Model management decision environment: a web service prototype for spreadsheet models

  • Authors:

  • Bala Iyer;G. Shankaranarayanan;Melanie L. Lenard

  • Affiliations:

  • Information Systems Department, School of Management, Boston University, Boston, MA;Information Systems Department, School of Management, Boston University, Boston, MA;Crystal Decision Systems, Brookline, MA

  • Venue:
  • Decision Support Systems
  • Year:
  • 2005

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

In the modern day, digital enterprise data and models are widely distributed. Decision-making in such distributed environments needs secure and easy access to these resources, rapid integration of decision models, and the ability to deploy these in real time. This demands a different approach for model management--one that permits decision-makers to not only share/access but also evaluate/understand models, choose appropriate ones from a collection of models, and orchestrate the execution of the model(s) in real time. In this paper, we describe an architecture that defines a service-oriented, Web service-based approach to model management. We first present a classification of stakeholders from the perspective of model management and identify the layers of modeling knowledge required for managing models. We then define a formal representation for organizing the content knowledge using a graph-based representation. We have used spreadsheet model(s) as a vehicle for explaining and demonstrating our concepts in this paper. Finally, we describe an environment (virtual business environment, VBE) that is based on a Web services architecture that would help store, retrieve, and distribute the layers of modeling knowledge to the various categories of users identified.