrity is. For those who don't it is just the general 'correctness' of data, such as it is up-to-date, correct, valid etc,.

Anyone with any ideas as to what i can write on for any of these 3 questions would be greatly appreciated as i'm now stuck for ideas on these questions.

All i need is some ideas and i can eleborate on them without any problems.

cheers

 

[vanders]

would love to help ya but i have absolutely no idea!!

Good luck with it though

 

[Danni]

Originally posted by hourn
allright, if anyone can give me some help on this it would be greatly appreciated as i have gone through this whole assessment without to much trouble but now i'm stuck with three questions to do and my parents are out and i've got no idea.

the subject is information process and technology - basically a computing/business management subject.

the assessment is on Transaction Processing Systems. We have to answer a number of essay questions on a particular area of the comercial industry. i chose banking.

the questions i still have to do are:

1. how has technology changed the role of employees in collecting and processing data in the area of your choice (banking)?

For this question i have dont two paragraphs basically explaining how employees now spend less time collecting data and more time processing it into information, which is what a company and its customers are really after.

2. How can the collection of data be biased in the area of your chioce?

I'm up **** creek for this question. Got nothing done and don't have any ideas for it

3. How can the integrity of data change in the area of your choice? What inernal and external influences can affect this change in integrity?

Only done one paragraph to explain what data integrity is. For those who don't it is just the general 'correctness' of data, such as it is up-to-date, correct, valid etc,.

Anyone with any ideas as to what i can write on for any of these 3 questions would be greatly appreciated as i'm now stuck for ideas on these questions.

All i need is some ideas and i can eleborate on them without any problems.

cheers

Ok for question 3, not sure if this is the tack they are asking for, but the integrity of the data, can it not be changed by human error? seeing as it is humans puting the data into the system?

For question 1, as a former bank teller, technology significantly changed the collection of data and I suppose inturn the integrity of it.

It brought about a reliance on the technology to be able to do processes, such as mathematics, rather than the onus being on the teller. I think the biggest thing was that it was assumed that the data would be more secure and more accurate as it was coming from a machine, neglecting the fact that the machine obtained it's original data from humans anyway.

I don't know if that is what you are looking for, just my pov from my former job.

Cheers
Danni

 

[hourn]

thanks danni,

its all good right now, i'm absolutely scracthing the barrell for ideas

 

[bunsen burner]

1. how has technology changed the role of employees in collecting and processing data in the area of your choice (banking)?

Your answer seems pretty good

2. How can the collection of data be biased in the area of your chioce?

You want to ask them what they mean by this question. It's a bit vague. The only thing I can think of is that tellers may enter the wrong numbers or wrong account etc.

3. How can the integrity of data change in the area of your choice? What inernal and external influences can affect this change in integrity?

Banking is a very important industry. Almost everybody uses them - business, consumers, employees etc. Therefore, it is of utmost importance that banks maintain integrity of their data. Without this data integrity, economies would be in chaos.
Bank customers need to be guarunteed that their transactions and account balances are correct and up to date.

There are three main things that might compromise a bank's data integrity;

1) Software problems - bugs or insufficient controls
2) Hackers
3) Incorrect data entry

Software bugs and insufficient controls

Banks need the highest quality software to be able to maintain data integrity. Controls that are built into their system to ensure data integrity include the use of default values, range control, NULL value control, referential integrity, rollforwards and rollbacks. Rollbacks are one of the most important controls. Rollbacks are needed to reverse the changes made by transactions that have been aborted or terminated abnormally. i.e. Guy goes to bank and asks for $10,000 to be transferred from one account to another. The money is withdrawn from one account (electronically), and then the system goes down before that money is deposited into the other account. The roll back feature (basically computer code) will automatically cancel the transaction and revert back to the original state.

Hackers

Hackers can hack in and change shi t around. Banks need to use the best security to prevent this (firewalls, encryption, SET - secure electronic transfer, SSL -secure sockets layer).


Incorrect data entry

When tellers enter the wrong amount.


I would go onto the net and look all this shi t up. Words that you may want to use for searching are:

TPS
Data integrity
transaction integrity
Rollback
Rollforward

 

[hourn]

thank you bunsen burner, you are my new hero. I have searched all weekend, and have just been stumped on those three questions.

At least now i have one of them answered, and although as you say the first question is an allright answer, i haven't done nearly enough as what i need.

I would ask the school about the bias question except it is due tomorrow. I managed to get a paragraph or two in about banks only giving out information to make them look innocent when lawsuits came around involving their customers. Just have to rely on others having lots of problems with this question.

 

[bunsen burner]

There is on more thing that you want to consider regarding data integrity:

Lets say that there are two simultaneous transaction on the one account, i.e. The receptionist and the boss make a transaction on a company's account at the same time.

A company has a balance of $10,000

The receptionist pays a bill for $7,500 by phone. At the exact same time, the boss pays a hooker $3000 with the company debit card. When both these transactions checks the balance, it says $10,000 and seems okay - but it isn't.

To get past this problem, banks use "locking mechanisms". Here's how it works: While the receptionist's transaction is being processed, the record/account is locked. The boss can't make his transaction. Once the receptionist's transaction is complete and the balance is updated ($2,500), and the account is unlocked. The boss can now access the account, but will find that there is insufficient funds.


You should add this into the "Software bugs and insufficient controls" section.

 

[hourn]

cheers mate, that is unbelievably greatly appreciated, i was about 2 minutes from going to bed really ****ed off that this was going to be my lowest mark in IPT for the year by a long way.

It'll still probably be my lowest with two of 7 questions not answered really at all, but i think i should still manage about 65/70 per cent which is pretty good. (actually, that wouldn't be my lowest score because i got 58.5% in the last exams but that was third in the year, so i'll just say it was a hard exam) .