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Dan Power

Greetings to all of my friends who work in the area of computerized decision support. This blog is a way for me to share stories from my encounters related to decision support, to comment on industry events, and to comment on other blogger's comments, especially those of my friends on the Business Intelligence Network. I'll try to state my opinions clearly and provide an old professor's perspective on how computers and information technology are changing the world. Decision making has always been my focus, and it will be in this blog as well. Your comments, feedback and questions are welcomed.

About the author >

Daniel J. "Dan" Power is a Professor of Information Systems and Management at the College of Business Administration at the University of Northern Iowa and the editor of DSSResources.com, the Web-based knowledge repository about computerized systems that support decision making; the editor of PlanningSkills.com; and the editor of DSS News, a bi-weekly e-newsletter. Dr. Power's research interests include the design and development of decision support systems and how these systems impact individual and organizational decision behavior.

Editor's Note: More articles and resources are available in Dan's BeyeNETWORK Expert Channel. Be sure to visit today!

What is the life cycle for a document?

by Dan Power
Editor, DSSResources.com  

Documents should be handled once and if necessary scanned and digitized. Once a document is in digital format we can categorize, store, archive, transmit, share, annotate and perhaps revise it. Potentially these digital documents can provide decision support. Physical documents are obsolete and should be kept only when required or highly desired. Today we must manage an electronic document life cycle from birth to use to death. When first a document enters our information systems is its birth. Death only occurs when we choose to delete an instance of a document.

Posted March 4, 2012 7:03 PM
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What is a data warehouse appliance?

by Dan Power
Editor, DSSResources.com  

In general, a data warehouse (DW) appliance is an integrated hardware and software bundled application. A DW appliance includes server hardware and premium storage technology with an installed operating system, database management system and application software tuned for data warehousing. Most DW appliances use massively parallel processing (MPP) architectures to provide fast query performance and platform scalability. An appliance is a purpose specific device.

Posted February 19, 2012 6:47 AM
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How does decision support processing differ from transaction processing?

by Dan Power
Editor, DSSResources.com 

Information systems can be categorized in many ways, but historically business information systems began as tools to record and process transactions. It is still useful 
to distinguish between informational decision support and transaction processing systems. Transaction processing is divided into individual, indivisible operations, called 
transactions. More specifically, a transaction is a discrete unit of work that must be completely processed by a computer system or it fails. For example, entering a customer order is an example of a transaction. Decision support or informational systems summarize and report on transactions.

Continue reading at 

Posted January 22, 2012 6:50 AM
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What is Hadoop?

by Dan Power
Editor, DSSResources.com  

Data-driven DSS may need to access and process very large data sets to support decision-making. One way to provide this capability is with Hadoop. Apache Hadoop is an open source Java framework for processing, storing and querying large amounts of data distributed on clusters of commodity hardware. Hadoop is a top level Apache project that Yahoo! initiated. The Hadoop project (http://hadoop.apache.org/) develops open-source software for reliable, scalable, distributed computing. 

Continue reading at  http://dssresources.com/faq/index.php?action=artikel&id=235


Posted January 11, 2012 7:32 AM
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What is mobile business intelligence?

by Dan Power
Editor, DSSResources.com   

Mobile business intelligence refers to data-driven decision support applications on mobile devices like smartphones and tablet computers. Mobile BI uses wireless devices to support data transfer and operations decision making. Mobile BI applications exist for Android, Blackberry, iPhone/iPad, and Windows Mobile operating systems. In general, the phrase refers to a rapidly emerging decision support application area. More applications are becoming available from start-ups and traditional BI vendors for innovative dashboards, live reports, CRM and performance monitoring.


Posted December 20, 2011 2:58 PM
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