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The On-Line Executive Journal for Data-Intensive Decision Support
*** October 7, 1997: Vol. 1, No. 1 ***
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ANALYSIS & COMMENTARY
DATA WAREHOUSE AND DATA MINING
by W H Inmon
How necessary is the construction of a data warehouse for effective implementation of data mining strategies? Bill Inmon, the "father of the data warehouse" examines this and related questions pertaining to the linkage of these two technologies:
"In 1990 the phenomenon of data warehouse appeared and the world has not been the same since. Prior to data warehouses, computer systems were designed to capture, edit, and store detailed bits of data. These early systems are known as operational or legacy systems. While capturing and storing data efficiently in legacy, operational systems is certainly a useful thing to do, accessing and analyzing operational data is hardly easy or optimal. Data ended up in "jail" in the 1960/1970 style of legacy, operational system.
There are several important reasons why data was so hard to get to in the operational systems of yesterday. Operational systems are notorious for being unintegrated. There is no uniform understanding of who a customer is, what a product is, what a sale or transaction is and so forth. Each operational application has its own unique interpretation of the basic data that runs the corporation. Trying to achieve a uniform, consistent view of what is going on in the corporation is impossible with the many operational applications that a company has..."
Bill Inmon has over 26 years of database technology management experience and data warehouse design expertise, and has published 35 books and more than 300 articles in major computer journals. His books have been translated into nine languages. He is known globally for his seminars on developing data warehouses and has been a keynote speaker for every major computing association.
Before founding Pine Cone Systems, Inmon was a co-founder of Prism Solutions. He is responsible for the high-level design of Pine Cone products, as well as for the architecture of planned and future products. Inmon has consulted with a large number of Fortune 1000 clients, offering data warehouse design and database management services. He also worked for American Management Services and Coopers & Lybrand.
Bill Inmon's latest book is Managing the Data Warehouse: Practical techniques for Monitoring Operations and Performance, Administering Data and Tools, Managing Change and Growth, (1997) co-authored with J. D. Welch and Katherine L. Glassey. Publisher: New York, NY: John Wiley ISBN: 0-471-16310-4
GUIDED KNOWLEDGE DISCOVERY
by Frank McGuff, Principal, Telos Solutions, Inc.
What is the most important step in the database knowledge discovery process -- and who should perform it? Frank McGuff explores this topic in detail. He writes: "Every corporation has long-standing beliefs about their business. Some of these may have reached the status of folklore, while some of them may simply be "gut level" beliefs held by corporate management. The easiest and most powerful first-use of data mining is the verification and quantification of these long standing beliefs."
Frank McGuff has been in the Information Technology industry for over twenty-five years. He has been developing decision support and executive information systems since the late 1970s. These covered a variety of industries, including manufacturing, pharmaceutical, consumer package goods and insurance. As President and founder of Telos Solutions, McGuff has led the development of the Guided Knowledge DIscovery product. This combines data mining, data warehousing and data visualization into a complete DSS environment, supporting a full and iterative process of knowledge discovery in databases. This product is designed to allow data warehousing users to achieve the full potential of the information resident in the database.
VASANT DHAR DISCUSSES KD/DM STRATEGIES
by Alan Beck, editor in chief
D S * interviewed Vasant Dhar, co-author with Roger Stein of "Seven Methods of Transforming Corporate Data into Business Intelligence" (Prentice-Hall, 1997). The book provides a very accessible treatment of the range of knowledge discovery techniques from a business perspective along with several fleshed-out case studies. Thus, the volume stands as a unique offering: a DS treatment of interest not only to technologists but also to key executives concerned with gaining a working understanding of KD/DM technologies and how they can profit from them.
Dhar spent several years at Morgan Stanley where he founded and led the Data Mining Group focusing on the trading and asset gathering parts of the business. He is currently Associate professor of Information Systems at New York University's Stern School of Business and president of Datamining Systems, a company specializing in providing data mining services that include consulting, advisory, data analysis, and education services.
Sybase to Support FLITE Initiative
Sybase has joined with FLITE founder Transaction Information Systems and nearly 20 hardware, software and marketing leaders to further the use of interactive and visualization technologies in the development of online financial services products.
META Group Sees "Hub-And-Spoke" Architecture As Solution To Data
Mart-Oriented Warehouse Design Through 2000
META Group, Inc. announced that recent client interviews and market research have revealed that, although solving the performance problems found in large centralized data warehouses, data marts have created new and costly problems for IT.
Siemens Pyramid Teams Up With HYPERparallel, Inc. to Deliver Data Mining Applications For Customer Relationship
Siemens Pyramid Information Systems, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Siemens Nixdorf Information Systems, Inc., has announced a marketing agreement with data mining software provider HYPERparallel, Inc. to provide corporations in the financial services, retail and telecommunications industries with massively scalable data mining applications for customer relationship marketing.
CONFERENCE CALENDAR
D S * INFORMATION
D S * welcomes bylined comments for publication.All comments regarding editorial content should be sent to: dseditor@tgc.com