ANALYSIS & COMMENTARY

GOLDEN MEANS: IN THE BEGINNING
by Inderpal Bhandari, executive editor at large

With this edition, D S * is proud to introduce the first column by its executive editor at large Inderpal Bhandari. We believe that Dr. Bhandari's world-renowned technical virtuosity and profound understanding of business intelligence will provide numerous valuable and unique insights for all of our readers.

Inderpal Bhandari is widely recognized as a leading researcher in data mining and computer science. He is one of the few experts who have successfully demonstrated how the emerging technology of data mining can be translated into useful applications that offer a competitive advantage. Recently, he formed Virtual Gold, Inc. to implement his technical vision. Virtual Gold also offers a consulting service to help clients differentiate themselves from their competitors via the use of data mining technology.

From 1990-1997, Dr. Bhandari was a member of the research staff at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, where he received several awards for his pioneering work in data mining and in software engineering. He was the creator and project director of IBM's Advanced Scout, a data mining program used extensively by coaches of the National Basketball Association to devise new strategies based on the automatic identification of hidden patterns in game data and video.

He was educated at Carnegie Mellon University (Ph.D, Electrical & Computer Engineering, 1990), the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (M.S.) and the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, India (B.Engg). He has published extensively in leading computer-related journals and conferences and has deployed several cutting-edge technological solutions to business problems.

In this edition of D S * , Bhandari writes: "In mid-1997, I founded Virtual Gold, Inc. to create innovative data mining technology and bring it to market. I assembled a crack team of software developers. The ideas flew fast and the code even faster. We were on our way. I could agree with Ambrose Bierce that the future is indeed a period in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured. Until I talked with Dollar, Mark, and Otto, senior executives who were representative of our potential customer."

METADATA AND DATA MINING: TWO UNLIKELY PEAS IN A POD, PART II
by W H Inmon

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

In this final segment of a two-part commentary, Inmon notes: "There are many aspects of data and processing that are constantly changing. Viewed from a single instant in time, the data appears to be static because at that single moment in time nothing about the data is changing. But viewed historically, data is dynamic and is seen to be changing. Which is where metadata comes in."

For the first part of this article see 100133

Founded in 1991, Magnify, Inc. provides innovative data mining solutions to maximize the intrinsic value of the rapidly expanding data resources of Global 2000 companies. Based in Chicago, Magnify's mission is to continue to produce award-winning software and complete applications that will discover, explain, and predict rare and critical patterns in databases up to and including multiple terabytes.

Magnify maintains partnerships with Tandem Computers Inc., Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: SUNSW), Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: ORCL), Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE: HWP) and Informix Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: IFMX). Magnify, Inc. and Magnify Research, Inc., which develops products and integrates systems for the federal government, are subsidiaries of Magnify Holdings Corporation.

For more information access Magnify's Web site at http://www.magnify.com , or send e-mail to info@magnify.com

In his commentary, Thompson observes: "I've just returned from the Data Mining Summit, where some of the best and brightest names in the business have been weighing in on where data mining is headed. And here is the clearest message from the Summit: desktop data mining is fading, if in fact it was ever a truly viable force in the first place."

Dataquest Reports Moderate Growth for Worldwide DB Market
The worldwide database market posted single-digit growth with revenue approaching $6.6 billion in 1997, up approximately 7 percent from 1996 revenue of slightly more than $6.1 billion, according to preliminary market statistics from Dataquest.

Cognos Software Helps Create Award-Winning Data Warehousing Application for Browning-Ferris Industries
Cognos announced at the 4th Annual Internet/Intranet Application Development Conference and Expo that an implementation using its business intelligence tools, PowerPlay and Impromptu, by Browning-Ferris Industries, Inc. (BFI) has been chosen as the winner of the 1998 ADT Innovator's Award in the data warehousing category. The ADT Innovator Awards, established in 1994 and presented today, honor organizations who demonstrate unique and innovative concepts for enhancing productivity through the use of technology.

PLATINUM technology Announces DecisionBase to Both Accelerate Data Warehouse Creation and Build Strong Enterprise Information Architecture
In a move to address a growing information technology (IT) challenge, PLATINUM technology, inc. announced DecisionBase, designed to help IT users quickly build and deploy data marts and warehouses with both powerful data movement technology and a best-selling enterprise repository. DecisionBase is thus designed to help IT organizations accelerate warehouse creation and simplify complex data transformations, while providing a solid foundation to build upon and more easily manage in the future.

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