Differences Between Data and Information
| Data | Information |
|---|---|
| Raw facts which are unprocessed | Data which is processed as well as structured |
| Have no context | Data which is given context |
- In essence, data is just text and numbers.
- Meanwhile, information is when data is given meaning.
Self review
- Data: "Arjun got a 42/100 in the CS test".
- Information: "Arjun was 25 points lower than the cohort's average".
Differences Between Information System and a Database
Definition
Information System
An organised combination of people, procedures, hardware, software, networks, (databases) and data that captures, stores, processes and delivers information to support decision‑making and control within an organisation.
Definition
Database
A structured, persistent collection of related data that can be efficiently queried, inserted, updated and deleted usually managed by a database‑management system (DBMS).
Hint
- DBMS is known as a Database Management System.
- You will encounter this in detail on A.2.
Example
- Information system: A school management system where teachers enter attendance, the software checks for absences, generates daily summary emails to parents, and stores records for reports.
- Database inside it: A MySQL database containing tables such as Students(id, name, class) and Attendance(student_id, date, present), used solely to persist the raw attendance data.
The Need for Databases
Note
Databases are essential in the current world, especially in the areas of data management, data sharing, and data integrity.
- Data management:  
- In databases, the data is organised in a manner which can be easy to access and manage.
- Further, it organises data into normalised tables, eliminating redundancy.
- Databases leverage SQL, indexing and in‑memory caching to locate, insert or update a record in an efficient and swift manner.
- Data sharing: 
- By using databases, dozens (or thousands) of users can query or edit the same dataset simultaneously without overwriting each other’s work.
- This helps reduce data redundancy and increases efficiency.
- Data integrity and security:
- Integrity constraints restricts data to adhere to specific conditions on databases.
- Moreover, databases have backup systems, which in case of failures, restores data.
- Also, databases have security measures such as encryption and firewalls which helps protect data from possible attacks.
Note
- Being specific, primary and foreign‑key constraints reject illegal relationships, validation rules stop out‑of‑range values, and ACID transactions guarantee each change is committed or not.
- This ensures the database never slips into an inconsistent state.
