An object relational approach for the design of decision support systems

We present an approach to implementing model based decision support systems. Our method integrates the power of management science modelling with the versatility of extensible data management technologies. Common criticisms of attempts to implement this class of systems have been that they are too domain specific, or that they focus on selected parts of the design life cycle at the expense of others. We deal with these criticisms by (1) rooting our implementation in a formal and generalisable conceptual basis, Structured Modelling, and (2) developing applications in a software environment that handles constructs with varying degrees of complexity: an object relational database system. The choice of the object relational platform offers the (a) flexibility in the choice of a user interface, (b) ability to deal with scalable implementations, and (c) ability to support key aspects of the modelling life cycle via built-in components of the platform.