Decision Support Systems (DSS) are a specific class of computerized information system that supports business and organizational decision-making activities. A properly-designed DSS is an interactive software-based system intended to help decision makers compile useful information from raw data, documents, personal knowledge, and/or business models to identify and solve problems and make decisions.

Typical information that a decision support application might gather and present would be:

* an inventory of all of your current information assets (including legacy and relational data sources, cubes, data warehouses, and data marts),

* comparative sales figures between one week and the next,

* projected revenue figures based on new product sales assumptions;

* the consequences of different decision alternatives, given past experience in a context that is described.