Information Systems Design and Development Computing Science Information Systems Design and Development Purpose, features and functionality
Learning Outcomes By the end of this topic you will be able to: explain why it is necessary to have a detailed description of purpose for an information system; describe the different types of users that may use an information system; explain why it is important that information systems can interact with other software.
Purpose of an information system We are looking at two types of information system Databases Websites Information systems should allow the following
Purpose of an information system Information systems should allow the following •Multi-access •Fast access to information •Information to be sorted by different criteria •Information to be presented in different formats •Information to be inserted, deleted or amended.
Purpose of an information system Information systems should have a detailed description of their purpose to allow users to decide the usefulness of the system The description could include What information is to be stored Why the information is to be stored How the information is to be stored How the information will be used Who will be using the information system.
Types of user Important to determine what type of user will use the system Two main questions to determine What is the age range of the target audience? What is the experience level of the target audience?
Software interaction Increasingly important that information systems can interact with other software without human intervention Design of information systems is increasingly influenced by the need for these interactions
Software interactions Example 1 – Search engines on WWW Search engines work by automatically creating a database that links words and phrases to web addresses Done by software called web crawlers which scans HTML to pick out components Originally done by searching metadata contained in <head> area of web pages
Software interactions Example 1 – Search engines on WWW Google (and other search engines) analyse links to sites with sites with the best links being rated highly Search engine optimisation is the name for creating web pages in such a way that places the pages highly in search engine results Search engines like Google and Bing now keep their methods of rating sites secret to stop manipulation of search results
Software interactions Example 2 Aggregating sites These are sites that gather information from other sites Examples are Expedia, CompareThe Market and GoCompare They collect information about, for example, holidays from multiple sites and display it on a single, searchable web site
Software interactions Example 2 Aggregating sites If someone buys through the aggregate site then the company selling the product will pay a small sum to the aggregate site. The aggregate sites are made possible by companies agreeing standards to create their sites. This allows the aggregate site to automatically gather the data needed