Importance of Data

Data in a TPS has a different significance to many other systems because it is dealing with cash. If data is lost it may
have significant financial implications. As such it is critical that businesses have procedures to ensure that data is secure,
accurate and that data integrity is maintained.
• Data Security: data security involves safeguarding the data from malicious or unintentional corruption or theft or
data. This corruption may be from hackers, viruses, staff or natural cause such as fire. IT professionals try to ensure
data integrity by:
○ Restricting the levels of access by using logins and passwords with varying levels of access depending
upon requirements for access to the information stored.
○ Firewalls: to restrict unauthorised access by hackers
○ Virus checks must be carried out on a very regular basis

○ security patches must be current so that any security flaws are not used by hackers or trojans
○ regular backups must be made and stored away from the physical location of the database

• Data Accuracy: Every effort must be made to ensure that data is accurate. Data validation is used to restrict
mistakes on entering mistakes while data verification is carried out to try to pick up errors.
• Data Integrity: Data integrity describes the overall reliability of the data. Data integrity with real time systems
involves the ACID test (atomicity, consistency, isolation, and durability)
○ Atomicity: either all steps in a transaction are completed or the entire transaction is cancelled

○ Consistency: Consistency ensures that only operations that comply with database validity constraints
are allowed. For instance, a database tracking a checking account may only allow unique check
numbers to exist for each transaction. An operation that repeats a check number should fail due to
consistency and ensure that the information in the database is correct and accurate. A network failure
or a lack of disk space can also cause consistency problems. Consistency rules enforced by the database
will make sure that these situations do not leave information in an “inconsistent “ state.
○ Isolation: A teller looking up a balance must be isolated from a concurrent transaction involving a
withdrawal from the same account. This means that only when the withdrawal transaction is
successfully completed will the new balance be reported.

○ Durability: Durability ensures that once a transaction is complete the information as changed will
survive failures of the system. A system crash or other failure must not be allowed to lose the contents
of the database. Durability is often achieved through separate transaction logs that can "re-create" all
transactions from a checkpoint. Other ways include database "mirrors" which replicate the database on
another server. Backups by themselves do not provide "durability".

Data Warehousing
• consolidated
• subject-oriented

• historical

• read only
Data is a valuable commodity which is traded and sold. This data ranges from personal information on customers,
demographics on customer bases for products, sales figures and so on. All of this data is stored in databases called data
warehouses. This data can then be used for a myriad of reasons. Reports can be writtenn or marketing plans may revised all
based on figures stored in a data awarehouse. AI programs are often used to look for meaningful patterns. people who look
after these data warehouses are called Knowledge Managers. Data stored in data warehouses is used to look for patterns in
credit card usage which points to fraud. Refer also to knowledge management , financial systems , data mining , Expert
Systems
A data warehouse provides data that is consolidated, subject-oriented, historical and read only
Consolidated: data is organised in a consistent manner to allow usage of the data across organisations.
Subject oriented: data is stored by subject to allow querying and reports.
Historical: data is stored over a long time period. A longer time frame allows better analysis of the data.
Read-Only: The data can not be changed by users. It can only be added to.

Components of a TPS
The components of a TPS include hardware, software and people. The most important component of a TPS are people.
Without people the system does not have customers and without customers it does not have a funtion to perform. People in a
TPS can be divided into 3 categories: users, participants and people from the environment.
• Users: The users are people employees of the company who own the TPS. They will use it to provide information
information about the system but will not enter data themselves. The information they provide from the TPS may be
used to provide inputs for other information systems such as stock control, marketing etc...
 • Participants: Participants are direct users of the system. These are the people who will enter the data. They include
data entry operators, customer service operators, people working at checkouts and anyone carrying out the tasks
required to process the data.
• People From The Environment: These are people who do not directly work for the company but people off the
street who sometimes require the services of a TPS as they enter transactions and validate data such as a customer
withdrawing money from an ATM.

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.

Architecture
Design of a Drought Mitigation Decision Support System.

Three fundamental components of a DSS architecture are:[5][6][10][11][12]

1. the database (or knowledge base),
2. the model (i.e., the decision context and user criteria), and
3. the user interface.
The users themselves are also important components of the architecture.[5][12]
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
DSSs which perform selected cognitive decision-making functions and are based on artificial
intelligence or intelligent agents technologies are called Intelligent Decision Support Systems
(IDSS)[15].
The nascent field of Decision engineering treats the decision itself as an engineered object,
and applies engineering principles such as Design and Quality assurance to an explicit
representation of the elements that make up a decision.
Applications
As mentioned above, there are theoretical possibilities of building such systems in any
knowledge domain.
One example is the Clinical decision support system for medical diagnosis. Other examples
include a bank loan officer verifying the credit of a loan applicant or an engineering firm that
has bids on several projects and wants to know if they can be competitive with their costs.
DSS is extensively used in business and management. Executive dashboard and other
business performance software allow faster decision making, identification of negative
trends, and better allocation of business resources.
A growing area of DSS application, concepts, principles, and techniques is in agricultural
production, marketing for sustainable development. For example, the DSSAT4 package[16][17],
developed through financial support of USAID during the 80's and 90's, has allowed rapid
assessment of several agricultural production systems around the world to facilitate decision-
making at the farm and policy levels. There are, however, many constraints to the successful
adoption on DSS in agriculture[18].
DSS are also prevalent in forest management where the long planning time frame demands
specific requirements.
Benefits of DSS
1. Improves personal efficiency
2. Expedites problem solving (speed up the progress of problems solving in an
organization)
3. Facilitates interpersonal communication
4. Promotes learning or training
5. Increases organizational control
6. Generates new evidence in support of a decision
7. Creates a competitive advantage over competition
8. Encourages exploration and discovery on the part of the decision maker
9. Reveals new approaches to thinking about the problem space
10. Helps automate the managerial processes.