IRCS: An Inheritance Rule Checking System for Model Management in DSS

Model management is a research area in decision support systems (DSS). Current research trends emphasize the specification of decision models at the conceptual level rather than their detailed implementation. Several approaches have been proposed for the conceptual specification of model management systems (MMS). However, these methods lack the design theory for the discovery of the inheritance relationship between decision models. As a result, redundancy and inconsistency arise in MMSs. This paper proposes the use of an object-oriented (OO) approach to the design of MMSs. A design theory consisting of the normalization of a class and inheritance rulesbetween twoclasses is presented. An inheritance rulechecking system(IRCS) based upon it has been implemented as a software tool for designing a MMS.