(a) What are decision support systems, and what role do they play in the business environment?

(b) Data warehousing is defined as "a subject-oriented, integrated, non-volatile collection of data" in support of management?s decision making process.

(i) Define the term subject-oriented and support your answer with appropriate examples.

(ii) Describe the three important differences that exist between an application oriented system and a subject oriented system.

(c) Data mining is a knowledge discovery process of automated extraction of hidden predictive information from large databases.

(i) Data mining being relatively a new technology, what advantages would an Insurance company achieved for implementing such a
technique? Provide relevant examples

(ii) To better exploit data mining what are the pre-requisites for a data warehouse?

(iii) Discuss the two critical factors which can affect success with the application of data mining technology.