The AS (Administrative Sciences) Financial Reporting System: Some Experience on Prototyping and User Interaction

• Main Author: Booker,Ronald L
• Format: Report
• Language: English
• Subjects: ADAPTIVE SYSTEMS; Administration and Management; APPROACH; CHARTS; COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE; Computer Hardware; Computer Programming and Software; COMPUTER PROGRAMS; DATA BASES; DECISION MAKING; FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT; FLOW CHARTING; HARD COPY; INSTRUCTIONS; INTERACTIONS; INTERFACES; ITERATIONS; Knowledgeman computer program; MANAGEMENT; MENU; PROTOTYPES; USER MANUALS; USER NEEDS

This thesis is twofold. First, it designs, develops ad implements a data-oriented financial decision support system for the Department of Administrative Sciences (AS) of the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School -- the AS Database Reporting System. Second, it seeks to derive some observations on the effectiveness of the adaptive, or prototyping, approach in building an end user-oriented computerized decision support system. Chapter II discusses the adaptive design approach to DSS development. Characteristics of the prototyping approach are addressed. Also, the model for prototyping is presented. Chapter III gives an account of the prototyping experiment with the AS Database Reporting System. The 'diary approach' is adopted to record the evolution of the system architecture from the user interaction perspective. Chapter IV discusses some observations based on the prototyping experiment and provides suggestions for possible future extension of the proposed system. Three phases of iterative design are examined. Technical reports on the AS Database Reporting System are described in the appendices. Appendix A. reproduces the user's manual. It provides instructions for the casual users. Diagrams of the system interface, reproduction of the system menus, and sample hard copy reports are respectively given in Appendices B, C and D. Appendix E contains detailed technical instructions intended for the database administrator and the system programmer. Data Flow Diagrams, structured charts, a data dictionary, program listings and lists of tables are respectively given in Appendices F, G, H, I and J. Keywords; KnowledgeMan computer program.