Design of organizational decision support systems: the use of a data extraction scheme to facilitate model-database communication

The concept of organizational decision support and the criteria for designing such support systems (ODSS) have recently received a great deal of attention. While the organizational decision processes differ considerably from individual and group decision making, the requirements for securing data from the corporate database in an ODSS are not much different. The computer and communication technologies that integrate the subsystems of knowledge, data, and models are still essential for ODSS. The authors examine the issues of integrating models and databases through the use of a data extraction scheme. In particular, they describe certain aspects of the query generation algorithms that allow the user or model to view the database as a single relation. The generated query is then translated into TQUEL, a temporal query language reflecting the historical nature of corporate databases