Information system

The term information system has the following meanings:

1. A system, whether automated or manual, that comprises people, machines, and/or methods organized to collect, process, transmit, and disseminate data that represent user information.

2. RAW DATA + PROCESS = MEANINGFUL INFORMATION. This concept where Raw Data which has hardly any meaning is Processed and the Outcome which results in Meaningful information is simply understood as the Information System. For example adding of two numbers. The two numbers are just Raw Data that mean nothing for a start but the addition process when applied to the two numbers will result in a meaningful answer. Thus Information systems are born where syetems are created and put into place to filter raw data to produce sensible information.

3. Any telecommunications and/or computer related equipment or interconnected system or subsystems of equipment that is used in the acquisition, storage, manipulation, management, movement, control, display, switching, interchange, transmission, or reception of voice and/or data, and includes software, firmware, and hardware

Source: from Federal Standard 1037C and from MIL-STD-188 and from the National Information Systems Security Glossary

The simplest model that describes the Structure and Behaviour of an Information System takes five objects:

For Structure:

Repositories, hold data permanent or temporarily, such as buffers, RAM, hard disks, cache, etc.
Interfaces, exchange information with the non-digital world, such as keyboards, speakers, scanners, printers, etc.
Channels, connect repositories, such as buses, cables, wireless links, etc. A Network is a set of logical or physical channels.

For Behaviour:

Services; provide value to users or to other services via messages interchange.
Messages; carries a meaning to users or services.

Source: from book "Seguridad de la Informacion", 2004 ISBN 84-933336-7-0

4. In the mathematical area of domain theory, a Scott information system (after its inventor Dana Scott) is a mathematical structure that provides an alternative representation of Scott domains and, as a special case, algebraic lattices.

Gourt Home::Gourt :: Information system

See also