CHAPTER 1

1. TRADITIONAL FILE ORIENTED APPROACH

The traditional file-oriented approach to information processing has for each application a separate master file and its own set of personal files. Examples of file systems are payroll, inventory and financial accounting systems. An organization needs flow of information across these applications also and this requires sharing of data, which is significantly lacking in the traditional approach. One major limitations of such a file-based approach is that the programs become dependent on the files and the files become dependent upon the programs. Although such file-based approaches provides better data processing capability in compared to earlier manual paper record-based systems. As the demand for efficiency and speed increased, the file-oriented approach to data processing have following problems.

1. Data Redundancy : The same piece of information may be stored in two or more files. Since different file management programs are developed for different applications it may be possible that record may have different structure. For example, the particulars of an individual who may be a customer or an employee may be stored in two or more files. Some of these information may be changing, such as the address, the pay drawn, etc. It is therefore quite possible that while die address in the master file for one application has been updated the address in the master file for another application may have not been. It may not also be easy for the computer-based system to even find out as to in how many files the repeating items such as the address is occurring. The solution therefore is to avoid this data redundancy and the keeping of multiple copies of the same information and replace it by a system where the address is stored at just one place physically, and is accessible to all applications from this itself.

2. Program/Data Dependency : In the traditional approach if a data field is to be added to a master file, all such programs that access the master file would have to be changed to allow for this new field which would have been added to the master record.

3. Data isolation : Number of diffenrent file format and structures are being used by various

application. Writing a application which need data from various file is difficult.