Discussion Post

Help me study for my Computer Science class. I’m stuck and don’t understand.

Read the case study, “Database Saves the State of Washington Medicaid Dollars”. After reading the case study and completing additional independent research using the textbook and online resources, address the following:

• Consider your degree program or your selected industry and then give an example of how knowledge management systems could be used in your selected business.
• Describe the relationship between data and information in the context of your selected business.

Respond to two of your peers’ initial posts and consider the following:

• Describe how the chosen knowledge system (beyond those discussed by your peers) can improve an organization or a department within an organization.
• Explain the advantages of that system. Give specific examples.
• Respond: I run a wastewater treatment plant in Arizona, and data is a key factor in making decisions. Not only is it important for making daily changes, but its also in problem prevention. I use two types of data collections systems, the first is a SCADA program that gives me up to date information and I use a historical logger. The historical logger is great when it comes to diagnosing a problem and for predicting problems, both in maintenance and operations. The SCADA program is the brains of the operation and it controls the plant and alerts me when there is a potential problem. I could always use more information. I have holes in my data collection that I hope to fix in the future. for example, I need to remove the ammonia from the wastewater and I do this by adding and removing air. One of the main control options that I hope to install is an ammonia analyzer that calculates the amount of air needed to remove the ammonia from my incoming water, at the same time I need it to automatically adjust my blowers based on the air needed. This would make my plant run more efficiently and give me a better understanding of the annual amount of ammonia.

  and,With my degree selection in mind, Information Technology plays a role in almost all businesses to some degree. So, I decided to narrow it down to a specific field, instead of my degree in general. I chose to talk more on the educational aspect this week. Although I don’t know much about the educational field as far as occupation goes, through experience with my coding background I’m able to come up with a few different instances where knowledge management systems would be an asset. To keep things business orientated, we can say our example is a Private school, which associates itself as a business where parents pay directly to the school to have their children educated.For starters, and obvious reasons, keeping track of students. With a database that keeps track of student profiles, you can add an assortment of details that can be found in just a few key swipes. Age, race, gender, attendance, lunch accounts, even allergies for the on-site clinics. There are also instances where you could keep a library database that keeps track of check-in’s and out’s, if applicable. You could even add teacher profiles to boot making an entire database that contains all the information needed in an educational sense. As far as the financial side of things goes, you could keep a database that contains all records of payments made from parents, whether it be electronic payment or otherwise, which logs a student’s admission status in leu with payments.That is just a general overview to say the least, however I feel it makes my point. Back last semester I had to make a student database program myself which, albeit MUCH smaller than I described above, the task at hand allowed me to think more so into what a database should comprise of. I feel knowledge management systems are essential for a business to thrive in the sense that almost all retail markets have membership programs, all pharmacies have patient portals/patient databases, and so on. It, in a sense, makes things more easily accessible and less troublesome to keep track of.