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The On-Line Executive Journal for Data-Intensive Decision Support
*** June 30, 1998: Vol. 2, No. 26 ***
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IN THIS ISSUE:

DISCOVERING KNOWLEDGE FROM DATA: PART I
BY INDERPAL BHANDARI
HOW TO THINK ABOUT METADATA: PART III
BY ROBERT SEINER
FOCUS -- WHERE WILL IT COME FROM?
BY JOHN THOMPSON

ANALYSIS & COMMENTARY

DISCOVERING KNOWLEDGE FROM DATA -- PART I
by Inderpal Bhandari, executive editor at large

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.

Dr. Bhandari writes: "How does one discover knowledge from data? Let me count the ways. I am not sure if there are as many ways to discover knowledge from data as there are to skin the proverbial cat, but there are indeed a number of situations where such discovery is possible. Let us start at one extreme and work our way across the spectrum."

META DATA IS THE ANSWER; NOW WHAT WAS THE QUESTION? PART III
by Robert S. Seiner

Robert S. Seiner is a Senior Consultant for Spectrum Technology Group, Inc. Spectrum is a Data Management consulting company based in Somerville, New Jersey. Bob is recognized for his knowledge of meta data management, repository implementation and information stewardship, and he speaks often at major conferences and user group meetings. Bob is also the publisher and editor of The Data Administration Newsletter (TDAN) located on the internet at http://www.tdan.com Bob can be reached at rseiner@tdan.com

In the last installment of a three-part series, Seiner observes: "Over the past twenty years or so, while companies were developing their IT architectures and data structures, companies inherently knew the data structures, development tools, and software modules and features (so to speak) like the back of their hands. With that in mind, companies that purchase packages have the dilemma of moving data that they understand well (hopefully) to a piece of vendor software that they had nothing to do with developing."

The first two articles in this series may be retrieved as 100206 100212

FOCUS -- WHERE WILL IT COME FROM?
by John K. Thompson

John K. Thompson is the Vice President of Marketing for Magnify, Inc. Thompson has over 15 years experience spanning all major technology management functions for software organizations. In his current role, as Vice President of Marketing, Thompson formulates and executes the strategic direction for Magnify, Inc. and the PATTERN product line. His technology expertise includes knowledge discovery, decision support, data warehousing, and database systems. Prior to joining Magnify, Inc., he held a number of senior technology and marketing positions at PLATINUM technology, IBM, and Metaphor Computer Systems. Thompson has consulted in Latin America, Europe, and Asia regarding the issues around building world class data warehouses and decision support systems. Thompson holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Ferris State University and a MBA in Marketing from DePaul University.

Thompson observes: "Off on another trip this week. This time to listen to and talk with the analysts and attendees at the META Group event in Orlando. One of the most telling comments I heard was from Rob Tholemeier. Mr. Tholemeier is an analyst with First Albany. Rob follows a number of stocks or companies in the technology sector. The stocks are primarily concentrated in the data warehousing/business intelligence area. I listen and follow the activities in this area because I believe that this sector contains the data mining segment, and the more mature segments (if you can call data warehousing, and business intelligence mature) are indicative of actions that will be occurring in the data mining and data mining enabled application spaces in the near future."

ACTION ITEMS

U.S. Data Warehouse Software Applications and Tools Market: Competition May be Fierce, But Lucrative Rewards are Worth the Fight
According to recent strategic research by Frost & Sullivan, the U.S. Data Warehouse Software Applications and Tools Market accounted for $2.1 billion in revenues in 1997, up 23.7 percent from 1996. With it's ability to store and process corporate-wide data, data warehousing is fast becoming a competitive factor in virtually every industry.

Prism and Arbor Software Join Forces to Deliver End-to-End Data Warehousing and Analytic Applications
Prism Solutions, Inc., a leading provider of solutions to deliver business intelligence applications, has announced an agreement to jointly market the Prism Executive Suite and Arbor Integration Server. Arbor Integration Server, announced separately by Arbor Software, is a suite of graphical tools and scalable data integration services that minimizes the time and expense required to create, deploy and manage analytic applications.

Monte Carlo Benchmarking at Sun Lab Confirms C*ATS' Speed Claim for CARMA Enterprise Risk Management Engine
C*ATS Software Inc., a leading provider of high-performance solutions for integrated market, credit and liquidity risk management, has announced the results of a formal benchmark testing the speed of the CARMA enterprise risk management solution running on Sybase System 11 and a Sun Ultra Enterprise 2 workstation.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"The Year 2000 problem (Y2K) is a complicated problem that was caused by and can be fixed using meta data."

CONFERENCES & SEMINARS 06.30.98

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