INDEPENDENCE AND MAPPINGS IN MODEL-BASED DECISION-SUPPORT SYSTEMS

Independence of applications from logical and physical data structures is one of the cornerstones of modem database systems. Similar concept s may be applied to model management in a decision support system (DSS ) to facilitate model portability, sharing, and multi-purpose applicat ion. In this paper we define the concepts of model/data and model/solv er independence, present an extended architecture for DSS, and show it s implementation. The architecture supports separate solver, model, an d data bases and uses mappings to integrate them. Computationally-equi valent solvers support portability, while non-computationally-equivale nt solvers allow a model to be used without modification for different purposes (what if, goal seeking, optimization). The implementation in tegrates an SQL database system with a mathematical modeling language.