Designing a Generalized Multiple Criteria Decision Support System

Decision support systems are of many kinds depending on themodels and techniques employed in them. Multiple criteriadecision making techniques constitute an important class of DSSwith unique software requirements. This paper stresses theimportance of interactive MCDM methods since these facilitatelearning through all stages of the decision making process. Wefirst describe some features of Multiple Criteria Decision SupportSystems ( MCDSSs) that distinguish them from classical DSSs. Wethen outline a software architecture for a MCDSS which has threebasic components: a Dialog Manager, an MCDM Model Manager, and aData Manager. We describe the interactions that occur betweenthese three software components in an integrated MCDSS and outlinea design for the Data Manager which is based on a concept oflevels of data abstraction