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
*** October 13, 1998: Vol. 2, No. 41 ***
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IN THIS ISSUE:

ED COLET COMMENTS ON RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY ISSUES
DATA WAREHOUSE VERSUS DATA MART BY DANIEL GRAHAM
KAISER TRACKS PHARMACEUTICAL INFO WITH DATA WAREHOUSE

ANALYSIS & COMMENTARY

RELIABILITY, VALIDITY AND THE SUBWAY SYSTEM
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.

Colet writes: "In order to do any sort of useful data mining, one would like to have clean, high quality data to mine. The importance of clean data is obvious -- without it, subsequent analysis and interpretation of results can easily become questionable. In this column I discuss a real-world example of how a flawed measurement process can result in "unclean" data. There are two very useful concepts from statistical measurement theory that are relevant here: reliability and validity (which basically correspond to consistency and accuracy)."

DATA WAREHOUSE VERSUS DATA MART: THE GREAT DEBATE
by Daniel T. Graham

Daniel T. Graham is Worldwide Strategy and Operations Manager for IBM's Global Business Intelligence Solutions. Graham observes: "Customers exploring the field of business intelligence for the first time often lead with: What is the difference between a data warehouse and a data mart? The next question follows as predictably as night follows day: which one does my company need? Let me start by saying that the two terms are often confused. Indeed, some people in the industry use them virtually interchangeably, which is unfortunate, because they do reflect a valuable hierarchical difference."

KAISER PERMANENTE SELECTS SEQUENT AND HITACHI DATA SYSTEMS FOR DATA WAREHOUSE TO TRACK PHARMACEUTICAL INFO

Sequent Computer Systems, Inc. and Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) have announced that Kaiser Permanente, America's largest not-for-profit health plan, has chosen the HDS' Freedom 5700E storage system and the Sequent NUMA-Q 2000 server, packaged and sold through HDS, as a data warehousing hardware solution for its new National Prescription Data Warehouse (NPDW).

DECISION-SUPPORT WARES CONTINUE TO SCALE

The decision-support market continues to grow in all directions as decision-support vendors Cognos, Seagate, and Information Advantage improve their products.

SURVEY REVEALS DATA WAREHOUSING AND Y2K ARE MAJOR CONCERNS OF AS/400 COMMUNITY

Silvon Software, Inc. announced that a recent survey conducted of AS/400 users indicates that more than 50 percent of businesses intend to explore various data warehousing solutions very soon. And, while only 20 percent of the respondents -- representing the manufacturing, distribution, retail and services sectors -- have implemented data warehouse systems to date, approximately 75 percent said they will be seriously considering building a data warehousing system as a business intelligence solution before the Year 2000.

ACTION ITEMS

Informatica and MicroStrategy Deliver Metadata Integration
Informatica Corp. has announced an expansion of its relationship with MicroStrategy Incorporated to further integrate its flagship data warehousing "build and manage" software, PowerMart, with MicroStrategy's DSS Agent 5.5 ROLAP product at the metadata level. The integration is part of MicroStrategy's recently announced Metadata Extraction Transformation Loading (ETL) program which provides joint customers with a clear, business-oriented view into the full data warehouse life cycle and increasing data warehouse usage among decision-makers.

NCR Acquires Decision Support Services Group from Medaphis Corporation
NCR Corporation has announced the acquisition of the Decision Support Services Group (DSSG) from Medaphis Corporation headquartered in Atlanta. With this acquisition, NCR gains software, as well as marketing and development staff, for the communications and energy utilities industries. It also strengthens NCR's ability to provide integrated and best-in-class data warehouse solutions for other targeted industries such as consumer goods manufacturing, healthcare and insurance.

NCR Announces Teradata for Windows NT
Underscoring its commitment to open systems, NCR Corporation has announced it has successfully ported its powerful Teradata database to the Windows NT Server operating system, including the Enterprise Edition. The move makes Teradata one of the leading decision-support databases in the high-end marketplace, better able to address the growing market of more data warehousing customers of all sizes and applications than ever before.

ANGOSS Software Notes Technology Transfer Agreement
ANGOSS Software Corporation has announced that it has entered into a technology transfer agreement with Hummingbird Communications Limited with respect to KnowledgeSTUDIO, the data mining workbench developed by ANGOSS. Under the agreement Hummingbird has acquired from ANGOSS the right to incorporate the source code for KnowledgeSTUDIO, KnowledgeSERVER and related components into Hummingbird's future product offerings. The agreement builds on the previous integration of KnowledgeSEEKER, another ANGOSS data mining software application, with Hummingbird's products.

Unisys Allies with Kamakura Corp to Maximize Risk Management Choice for Financial Services Clients
Unisys Corporation and Kamakura Corporation have announced an agreement whereby Unisys will offer its clients the Kamakura Risk Manager (KRM) suite of products. This suite of leading-edge solutions for the financial services market will allow clients to dramatically broaden and fortify their ability to assess and manage various forms of risk.

D&B Intros Connect for Enhancing Information Warehousing
As more companies build customer-centric information warehouses to improve their supply and demand chains, they realize that quality and currency of customer information are two of the most critical success factors. Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) has announced a product that enables companies to scrub, clean and match their customer information against the D&B global database, consisting of 50 million business records.

Information Builders and Compaq Announce Expanded Relationship
Information Builders and Compaq Computer Corporation have announced an expanded relationship through which Compaq will sell a Web-based data mart solution for OpenVMS (VAX or Alpha) or Windows NT (Intel or Alpha) based on Information Builders SmartMart and WebFOCUS products. The Compaq offering is called the Web Data Mart Suite.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"The decision to set up a mart usually originates in that part of an organization with the most business "pain", and, thus, the opportunity for greatest gain."

CONFERENCES & SEMINARS 10.13.98

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