Sheet 2 - Data Handling & Storage previous pagenext pagelast page

You are returning from a family holiday in your car and are stopped by the police. To your surprise the police officer greets the driver by name. This is because his/her details and the details of the car are held on a central computer at Swansea.

  1. How did the police officer communicate with the local police station?
  2. What device is required for the computer at the local police station to communicate with the central computer at Swansea?
  3. What type of computer program is used to store all the details about all the cars in the country and their owners?
  4. Name the device used to store these details when the computer is switched off.
  5. Name 5 fields of data likely to be stored by this program, other than the owner’s name.
  6. Suggest a query statement that the police officer might have used to locate the record on your car.
  7. How were all the details about your car and its owner obtained in the first place?
  8. Name an input device that could be used to enter these details into the computer.
  9. When these details were entered into the computer a mistake was made in the owner’s age. The number 366 was entered instead of 36.

(a) Suggest how this error could be found.
(b) Suggest how this error could be prevented from happening again.

  1. Actually, it is not a good idea to store a person’s age on the computer. Why is this?
  2. Are you allowed to see personal information about yourself, which is held on a computer and check that it is correct?
  3. Are you allowed to see personal information about other people, which is held on a computer?
  4. Suggest one possible problem that might occur if your details could be accessed by any computer in the country.
  5. State one way in which this access to personal information might be prevented?
  6. What precautions are taken in case of a complete computer breakdown where all data stored on the computer is lost?

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