Decision Table Enhancements

This paper presents logical, pedagogical and practical principles for the enhancement, systematic construction, and radical simplification of decision tables. Suggested departures from current practice will be obvious to those familiar with current treatments. The way is pointed to extending the analysis in future work to an axiomatic treatment and the inclusion of additional logical properties such as certainty factors and payoffs. Purposes of Decision Tables and the Suggested Enhancements • To present an organization’s policy in a more understandable, non-verbal format. The table may be simplified for users by eliminating overlapping and irrelevant situations. • To facilitate the coding of conditional statements in a program more accurately. Decision tables are especially suited for representing case-structures, e.g., COBOL’s EVALUATE verb. • To analyze the actions that are needed for all possible condition-values of the relevant conditions. Use of the techniques presented here helps ensure that no possible set of condition-values escapes consideration, thereby protecting the organization from not taking the corresponding appropriate actions.