Unit – 2

Executive Information and Support Systems

1. Executive Information System (EIS)

An Executive Information System (EIS) is a kind of decision support system (DSS) used in
organizations to help executives in decision making. It does so by providing easy access to
important data needed in an organization to achieve strategic goals. An EIS usually has graphical
displays on a user-friendly interface.
Executive information systems can be used for monitoring company performance in many
different types of organizations as well as for identifying opportunities and problems.
Executive support systems are intended to be used directly by senior managers to support
unscheduled strategic management decisions. Often such information is external, unstructured
and even uncertain. Often, the exact scope and context of such information are not known in
advance.
This information is based on data,
 Business intelligence
 Financial intelligence
 Data with technology support to analyze

1.1 Executive Information System-Key Characteristics

The below mentioned figure describes about key characteristics of EIS

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  Detailed data – EIS provides absolute data from its existing database.
 Integrate external and internal data – EIS integrates integrate external and internal data. The
external data collected from various sources.
 Presenting information – EIS represents available data in graphical form which helps to
analyze it easily.
 Trend analysis – EIS helps executives of the organizations to data prediction based on trend
data.

 Easy to use – It is a very simplest system to use.

1.2 Advantages of EIS

 Trend Analysis
 Improvement of corporate performance in the marketplace
 Development of managerial leadership skills
 Improves decision-making
 Simple to use by senior executives
 Better reporting method
 Improved office efficiency

1.3 Disadvantage of EIS

 Due to technical functions, not to easy to use by everyone
 Executives may encounter overload of information
 Difficult to manage database due to the large size of data
 Excessive costs for small business organizations

2. Executive Support System (ESS)

Executive Support System (ESS) is a reporting tool (software) that allows you to turn your
organization’s data into useful summarized reports. These reports are generally used by
executive level managers for quick access to reports coming from all company levels and
departments such as billing, cost accounting , staffing, scheduling, and more.
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 Executive support systems are handled by the senior most managers directly in giving support to
the non-programmed decisions in strategic management. It helps in giving support the internal
and external information which are set for organizational goals.

These information found to be often external, unstructured and even uncertain. The context of
such information provided cannot be known beforehand

This information is intelligence based:

 Market intelligence
 Investment intelligence
 Technology intelligence

Examples of Intelligent Information

 External databases
 Technology reports like patent records etc.
 Technical reports from consultants
 Market reports
 Confidential information about competitors
 Speculative information like market conditions
 Government policies
 Financial reports and information

2.1 Features of Executive Information System

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 2.2 Advantages of ESS
 It is easy for senior most executive to use
 Ability to analyze trends
 Augmentation of managers' leadership capabilities
 Enhancement of personal thinking and decision-making
 Contribution to strategic control flexibility
 Broadened the organizational competitiveness in the market place
 Instruments of change
 Increased executive time horizons.
 Better reporting system
 Improved mental model of business executive
 Help improve consensus building and communication
 Improve office automation
 Reduction in time to find information
 Early identification of company performance
 Detailed examination of critical success factor
 Better understanding
 Time management
 Increased communication capacity and quality

2.3 Disadvantage of ESS

 Functions are limited
 Very tough to quantify benefits
 Executive may encounter information overload
 System may become slow
 Difficult to keep current data
 May lead to less reliable and insecure data
 Highly expensive for small company
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3. Business Expert System (BES)
A Business Expert System (BES) is a knowledge based information system, which is based on
artificial intelligence. A Knowledge Based information system adds a knowledge base that uses
its knowledge about a specific, complex application area to act as an expert.
Also, BES provides decision support to managers in the form of advice from an expert in a
specific problem area such as medical, engineering and business. BES is interactive in nature and
it is able to answer the questions asked by a user. For answering the questions, an expert system
searches its knowledge base for facts and rules and explains its reasoning process and results in
the expert advice to the end user. The main components of BES are:
1) Knowledge base
2) Inference engine
3) User interface

Knowledge base contains the facts about the specific expert area and heuristics that describe the
reasoning procedures of an expert on the subject.
The inference engine contains the logic of reaching an inference from the stored data and from
the knowledge base.
Expert systems may be developed by using either the programming language like LISP,
PROLOG or C or by using the expert system packages. Using the expert system packages, one
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can design an expert system that combines the features of DSS and expert systems. This
integration makes the application development process easier and faster for the end users.

4. Expert System
An expert system is a computer program that is designed to solve complex problems and to
provide decision-making ability like a human expert. It performs this by extracting knowledge
from its knowledge base using the reasoning and inference rules according to the user queries.
The expert system is a part of AI, and the first ES was developed in the year 1970, which was the
first successful approach of artificial intelligence. It solves the most complex issue as an expert
by extracting the knowledge stored in its knowledge base. The system helps in decision making
for compsex problems using both facts and heuristics like a human expert. It is called so
because it contains the expert knowledge of a specific domain and can solve any complex
problem of that particular domain. These systems are designed for a specific domain, such
as medicine, science, etc.
The performance of an expert system is based on the expert's knowledge stored in its knowledge
base. The more knowledge stored in the KB, the more that system improves its performance.
One of the common examples of an ES is a suggestion of spelling errors while typing in the
Google search box.

Below is the block diagram that represents the working of an expert system:

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Examples of the Expert System:
 DENDRAL: It was an artificial intelligence project that was made as a chemical analysis
expert system. It was used in organic chemistry to detect unknown organic molecules
with the help of their mass spectra and knowledge base of chemistry.
 MYCIN: It was one of the earliest backward chaining expert systems that was designed
to find the bacteria causing infections like bacteraemia and meningitis. It was also used
for the recommendation of antibiotics and the diagnosis of blood clotting diseases.
 PXDES: It is an expert system that is used to determine the type and level of lung cancer.
To determine the disease, it takes a picture from the upper body, which looks like the
shadow. This shadow identifies the type and degree of harm.
 CaDeT: The CaDet expert system is a diagnostic support system that can detect cancer at
early stages.

4.1 Characteristics of Expert System

o High Performance: The expert system provides high performance for solving any type
of complex problem of a specific domain with high efficiency and accuracy.
o Understandable: It responds in a way that can be easily understandable by the user. It
can take input in human language and provides the output in the same way.
o Reliable: It is much reliable for generating an efficient and accurate output.
o Highly responsive: ES provides the result for any complex query within a very short
period of time.

4.2 Components of Expert System

An expert system mainly consists of three components:
o User Interface
o Inference Engine
o Knowledge Base
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1. User Interface
With the help of a user interface, the expert system interacts with the user, takes queries as an
input in a readable format, and passes it to the inference engine. After getting the response from
the inference engine, it displays the output to the user. In other words, it is an interface that
helps a non-expert user to communicate with the expert system to find a solution.

2. Inference Engine(Rules of Engine)

o The inference engine is known as the brain of the expert system as it is the main
processing unit of the system. It applies inference rules to the knowledge base to derive a
conclusion or deduce new information. It helps in deriving an error-free solution of
queries asked by the user.
o With the help of an inference engine, the system extracts the knowledge from the
knowledge base.
o There are two types of inference engine:
o Deterministic Inference engine: The conclusions drawn from this type of inference
engine are assumed to be true. It is based on facts and rules.
o Probabilistic Inference engine: This type of inference engine contains uncertainty in
conclusions, and based on the probability.
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Inference engine uses the below modes to derive the solutions:

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 o Forward Chaining: It starts from the known facts and rules, and applies the inference
rules to add their conclusion to the known facts.
o Backward Chaining: It is a backward reasoning method that starts from the goal and
works backward to prove the known facts.

3. Knowledge Base
o The knowledgebase is a type of storage that stores knowledge acquired from the different
experts of the particular domain. It is considered as big storage of knowledge. The more
the knowledge base, the more precise will be the Expert System.
o It is similar to a database that contains information and rules of a particular domain or
subject.
o One can also view the knowledge base as collections of objects and their attributes. Such
as a Lion is an object and its attributes are it is a mammal, it is not a domestic animal, etc.

Components of Knowledge Base

o Factual Knowledge: The knowledge which is based on facts and accepted by knowledge
engineers comes under factual knowledge.
o Heuristic Knowledge: This knowledge is based on practice, the ability to guess,
evaluation, and experiences.

Knowledge Representation: It is used to formalize the knowledge stored in the knowledge base
using the If-else rules.

Knowledge Acquisitions: It is the process of extracting, organizing, and structuring the domain
knowledge, specifying the rules to acquire the knowledge from various experts, and store that
knowledge into the knowledge base.

5. Why Expert System?

Before using any technology, we must have an idea about why to use that technology and hence
the same for the ES. Although we have human experts in every field, then what is the need to
develop a computer-based system. So below are the points that are describing the need of the ES:
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1. No memory Limitations: It can store as much data as required and can memorize it at
the time of its application. But for human experts, there are some limitations to memorize
all things at every time.
2. High Efficiency: If the knowledge base is updated with the correct knowledge, then it
provides a highly efficient output, which may not be possible for a human.
3. Expertise in a domain: There are lots of human experts in each domain, and they all
have different skills, different experiences, and different skills, so it is not easy to get a
final output for the query. But if we put the knowledge gained from human experts into
the expert system, then it provides an efficient output by mixing all the facts and
knowledge
4. Not affected by emotions: These systems are not affected by human emotions such as
fatigue, anger, depression, anxiety, etc.. Hence the performance remains constant.
5. High security: These systems provide high security to resolve any query.
6. Considers all the facts: To respond to any query, it checks and considers all the
available facts and provides the result accordingly. But it is possible that a human expert
may not consider some facts due to any reason.
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 7. Regular updates improve the performance: If there is an issue in the result provided
by the expert systems, we can improve the performance of the system by updating the
knowledge base.

5.1 Capabilities of the Expert System

Below are some capabilities of an Expert System:
o Advising: It is capable of advising the human being for the query of any domain from
the particular ES.
o Provide decision-making capabilities: It provides the capability of decision making in
any domain, such as for making any financial decision, decisions in medical science,
etc.
o Demonstrate a device: It is capable of demonstrating any new products such as
its features, specifications, how to use that product, etc.
o Problem-solving: It has problem-solving capabilities.
o Explaining a problem: It is also capable of providing a detailed description of an
input problem.
o Interpreting the input: It is capable of interpreting the input given by the user.
o Predicting results: It can be used for the prediction of a result.
o Diagnosis: An ES designed for the medical field is capable of diagnosing a disease
without using multiple components as it already contains various inbuilt medical
tools.

5.2 Advantages of Expert System

o These systems are highly reproducible.
o They can be used for risky places where the human presence is not safe.
o Error possibilities are less if the KB contains correct knowledge.
o The performance of these systems remains steady as it is not affected by emotions,
tension, or fatigue.
o They provide a very high speed to respond to a particular query.
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5.3 Limitations of Expert System

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o The response of the expert system may get wrong if the knowledge base contains the
wrong information.
 o Like a human being, it cannot produce a creative output for different scenarios.
o Its maintenance and development costs are very high.
o Knowledge acquisition for designing is much difficult.
o For each domain, we require a specific ES, which is one of the big limitations.
o It cannot learn from itself and hence requires manual updates.

5.4 Applications of Expert System

o In designing and manufacturing domain
It can be broadly used for designing and manufacturing physical devices such as camera
lenses and automobiles.
o In the knowledge domain
These systems are primarily used for publishing the relevant knowledge to the users. The
two popular ES used for this domain is an advisor and a tax advisor.
o In the finance domain
In the finance industries, it is used to detect any type of possible fraud, suspicious
activity, and advise bankers that if they should provide loans for business or not.
o In the diagnosis and troubleshooting of devices
In medical diagnosis, the ES system is used, and it was the first area where these systems
were used.
o Planning and Scheduling
The expert systems can also be used for planning and scheduling some particular tasks
for achieving the goal of that task.

6. Data Warehouse
A data warehouse is a relational database that is designed for query and analysis rather than for
transaction processing. It usually contains historical data derived from transaction data, but it can
include data from other sources. It separates analysis workload from transaction workload and
enables an organization to consolidate data from several sources.
In addition to a relational database, a data warehouse environment includes an extraction,
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transportation, transformation, and loading (ETL) solution, an online analytical processing

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(OLAP) engine, client analysis tools, and other applications that manage the process of gathering
data and delivering it to business users.

6.1 Data Warehouse Concepts

The basic concept of a Data Warehouse is to facilitate a single version of truth for a company for
decision making and forecasting. A Data warehouse is an information system that contains
historical and commutative data from single or multiple sources. Data Warehouse Concepts
simplify the reporting and analysis process of organizations.

6.2 Characteristics of Data warehouse

Data Warehouse Concepts have following characteristics:
1. Subject-Oriented
2. Integrated
3. Time-variant
4. Non-volatile

1. Subject-Oriented
A data warehouse is subject oriented as it offers information regarding a theme instead of
companies' ongoing operations. These subjects can be sales, marketing, distributions, etc.
A data warehouse never focuses on the ongoing operations. Instead, it put emphasis on modeling
and analysis of data for decision making. It also provides a simple and concise view around the
specific subject by excluding data which not helpful to support the decision process.

2. Integrated
In Data Warehouse, integration means the establishment of a common unit of measure for all
similar data from the dissimilar database. The data also needs to be stored in the Datawarehouse
in common and universally acceptable manner.
A data warehouse is developed by integrating data from varied sources like a mainframe,
relational databases, flat files, etc. Moreover, it must keep consistent naming conventions,
format, and coding.
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This integration helps in effective analysis of data. Consistency in naming conventions, attribute
measures, encoding structure etc. have to be ensured. Consider the following example:
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 In the above example, there are three different application labeled A, B and C. Information stored in these appl
In Application A gender field store logical values like M or F
In Application B gender field is a numerical value,
In Application C application, gender field stored in the form of a character value.

 Same is the case with Date and balance

However, after transformation and cleaning process all this data is stored in common format in
the Data Warehouse.

3. Time-Variant
The time horizon for data warehouse is quite extensive compared with operational systems. The
data collected in a data warehouse is recognized with a particular period and offers information
from the historical point of view. It contains an element of time, explicitly or implicitly.
One such place where Datawarehouse data display time variance is in in the structure of the
record key. Every primary key contained with the DW should have either implicitly or explicitly
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an element of time. Like the day, week month, etc.

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Another aspect of time variance is that once data is inserted in the warehouse, it can't be updated
or changed.

4. Non-volatile
Data warehouse is also non-volatile means the previous data is not erased when new data is
entered in it.
Data is read-only and periodically refreshed. This also helps to analyze historical data and
understand what & when happened. It does not require transaction process, recovery and
concurrency control mechanisms.
Activities like delete, update, and insert which are performed in an operational application
environment are omitted in Data warehouse environment. Only two types of data operations
performed in the Data Warehousing are
1. Data loading
2. Data access

6.3 Difference between Application and Data Warehouse

Operational Application Data Warehouse

Complex program must be coded to This kind of issues does not happen because
make sure that data upgrade processes data update is not performed.
maintain high integrity of the final
product.

Data is placed in a normalized form to ensure Data is not stored in normalized form.
minimal redundancy.

Technology needed to support issues of It offers relative simplicity in technology.

transactions, data recovery, rollback,
and
resolution as its deadlock is quite complex.
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7. Data Warehouse Architecture

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Data Warehouse Architecture is complex as it’s an information system that contains historical
and commutative data from multiple sources. There are 3 approaches for constructing Data
Warehouse layers: Single Tier, Two tier and Three tier. This 3 tier architecture of Data
Warehouse is explained as below.

Single-tier architecture
The objective of a single layer is to minimize the amount of data stored. This goal is to remove data redundanc
Two-tier architecture
Two-layer architecture is one of the Data Warehouse layers which separates physically available

sources and data warehouse. This architecture is not expandable and also not supporting a large
number of end-users. It also has connectivity problems because of network limitations.
Three-Tier Data Warehouse Architecture
This is the most widely used Architecture of Data
Warehouse. It consists of the Top, Middle and Bottom Tier.
1. Bottom Tier: The database of the Datawarehouse servers as the bottom tier. It is usually
a relational database system. Data is cleansed, transformed, and loaded into this layer
using back-end tools.
2. Middle Tier: The middle tier in Data warehouse is an OLAP server which is
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implemented using either ROLAP or MOLAP model. For a user, this application tier
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 presents an abstracted view of the database. This layer also acts as a mediator between
the end-user and the database.
3. Top-Tier: The top tier is a front-end client layer. Top tier is the tools and API that you
connect and get data out from the data warehouse. It could be Query tools, reporting
tools, managed query tools, Analysis tools and Data mining tools.

8. Data warehouse Components

We will learn about the Data warehouse Components and Architecture of Data Warehouse with
Diagram as shown below:

The Data Warehouse is based on an RDBMS server which is a central information repository
that is surrounded by some key Data Warehousing components to make the entire environment
functional, manageable and accessible.

There are mainly five Data Warehouse Components:

1. Data Warehouse Database
The central database is the foundation of the data warehousing environment. This database is
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implemented on the RDBMS technology. Although, this kind of implementation is constrained

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by the fact that traditional RDBMS system is optimized for transactional database processing and
not for data warehousing. For instance, ad-hoc query, multi-table joins, aggregates are resource
intensive and slow down performance.
Hence, alternative approaches to Database are used as listed below-
 In a datawarehouse, relational databases are deployed in parallel to allow for scalability.
Parallel relational databases also allow shared memory or shared nothing model on
various multiprocessor configurations or massively parallel processors.
 New index structures are used to bypass relational table scan and improve speed.
 Use of multidimensional database (MDDBs) to overcome any limitations which are
placed because of the relational Data Warehouse Models. Example: Essbase from Oracle.

2. Sourcing, Acquisition, Clean-up and Transformation Tools (ETL)

The data sourcing, transformation, and migration tools are used for performing all the
conversions, summarizations, and all the changes needed to transform data into a unified format
in the datawarehouse. They are also called Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) Tools.
Their functionality includes:
 Anonymize data as per regulatory stipulations.
 Eliminating unwanted data in operational databases from loading into Data warehouse.
 Search and replace common names and definitions for data arriving from different
sources.
 Calculating summaries and derived data
 In case of missing data, populate them with defaults.
 De-duplicated repeated data arriving from multiple datasources.
These Extract, Transform, and Load tools may generate cron jobs, background jobs, Cobol
programs, shell scripts, etc. that regularly update data in datawarehouse. These tools are also
helpful to maintain the Metadata.
These ETL Tools have to deal with challenges of Database & Data heterogeneity.

3. Metadata
The name Meta Data suggests some high-level technological Data Warehousing Concepts.
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However, it is quite simple. Metadata is data about data which defines the data warehouse. It
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is used for building, maintaining and managing the data warehouse.

In the Data Warehouse Architecture, meta-data plays an important role as it specifies the
source, usage, values, and features of data warehouse data. It also defines how data can be
changed and processed. It is closely connected to the data warehouse.
For example, a line in sales database may contain:
4030 KJ732 299.90
This is a meaningless data until we consult the Meta that tell us it was
 Model number: 4030
 Sales Agent ID: KJ732
 Total sales amount of $299.90
Therefore, Meta Data are essential ingredients in the transformation of data into knowledge.
Metadata helps to answer the following questions
 What tables, attributes, and keys does the Data Warehouse contain?
 Where did the data come from?
 How many times do data get reloaded?
 What transformations were applied with cleansing?
Metadata can be classified into following categories:
1. Technical Meta Data: This kind of Metadata contains information about warehouse
which is used by Data warehouse designers and administrators.
2. Business Meta Data: This kind of Metadata contains detail that gives end-users a
way easy to understand information stored in the data warehouse.

9. Online Analytical Processing (OLAP)

Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) is a category of software that allows users to analyze
information from multiple database systems at the same time. It is a technology that enables
analysts to extract and view business data from different points of view.

Analysts frequently need to group, aggregate and join data. These operations in relational
databases are resource intensive. With OLAP data can be pre-calculated and pre-aggregated,
making analysis faster.
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OLAP databases are divided into one or more cubes. The cubes are designed in such a way that
creating and viewing reports become easy. OLAP stands for Online Analytical Processing.
Usually, data operations and analysis are performed using the simple spreadsheet, where data
values are arranged in row and column format. This is ideal for two-dimensional data. However,
OLAP contains multidimensional data, with data usually obtained from a different and unrelated
source. Using a spreadsheet is not an optimal option. The cube can store and analyze
multidimensional data in a logical and orderly manner.

9.1 How does it work?

A Data warehouse would extract information from multiple data sources and formats like text
files, excel sheet, multimedia files, etc.

The extracted data is cleaned and transformed. Data is loaded into an OLAP server (or OLAP
cube) where information is pre-calculated in advance for further analysis.

9.2 Basic analytical operations of OLAP

Four types of analytical operations in OLAP are:
1. Roll-up
2. Drill-down
3. Slice and dice
4. Pivot (rotate)

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9. Difference between OLTP and OLAP
OLTP and OLAP both are the online processing systems. OLTP is a transactional processing
while OLAP is an analytical processing system. OLTP is a system that manages transaction-
oriented applications on the internet for example, ATM. OLAP is an online system that reports to
multidimensional analytical queries like financial reporting, forecasting, etc.
The basic difference between OLTP and OLAP is that OLTP is an online database modifying
system, whereas, OLAP is an online database query answering system.

9.1 Definition of OLTP

OLTP is an Online Transaction Processing system. The main focus of OLTP system is to
record the current Update, Insertion and Deletion while transaction. The OLTP queries
are simpler and short and hence require less time in processing, and also requires less space.
OLTP database gets updated frequently. It may happen that a transaction in OLTP fails in
middle, which may effect data integrity. So, it has to take special care of data integrity. OLTP
database has normalized tables (3NF).
The best example for OLTP system is an ATM, in which using short transactions we modify the
status of our account. OLTP system becomes the source of data for OLAP.

9.2 Definition of OLAP

OLAP is an Online Analytical Processing system. OLAP database stores historical data that
has been inputted by OLTP. It allows a user to view different summaries of multi-dimensional
data. Using OLAP, you can extract information from a large database and analyze it for decision
making.
OLAP also allow a user to execute complex queries to extract multidimensional data. In OLTP
even if the transaction fails in middle it will not harm data integrity as the user use OLAP system
to retrieve data from a large database to analyze. Simply the user can fire the query again and
extract the data for analysis.
The transaction in OLAP are long and hence take comparatively more time for processing and
requires large space. The transactions in OLAP are less frequent as compared to OLTP. Even
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the tables in OLAP database may not be normalized. The example for OLAP is to view a
financial report, or budgeting, marketing management, sales report, etc
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 Comparison Chart
BASIS FOR OLTP OLAP
COMPARISON
Basic It is an online transactional It is an online data retrieving and data
system and manages database analysis system.
modification.
Focus Insert, Update, Delete Extract data for analyzing that helps in
information from the database. decision making.

Data OLTP and its transactions are the Different OLTPs database becomes the
original source of data. source of data for OLAP.

Transaction OLTP has short transactions. OLAP has long transactions.

Time The processing time of a The processing time of a transaction is
transaction is comparatively less comparatively more in OLAP.
in OLTP.
Queries Simpler queries. Complex queries.
Normalization Tables in OLTP database are Tables in OLAP database are not
normalized (3NF). normalized.
Integrity OLTP database must maintain data OLAP database does not get
integrity constraint. frequently modified. Hence, data
integrity is not affected.

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