"Enterprises are rather complex systems which have to be managed for their internal affairs, but more importantly for the many relations to the different environments in which they are operating. Today, these environments are changing much more rapidly and the need for relevant information becomes of paramount importance in the decision making processes at all levels of enterprise management. Fluctuations in market demands, technology evolution and changing regulations require very flexible enterprise operations, capable of reacting to those changes. These reactions must be based on relevant and up-to-date information which must be supported by new decision support technology. The challenges in decision support concern the identification of relevant information, easy access and intelligent use of this information. Building and maintaining the enterprise knowledge base and enabling its efficient use for decision support are major tasks of enterprise engineering."