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
*** February 16, 1999: Vol. 3, No. 7 ***
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IN THIS ISSUE:

THE MAGIC OF DATA MINING
BY ED COLET
DATA WAREHOUSE VS PATTERN WAREHOUSE: PART II
BY KAMRAN PARSAYE
CAN A BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE PROGRAM THINK LIKE A HUMAN?

ANALYSIS & COMMENTARY

THE MAGIC OF DATA MINING
by Ed Colet, Virtual Gold, Inc

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 observes: "Data mining can be analytically complex, yet we want discovered patterns to be readily understood by end-users, many of whom may not have the technical background to truly understand the underlying analyses. Instead of hoping that end-users accept results on faith, it's would be better if we helped them understand the MAGIC behind data mining."

THE DATA WAREHOUSE VS THE PATTERN WAREHOUSE: PART II
by Kamran Parsaye, Information Discovery, Inc

Kamran Parsaye, PhD, is CEO of Information Discovery, Inc. He is one of the original developers of the concept of "data mining", having developed commercial programs for this purpose in the mid 1980's. He originated the concept of an "intelligent database", and is the author of "Intelligent Database Tools & Applications" published by John Wiley. Dr. Parsaye has a wide range of experience in the software industry, both as a research scientist and as a high-technology business leader, having provided guidance and direction to top level management of leading industrial and financial organizations, as well as key government entities such as the US AirForce. He received his BS and MS degrees in Mathematics from King's College, London, and his PhD in Computer Science from the University of California, Los Angeles. His books on databases are used in universities world-wide.

Dr. Parsaye writes: "The patterns a data mining system discovers are stored in a the PatternWarehouse. Just as a data warehouse stores data, the PatternWarehouse stores patterns -- it is an information repository that stores relationships between data items, but not the data. While data items are stored in data warehouse, we use the PatternWarehouse to store the patterns and relationships among them."

Part I of this commentary may be retrieved as D S * article 100564 .

DATA WAREHOUSING & DATA MARTS HIT MAINSTREAM MARKET, ENCOURAGING EUROPEAN MARKET GROWTH

With competition increasing in all vertical markets across Western Europe, companies are seeking ways to gain a competitive edge over their rivals. Data warehousing is one way in which companies can offer more to their customers. The number of implementations of data warehouses and data marts is increasing, and this trend is expected to continue up to and beyond the end of the millennium.

100 TOP DATA WAREHOUSING LEADERS STEP UP
by Jeff Moad

Top executives at shipping giant United Parcel Service of America Inc. don't have to work very hard to come up with good reasons to continue increasing investments in data warehousing hardware and software. All they have to do is cast their memories back to just over a year ago. As the $22.5 billion company struggled to recover from one of the most devastating labor strikes in its history, UPS marketing officials were able to tap into a secret weapon: a 400GB data warehouse containing up-to-the-minute customer information.

BLUE CROSS DISSECTS DATA TO IMPROVE CARE

Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association prides itself on providing quality patient care--anywhere. To deliver on that mission to 71.1 million subscribers nationwide, the confederation of health care providers is looking not to extend its medical team but to institute technology that maximizes its data.

ACTION ITEMS

PHH Announces Major Enhancements to PHH InterActive
PHH has announced major enhancements to PHH InterActive, the secure area of PHH's highly-acclaimed Internet website. This new release brings even more power, flexibility and value to a web-based information management system being accessed by over 1,100 PHH client users.

Filetek Offers Free "Continuing Education" Data Warehouse Guide
FileTek, Inc. has announced publication of a 31-page booklet that serves as a "continuing education" for executives about issues related to the design, building, and management of Atomic Data Store (ADS) warehouses and the use of the ADS to make better business decisions.

NeuCO, LLC, Signs New Contracts With Arizona Public Service Company and Cajun Electric Power Cooperative, Inc
NeuCo, LLC, established by Charles River Associates and Advanced Energy Systems, a subsidiary of Commonwealth Energy System, to commercialize state-of-the-art neural network-based solutions for the electric power industry, has signed contracts for work extending through 1999 with Cajun Electric Power Cooperative, Inc (Baton Rouge, Louisiana) and Arizona Public Service Company (Phoenix, Arizona), to install ProcessLink at these customers' largest generating stations.

Monsanto Company Selects Acta Technology's ActaWorks to Build SAP R/3-Based Decision Support Repository
Acta Technology, Inc., a leading provider of data warehousing solutions for packaged applications, has announced that Monsanto Company, the $7.5 billion life sciences company, has purchased, tested and deployed ActaWorks, Acta's award-winning SAP R/3-to-data warehouse extraction, transformation and loading tool.

Nobel Laureate Calls Data Mining "A Must"
In an interview with ComputerWorld in January 1999, Dr. Penzias considered large scale data mining from very large databases as the key application for corporations in the next few years. In response to ComputerWorld's age-old question of "What will be the killer applications in the corporation?" Dr. Penzias replied: "Data mining."

Computer Associates and McLaren International Renew Technology Partnership Following Victorious 1998 Season
Unicenter TNG provides the West McLaren Mercedes Formula One Team with a powerful software tool by allowing them to rapidly analyze the vast amount of data generated by the racing car's telemetry systems during the course of a Grand Prix or test period.

Brio Technology Selected by Leading French Retailer Carrefour to Exploit its Distributed Data
Brio Technology Inc. has announced that it has been chosen by Carrefour, a leading French retailer, for the implementation of its business intelligence project in France. Extending Carrefour's data warehouse to end users throughout France, Carrefour employees will be able to process data and generate standard reports using a push button interface.

BellSouth Implements Switch Capacity Planning and Management Solution
BellSouth has announced plans to implement a new Network Infrastructure Warehouse (NIW) solution, a telecommunications industry-specific data warehousing product that offers a complete view of a provider's switch network and its capabilities. The solution was developed for BellSouth by NCR Corporation.

Advanced Visual Systems Announces Aggressive New Pricing; Reflects Dynamics of Marketplace and Customer Needs
Advanced Visual Systems Inc. (AVS), a premiere global provider of data visualization solutions, has announced price reductions across product lines in a move to increase usage of visualization on the latest generation of hardware available from it's partners.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"Data mining will become much more important, and companies will throw away nothing about their customers because it will be so valuable. If you're not doing this, you're out of business."

• Nobel Prize winner Dr. Arno Penzias

CONFERENCES & SEMINARS 02.16.99

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