Information Systems in Management Science—The Syntax of Operands: Data Base Structures

If you are not familiar with concepts like data base, data base management, hierarchially structured data set, you cannot communicate and deal with Information Systems people. We are repeatedly exposed to these new-fangled concepts and are told they are extremely important to management, and therefore to management scientists. But the going is not easy in this rapidly changing, controversial field, and so in this column and the next I would like to describe the private bridge I have built from Management Science to Computer Science.