Section II. Infrastructure

Information technology (IT) is a techer's (technical person's) dream. It's vast, complex, and ever-changing, yet has a logical structure.

It's also cheap to get started. You can pick up a used PC at a garage sale. You can load it up with a free operating system (e.g., Linux), free office software (e.g., OpenOffice), games, compilers, and other neat stuff.

But even the world's best tech experts only know a tiny fraction of the whole, and what they know quickly becomes obsolete. Tech humans have to keep learning, and there will always be new stuff to learn. For those who enjoy mastering new things, techism is great.

For some norms (non-techers), this is a nightmare. They want to do their marketing, accounting, or managing. They use computers to do their jobs, not because they necessarily want to use them, but because the costs of not doing so are simply too great.

Fortunately, you don't need to be a techer to understand how companies can use information systems (IS) to meet their business goals. However, you need to know a little bit about how the technology works, so you can get a general idea of how your business processes will be supported, and so you can talk to tech humans. That's the goal of this section.

We'll look at a few basic topics here, enough so you can understand the rest of the book. We'll restrict ourselves to computers and software, networks, and databases. We'll end the section with a look at security.

• Chapter 3. Computers and programs
  • Introduction to computers and programs
  • Types of computers
  • More about programs
  • Writing your own programs
  • Types of software
  • Piracy
  • Summary
  • Exercises
  • Fun stuff
  • Extra: Programming in Scratch
• Chapter 4. Networks and servers
  • Introduction to networks
  • LANs
  • The Internet
  • Servers and services
  • The Web
  • Creating Web pages
  • Email
  • Other servers
  • Summary
  • Exercises
• Chapter 5. Database infrastructure
  • Introduction
  • Databases in transaction processing
  • Databases in decision support
  • Databases in document centers and virtual communities
  • Summary
  • Exercises
• Chapter 6. Security
  • Why security is important
  • Security threats
  • Preventing security breaches, part 1
  • Preventing security breaches, part 2
  • What a mess!
  • Summary
  • Exercises