Agent-based conceptual framework for data management in I-DSS with data warehouse incorporated

Abstract

The advent of Internet era has profound impact on development of decision support systems. Especially, the decision support systems based on Internet or Web environment with brokerage service employed for decision technologies attract application attention as e-marketplace does in e-business. `Internet-based Decision Support System` (I-DSS), which is under its system design and development in this thesis, needs to be designed to facilitate exchanges of decision technologies between decision makers and technology providers. In this thesis, the concept I-DSS Intermediary, which takes a role of data management part within I-DSS, is proposed in order to (i) relieve the effort to find specific data as models` input data in distributed environment and (ii) eliminate the effort of translation between database and solvers` input data file by incorporating data warehouse and agent technologies. This thesis is divided into two parts. The first part of the thesis specifies advantages of employing data warehouse as a decision-support specialized database for I-DSS Intermediary. It explores how data warehouse having multidimensional characteristics can be used for decision support - especially, various types of input data generation compared with relational data model in modeling process - and what other characteristics of data warehouse are advantageous to enhance the user customization. The second part proposes a framework for supporting data flow management using agent technologies. The data flow management is composed of data retrieval part (employing data warehousing framework with mediation concept) and within-system data flow control part (supporting modeling life cycle). The required agents, along with their functionalities and interaction are identified. An illustrative example is given to show how data warehouse and agent technologies proposed in the thesis can be incorporated in the decision process. It is expected that the results of this thesis can activate a...