Ochre

Author Archive

Accounting information system is a system of records, usually computer based, which combines accounting principles and concepts with the benefits of an information system and which is used to analyze and record business transactions for the purpose to prepare financial statements and provide accounting data to its users. Some accounting information systems are still manual, i.e. accounting records are made with a pen, paper and manual entries into accounting books.

How are Such Systems Used?
These systems can be customized to meet the needs of a business. For example, information technology professionals responsible for business processes and information technology professionals responsible for the accounting information system can work together to develop and implement such a system so that it automatically gets information from other sources already in use by the business. Also, the systems can be set up to feature certain functions that are important to the business and eliminate functions minor to the business.

We live in an age where information accumulates all around us in seemingly limitless quantities. As individuals we send or receive emails, text messages, photos and sound bytes on an hour-to-hour basis. As corporations, we cram computer hard drives with statistics, contacts, financial transactions, specifications, technical drawings, instructional materials, and employee and customer data. It’s just as well that our technological capability to store information electronically has improved beyond all expectation.

But despite our technological ability to store information there is still so much that simply disappears on a day-to-day basis. Business owners and managers know the cost when an experienced and valuable employee moves on to a new job. It’s often a mad scramble to capture their knowledge and organise an information handover to the new employee. As technologically advanced we may be, you cannot just backup the employee’s brain to a computer hard drive as they leave. It’s likely you’ll soon be a victim of a variation of Murphy’s Law – the information you most need is the information you don’t have!

The continuous cycle of employees joining and leaving, at whatever level, can be a major impediment to organisation learning and the continuous improvement process. Employees are mostly concerned with the here and now rather than leaving trails of information that may benefit their successors. The management of knowledge and information within a business needs a continuous improvement process itself. Although business owners and managers may strive hard to implement, update and ensure the continuity of work systems and processes, there is still a need to foster an organisation culture that promotes the importance of spending time and energy capturing and preserving information and knowledge on a daily basis.

In any work situation, there are always employees that perpetually seek the assistance of colleagues when they need information. They rely on others to be the ‘keepers of knowledge’. They are full of praise when the information is forthcoming and they curse ‘the system’ if information cannot be found. They take little responsibility themselves to contribute to the organisation’s efforts in information management, it’s someone else’s job. At home, they probably have countless thousands of photos, some of them precious, sitting on an aging hard drive that has never been backed up.

Likewise, there are always some employees that seem to be the givers and perpetrators of information. They seem to have an uncanny knack of finding information when asked, or some 6th sense in knowing what information must be kept. But having special powers is not their reality, it’s more a case of good habits and an appreciation of the need to spend time on a daily basis collecting, updating and managing information.

The difference between people’s inclination to manage information is a consequence of training, life experience and human nature. Some people just don’t get the need to do something now if it can be left until tomorrow, or next week. For many people, taking time to store and organise information falls into this category. On any day inside any business, there is likely to be some failure to appropriately store information. While each failure may be relatively insignificant, cumulatively the effect can be considerable, even damaging to the business.

Basically SAP, an enterprise application is made up of programs together with the data used and formed by programs. The data are organized in a meaningful way within the database, making it easy for the programs to access and find the data necessary to do something useful like run a financial report or create a sales order. Both the programs as well as data exist in the same database in the case of an SAP component or products such as ECC. Normally each and every component has its own database a production system landscape composed of SAP ECC, SAP Business Warehouse (BW), and SAP Customer Relationship Management (CRM) consists of three production databases.

Database Structure:

Essentially database is an electronic filing system that houses a collection of information organized in such a way that allows a computer program to find preferred pieces of data in a rapid way. A database is composed of tables, columns (called fields), and rows (called records or data). The fundamental structure of a database is same as the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet wherein columns (fields) store row after row of records (data). The difference between a database and a spreadsheet is simply the databases that contain multiple tables are connected to one another through relationships.

Database structure is an alternative technical term that does not need to concern with you, but are important nonetheless. Structures are triggered and are very well defined in the ABAP/4 Data Dictionary and have only temporary data. The database plays a key role in each SAP system, as it houses all the data that are used by that SAP component or product specifically. Numerous brands of databases exist, making it easier for an IT shop to opt for a database vendor with which they are almost well-known. Moreover, it is imperative to note that not all database vendors and versions are supported by SAP. Rather it tends to stick with the market leaders, over the years adding and removing support for certain vendors.

Primary Key

Database tables in an Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) are obligatory to hold a unique field that distinguishes one particular record separately from others found in the database. This unique field is called a primary key and is composed of one or more fields that make each and every record in a database as a unique one.

Foreign Key

Use the primary key field in one table for linking it with another. The common link field in the other table is usually not the primary key in the other table: and is known as a foreign key.

Database Concepts:

The SAP system contains lots of types of constructs along with structures inside the R/3 Data Dictionary (DDIC). The majority of these constructs tend to be very technical.

Transparent Tables:

SAP uses another concept called transparent tables, which are SAP database tables that contain only data at runtime. When a table is activated in the ABAP/4 Data Dictionary, a transparent table is created automatically in the database. This transparent table encloses the same name as your database table contained in the ABAP/4 Dictionary. Each of its fields contains the same names as their database counterparts though the sequence of the fields might get varied. This unstable field sequence makes it possible to insert new fields into the table without having to convert it, all of which pays a way for more rapid access to data during runtime.