Question

A systems analyst is examining three candidate solutions for developing a web based financial information system. The three candidate solutions are developed in three different technical platforms - ASP.Net, JAVA and PHP. Each candidate solution could be exposed to either high or low levels of security risks. The probability of occurance of high level of risk is 0.6 and the probability of occurance of low level of risk is 0.4. The costs associated in addressing the security risks for the three solutions are given below:

Candidate Solution	Level of Security Risk	Cost associated in addressing risk
ASP.NET	High	$ 110,000
ASP.NET	Low	$ 60, 000
JAVA	High	$ 120,000
JAVA	Low	$ 80, 000
PHP	High	$ 100,000
PHP	Low	$ 90,000

What technical platform would you choose based on a Decision Tree approach?

Answer 1

In this problem we are faced with situation whether to choose ASP.NET, JAVA or PHP as paltfrm of choice for implementation. The candidate solutions are ASP.NET, JAVA and PHP. As each of these are exposed to risk with some probability of occurence (high, low) or (0.6, 0.4) with cost associate with it.

The cost associated with a selection can be found out by multiplying probablity with cost associated.

Exoected Cost=Probability of risk * cost associated cwith it

The solution of choice will be the one which has minimum cost associated (sum of low risk cost +high risk cost)

The Decsion tree of this showing all paths is shown below:

The cost associated with each choice is as follows:

Probability Cost Platforms Decision Tree Platform Selection 24000 Low-P-0 $60000 High P 0.6 Expected cost-0.6 110000- 66000 ASP.NET $110000 32000 Low P 0.4 $80000 JAVA High P 0.6 Platform Selection Expected cost-0.6-120000- 72000 $120000 PHP 5 36000 Low P $90000 High P-0.6 Expected cost-0.6-100000- 60000 $100000 0

ASP.NET=$24,000+$66,000=$90,000

JAVA= $32,000+72,000=$108,000

PHP= $36,000+60,000=$96,000

Therfore here ASP.NET has cost $ 90,000 and therfore ASP.NET is candidate selection for platform.