• Databases to improve busi-ness performance and de-cision making

• Client-server architecture

Naveen Raj D.S

Databases to improve business performance and decision making

Businesses use their databases to:

Keep track of basic transactions Provide information that will help the company run the business

more efficiently Help managers and employees make better decisions

Data warehouse: a database that stores current and historical data from core operational transactional systems for use in management analysis, but this data cannot be altered.

Data mart: A subset of a data warehouse in which a summa-rized or highly focused portion of the organization's data is placed in a separate database for a specific population

Business intelligence (BI) tools: Data analysis tools used for consolidating, analyzing, and accessing vast stores of data to help in decision making, such as software for database query and reporting, tools for multidimensional data analysis (online analytical processing), and data mining

of users.

Components of a data warehouse

Client-server architecture

• Client-server architecture (client/server) is a network architec-ture in which each computer or process on the network is either a client or a server. Servers are powerful computers or processes dedicated to managing disk drives (file servers), printers (print servers), or network traffic (network servers ). Clients are PCs or workstations on which users run applications. Clients rely on servers for resources, such as files, devices, and even processing power.

• Another type of network architecture is known as a peer-to-peer architecture because each node has equivalent responsibilities. Both client/server and peer-to-peer architectures are widely used, and each has unique advantages and disadvantages.

• Client-server architectures are sometimes called two-tier archi-tectures

Client-server architecture