AOCD: A Multi-agent Based Open Architecture for Decision Support Systems

Despite the critical need for an open architecture in Decision Support System (DSS) design, present DSS architectural design are unable to provide a fundamental solution to enhance the flexibility, connectivity, compatibility, and intelligence of a DSS. In this paper, we present a novel multi-agent-based architecture for DSS, called Agent-based Open Connectivity for Decision support systems (AOCD). The AOCD architecture adopts a hybrid agent network topology that makes use of a unique feature called Matrix-agent connection. This architecture is able to overcome the difficulties in concurrent control and synchronous communication problems that plague many decentralized systems. Performance analysis has been carried out on this architecture and we find that it is able to provide a high degree of flexibility and efficiency compared with other architectures.