TITLE: Web-Based Decision Making Support Systems

TOPIC AREA: Management Information Systems

KEYWORDS: decision support systems, web-delivery, information technology

AUTHOR: Benjamin Khoo, Ph.D. (lead & corresponding author)

Assistant Professor
Computer Information Systems Dept.,
College of Business Administration,
California State Polytechnic University,
3801 West Temple Avenue, Pomona, CA 91768

EMAIL: bskhoo@csupomona.edu OR benson45us@yahoo.com

TELEPHONE: (909) 869-2012
FAX: (909) 869-3248

AUTHOR: Guisseppe Forgionne, Ph.D.

Professor
Information Systems Dept.,
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250
 WEB-BASED DECISION MAKING SUPPORT SYSTEMS

ABSTRACT

The advent of the Internet has resulted in a trend toward network centric
computing. As a result, more of the computing work is delegated to the
computer and the underlying systems. For many years, researchers have been
working towards the development of shareable and re-usable
problem-solving components to support decision-making. Web technologies
provide a new means of sharing decision support functionalities and
delivering decision support capabilities. This critically examines two such
systems: DecisionNet and Open-DSS Protocol.

INTRODUCTION

The technological explosion of the Internet in the late 1980s and early 1990s has

resulted in a paradigm shift that has affected all aspects of our lives. As the world struggles

to catch up with this client/server model, an emerging trend is a movement toward network

centric computing. The rapid adoption by businesses of the Internet, Intranet and Extranet has

pushed the fringes of information systems towards a new frontier. The advent of new

programming languages such as Java (“write once, run anywhere”) and JavaScript, combined

with the client-server architecture adopted by many organizations, has opened new

opportunities for information systems researchers to develop distributed, network centric

systems. As a result, the trend is to delegate to the computer and the underlying systems more

of the computing work. In this new model, the content, communication, and computing

converge on the network resulting in the network becoming THE COMPUTER.

The current environment in which organizations find themselves is a highly dynamic

one. This environment has created a need to respond speedily and flexibly to external changes
(Morton, 1991). This need has profoundly affected decision making and the information

systems that support the process.

For many years, researchers have been working towards the development of shareable

and re-usable problem-solving components to support decision-making (Chandrasekaran,

1986; Walther, Eriksson & Musen, 1992; Wielinga et al., 1993). The aim is to build flexible

component-based systems that are adaptable. But this has not been implemented successfully

on a large-scale in cross-platform components due to a lack of standards and the enormous

costs involved with the implementation. These characteristics have altered the traditional

view of decision making support systems.

BACKGROUND

Management is an integral function of an organization, and a principal component of

management is the complex process of decision making (Keen & Scott Morton, 1978, Turban

& Aronson, 2001). In Herbert Simon’s view, decision making involves intelligence, design,

choice, and implementation (Simon, 1977). There is recognition of a problem or opportunity,

the identification of possible causes, the development of alternative solutions, the selection

among alternative causes of actions, and carrying out the chosen action.

Computer based systems developed to support decision making are called decision

support systems (DSS) (Morton, 1971; Keen and Scott Morton, 1978). According to

Holsapple, (2001):

Decision-making is a knowledge-intensive activity with knowledge as its raw

materials, work-in-process, by-products, and finished goods. Computer-based DSSs
employ various KM[knowledge management] techniques to represent and process
knowledge of interest to decision makers, including descriptive knowledge (e.g. data,
 information), procedure knowledge (e.g. algorithms), and reasoning knowledge (e.g.
rules).

The DSS domain has had an illustrious history, beginning formally in the 1960s (Keen and

Morton, 1978). There have been many papers written about the general state of the art in DSS

and its associated technologies (see, for example, the Decision Support Systems Journal,

volume 33 (2002), with articles by Powell (2001), Power (1999), Power and Karpathi (1998)

and Power (1997), and others).

The two most common implementations of DSS use the data-driven or the

model-driven approach. The model-driven approach uses good quality models with strong

analysis capabilities and a user friendly user interface to facilitate ease of interaction. In the

data-driven approach, the value added to the DSS is provided by the data where the model is

usually simple, computing information like averages and data distributions, and the intent is

to allow the user to condense huge amounts of data into a form that is useful for decision

making (Dhar and Stein, 1997). In recent years there has been an evolution in the type of

information sources used in DSS from an emphasis on stored data and data analysis to an

increased reliance on decision models. Research in decision support systems also has

highlighted the importance of technology to the decision making process (Forgionne,

1991a; Kendall, 1999; Zahedi, 1991).

WEB-BASED SYSTEMS
 Of the technologies that influenced the development of DSS, internetworking, or

web technology, is arguably the most prevalent one today. Web technologies provide a

new means of sharing decision support functionalities and delivering decision support

capabilities. (Power, 2000a) and (Power, 2000b) suggested some frameworks for

organizing DSS on the web. Web technologies have also made it possible to implement

DSS using the other approaches, apart from the data-driven and model-driven approaches,

like the communication-driven, knowledge-driven and document-driven approaches. The

communication-driven approach utilizes web communication technologies to assist

decision makers who might be at different locations, at different times, to collaborate and

resolve problems. The knowledge-driven approach utilizes web technologies to

recommend and deliver recommended actions to a broad spectrum of decision makers. The

document-driven approach utilizes web technologies to integrate the storage, retrieval and

processing of different types of documents for decision makers to read and analyze

(Bhargava and Power, 2001).

Developers have started to develop web enabled DSS as services which can be

accessed from anywhere through an Internet connection. The services can combine

multiple components from different sources to deliver application solutions. Papers by

(Cohen et al., 2001) and (Czyzyk et al., 1997) described some of the services that were

enabled by web technologies. (Bhargava and Krishnan, 1998) classified web technologies

into 3 main categories: enabling server-side computation (e.g. Java Server Pages, Active

Server Pages, Java applications, etc.), enabling client-side computation (e.g. Java applets,
client-side scripting languages, etc.) and enabling a distributed implementation and

deployment of DSS components (e.g. CORBA, Java RMI, Java Beans, etc.)

Web technology can be applied on enterprise intranets, as well as on the Internet.

Since corporate decision makers are not willing to cede control of corporate data and

models to internet-based DSS, an enterprise-wide knowledge portal (corporate

intranet-based DSS) has been developed. The technologies that can be utilized to enable

intranet-based DSS have not been fully explored. Further research in this direction is

needed to fully extend the capabilities of corporate intranet-based DSS.

Although many DSSs have been developed and implemented over the last twenty

years, few are readily available to everyone, anywhere and at anytime. Some issues faced by

users of decision technologies (Bhargava & Norris, 1996) are:

Awareness: Users may not be aware of relevant technologies.

Accessibility: Users may not have access to beneficial technologies.
Compatibility: Most technologies require specific hardware and software
configurations.
Applicability: Due to both the complexity - expertise, effort, and cost - of
developing decision technologies and the limited
market-base, there is little motivation for providers to create
easily adaptable models.
Interoperability: Many decision problems require a combination of
technologies to provide a satisfactory solution.

Some problems faced by providers of decision technologies (Bhargava & Norris, 1996) are:

Advertisement (awareness & accessibility): As new decision technologies are

developed, providers need to attract users. Currently, it is
difficult for specialized software providers to cost-effectively
reach consumers.
Heterogeneity (compatibility): Even in niche markets, there is heterogeneity
of computational platforms. For providers looking for market
share, this chracteristic creates the expense of supporting the
technology on a variety of platforms.
 Version Management (compatibility): Often a working version of a product is
rendered useless due to a change in, say, operating system
software. Even in the absence of shifts in the user platform, a
variant of this problem is encountered, as there is a need to
upgrade and maintain software over time.
Customization (applicability and inter operability): The cost of producing and
customizing decision technology software using a traditional
software distribution strategy is high due to the small and
specialized nature of the market. This problem is exacerbated
by the need to offer coordinated or integrated inter operable
solutions.

As a result, few systems had been developed to provide decision support on demand.

DECISIONNET

DecisionNet (Bhargava, Krishnan and Muller, 1995; Bhargava, Krishnan and Muller,

1996) is a web-based marketplace for decision support technologies. It is a broker-based

system that facilitates services between consumers (users of DSS) and providers (providers

of DSS services). Its basic modus operandi is that all providers have to submit their DSS for

inclusion in the DecisionNet system and all customers have to register to use DecisionNet.

Once registered, consumers can access the DSS on the system and run the specific DSS that

is needed remotely. In this way, consumers do not have to download any software; they can

utilize the DecisionNet system hardware and services. The key features of DecisionNet

include (Bhargava, Krishnan and Muller, 1996):

DecisionNet features all types of decision technologies from data sets to

modeling environments, placing the niche data-set provider on equal
footing with those that own high-end, expensive computational
platforms and modeling environments.
Providers are given access to an intelligent registration agent, which leads
them through a series of steps resulting in both a listing for
DecisionNet yellow pages and in the automated creation of a
web-based user interface to the technology.
 Consumers in DecisionNet can use the services of an intelligent agent to
cobble together a solution using available technologies.
Providers are not required to supply their technologies on a platform owned
by DecisionNet. After registering the appropriate protocol to invoke
their technology (e.g., anonymous telnet or the POST method of the
http protocol), providers maintain their own servers, leveraging the
distributed nature of the web and permitting scalability.

Providers of DSS to DecisionNet maintain their own technologies. DecisionNet acts as a

broker to guide the consumer in the search, selection and execution of these technologies. The

operation of DecisionNet is based on the notion of "pay-per-use" where the decision

technologies available are provided as a service rather than as a product.

There are a number of limitations to the DecisionNet implementation (Gregg and

Goul, 1999; Gregg, et al., 2002). Apparently, consumers can have problems accessing the

web site because of firewall configurations and other security issues. In addition, if either the

DecisionNet or provider's link is down or poorly maintained, end users would have unreliable

access to the decision support tools. The accessibility issue has not been resolved. If the

consumer is able to access the system, the user can choose options from the menu and receive

a listing of the technologies available. This listing is visible on the browser but it cannot be

saved. According to the DecisionNet site all potential consumers of DecisionNet need is a

forms-capable WWW browser. It indicated that most interaction with technologies could be

achieved via HTML fill-out forms. However, for interactions involving larger data sets, users

may also need to have FTP or SMTP client software. Users are also dependent on the number

of providers who submit their DSS products; apparently there are few or none available. This

is understandable from an economic perspective. DSS developer enterprises would not want
to be dependent on a single channel such as DecisionNet to market their product. Also, such

a channel is not within their control; there is no competitive advantage to the enterprise.

OPEN-DSS PROTOCOL

(Goul, et al., 1997) has suggested another web-based DSS system called Open-DSS

Protocol. The Open-DSS Protocol is a general protocol that provides facilitated access to

DSSs utilizing the existing Internet application layer protocols, HyperText Transfer Protocol

(HTTP) and HyperText Markup Language (HTML). The first layer in the Open-DSS protocol

is the Metainformation Layer. It indicates that the Web site contains a DSS and includes all

of the information necessary to completely explain the DSS. The second layer is the

Transaction Processing Layer. This Layer is responsible for any transactions that are

necessary before the software will be made available to the client.

The Meta-Information Layer takes care of processing meta-information relating to the

DSS offered at web sites. Information about objects transferred over the Internet

("meta-information") is transferred in its HTTP headers. The Open-DSS protocol requires the

encoding of sets of specialized headers to provide basic information about the DSS to special

automated intelligent search agents. These special search agents will crawl the WWW

requesting entity-header information only (using the HEAD command) to determine if the

WWW site contains a DSS. The special headers will not affect other search agents since, by

convention, unrecognized HTTP headers and parameters are ignored. The header information

provided by DSS providers must be in a consistent format so that the automated DSS search

agents can index them correctly. The basic information necessary for DSS headers includes
the content-type (DSS), a list of keywords, a description of the DSS, the functionality of the

DSS being offered, the user-site requirements and other information necessary to evaluate the

DSS. The type of information that should be included in the metainformation for the DSS's

functionality includes the problem domain of the analysis, the solution options, the inputs, the

outputs and assumptions made. The information on the resources to be provided by the user

should include information on the hardware requirements (for example, computing platform),

software requirements (for example, operating system or application needs), and any specific

user skills required to use the DSS. Finally, the metainformation header must contain all other

information necessary to purchase and download the DSS. This would include information

on the DSS's cost, its references, related DSSs, and vendor information.

The Transaction Processing Layer is envisioned to be open such that individual DSS

developers can either create their own transaction processing software or purchase any

commercially available product. The functionalities of the Transaction Processing layer

will include user registration, access control, profiling, secure credit card transaction

processing and billing. User registration could include login and registration templates,

which DSS providers could use to gather data about customers. When registering, users can

be asked to enter information about interests and occupation along with their name, phone

number and e-mail address. The intent of this additional information is mainly customer

data for DSS developer enterprises. To cater to business transactions for utilizing the DSS,

some type of billing services in the transaction layer would allow payment capture and

invoicing, credit card processing and activity tracking.

 It should be noted that Open-DSS Protocol is currently a conceptualization. For the

Open-DSS Protocol to be viable, it had to be implemented across the WWW. The DSS

developer enterprises or vendors had to agree to the additional standardized encoding on the

HTTP headers. In addition, specialized search agents had to be developed. This scheme also

have some unresolved issues when viewed from an economic perspective. It suffers from

similar weaknesses as DecisionNet. Currently, vendors are selling products with what is

available on the Internet; unless there is some additional motivation to get onto the Open-DSS

Protocol bandwagon, it is likely to remain just a conceptualization.

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