Knowledge-based decision support applications differ from those typical of artificial intelligence expert systems in their open-ended, evolutionary character and need to coordinate with other systems resources, such as organizational databases and quantitative analysis routines. While knowledge representation machinery is becoming available, the corresponding formalization of managerial/administrative knowledge needed for DSS application is still lacking.
This entails problems of an epistomological nature, identifying the foundational concepts of business. An abstract framework based on formal languages and denotational semantics is proposed, and ontological issues are identified
