Saving data online is very convenient, especially if you use different devices in different locations.
For example you may start a document in google docs on your laptop at school or work, then continue working on the document on your ipad while on the bus or on the way home.
It is very reliable for ease of access.For example in the old days, if you left your homework at home, you could not hand it in. But now you can log into the cloud, download your homework and hand it in.
Individual and companies often use the 'cloud'.
Data warehouses and data marts are different. Yes they are used for storage of data, but they have other major advantages. (see below)
a data warehouse collects large amounts of data
stores and manages data for a company
this is to do analysis on that data (data mining) for financial or other gain
works alongside and with data mining
often inside a data warehouse you will find a large bank of very modern, high end computers with a large database (Relational DataBase Management System RDBMS), and software called Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) database.
users need this data and can get it from the central data warehouse, or from smaller collection points called data marts
a collection point of data from a data warehouse
usually has data for a specific topic
a data warehouse may have 40 or 50 data marts, each offering different data
storing data in the cloud requires 3 things.
an internet connection
a username and password
accepting a user agreement
examples of cloud storage are google docs, oneDrive, dropbox, iCloud, Facebook and more
the cloud is actually a collection of servers that store and transmit data
Upload - you can upload your files,
download - you can download your files
advantage - no need to buy the software
advantage - can be used from any device with an internet connection
advantage - compatible with most devices and operating systems
advantage - updates transfer automatically across devices eg calendar, email, notes, messages
disadvantage - security problems
disadvantage - privacy issues
disadvantage - ownership of your data
Data mining is done by business
Data mining is finding the data from a large collection of data
Is it the same as you searching in a browser on the internet? No. The internet is huge and trying to find exactly what you want is difficult
Data mining is done for business use
Data mining is done to find the information, analyse it and then gain financially from it
Data mining is related to data warehouses and data marts
Data mining is the process of finding information in a data mart or data warehouse
Data mining is a source of business intelligence
after the 9/11 attacks in the USA, the US government analysed data from the internet, emails, text messaging to identify who did the attacks
so data mining is used by governments to get information to stop terrorists
it is also used by the police to prevent major crime, eg for the Sydney Olympics in 2000 police monitored internet activity for criminal action
it is used by business for who to send investment returns. It does this by using data to predict which regions are more likely to participate in the investment. For example; a property magazine may send investment news to people in the rich part of town, rather than the poor part of town because data mining showed there is a greater chance of sales in the rich part of town
another example in the clothing industry would be shops that have sold silk dresses have data on how many were sold. They are also keep data on who bought silk dresses and also bought a hat(or other) at the same time. From this data, they can learn that, for other shops they have, they can match up the products they put into the shop window based on the data
data mining can help business work smarter
When people submit forms on the internet they make many mistakes. Nowadays, the mistakes don't happen so often because web creators now use data validation techniques.
check to see if the data is in the correct format
eg for an email field; is an @ symbol and domain present
check for duplication eg creating an account displays username availability
check for completion of essential details eg some forms have an asterisk * for essential fields
for essential details it is a good idea to put it in twice. eg choose password, re-type password
if validation fails, the user should be given clear help to identify the error. eg a red box around the mistake
the error can also be a pop up tool tip, or a change of colour of the field
can occur once the submit button is clicked
can occur in real-time, while the user is filling in the field