Ais Chapter 7

Front 1

Who was a pioneer in the development of event driven AIS?

Back 1

McCarthy

Front 2

What are the 2 basic levels AIS systems can be divided into?

Back 2

View driven systems
Event driven systems

Front 3

What are view driven information systems?

Back 3

View driven systems are traditional accounting systems. They deal with the general purpose of financial statements.

Front 4

What are the 5 key problems with view driven accounting information systems?

Back 4

1. They focus on a very small, well-defined group of important business events--those that are recordable in the AIS with debits and credits.
2. They often process data in batches, frequently at the end of the month. Thus the data in a view driven system is often outdated.
3. For the transactions that are captured, a very limited set of data is captured--dates, accounts, amounts. Other transaction details such as product characteristics, are ommitted.
4. Data in a view driven system are highly aggregated and stored in multiple places.
5. In a view driven system the internal control process is often protective and expensive. Controls such as separation of duties are focused on preventing collusion in an effort to safegurad assets.

Front 5

While the info in event driven systems is useful in the production of financial statements questions such as _________ go unanswered.

Back 5

Was the merchandise delivered on time?
Was the quality acceptable to the customer?
Has this customer ordered similar merchandise before? How close is the customer to reaching their credit limit?

Front 6

What do view driven systems do?

Back 6

They capture, organize, and summarize data by business function

Front 7

What do event driven systems do?

Back 7

Event driven systems focus on business processes which is more comprehensive.

Front 8

Definition of event driven system

Back 8

The event driven approach assumes that the purpose of accounting and other info systems is to provide information about economic events that is useful in a variety of decision contexts. Events proponents say "Let's collect ray business data that can be sed by a variety of information customers, each with its own sets of values and weights to assign to the data". It is the events view that provides an avenue to the next generation of business information systems.

Front 9

What do event systems caputre?

Back 9

1. Capture more data about individual transactions.
2. Organize the data so that they can be accessed and understood by people from a variety of organizational functions.
3. Are equipped to answer questions like those posed above regarding the inventory transaction.

Front 10

What does real modeling do?

Back 10

A documentation technique that facilitates the design and implementation of event driven accounting systems

Front 11

REAL stands for

Back 11

R-Resources
E-Events
A-Agents
L-Location

Front 12

Operating events

Back 12

Focus on activities involved with providing goods and services to customers. Examples include purchasing and selling inventory, selling, paying employees, ad converting raw material into finished goods.

Front 13

Information events

Back 13

Deal with recording and maintaining data, as well as reporting information. Think of information events as preparing financial statements or updating account records.

Front 14

Decision/management events

Back 14

Are concerned with human decision making. They can range from simple things such as which software and hardware to buy, to complex decisions such as changing compensation packages.

Front 15

REAL models do what?

Back 15

Capture data on strategically significant operating events. They do not incoroporate information events or decision/management events. Once the events have been identified the rest of the details (resources, agents, locations) can be filled in around them.

Front 16

Agents

Back 16

Agents are the people involved in the information system. Internal agents include employees in all departments; external agents refor to customers, vendors, and other stakeholders "outside" the business.

Front 17

Resources

Back 17

The things the agents need to complete the events; cash, inventory, equipment, supplies, and other assets.

Front 18

Locations

Back 18

not strictly required in every REAL model However, if an event occurs at a particular geographic location, it should be noted in the REAL model. For example, if a company maintains an operating bank account in one bank and a payroll account in another bank, the event "cash disbursement" would require a location.

Front 19

What are the 3 types of events?

Back 19

Operating events
Information events
Decision/management events

Front 20

How are REAL models organized?

Back 20

Events appear in the middle
Resources are on the left
Agents are on the right
Locations are included wherever they fit most logically.

Front 21

6 steps to develop REAL models

Back 21

1. Understand the organization's environment and objectives.
2. REview the business process and identify the strategically significant operating events.
3. Analyze each strategically significant operating event to identify the event resources, agents, and locations.
4. Identify the relevant behaviors, characteristics, and attributes of the REAL model elements.
5. Identify and document the direct relationships among elements of the REAL model.
6. Validate the REAL model with businesspeople.

Front 22

1. understand the organization's environment and objectives

Back 22

Accounting professionals need to have a thorough grasp of what the organizaton does. You'll have to observe the operations, read manuals and argicles from the literature, and talk with managers and workers before developing a REAL model.

Front 23

2. Review the business process and identify the stragetically significant events.

Back 23

REAL modeling focuses on business process==the everyday activities employees undertake to create value for their customers and their stakeholders. The focus in REAL modeling is on the strategically significant operating event. AS I write this chapter I sit in the airport and wait for my flight home. The strategially significant events associated with the flight process would be checking baggage, checking in passangers, and boarding the airplane. Identifying these events is both subjective because 2 different designers might come up with slightly different sets of events/process names, and iterative because you'll normally need several tries to capture all the events.

Front 24

3. Analyze each strategically significant operating events.

Back 24

For example, checking in passengers would include 2 agents (passanger and ariline employee) and 2 resources (a computer and a boarding pass). The location would be the city.

Front 25

4. Identify the relevant behaviors, characteristics, and attributes of the REAL model elements.

Back 25

This step helps design database tables. For example, what data would you want/need to capture about an airline employee for your database? First name, last name, SSN, phone number, address, job positon, emergency contact info. For the passanger they'd have a database containing: passenger's name, seat assignment, departure and destination cities, gate assignment, and departure time.

Front 26

5. Identify and document direct relationships among various elemtents of the REAL model.

Back 26

The lines show which elements are related to one another, the symbols are called cardinalities. Cardinalities help systems designers and audiros understand how a relational database should be condstructed.

Front 27

6. Validate the REAL model with businesspeople.

Back 27

Once the REAL model is constructed, it sould be discussed with ppl form the organization. Discussing it should help the accounting professional develop a deeper understanding of the organization and its business processes. This will often result in changes of the REAL model.

Front 28

Cardilalities

Back 28

Tell an accounting professional about the relationships between elements of a REAL model.

Front 29

Ask yourself 4 questions when establishing cardinalities for a REAL model:

Back 29

1. For each x, what is the minimum number of y involved?
2. For each x what is the maximum number of y involved?
3. For each y what is the minimum number of x involved?
4. For each y what is the maximum number of x involved?

Front 30

What should the database tables look like when they are finished in a REAL model?

Back 30

They should be in third normal form. They should contain neither repeating groups (1NF) nor redundant data (2NF). In addition, every field in the table should provide additional information about its primary key (3NF).

Front 31

Rules of noramlization

Back 31

1. Focus each database on a single "thing", such as customer data or inventory data. Each table must have a primary key that identifies the record.
2. Eliminate redundant data in each table. If a table has a compound primary key, each data element in the table must depend on both parts of the primary key. If a data element depends on only one part it should go into another table.
3. Ensure that all fields in a database contain data that describe the table's primary key. If a field is not dependent on a primary key, it should be removed.

Front 32

Rules of creating database tables from a REAL model:

Back 32

1. When the maximum cardinalities between 2 elements of a REAL model are one and many, include the primary key from the "one side" in the table on the "many side".
2. When the maximum cardinalities between 2 elements of a REAL model are many and many, create a separate junction table to reflect the combined relationship.

Front 33

Junction table

Back 33

Don't normally contain more than a few fields. Many of them will simply comprise the primary keys from other tables.

Front 34

In creating a database...

Back 34

You would enforce referential integrity between the tables. Enforcing referential integrity tells the database to update the junction table whenever the separate tables are updated. Junction tables are necessary to make databases more efficient.

Front 35

How do we know how many tables are required for the REAL model?

Back 35

In general, you're going to need at least one table for each "box" in the REAL model.

Front 36

How are primary keys signified in the database?

Back 36

Primary keys are signified by an underline.

Front 37

What happens when the maximum cardinalities between 2 elements of a REAL model are 1 and many?

Back 37

Include the primary key from the "one side" in the table on the "many side".

Front 38

When the maximum cardinalities between 2 elements of a REAL model are many and many

Back 38

create a separate junction table to reflect the combined relationship.