Data mining, data warehousing, decision support and knowledge discovery make up the universe of D S * (dsstar), the only executive business newsletter supporting strategic employment of these technologies.

The On-Line Executive Journal for Data-Intensive Decision Support
*** July 28, 1998: Vol. 2, No. 30 ***
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IN THIS ISSUE:

DATA MINING AND SECURITY
BY INDERPAL BHANDARI
DW SYS ADMIN, A BUSINESS-CRITICAL SYSTEM, PART III
BY NIGEL CHANG
OBSERVATIONS ON THE STATE OF DW/DM TECHNOLOGY
BY JOHN THOMPSON

GOLDEN MEANS: DATA MINING AND SECURITY -- THE LAST LINE OF DEFENSE?
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: "Recently, Business Week reported that more than 80% of companies in a survey said that security is the leading barrier to expanding electronic links with customers and partners. This fear is not unfounded. Cyber crooks have been known to break into even the most secure systems. In one particularly brazen attempt, they re-routed phone calls meant for a major intelligence organization to sex chat lines in Hong Kong and Moldova."

DATA WAREHOUSING SYSTEM ADMINISTRATION, A BUSINESS-CRITICAL SYSTEM, PART III
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: "Data warehouses have more online data than any other system. They easily consume gigabytes to terabytes of disk space. Today, the only conventional technology to provide sufficient disk space with acceptable availability and performance is RAID. A data warehouse systems administrator must do his/her homework to understand just what RAID has to offer. Many hardware platform vendors, such as IBM and DEC, offer their own RAID solutions, while others, such as HP, team up with RAID-specialized vendors like EMC."

Parts I and II of this series may be retrieved as D S * articles: 100230 and 100236

OBSERVATIONS ON THE CURRENT STATE OF DW/DM TECHNOLOGY
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: "...I was having a drink with an acquaintance. He asked me if I would spend some time with him to discuss the current state of technology and opportunities within the high tech marketplace. An invitation to talk about two of my favorite topics coupled with the fact that he was buying, how could I refuse? This fellow works for a national not-for-profit and has an interest in moving into the high technology field. I won't bore you with all of the details, but the comment that made my ears prick up was, 'I want to work with a company or companies that are accessing a data warehouse using the internet as the access mechanism.'"

ACTION ITEMS

Visual Insights Announces Beta Release of Data Visualization Software for ActiveX Developers
Visual Insights, a venture of Lucent Technologies, has announced the beta release of a set of interactive and linked data visualization software for the Microsoft ActiveX developer market. This component set will allow software developers to create more flexible, animated ways to display trends in vast stores of information. Based on the COM/ActiveX control architecture from Microsoft, the Visualization Components software allows users to incorporate visualization information into existing data mining and analysis applications and to create new stand-alone visualization applications.

PowerCenter Product Integrated with Data Cleansing
Informatica Corp., a leading provider of software for deploying business intelligence and analytic applications across the enterprise, has announced the integration of its PowerCenter 1.5 product with The Trillium Software System, a premier enterprise data cleansing technology. Essential for data warehousing, data cleansing leverages the full business potential of customer databases and other enterprise information by providing improved data quality, giving companies confidence in the accuracy and usefulness of their data to make effective business decisions.

Amazon.com Selects Sun's Starfire Server and Sun StorEdge Arrays to Power Strategic Data Warehouse and Decision Support Systems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. has announced that Amazon.com, Inc., one of the Web's best-known retailers, is turning to Sun's server, software and storage systems to help serve its growing customer base. The online retailer has selected the Sun Enterprise 10000 Starfire server running the Solaris operating environment with Sun StorEdge A5000 fibre channel arrays and the L3500 tape library for its data warehouse and decision support system.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"(M)y experience shows that those with a naive perspective are an excellent barometer on what the mainstream will buy in volume."

• John K. Thompson

CONFERENCES & SEMINARS 07.28.98

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