Decision Support System
Decision Support System
While academics have perceived DSS as a tool to support decision making process, DSS users
see DSS as a tool to facilitate organizational processes.[1]Some authors have extended the
definition of DSS to include any system that might support decision making and some DSS
include a decision-making software component; Sprague (1980)[2] defines a properly termed
DSS as follows:
1. DSS tends to be aimed at the less well structured, underspecified problem that upper
level managers typically face;
2. DSS attempts to combine the use of models or analytic techniques with traditional data
access and retrieval functions;
3. DSS specifically focuses on features which make them easy to use by non-computer-
proficient people in an interactive mode; and
4. DSS emphasizes flexibility and adaptability to accommodate changes in
the environment and the decision making approach of the user.
Typical information that a decision support application might gather and present includes:
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.