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The On-Line Executive Journal for Data-Intensive Decision Support
*** July 14, 1998: Vol. 2, No. 28 ***
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IN THIS ISSUE:

INTERPRETING BIZARRE PATTERNS IN DATA MINING RESULTS
BY INDERPAL BHANDARI

DW SYSTEM ADMINISTRATION, A BUSINESS-CRITICAL SYSTEM
BY NIGEL CHANG

WHERE WILL MODELS LIVE?
BY JOHN THOMPSON

ANALYSIS & COMMENTARY

GOLDEN MEANS: INTERPRETING BIZARRE PATTERNS IN DATA MINING RESULTS IN DATA MINING RESULTS
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: "I have often been asked what should be done when a data mining exercise leads to a really weird pattern. The following anecdote that has been making the rounds of e-mail has made it a lot easier for me to answer this question. I paraphrase the anecdote below..."

DATA WAREHOUSING SYSTEM ADMINISTRATION, A BUSINESS-CRITICAL SYSTEM, PART I
by Nigel Chang

Nigel Chang is Director of Data Warehousing Projects for MetaEdge. MetaEdge was founded by IT professionals who saw the business challenges and opportunities revealed -- or perhaps created -- by corporate information systems. The company's beginnings were in the consulting field -- solving a variety of IT problems, dealing with very large database (VLDB) issues, building data warehouses. The data warehouse is not only a critical system in business, it is also difficult to maintain. This multi-part article emphasizes the critical administrative tasks that make a data warehouse successful.

Chang writes: "According to a report from International Data Corporation (IDC), 95 per cent of Fortune 500 companies had built their own data warehouse by 1995. There is no doubt that many MIS professionals are now familiar with the design, implementation, and maintenance of data warehouses. However, many MIS professionals still hesitate to call data warehousing a mission-critical system."

WHERE WILL MODELS LIVE?
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: "Now that the standards camps are beginning to form there will be many questions that will start to be debated at conferences, tradeshows, and in marketing collateral such as product slicks and other glossies, and, of course, in the most popular weapon in the high tech marketplace, the white paper. One question that has been consistently discussed over the past 12 to 18 months is: where will the models that are produced in the data mining phase of the process reside?"

ACTION ITEMS

InterNetivity Announces Support for Informix Dynamic Server with MetaCube ROLAP Option 4.0
InterNetivity has announced that dbProbe, its award winning Java-based data analysis tool, will support Informix MetaCube ROLAP Option 4.0 for the Informix Dynamic Server. Scheduled for delivery in September, 1998, dbProbe 4.0 will combine its advanced web-based OLAP capabilities such as fully interactive drilling-down, graphing and pivoting of axes with client-server deployment against a number of data sources, including Informix MetaCube.

NCR and Quadstone Help Banks Better Predict Customer Behavior
NCR Corporation will help financial institutions better anticipate the future actions of consumers through a new suite of propensity modeling software and consulting services. NCR is augmenting the power of its data warehousing and professional consultancy services through an agreement with Quadstone Limited, the Edinburgh-based developer of Decisionhouse, a fully-scalable suite of tools for integrated data access, visualization, and predictive modeling. Decisionhouse is an integral part of the NCR propensity modeling offer.

ISL: Carving Into Web-Logs for Business Intelligence
ISL's Clementine Data Mining System is to be used as the basis for a new tool to analyse web-log data, aiming to revolutionise Internet commerce. The tool, which will be developed as part of the MIMIC project (Mining the Internet for Marketing Intelligence), will be a web-enabled data mining system, customised to deal with web-log data.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"It takes more than UNIX systems administration knowledge and experience to make data warehouse systems administration an easy job."

CONFERENCES & SEMINARS 07.14.98

D S * INFORMATION

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