Intensional XML-enabled web-based real-time decision support system

Enterprise data warehouse (EDW) with its ETL toolkit is not an adequate approach for today's business environment that is in a constant state of flux. Organizations will, in fact, improve their tactical and operational decisions by utilizing systems that can alert the organization to any critical situation in any of the business sectors and consolidate the corresponding real-time data on the spot. In this paper, we define a service-oriented architecture (SOA) for an event driven Web-based real-time decision support system (WB-RT-DSS) engine that can be available on the cloud for stakeholders to access and request a decision making support on demand. We extend the implementation of intensional XML (Active XML) framework to propose a metadata directory to dynamically extract real-time data from various internal and external data sources. The WB-RT-DSS governs data collection and exchange based on the concept of service-orientated data gathering via Web services as the Active XML-based metadata directory provides connection to the external data as a service (DaaS) and to the external models as software as a service (SaaS). For illustration, the issue of overcrowding in emergency departments is addressed from a technical perspective.