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
*** January 26, 1999: Vol. 3, No. 4 ***
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IN THIS ISSUE:

ED COLET FOLLOWS HOLIDAY SEASON DATA TRAILS
BMHC BOOSTS VALUE-ADDED SELLING WITH ORACLE DATA WAREHOUSE
NCR HELPS HARRAH'S EFFECT CUSTOMER RECOGNITION & REWARD

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ANALYSIS & COMMENTARY

SOME DATA TRAILS FROM HOLIDAY SEASON LEAD BACK TO RETAILERS
by Ed Colet

Ed Colet is the Acting Director of Research at Virtual Gold Inc., responsible for developing analytical methods for data mining and for investigating human factors and usability issues of business intelligence systems. At present, he is in the final stage of completing a doctoral dissertation in the Cognition and Perception program at New York University's Department of Psychology. Ed has also worked for IBM Research at the T.J. Watson Research Center. At IBM, Ed was a member of the group that developed Advanced Scout, the data mining application for NBA teams. His research interests focus on statistical methods and human factors.

VIRTUAL GOLD ANNOUNCES VIRTUALMINER FRAMEWORK; PATENT-PENDING TECHNOLOGY DEMYSTIFIES THE ART OF DEVELOPING SOPHISTICATED DATA MINING APPLICATIONS

Virtual Gold, Inc., a company founded by Dr. Inderpal Bhandari, the inventor of IBM's Advanced Scout data mining technology for coaches of the National Basketball Association, has announced the VirtualMiner Framework. With VirtualMiner's breakthrough technology, creating, deploying and using data mining applications in an Internet/Intranet environment is now as simple as creating, deploying and using a typical querying front-end for an SQL database.

BUILDING MATERIALS HOLDING CORPORATION SELECTS ORACLE RETAIL SOFTWARE SOLUTION RETEK DATA WAREHOUSE TO PROVIDE VALUE-ADDED SELLING TOOL

Oracle Corp. and Retek Retail Solutions, an HNC Software Company, announced that Building Materials Holding Corp. (BMHC), a leading distributor and retailer of building materials, selected Oracle Retail to enhance BMHC's value-added selling process.

NCR HELPS HARRAH'S BETTER SERVE AND REWARD CASINO GUESTS; HARRAH'S ENTERTAINMENT, INC. CHOOSES NCR DATA WAREHOUSE TO RUN ITS INTERNATIONAL CUSTOMER RECOGNITION AND REWARDS SYSTEM

Harrah's is putting its chips on NCR Corporation to keep track of the more than 14.5 million guests, who eat, sleep, watch live shows and wager at the company's 18 casinos in eight U.S. states.

ACTION ITEMS

PeopleSoft Certifies Acta Technology's Award-Winning ERP-to-Data Warehousing Solution
Acta Technology, Inc., a leading provider of data warehousing solutions for packaged applications, announced that ActaWorks, Acta's award-winning ERP-to-data warehousing solution, has been certified by PeopleSoft, Inc. to load the PeopleSoft Enterprise Warehouse Solution.

Fortune 500 Companies to Reveal IT Strategies At DCI's Data Warehouse and Knowledge Management Events
DCI's Data Warehouse Summit, the leading educational event for IT and business professionals, will feature a new conference program centered on a case-based approach.

Amdocs Launches Churn Mgt System Software
Amdocs, already well known for its cellular customer care and billing system software, has unveiled a churn management package. Known as the Churn Management System (CMS), the software is based on the firm's existing data mining applications.

CROSS ACCESS Introduces SERIESfour; Offers Native, Fast, Scalable Legacy Data Connectivity For Data Marts, ERP Applications; Standardizes Access to Mainframe Non-Relational Data for Rapid Implementation
Companies implementing data marts or enterprise resource management (ERP) applications now have the means to natively access, connect and migrate data from legacy mainframe databases in a faster, easier and more efficient manner than ever before.

Retail Pro Suite of Data Warehousing Tools Premiers at NRF 99; Windows Based 32-bit Retail Data Warehouse at the Heart of System
When the National Retail Federation's (NRF) Expo opens at the Jacob Javits Convention Center a broad spectrum of information technology will be shown to retail executives. One popular software application they will see is Retail Pro, with its new Retail Data Warehouse (RDW) and related data mining tools.

TrueFace Stands Alone on NT; Miros Inc. Announces the Latest in Its Cutting-Edge Face Recognition Product Line
Miros, Inc. announced the release of TrueFace NT, the latest product in its TrueFace product suite using face recognition technology. TrueFace NT authenticates users by their face and provides logon capability to Windows NT personal computers.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"Knowing our customers better allows us to determine what adds value to each customer, individually, and then provide that value at the right time." Information Technology and Marketing Services, Harrah's Entertainment

CONFERENCES & SEMINARS 01.26.99

D S * INFORMATION

D S * welcomes bylined comments for publication.

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