Databases and the Internet

This assignment is ungraded and should not be submitted. The questions review key concepts from the reading for this module.

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Assignment

Answer the following questions from Fundamentals of Database Management Systems (Gillenson, 2011).

1. What does “availability” mean? Why is it important in the e-commerce environment? (Question 14.11)

   Availability is the probability that service will not be denied to authorized users or “doing the right thing within the specified response time” (Gray 1985). Users expect immediate access to information (e.g., websites), and there is no “good” time for outages with users around the world trying to access resources.

2. What does “scalability” mean? Why is it important in the e-commerce environment? (Question 14.13)

   Scalability refers to the “capacity” of a service—i.e., the service’s ability to respond efficiently as the number of users change (particularly increase). The growth rate of popular websites and applications can be phenomenal, sometimes increasing 10–40x per year.