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Understanding Decision Support System (DSS)

A Decision Support System (DSS) is a class of information systems (including but not limited to computerized systems) that support business and organizational decision-making activities. 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:

  • an inventory of all of your current information assets (including legacy and relational data sources, cubes, data warehouses, and data marts),
  • comparative sales figures between one week and the next,
  • projected revenue figures based on new product sales assumptions.

Development Frameworks

DSS systems are not entirely different from other systems and require a structured approach. Such a framework includes people, technology, and the development approach.[10]

DSS technology levels (of hardware and software) may include:

  1. The actual application that will be used by the user. This is the part of the application that allows the decision maker to make decisions in a particular problem area. The user can act upon that particular problem.
  2. Generator contains Hardware/software environment that allows people to easily develop specific DSS applications. This level makes use of case tools or systems such as Crystal, AIMMS, and iThink.
  3. Tools include lower level hardware/software. DSS generators including special languages, function libraries and linking modules

An iterative developmental approach allows for the DSS to be changed and redesigned at various intervals. Once the system is designed, it will need to be tested and revised for the desired outcome.

DSS components may be classified as:

  1. Inputs: Factors, numbers, and characteristics to analyze
  2. User Knowledge and Expertise: Inputs requiring manual analysis by the user
  3. Outputs: Transformed data from which DSS "decisions" are generated
  4. Decisions: Results generated by the DSS based on user criteria
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