What is the relationship of data flows with Databases?
To understand this relationship, let us examine what data flows really are first.
A data flow has three components:
- the data that is transfered from one process to another
- what process did this data come from?
- to what process will use this data.
These components tell us that organizational processes is about using data and exchanging information across functions and units of the organization. As an information systems student, this is a critical part of the analysis activity you perform to determine the problems and identify the solution.
When data flowed from source to destination, this is a transactional event. As a transactional event, data is recorded to ensure that the transaction is not lost or completely forgotten. For a system that will able to improve the flow of information in an organization, the first to ensure is that the data about transactions are completely and accurately recorded This tells us that when we do analysis in the objective of developing Information Systems, we also perform transactional analysis. Transactional analysis means to dissect the elements of the transaction and evaluate whether the pre-requisite complete capture is present - Are the data needed to generate the information that should flow to destination complete?
Important elements of a transaction is something that we already learned in our early years - WWWWH (Who, What, Where, When, How).
- What is the transaction?
- Who transacted it?
- How was it transacted?
- When did it happen?
- Where did it happen?
- What exactly was transacted?
- What completed the transaction?
- Who completed it?
- When was it completed?
- How was it completed?
This discussion actually leads us to the role of Databases in Data Flows. Since Data Flows contains data about the transaction, such is important to be recorded in Databases.
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