Architecture and Design

Architecture & Design

Architecture and design includes everything that is a part of the description of how the identified data sources are to be connected to the user requirements. It is not uncommon to find early architecture decisions mixed in with user requirements.

As part of our end user services, we will translate the requirements for a decision support system into a system architecture and design. The translation can include selection of tools, development of schemata and algorithms for software components, and designation of computing and networking resources that will host the software components and communications. We leverage our requirements documentation in this work; as the specification of the application is independent of any software system, we can tailor the architecture and design as needed.

Since specific analytical or BI tools are, by definition, optimized for certain types of logical and physical requirements, it is important for a service provider to be independent of any particular vendor's product(s). It is also important that the service provider know the details of numerous products, to be able to select them with the requirements in mind. At DSS Lab, through our vendor services and our role in numerous industry organizations and initiatives, we have ongoing relationships with all the major DSS or BI vendors. In combination with our on-site lab, we are uniquely enabled to advise you on your tool selection and the impact of tools on your design and architecture. We are familiar and work with a range of products from different vendors, as well as maintaining a specialized Microsoft solutions practice.

It has been our experience that many projects stress tools in ways that have not yet been tested. For these projects, we often recommend tightly focused performance tests to be conducted in our labs or on site at the client to make the final determination of architectural feasibility.

Furthermore, and for large projects, we can also create performance simulation models that take into account everything from detailed hardware and software configurations in combination with software design choices and user/batch loads to approximate final system performance as a function of chosen architecture.

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