Digital Economy Notes Pt 1

Transactional Websites

A Transactional website is a type of website where you can purchase things from, for example Amazon and Ebay. Other transactional websites can provide services such as AA with car insurance etc. It is called a transaction website because a transaction is carried out between the customer and the company providing the goods or services.
Every transaction website has to
· Collect details from the customer (address, contact details, card details etc.)
· Collect payment (a system that is efficient with collecting card payments, however some companies use PayPal – an intermediary between you and the company)

Databases play a vital role in these websites as they store the details of the customers, card details, details of the purchases you have made, details of the products they sell and whether there is any in stock etc.

Information needs of Organisations
In order for organisations to function, they need to store and communicate information. Information they need on a daily basis is email addresses to keep their customers informed etc. Websites like Amazon will also need information such as addresses, what is in stock and what isn’t and the quantity.
People say that information is the most valuable thing for a company as it can give them a competitive edge. Businesses can succeed or fail depending on how effective they are in information handling.
Information is extremely vital for hospitals and police as in a hospital if information about people is lost about previous treatments they have had and what they are allergic to (medication) then this could cause a major problem as doctors could give patients medication that could cause more problems or perform operations that could be extremely dangerous due to other operations performed previously.
If police databases were deleted then they could not check past records of criminals. Therefore if they are investigating a murder they cannot track possible records and if they arrest someone and it is their third offence for example, they will not know whether this person needs to go to prison or not as they do not know any previous information.

Capturing and Processing Data
Data – collection of facts. What we input into computers and what computers manipulate. Set of numbers from a bar code or a list of items stocked by a factory etc.
Information – what humans want. Output from a computer system. It is data in context, it has meaning to us like 25 does not mean anything to us but 25 degrees celcius means something.
Knowledge – it is coherent understanding based on information. It includes understanding links between different items of information and how actions can be decided on because of the information.

Computers need data: they have no use for information, they receive data in such a way that their software can process it to make it useful to us.

Data Capture – is a process of getting information from the outside world and putting it onto the computer.
An example of this is someone voting on a reality program.

If a mistake is put into a data capture, this could have devastating effects. If a criminal has the same name as you then you may be arrested instead of the criminal, this could be damaging to your reputation.

Paper Forms
Paper forms are very useful as they can force a structure on the data being collected. This means that it forces people to write things in a certain way i.e. in certain boxes etc.
For example, if someone is filling in a form in order to provide a name and address, there can be separate boxes for each character for each item of information.
Another advantage of using paper forms is that data can be easily processed later on as the information can be separated and easily read.
You can restrict their answers so that your data is easier to process, this can be done by giving options and asking for the person to only tick one etc.


Screen forms and Validation
Data from forms is often typed into a computer system by copying the data into a screen form that has the same fields as the original paper document.
Validation can be used by screen form software and this can trap certain types of mistake as the data is being entered. Fields can have rules on them so only numbers can be input etc.
Two examples other examples of validation are;
· No surname is longer than 15 letters
· A postcode must start with one or two letters

Validation cannot stop human errors from happening however, for example if a person types in MR PETEM instead or MR PETER then the system will not be able to tell the user that there is a problem as there is nothing wrong (in the validation rules).