computer science essay

XYZsupermart Information Systems

The diagram above shows the data sources, data warehouse with data marts, decision support system, and data access layer.

XYZsupermart Inc. has three main department sales, marketing and human resource department. The Information system department is forma and very structured to a level they can be able to track the time spent on projects so as track budget and productivity metrics.

Data warehouse

Data warehouse are central stores of integrated data from different data sources. The XYZsupermart data warehouse gets data from several departments of the company. Some of the data is stored in the operational data store. Before the data get to the data ware house is passed through the integration layer where data is cleaned and formatted into a universal format(Trujillo, Palomar, Gomez, & Il-Yeol Song, 2001). The staging layer stores raw data stored obtained from different data sources while the integration layer integrates distinct data sets by transforming the data from the staging layer. Data from integration layer is temporary stored in the Operation data store before it is loaded into the data warehouse where it is arranged in hierarchical groups called dimensions, and into fact and aggregate facts(Oracle.com, n.d.). After the data has been cleansed, transformed and catalogued it becomes ready to be used for online analytical processing, data mining, decision support and market research. Since the data warehouse stores general data from different data sources, in a large company the data may accumulate to large amount that makes it hard to search data. To avoid such situations data marts are introduced. Data marts are simple data warehouse that stores data of a specific subject or functional area. They draw data from a restricted number of sources such as finance, sales or marketing as shown in the diagram.

The central data center is the data centre of XYZsupermart with capacity of 120 terabytes of data. That is a huge data capacity that requires powerful processing system to be able to get the searched item. However, this effective of this data centre has enabled the company to become one of the biggest retailers in the country within a decade. The data center deals with the following kind of data: store opening data which include the opening dates of XYZsupermat stores and supercenters, model calculations data including Gaus data sets and Gaus programs(in .fmt format) which calculate operating profits, sales,. Also the company deals with the deviation data (data set on payoff to deviations).

Decision Support System

The decision support system is an automated information system that supports organizational or business decision-making activities. DSS serve the management, planning and operations levels of organization and help concerned persons make decisions about the problems that are not easily specified in time; semi-structured and unstructured decision problems. A normal DSS has four components: model management, data management, user interface management and knowledge management(Amarnath Banerjee, Arun Halambi, 2004). The data management part stores and maintains the information used by decision support system. Therefore, the data management contains the decision support system database management system and decision support system information. Model management component consist of decision support system model management system and decision system models(S.M Aparajit, 2015). Model here means the representation of fact, even or a situation. Organizations use models to represent variables and their relationships. For instance, a business would use statistical model to determine whether a TV and newspaper advertising are evenly useful in increasing sales. User interface management component allows the user to communicate with the Decision Support System(Power, 2002). Lastly, the knowledge management part provides information about the relationship among data that hard for the database represent. The diagram above shows the two main components of the decision components of the Decision support system, the Decision system component and the decision support knowledge base. The decision support knowledge base stores rules and procedures used by the Decision support to derive knowledge from the data obtained from the data marts.

Type of information

The use of bar code has allowed the company to generate various kind of information that is stored later stored in the data warehouse. The XYZsupermart Inc, the company has been able to develop a sophisticated technology that uses information behind the bar to track its inventory and minimize loss of its supply chain. The company is investing more on technology by developing a adding decision support system to its data warehouse. The decision will be more useful in tracking sales and production.

Type of knowledge

Since the company started in a decade ago it has created a great mark in the retails industry at the same time it has also developed an effective knowledge management program that has pushed it to great heights in retails. Currently the XYZsupermart has great competitive advantage that has enabled it to survive even in unstable economic situations. Through balancing its operations with economy growth and by committing itself to business aims the company has been able to meet its goals. The knowledge generated by decision support system allows the company to focus on strategic business operations into creating value for its shareholder, cutting operational cost and maintaining effective and useful corporation knowledge management strategies. The Knowledge also helps it to succeed in managing productivity with the company.

References Amarnath Banerjee, Arun Halambi, B. S. (2004). Decision Support System Flowchart. Retrieved November 16, 2017, from https://www.researchgate.net/figure/280051613_fig4_Fig-4-Decision-Support-System-Flowchart O’Neil, B. M. (1997). Oracle Data Warehousing. Indianapolis,: SAMS Publishing. Oracle.com. (n.d.). Logical Design in Data Warehouses. Retrieved November 16, 2017, from https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E11882_01/server.112/e25554/logical.htm#DWHSG002 Power, D. J. (2002). Designing and Developing Decision Support Systems. Decision Support Systems: Concepts and Resources for Managers, 12, 1–20. S.M Aparajit. (2015). Build a decision support system | SAS. Retrieved November 16, 2017, from https://www.sas.com/en_us/customers/des.html Trujillo, J., Palomar, M., Gomez, J., & Il-Yeol Song. (2001). Designing data warehouses with OO conceptual models. Computer, 34(12), 66–75. https://doi.org/10.1109/2.970579 Zografos KG1, V. G. (2000, Jan 7). Methodological framework for developing decision support systems (DSS) for hazardous materials emergency response operations. Hazard Mater .