Transactional Websites

A transactional website is a site where you can buy things from; perhaps a service (insurance) or goods (a book etc). Money is electronically transferred when something is purchased, and personal details are taken by the company from the customer.
Databases play an important role on these transactional websites, as they keep personal information about their customers; e.g. name, address etc. There may be a separate database for bank details, and another for product details. There may be a database for items in stock, and a database of past purchases.

Information needs of organisations (P115)
Schools, businesses, governments… All organisations need information to function. They used to have hard copies that were manually written by clerks. This continued until the information age.
e.g. Amazon keeps information about their customers: email addresses, addresses, stock – what they need, what are they running out of etc.
e.g. For paypal, information is vital. If they have lost your credit card details then the whole paypal system fails.
e.g. If the police lost information, they can’t do back-up checks, cannot look up evidence list etc.
e.g. Losing all of your friends numbers from your mobile phone
e.g. Hospitals might lose personal information, and gives someone medication that they are allergic to.

Difference between data, information & knowledge
Data- collection of facts which you store/process onto the computer that becomes information – e.g. typing postcode into website to find out the weather, receiving information in form of a picture of the weather forecast. Data on its own has no meaning, raw facts and figures (text or numbers).

Information- In comparison to data, information can be used and understood.

Knowledge- Make links between information e.g. traffic light is red, you stop your car.


Computers need data; they cannot process information. You can’t say “I want to find the folder called ‘Work’”. You need to input data into the search enginey thing. When we put information onto the computer we have to input data in order to put information from the outside world onto the computer; this is called data capture. E.g. voting on a reality TV program; you may have opinions on this person but you just give a vote.

People make mistakes; e.g. having the same name as a criminal may affect you in life if someone gets muddled. Validation means that databases can be formatted so that mistakes are reduced; e.g. only allowing 11 numbers in a field named Phone Numbers, so that there isn’t an extra number and no text.
PAPER FORMS
Paper forms are used to collect data from people. Tick boxes mean that data can be restricted to the absolute necessary (see above for example of voting for reality TV program). Sections on a form are called fields, they are used to restrict the data and people write what is necessary; e.g. address is encouraged to be written in full if there are separate fields for postcode etc, whereas if instructed ‘address’, a house number and road might just be given.

SCREEN FORMS
Screen form data is easier to edit, validate and delete information compared to paper forms.
Validation; makes sure information is relevant to boxes typing in to. See if information is text or number, or choose an option that’s listed. (See above)
e.g.
* No surname is longer than 15 letters
* No name has numbers in it
* A postcode must start with 2 letters
* A phone number is text only and has 11 characters
Validation saves mistakes, which saves time, which saves money. It means that their company is more efficient.