AMPA: Knowledge Management in Analytical-based Decision Processes

In the context of corporate business intelligence, the use of OLAP (On-Line Analytical Processing) tools constitutes a fundamental step to improve decision making and to create new knowledge. To help systematization and capture of the reasoning that happens during decision processes, this paper describes a computational environment to complement OLAP tools functionality, called AMPA (the initials for Analytical Processing Memory Environment, in Portuguese). AMPA proposes a structured representation of decision making processes, supporting the capture and retention of decision instances in organizational memory, maintaining not only reports and associated conclusions, but also the context in which they were created. This environment includes a series of sub-process components that guide the execution of decision processes (represented as frameworks) and describe many of its common activities (represented as beans), specially focusing on typical OLAP operations. An application case is described to exemplify the components use.