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DSS News
D. J. Power, Editor
December 22, 2002 -- Vol. 3, No. 26
A Bi-Weekly Publication of DSSResources.COM
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Check the Dynasty Triage Advisor case at DSSResources.COM
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Featured:
* Report from Moscow, Russia
* Spreadsheet-Based DSS Tip - Use conditional formatting
* What's New at DSSResources.COM
* DSS News Releases
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Report from Moscow, Russia
by Dan Power
This past week, Dec. 16-19, 2002, I was lecturing about Decision Support
Systems at Moscow State Linguistics University. Each day I spent 90
minutes lecturing in English about a different decision support topic.
Monday began with an overview of the expanded DSS framework from my
Decision Support Systems book, Tuesday the topic shifted to gaining
strategic advantage with DSS, on Wednesday redesigning business
processes with appropriate decision support was the main focus of my
remarks, finally on Thursday I used Excel to demonstrate some simple
decision support concepts related to data and model-driven DSS.
Demonstrations are always risky. I learned the hard way that the Russian
version of Excel uses the comma as a decimal symbol rather than the
period we use in the United States. This notation convention became
apparent as I was trying to illustrate "what if" analysis in a simple
model by changing a growth rate expressed as a decimal value. The error
message in Russian indicated my formula was yielding an incorrect value.
Trying to figure out the Russian names on the menus for goal-seek and
pivot table had already created some challenges for me so I didn't want
to use the help screens. Well with some help from the students we
figured out the problems and I demonstrated how to use spinners to
change the assumptions of an underlying decision support model; I used
goal seek to find the values needed to reach a target result for a
model; and I demonstrated pivot tables for a simple data-driven DSS
based on a small data set.
While I was in Moscow I also had a number of conversations with Prof.
Mikhail Lugachyov, Chair in Economic/Business Informatics at Moscow
State Lomonosov University, about Decision Support Systems. On
Wednesday afternoon, Prof. Lugachyov and I met with Academician Valery
Makarov, head of the Central Economical-Mathematical Institute of the
Russian Academy of Sciences, and Prof. Serguei Aivazian, Deputy
Director. We are investigating doing some joint work on DSS and on
developing some advanced course work on DSS at Moscow State Lomonosov or
at the Russian Academy of Sciences. All three speak excellent English so
my minimal knowledge of Russian is not a major barrier to our
collaboration.
The big news while I was in Moscow was two acquisitions: Sybase is
acquiring AvantGo and Cognos is acquiring Adaytum. Some subscribers may
recall the article Guy Haddleton, CEO of Adaytum, wrote for
DSSResources.COM in June 2002 titled "Out of Sight, Out of Mind? Not any
more with 20/20 foresight!"
I also had an email from Cliff Ragsdale about the World's Biggest
Spreadsheet contest that MIS DecisionWare is holding. I'd seen the
headline in InformationWeek email news, but I hadn't had time to read
it. The link is http://www.informationweek.com/story/IWK20021217S0006 .
MIS DecisionWare had an OLAP product TM1 and now they have a
multidimensional product Alea that uses Excel as a front-end. The
company is part of the German firm MIS AG.
Well it's been a long week. Happy holidays to all of the DSS News
subscribers. Many thanks to my host in Moscow -- Prof. Boris Shevchenko,
Moscow State Linguistics University.
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Happy Holidays from DSSResources.COM
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Spreadsheet-Based DSS Tip - Use conditional formatting
Conditional formatting involves specifying criteria for applying
formatting based on a cell value. A common use in a spreadsheet-based
DSS would be highlighting specific ranges of values in various colors.
For example, when a result cell from a model falls in a desirable range
it is green, in another range yellow and finally red in a third range of
values.
To use this feature click on Format on the menu bar and then
Conditional Formatting.
Use conditional formatting, but use it sparingly!
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What's New at DSSResources.COM
12/21/2002 Posted case by Biss, Andrew, "Dynasty Triage Advisor Enables
Medical Decision Support", 2002, URL http://dssresources.com/cases.
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Send your Ask Dan! questions to askdan@dssresources.com
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DSS News Releases - December 8 to 20, 2002
12/20/2002 Sybase solidifies mobile and wireless leadership with
acquisition of AvantGo.
12/20/2002 SGI delivers true cross-platform 3D visualization for the
visual simulation community.
12/20/2002 Air China chooses Sabre for advanced flight scheduling tools.
12/19/2002 New iris recognition study confirms superior performance in
large database applications.
12/19/2002 Fair, Isaac's TRIAD adaptive control system to process 5
million CIBC Credit Card accounts.
12/19/2002 Cognos® to acquire Adaytum: Powerhouse combination of BI and
enterprise planning sets foundation for CPM leadership.
12/17/2002 AskMe Corporation awarded 1st place at Giga Information
Group's Fifth Annual Emerging Technology Showcase.
12/16/2002 Sarnoff Corp. adds live surveillance video to stored models
to respond better to emergencies.
12/16/2002 PeopleSoft announces availability of Global Consolidations,
it will allow consolidation of financial data from multiple
organizations in real-time.
12/13/2002 NATO C3 Agency joins OMG; will align goals with Crisis
Management and C4I Task Forces.
12/13/2002 ZapThink: Native XML data storage evolving from a separate
market to a feature of general-purpose and purpose-built solutions.
12/12/2002 IBM and Nexaweb provide emerging technology to help Starwood
improve customer satisfaction at Sheraton Hotels.
12/12/2002 Applix announces latest global customer wins for analytics
solutions; 190 new analytics customers choose Applix in 2002.
12/12/2002 Open Text's records management solutions first to receive key
U.S. Federal security certification.
12/11/2002 Crystal Decisions introduces packaged BI offerings to target
small to medium sized business (SMB) market.
12/11/2002 CMP Media's Intelligent Enterprise identifies the 12 IT
solution providers most stronglyenabling the development of
'Intelligent' enterprises.
12/10/2002 Hershey Foods Corporation finds sweet spot with ProSight
Portfolios.
12/10/2002 ePeople Teamwork 4.5 reduces time to resolution for
organizations that support complex products.
12/10/2002 Polycom WebOffice enhancements further company's Web
collaboration leadership.
12/10/2002 ACP-ASIM and AMA to offer point-of-care CME credit; pilot
program uses PIER(TM) evidence-based medicine application delivered via
handheld software.
12/09/2002 Actuate survey reveals strong demand for spreadsheet based
reporting; business users want more Excel reports available through web
interface.
12/09/2002 PlanGraphics, Inc. provides GIS support to Kentucky Chemical
Stockpile Emergency Preparedness program -- CSEPP.
12/09/2002 Brio Performance Suite to be Intuit's primary business
intelligence application.
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DSS News is copyrighted (c) 2002 by D. J. Power. Please send your
questions to daniel.power@dssresources.com.
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