glossary of REA . from a to k

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Access control matrix // ....... identifies the functions each user is allowed to perform and what data and programs the user can access once he or she gains access to the system

Acquisition/payment process //...... transaction cycle in which cash or some other form of compensation is disbursed in exchange for goods and services; encompasses all activities associated with the purchase of and payment for those goods and services; also called the "procure-to-pay" mega-process or the expenditures cycle

Ad hoc querying //....... direct retrieval of information by end users from a database whereby the retrieval was not planned (i.e., no preformulated queries or interfaces were developed in anticipation of needing the information)

Agent //...... an individual, department, division, or organization that participates in the control and/or execution of one or more events

Aggregation function //........ a mathematical operation used in querying to summarize information within a single column; also called a vertical calculation

Application control //....... a feature created in a software program to help ensure transactions are valid, properly authorized, and completely and accurately processed

Areas of responsibility //.......... departments, sections within a department, or individual employees within a department; used in system flowcharting to clearly identify changes in accountability for a document as the document moves through the system

Artificial construct // .......... a thing that is artificially created or developed as opposed to something naturally occurring; also called an artifact

Attribute //........ a characteristic possessed by an entity or a relationship

Attribute conflict //......... differences in the list of characteristics identified as important for describing the same entity or relationship in various view models; resolve in view integration by including a set union of the attributes for the entity or relationship in the integrated view

Back-office systems //.......... activities or systems that are only seen and used by people within enterprises; external partners, such as vendors and customers, do not usually see back-office activities or systems

Backup // ......... a duplicate copy of a current data file

Balanced DFD //......... data flow diagrams at different levels of detail (e.g., context level and level zero) that are consistent in showing system inputs and outflows

Base object //........ a foundational building block of an enterprise information system; because they are foundational, removal of base objects causes serious problems and requires rebuilding of the system

Batch control total //.......... an internal control used to verify that all transactions within a batch were processed correctly

Bill of lading //......... a document that indicates transfer of custody of goods from the enterprise to a common carrier; includes details about how many boxes made up the shipment and the dimensions and/or weight of those boxes

Bill of materials //........ a document that identifies the types and quantities of raw materials needed to create a finished good item

Biometric access control //......... use of biological features such as fingerprints, palm prints, retina eye patterns, signatures, or voices to authenticate users and determine whether to allow them to access a resource

Bolt-on application //......... software programs that can be added to existing ERP software applications

Bonding //....... the process of purchasing insurance on the employees who handle cash for an enterprise; the insurer performs background checks on the employees, determines the likelihood the employees will steal from the enterprise, and agrees to compensate the enterprise in the case of employee theft; primarily a corrective control

Budget //......... a plan for future inflows and/or outflows of resources

Business-entrepreneur script //............ the stereotypical sequence of enterprise events that says (from the enterprise's point of view) the enterprise gets some money, engages in value-added exchanges, pays back the money, and lives off the profit

Business interruption //.............. a temporary halt in normal operations due to an incident, such as a threat or catastrophe

Business process //........... a term widely used in business to indicate anything from a single activity, such as printing a report, to a set of activities, such as an entire transaction cycle; in this text, business process is used as a synonym of transaction cycle

Business process level REA model //......... a representation of an enterprise's resources, events, agents, and appropriate relationships between them within one or more transaction cycles; this conceptual representation is typically used to design the logical enterprise database design

Business process risks //........... possibilities of loss and activities intended to mitigate such loss associated with actual business process objects, including resources, events, agents, and relationships among resources, events, and agents

Cardinality pattern // the complete specification of minimum and maximum cardinalities of the entities that participate in a relationship

Cash disbursement/cash disbursement economic event //........... an event that has the effect of decreasing cash; also called a payment

Cash flow budget //......... a plan that delineates expected future cash inflows and outflows

Cashier //............ a person who handles cash transactions on behalf of an enterprise

Cash receipt/cash receipt event //........... an event that has the effect of increasing cash

Cash requisition event //.............. the identification of need for cash

Cash resource // ............ usually a list of cash accounts (whether in banks or in petty or on-hand accounts) owned by an enterprise; in essence, a resource type

Check //............. a document used to authorize the transfer of cash from one person or enterprise to another

Check digit //............. a number that is appended to and maintained as a part of an account number, part number, or other identifier as determined by a predefined formula

Claim //............. a timing difference between an economic increment event and the related economic decrement event; receivables and payables are examples of claims

Closed loop verification //............ an internal control that helps the user verify the correct record is being processed and updated by displaying details of the record the user should recognize as belonging to the record; e.g., display of a customer's name upon the user entering the customer number

Collusion //........... two or more employees acting together to perpetrate a fraud

Column //.......... the data values of an attribute (field) for various records (rows) in a database table

Combined entity key posting //............. a logical level implementation compromise whereby a single foreign key is placed into a table to represent two or more different relationships

Commitment event //........... an event whereby an enterprise becomes obligated to engage in a future economic event

Committee on Sponsoring Organizations of the Treasury Commission (COSO) //.......... a committee of the Treadway Commission that issues reports with guidance/requirements as to components of internal control systems and methods of evaluating internal controls

Comparison operator //........... in querying, operators used to compare a variable to a value; common comparison operators are less than, equal to, greater than, not equal to, greater than or equal to, and less than or equal to

Completeness check //............. an edit check internal control that verifies that all critical field data are entered; only verifies that some value has been entered for each field; does not verify accuracy

Composite attribute //.......... a characteristic that is a combination of other characteristics

Concatenated primary key // ........... a unique and universal identifier for an entity or relationship that is made up of multiple attributes

Conceptual database model //.......... a representation that depicts the important objects and relationships between the objects that must be captured in a database; is independent of any hardware, software, or even any type of software

Conceptual level modeling compromise //............. the use of less than ideal representation in a conceptual model because of an inability (e.g., inadequate measurement technique) or lack of need to completely and accurately represent an object

Conceptually congruent events // ............... two or more events that are inseparable, that always occur simultaneously

Consume stockflow //.............. a relationship between a resource and an economic decrement event whereby the resource is partially used up by the decrement but still exists when the decrement is complete

Context //.............. the circumstances or setting in which an event occurs; determines which script is invoked in attempting to understand and make predictions about the event

Context diagram //.............. the highest level data flow diagram; represents a single system and provides the scope of the represented system

Contingency plan //............... an approach to be followed in case of a future business interruption or other emergency

Contract // an agreement that commits two or more enterprises to engage in one or more future exchanges of resources

Control activity //................ one of COSO's five interrelated components of an internal control system; a policy or procedure used to ensure necessary actions are taken to minimize risks associated with achieving enterprise objectives; may be preventive, detective, or corrective in nature

Control environment //................ one of COSO's five interrelated components of an internal control system; "the tone at the top"; the foundation that provides discipline and structure upon which all other components of internal control are built

Conversion process //............... transaction cycle in which materials, labor, machinery, and other resources are transformed into finished goods or services; also called the manufacturing cycle

Copy of entity //................. a duplicate representation of an entity placed in a separate position on a conceptual model; must be marked as a copy and have no attributes assigned to it to avoid the creation of duplicate database tables

Corrective control //.............. a control activity that focuses on recovering from, repairing the damage from, or minimizing the cost of errors or irregularities

Credit memorandum or credit memo //............ an internal document used to communicate to the accounting department that a journal entry needs to be made with a credit to the customer's account receivable; a copy may be given to the customer to confirm their account balance was decreased

Creditor //............... an external agent (business partner) from whom the enterprise borrows cash and to whom the enterprise repays cash

Customer //............. an external agent (business partner) to whom an enterprise sells its goods and services

Customer order //.............. information in the customer's own format regarding what goods and services the customer is committing to purchase from an enterprise

Customer statement //.............. a document that summarizes the economic transactions for a customer and reflects the customer's account balance status

Database orientation // ........... a goal for integrated enterprise-wide data storage that requires data to (a) be stored at their most primitive levels, at least for a defined time period; ( be stored only once, and such that all authorized decision-makers can access the data; and © be stored so as to allow retrieval in various formats as needed for different purposes

Database window (in Microsoft Access) // ............ a screen that depicts the components of the selected database (e.g., tables, queries, forms)

Data flow diagram // ................ a graphical representation whose primary purpose is to illustrate the logical flow of data in a system

Data flow diagram symbols //........... the notations used in a graphical representation whose primary purpose is to illustrate the logical flow of data in a system; four types of symbols are used: squares for data sources and destinations, circles for processes, arrows for data, and parallel lines for data storage

Data manipulation language //............... the specification of operations to be performed on one or more data fields to obtain additional information; may create aggregations, horizontal calculations, subset selections, and so forth

Datasheet view (in Microsoft Access) //............. a mode that presents a relational table or a query result in row/column format

Data type (field property) (in Microsoft Access) //................ specification as to what kind of data values may be entered into a database table's column

Data value //............. the actual entry in a cell of a database table

Date constraint //............... a restriction placed on a date field in a query to limit the query results to include only records for which the date values meet the restriction

Debit memorandum //.............. an internal document used to communicate the need for a journal entry to debit (decrease) the enterprise's accounts payable balance for a supplier to whom goods were returned

Debt financing //............. a mechanism for acquiring cash whereby the enterprise borrows cash from one or more external business partners for a specified period of time and with the agreement that the enterprise will pay a specified interest rate as well as repay the principal balance

Decomposition DFD //............. division of processes on a data flow diagram and into more detailed subprocesses

Default value //............. a software option that sets a data field's contents to a prespecified (default) value; in some cases the default values may be overridden, while in other cases they may not

Deposit slip //.............. a document used to summarize the cash receipts that are added to an enterprise's bank account at a specified point in time

Derivable attribute //............... a characteristic of an entity or a relationship that can be calculated based on the values of other stored characteristics

Design view (in Microsoft Access) //................ for relational tables, a mode that displays details about the fields of a table and allows the user to specify various design parameters such as which field(s) comprise the primary key, whether a field is set to required data entry, and the data type for a field; for queries, a mode that depicts the logic of a query in QBE format

Detective control //............. a control activity that focuses on identifying that errors or irregularities have occurred

Digital signature recognition //............ a technology that compares a user's signature to a stored digital representation of the user's signature to authenticate the identification of the user

Direct deposit //................ a cash disbursement (economic decrement event) made to an employee via electronic funds transfer from the enterprise's bank account to the employee's bank account

Disbursement voucher //............ an internal document that authorizes the transfer of cash from an enterprise to an external business partner

Dividend //............. a portion of enterprise earnings that is paid to shareholders

Dividend declaration commitment event //............. a commitment to a future economic decrement event in the equity financing cycle; a legal obligation of the enterpriseÑonce a dividend is declared the enterprise is required by law to actually pay the dividend

Document/procedure flowchart //............. a graphical representation that depicts the movement of and processing procedures for documents through a system

Duality relationship //............ the causal link between a give (economic decrement) event and a take (economic increment) event

Dynaset (in Microsoft Access) //............ a query's result; looks and behaves like a table but is not actually stored as a table; it is generated as a view each time the query is run

EbXML //............ Electronic Business using eXtensible Markup Language; a set of specifications that provides a standard method by which enterprises may communicate data in common terms

Economic decrement event //........... an activity that decreases one or more resources

Economic decrement reversal event //............ an activity that undoes a previous event that had decreased a resource; therefore, the reversal event increases the resource

Economic event //................ an activity that either increases or decreases one or more resources

Economic increment event //............. an activity that increases one or more resources

Economic increment reversal event //.......... an activity that undoes a previous event that had increased a resource; therefore, the reversal event decreases the resource

Economy risks //............ threats of loss associated with factors that affect the entire economy, and control activities that mitigate such threats

Edit check //.............. a control incorporated into computer program instructions to verify and validate the completeness, reasonableness, and/or accuracy of data

Electronic commerce (e-commerce) //............... use of electronic technology to facilitate or accomplish business exchanges

Electronic data interchange (EDI) //............ the exchange of transaction-level data between enterprises in a prescribed electronic format, usually through a proprietary value-added network

Electronic funds transfer //............ a form of payment that reduces human involvement with cash by having customers electronically transfer funds from their personal bank accounts directly to the company's bank account

Employee //............. an external business partner with whom the enterprise exchanges cash for labor; also serves as an internal agent acting on the enterprise's behalf

Employee knowledge and skills //.............. resources an enterprise is obtaining together with employee labor, but which the enterprise usually is unable to "own"

Encryption //......... a process of encoding data entered into a system, storing or transmitting the data in coded form, and then decoding the data upon its use or arrival at its destination to prevent unauthorized access to the data while it is stored or as it is transmitted

Enforce referential integrity (in Microsoft Access) // ........... a choice selected in the relationship layout to determine whether the referential integrity principle will be enforced in a relationship between two tables as the user enters data into the database

Enterprise //............. an organization established to achieve a particular undertaking involving industrious, systematic activity; may be profit driven or charitably motivated

Enterprise application integration software (EAI) //............. a software solution that builds bridges from existing applications to a generic central hub that integrates the pieces

Enterprise resource planning system (ERP) //........... a group of software applications integrated to form an enterprise-wide information system solution

Enterprise risks and controls //........... threats of loss to the enterprise as a result of internal and external factors that result from the actions or circumstances of the enterprise itself or of one of its external business partners, and control activities to mitigate such threats

Entity //............ an object that has either a physical or conceptual existence

Entity conflict //............. discrepancies in the labeling of entity sets in different views; may result from synonyms (same entity set given two different labels) or homonyms (different entity sets given the same label)

Entity integrity //........... a principle in the relational database model that requires the primary key of each tuple (row) to contain a non-null value; guarantees the uniqueness of entity instances and enables proper referencing of primary key values by foreign key values

Equi-join //.......... a join that combines the tables together based on a common attribute, keeping only those rows for which the data values of the common attribute match exactly; also called an inner join; accomplishes a set intersection of the tables

Equipment //............. a resource that gets partially consumed in machine operations in the conversion process

Equity financing //........... a mechanism for acquiring cash whereby the enterprise issues shares of stock in exchange for cash

ERP system software // .............. Internally developed or packaged software (such as SAP, PeopleSoft/JD Edwards, or Oracle Applications) that aims to provide one integrated enterprise-wide system with a common database

Error //.............. an unintended mistake on the part of an employee or external business partner

Event // an activity within an enterprise that needs to be planned, controlled, executed, and evaluated

Event activity roll-up //............... the aggregation of a group of event records into a single summary entry; an implementation compromise made at the physical level after transaction data is entered into the database once the historical detail is no longer needed

Exchange //............ a trade or swap of resources between two parties

Exposure //............ the potential impact of a threat of loss on an enterprise, i.e., uncontrolled risk

Expression builder (in Microsoft Access) //........... an application within Microsoft Access that assists the user in creating horizontal calculations within queries

Extended business process level REA model //............ the business process level of the REA enterprise ontology that includes commitment events, instigation events, and appropriate relationships in which those types of events participate

Extension //............... the rows in a relational database table; they represent the specific instances that are members of the entity or relationship set

External agent //........... a person or organization with which an enterprise trades resources; also called external business partner

External business partner //............ a person or organization with which an enterprise trades resources; also called external agent

Fact //........... the pairing of a candidate key data value with another attribute data value; facts are found in a table's extension (rows)

Field //.............. a column in a relational database table

Field or mode check //.............. an instruction in a computer program that verifies the entered data type is the appropriate mode (e.g., text, numeric, date) for the field into which the data is entered

Field property (in Microsoft Access) //............. defines the type of data that is allowed to be entered into a column of a database table

Financial officer //.............. internal agent who authorizes events in the financing process

Financing process //............. transaction cycle in which cash is exchanged for cash at a later point in time; may include debt and/or equity financing

Finished goods //................ the resource(s) produced in a production run event in the conversion process; the type of inventory into which raw materials, labor, and equipment are transformed

Firm infrastructure //............. support value activities in Porter's generic value chain; activities that support the entire value chain (e.g., general management, planning, finance, accounting, legal, government affairs, quality management)

Flowcharting conventions //............ guidelines to be followed in preparing a system flowchart

Flowcharting symbols //............... specific notations used to communicate constructs on a system flowchart; numerous symbols are used to represent different constructs

Flow line //.............. a symbol on a flowchart used to indicate the movement of a document, a physical object, or data to the next point in a system

Foreign key //............... an attribute from one relational database table that is added as a column in another relational database table to establish a link between the two tables

Fraud an intentional effort to cause harm to an enterprise; an irregularity

Front-office systems //.............. systems and activities that are typically visible to external partners such as customers and vendors

Fulfillment relationship //.............. associations between instigation and commitment events whereby the commitment events fulfill the instigation events, and associations between commitment events and economic events whereby the economic events fulfill the commitment events

General controls //............. all controls over data center operations, access security, systems software acquisition and maintenance, and application system development and maintenance

Generalization //............. a relationship between a supertype and its subtype entities; often called an "is-a" relationship

Grandparent-parent-child approach //............... a backup and file reconstruction procedure generally used with batch processing that maintains at least three generations of both event/maintenance data and master reference data; if the current version (the "child" copy) of the master reference file is destroyed or lost, the enterprise can reconstruct it by rerunning the appropriate event/maintenance data against the prior copy of the reference data (the "parent" copy); if a problem occurs during that reconstruction run, the backup data "grandparent" copy may be used to reconstruct the parent file; the parent is then used to reconstruct the child, and processing continues normally

Group by //.......... a querying function used to create subgroups to which aggregations may be applied; a means for creating subtotals

Homonym //............. a word used to designate multiple different things

Horizontal calculation //............... a row computation in a query that combines data from two or more separate columns of one or more tables

Horizontal subset of a table //............. a part of a table that includes only some of the table's rows, but includes all the columns

Human resource management //.............. support value activities in Porter's generic value chain; activities involved in recruiting, hiring, training, developing, and compensating all types of personnel

Human resources process //............. transaction cycle in which cash is exchanged with employees for labor; also called the payroll cycle

Implementation compromise //........... deviation from the identified ideal information system design due to practical considerations, insufficient measurement techniques, and other constraints

Imprest cash account //.............. a checking account that normally maintains a zero balance and is often used for payroll; enterprise transfers total payroll amount from a regular checking account to an imprest account; individual paychecks are drawn on the imprest account; a positive balance indicates employees haven't cashed paychecks; a negative balance indicates a mistake likely occurred; either situation warrants investigation

Inbound logistics // ............ primary value activities in Porter's generic value chain; activities associated with receiving, storing, and disseminating inputs to the products or services

Independent checks on performance //............... verification of accuracy of an employee's performance by a different employee (or by an automated procedure)

Industry risks //............ threats of loss associated with factors that affect an enterprise's industry, and control activities that mitigate such threats

Inflow //............ the flowing in (receipt) of a resource to an enterprise

Information and communication //.............. one of COSO's five interrelated components of an internal control system; prescribes features of the information system to ensure information quality and also prescribes open channels of communication to ensure employees understand what is expected of them in achieving internal control objectives

Information event //.......... a workflow activity that records, maintains, or reports information about one or more operating events

Information need //.......... a situation for which data is required, e.g., as input to a decision

Information process risks //............. Risks associated with recording, maintaining, and reporting information about resources, events, and agents and controls to mitigate those risks

Information retrieval //........... repossession or capture of data that was previously entered into a database or other data storage structure

Information system //............. the network of all communication channels used within an organization, including all paths by which enterprise employees and business partners impart and receive information (e.g., telephone conversations, written documents, fax transmittals, computer technology)

Inner join //............ a join that combines the tables together based on a common attribute, keeping only those rows for which the data values of the common attribute match exactly; also called an equi-join; accomplishes a set intersection of the tables

Instigation event //............ an activity in which need for a resource is identified; typically the event that starts a transaction cycle

Integration // .............. the combination of parts into a whole

Intension //............. the columns in a relational database table; they represent the attributes of the entity or relationship set; also called the schema of the table

Inter-enterprise integration //............... the connection of separate systems across two or more enterprises

Internal agent //.............. an individual, department, or division within an enterprise that participates in the control and/or execution of one or more events

Internal business process //............... a series of activities that achieve a business objective within an enterprise; a transaction cycle within an enterprise

Internal control //................. an activity performed to minimize or eliminate risk

Intra-enterprise integration //............ the connection of separate systems within an enterprise

Inventory //............ a resource; goods purchased or manufactured by an enterprise and offered for sale to customers

Inventory type //............. a resource type; a category of goods purchased or manufactured by an enterprise and offered for sale to customers

Investor //............ an external agent with whom the enterprise exchanges partial ownership of the enterprise for cash

Irregularity //.............. an intentional effort to cause harm to an enterprise; a fraud

Job time ticket //.............. a document that indicates starting and stopping times and descriptions for labor operations performed on a specific date by a specific employee; the document's number often serves as an identifier for the labor operation event; also called a time track document

Join // to combine separate but related tables by linking them on their common attributes; one of the three primary relational algebra operators discussed in this book

Join properties window (in Microsoft Access) a screen that appears when a user double-clicks on a join line to reveal whether the join is an inner join, a left join, or a right join; a user can change the join type in this window

Key verification (rekeying) //.......... the keying of input data twice, with the computer comparing the two entries and highlighting any discrepancies for correction

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تم تعديل 9 أغسطس 2008 بواسطة المغربي