Decision Support System
6.0
DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEMS A decision support system (DSS) is a computer-based information system that supports business or organizational decision-making activities. DSSs serve the management, operations, and planning levels of an organization and help to make decisions, which may be rapidly changing and not easily specified in advance. DSSs include knowledge-based systems. A properly designed DSS is an interactive software-based system intended to help decision makers compile useful information from a combination of raw data, documents, personal knowledge, or business models to identify and solve problems and make decisions. Typical information that a decision support application might gather and present are:
inventories of information assets (including legacy and relational data sources, cubes, data warehouses, and data marts),
comparative sales figures between one period and the next, Projected revenue figures based on product sales assumptions.
Figure 6.1: Decision Support System 6.1 Taxonomy As with the definition, there is no universally-accepted taxonomy of DSS either. Different authors propose different classifications. Using the relationship with the user as the criterion, Haettenschwiler differentiates, • Passive DSS
• •
Active DSS Cooperative DSS
A passive DSS is a system that aids the process of decision making, but that cannot bring out explicit decision suggestions or solutions. An active DSS can bring out such decision suggestions or solutions. A cooperative DSS allows the decision maker (or its advisor) to modify, complete, or refine the decision suggestions provided by the system, before sending them back to the system for validation. Another taxonomy for DSS has been created by Daniel Power. Using the mode of assistance as the criterion, Power differentiates communication-driven DSS, datadriven DSS, document-driven DSS, knowledge-driven DSS, and model-driven DSS.
A communication-driven DSS supports more
DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEMS A decision support system (DSS) is a computer-based information system that supports business or organizational decision-making activities. DSSs serve the management, operations, and planning levels of an organization and help to make decisions, which may be rapidly changing and not easily specified in advance. DSSs include knowledge-based systems. A properly designed DSS is an interactive software-based system intended to help decision makers compile useful information from a combination of raw data, documents, personal knowledge, or business models to identify and solve problems and make decisions. Typical information that a decision support application might gather and present are:
inventories of information assets (including legacy and relational data sources, cubes, data warehouses, and data marts),
comparative sales figures between one period and the next, Projected revenue figures based on product sales assumptions.
Figure 6.1: Decision Support System 6.1 Taxonomy As with the definition, there is no universally-accepted taxonomy of DSS either. Different authors propose different classifications. Using the relationship with the user as the criterion, Haettenschwiler differentiates, • Passive DSS
• •
Active DSS Cooperative DSS
A passive DSS is a system that aids the process of decision making, but that cannot bring out explicit decision suggestions or solutions. An active DSS can bring out such decision suggestions or solutions. A cooperative DSS allows the decision maker (or its advisor) to modify, complete, or refine the decision suggestions provided by the system, before sending them back to the system for validation. Another taxonomy for DSS has been created by Daniel Power. Using the mode of assistance as the criterion, Power differentiates communication-driven DSS, datadriven DSS, document-driven DSS, knowledge-driven DSS, and model-driven DSS.
A communication-driven DSS supports more