On Hierarchy of Actuarial Objects: Data Processing from the Actuarial Point of View

Data Administration Including Warehousing & Design (narrow topic or advanced); Special Topics (narrow topic or advanced); Like all professionals in the information era, actuaries need computers to automate non-creative activities and to relieve them from the burden of repetitive actions. Actuaries need a system which shields them from the complexities of computer architecture and provides an abstraction and generalization exactly at the level of the common denominator of all actuarial functions. From the actuarial point of view, an ideal data processing solution is a (a) transparent to users (b) highly efficient (c) storage/retrieval system for (d) structured actuarial data (objects) with (e) an extremely flexible (f) computationally complete (g) open (h) calculation engine. In short, a system which speaks actuarial language and makes it very easy to express actuarial algorithms and very hard to make mistakes. The paradigm where goals of abstraction, flexibility, simplicity and reliability can easily be achieved is the Object-Oriented (OO) model. In order to "teach" an object-oriented data processing system to "speak actuaries" actuaries need to structure and categorize their data as well as formalize their algorithms. A well-defined hierarchy of actuarial objects creates an environment for the effortless expression of actuarial business rules and algorithms.