Generic Model Base Design for Decision Support Systems in Revenue Management: Applications to Hotel and Health Care Sectors - Efficient Decision Support Systems: Practice and Challenges from Current to Future - page 187

uses. The proposed metamodel, as the model of the process models, aims to support the
whole spectrum of problem definitions intended to be addressed.
As shown in the class diagram, Infrastructure Access Types are defined first, as follows: each
Customer Segment Type accesses through a Channel Type a certain Infrastructure Type . In the
most general case, all Customer Segment Types would be able to access all Infrastructure Types
through all Channel Types ; the existence of restrictions in the access to some Customer
Segment Types , or access to certain infrastructures through some Channel Types , will lead to a
whole set of problems to be addressed.
This problem base is reflected in the instances of the entity Infrastructure Access Type . In turn,
each of these instances might be assigned different Value Types . In commercial infrastructure
allocation problems, these Value Types will be the tariff types, e.g. reduced tariff, normal
tariff, premium tariff; offer price, list price; high season, low season... The assignment of a
Value Type to an Infrastructure Access Type defines a generic Allocation Type . Each Allocation
Type will apply during a time interval, which will be defined by a Generic Start Time and a
Generic End Time . These times are handled in the generic model layer in abstract form,
without taking a specific value or time. Even if they do not take a specific value, in complex
models logical relationships ( Constraints ) will have to be defined among them.
According to this approach, a Business Process Model is defined as a set of Allocation Types .
The relationship that starts with the solid rhomboid is a Composition Relationship.
Therefore, in this layer, the proposed metamodel encompasses in a generic manner
definitions of infrastructure allocation optimization problems.
Fig. 2. UML class diagram of the Process Metamodel, the model of the process models
Model families can be derived from the instance patterns. Specifically, families can be
defined if a dependency is found between two of the following entities: Channel Type ,
Customer Segment Type and Infrastructure Type ; and according to which of these entities
affects the definition of the prices or values, Value Type . As an example, there might be cases
in which customers can access through various channels a given infrastructure (e.g.