Accounting Information

Systems - CAC 4104

Mr. C. Ncube and Mrs. F. Shumba
(Accounting Information Systems
– CAC 4104)

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Decision Support systems
(DSS)
Designed to support business decision
making primarily at management and
executive levels
Common types of decision support
databases include data warehouses,
reporting databases, and data marts
Primary goal in each of these is retrieving
and evaluating rather than modifying data

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Speed in accessing data and data
throughput are critical concerns
When adding data in a database, it’s
usually done by adding large quantities
at once, a process called bulk loading

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Data Warehouse
Stores historical data
Can use same data modeling approach as a
transactional database model
Key difference between data warehouse databases
and transactional databases is that a data
warehouse often contains many years of historical
data to provide effective forecasting capabilities.
An OLTP database is typically used as the source
database for the data warehouse

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Data Mart
Essentially a small subset of a larger
data warehouse
Typically based on the modeling
technique as its parent data warehouse

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Reporting database
Often a specialized data warehouse-type
database containing only active (and not
historical or archived) data.
Typically small in comparison to the data
warehouse, similar in size to the source OLTP
database
Can be smaller than the OLTP database because
they often have more limited data requirements
and contain a selected subset of the data.

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Examples of DSS in action
In a retail shop, in many cases, the company
will have a DSS that relies of a data warehouse.
Information collected by the transactional
database is written periodically to the data
warehouse.
How would the retail business use the info? One
way is by determining ordering and stocking
levels. It’s important to most businesses to keep
inventory levels levels to a minimum

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Ever wondered how a business decides the best
time to discount summer items and put
Haloween costumes out for sale, or when to
bring out Christmas trees? A DSS lets the
retailer adjust inventory stocking levels based on
variation needs such as seasonal requirements.
It tells the retailer when to rotate the stock and
can even provide suggestions as to the best
physical product placement inside the store.

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Another example is using a DSS to help identify new
products that the business may want to stock. Data
mining applications can make associations products
or customer purchases you might otherwise overlook.
A DSS can help the business target advertising so
that it better matches specific customers’ purchase
patterns. That’s one of the ways marketing efforts
specifically target different groups. In a chain store,
this is important because purchase habits vary by
geographic location, and can even vary by
neighbourhood in the same city.