Designing a Flexible, Highly Adaptable and Gracefully Expandable Information System for the Implementation of Complex Decision Support Systems

In many cases, complex Decision Support Systems (DSS) used in business operations in both the public and private domain may become very demanding, as far as the information system (IS) that implements them is concerned. Specifically, they may require very bulky databases, containing information that may be complex, diverse and even polymorph, a fact that makes the management, update and upgrade of the content of these databases and the corresponding IS very difficult or even practically unmanageable. Moreover, it has been observed that, due to the very rapid change in time of the main topics of interest of many modern businesses or public agencies, some complex DSS become obsolete even before they are fully developed and implemented. This paper introduces an innovative IS architecture, which significantly reduces the aforementioned risks. This architecture uses novel metadata architectures, in order to create DSS which are flexible, highly adaptable and can gracefully expand without becoming unmanageable. The proposed architectures can also be used for an effective and very much needed documentation of the whole system and its use.