The use of APL in teaching a course in decision support systems

Decision Support Systems (DSS) seem to be the latest Business Data Processing novelty. DSS are an outgrowth of Electronic Data Processing Systems (EDP) and Management Information Systems (MIS). EDP or transaction processing are essentially electronic booking systems. They consist of processing transactions and updating all of the business "master file" journals and eventually producing balance sheets, profit and loss summaries, etc. An EDP system that produces additional reports that are used by managers in decision making is called a HIS. HIS reports are generally characterized as being "static" in nature-they produce the same basic reports each period, ex. personnel turnover report, fastest selling items report, etc. These reports can be produced either in batch or interactive mode, but because of their length, they are usually relegated to batch mode.