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
*** December 1, 1998: Vol. 2, No. 48 ***
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IN THIS ISSUE:

A MATTER OF TRUST
BY INDERPAL BHANDARI
ORACLE CEO OUTLINES NON-CLIENT/SERVER VISION
IDC SAYS DW TOOLS WILL TOP $8 BILLION
BY 2002

ANALYSIS & COMMENTARY

A MATTER OF TRUST
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.

INTELLICORP LEADERSHIP COUNCIL HIGHLIGHTS EMERGING TRENDS IN BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT AND APPLICATIONS INTEGRATION

IntelliCorp, Inc., a provider of business process management products and services, announced the formation of a leadership council consisting of eight information management executives who are IntelliCorp customers. Council members are from Andrew Corporation, the Coca Cola Company, Deere & Company, Fluoroware, Nestle USA, and TRW.

ORACLE CEO OUTLINES NON-CLIENT/SERVER VISION

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison reiterated his vision about the demise of client/server and the dominance of mainframe-like computing Monday in his keynote speech here at Comdex.

THE DATA WAREHOUSING TOOLS MARKET SEEN TOPPING $8 BILLION BY 2002, REPORTS IDC

Increased adoption of data warehousing and the Internet are seen as strong influencing factors in the significant growth of the data warehousing tools market, according to the Data Warehouse Tools: 1998 Worldwide Markets and Trends report released by IDC.

WORLDWIDE ANALYTIC APPLICATIONS MARKET ON COURSE TO DOUBLE IN THREE YEARS, ACCORDING TO IDC

Worldwide analytic applications software revenue broke the $1 billion mark in 1997, will pass $2 billion by 2000 and is poised to reach $3.6 billion by 2002 according to the Analytic Applications: 1998 Worldwide Markets and Trends report released by IDC. The burgeoning analytic applications market represents the ``buy'' market for solutions that automate activities for planning, forecasting, and predictive modeling such as budgeting or factory planning. Major enterprise application vendors are now entering the market, the domain of analytic application specialists today.

ACTION ITEMS

Ardent Software to Acquire Prism Solutions
Ardent Software, Inc., a global data management software company, announced the signing of a definitive agreement to acquire Prism Solutions, Inc., a pioneer and leading provider of tools and solutions to the data warehousing market. This combination of forces creates a company with broad data migration and warehouse offerings, large and growing customer base, worldwide presence and partners, and experienced global sales and consulting organizations.

DataMirror Launches QuickMarts for J.D. Edwards Providing Rapid Implementation of Data Marts
DataMirror Corporation, a provider of data connectivity and resiliency software, announced the release of QuickMarts, a series of pre-configured business intelligence templates for DataMirror Transformation Server that automate the process of transforming J.D. Edwards data into relational data marts.

Information Builders and Sand Technology Systems Announce Product Integration and Joint Global Marketing
Information Builders Inc. and Sand Technology Systems International Inc. announced a joint global marketing alliance which integrates Information Builders' industry-leading SmartMart Copy Manager with Sand's Nucleus Exploration product suite.

NCR Expands Philippines Data Warehousing Portfolio
As it expanded its data warehousing portfolio for the communications industry recently, NCR Corp. also introduced a next generation business software that, the company says, will enable communications companies to use customer histories to improve business operations.

Free Adaptive Automation Web Site Available
Adaptive Automation Resources is a free web site that categorizes adaptive automation links. This site addresses the following major areas: algorithms, statistics, ops research, graph analysis, expert systems, fuzzy logic, neural networks, and evolutionary computation. It organizes links to information that a broad audience should find understandable and useful within the problem solving technology continuum of advanced heuristic methods.

Decision Guide for Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing
Palo Alto Management Group (PAMG), publisher of the landmark Database Solutions study series, announced the imminent release of a new research report entitled Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing: Crossing the Millennium.

Oracle $1 Million Challenge: Is Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 100 Times Slower Than Oracle8i?
Oracle Corp. details its data warehouse performance challenge issued at Comdex by Oracle Chairman and CEO Larry Ellison. Oracle Corp. will pay $1 million to the first person -- including anyone at Microsoft -- who can demonstrate that SQL Server 7.0 is not 100 times slower than the Oracle database when running a standard business query against a large database.

Princeton Softech Delivers Relational Extract Engine for DB2 UDB Databases
Princeton Softech, a wholly owned subsidiary of Computer Horizons Corp., announced Move for Servers: DB2 Universal Database (UDB), a data extract, transformation and migration tool. Move for Servers enables users to subset Oracle and UDB databases in preparation for creating realistic, time-shifted Year 2000 test data, building and refreshing data warehouses and data marts, staging data for production, or archiving production data.

Pilot Software Announces Retail Performance Monitor
Pilot Software, a provider of Web-based and client/server online analytical processing (OLAP) business intelligence applications, announces Retail Performance Monitor (RPM), a pre-built retail application solution fully integrated with the company's Pilot Decision Support Suite (PDSS).

Ernst & Young`s Data Warehouse Practice Expands Capabilities to Support Microsoft SQL Server 7.0
Ernst & Young LLP's data warehouse practice has announced it has expanded its capabilities to support Microsoft SQL Server 7.0, the latest Microsoft database platform for implementing strategic line-of-business and infrastructure solutions.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"You can't fragment your database across many locations. It's a bad idea to put small servers everywhere."

• Larry Ellison, CEO, Oracle

CONFERENCES & SEMINARS 12.1.98

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