In a flat-file data management system, what issue arises when a customer changes their address?

In a flat-file data management system, when a customer changes their address, the primary issue is that the address needs to be updated in multiple locations. This is because flat-file systems often lack a centralized structure that allows for a single, consistent record of customer information. Each instance of the customer data may be stored separately across different files or records, leading to redundancy.

When a customer updates their address, without an integrated system to automatically propagate that change through all instances of their data, the business must go through each file where the customer's information exists and manually make the update. This not only increases the potential for human error, as the address may be forgotten in one or more locations, but it can also lead to inconsistencies where different records show different addresses for the same customer. This situation highlights one of the significant limitations of flat-file data management systems in terms of data integrity and efficiency.