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
*** May 25, 1999: Vol. 3, No. 21 ***
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IN THIS ISSUE:

ED COLET CONSIDERS THE FORCES UNDERLYING ONLINE SHOPPING
NEW DATA MINING TOOL WILL PERSONALIZE THE WEB
FIGHTING CRIME WITH A DATA WAREHOUSE

ANALYSIS & COMMENTARY

TOWARDS A DYNAMIC VIEW OF ONLINE SHOPPING By Ed Colet

Executive Editor-at-Large Inderpal Bhandari presents a guest editorial by Virtual Gold's Acting Director of Research:

The rapid growth of electronic commerce on the Internet has led to numerous research studies and surveys geared towards understanding this phenomenon. How are people shopping on the web? What patterns characterize their shopping behavior? What can retailers and technologists learn from such studies? An example of some interesting results from a recent study is discussed here - but taken at face value such results may be of limited value. But by taking into account data mining considerations and trends in personalization and one-to-one marketing, then a better understanding of Ecommerce and online shopping can be gained.

INFORMIX MAKES MAJOR COMMITMENT TO ENHANCE INFORMIX RED BRICK WAREHOUSE: TARGETS WEB/E-COMMERCE ANALYTICS

Informix Corporation, a technology leader in enterprise database-powered solutions, has announced the next generation of its Informix Red Brick Warehouse, code named "Spiderman" that will feature new Web-analytic capabilities to meet the challenging demands of today's Web/e-commerce applications.

ARTIFICIAL LIFE, INC. TO RELEASE ALIFE-SMART-TEXT-ANALYZER A DATA MINING TOOL FOR PERSONALIZING THE WEB EXPERIENCE

Artificial Life, Inc., a technology leader of intelligent software bots for the Internet, will introduce ALife-Smart-Text-Analyzer, a new data mining solution targeted at Web marketing professionals to help create Web customer profiles. The product, scheduled for release at the end of July, will act as a filter and an information extraction tool for any text document, such as transcripts of conversations with customers. By automating the time-consuming process of reading hundreds, even thousands of lines of conversation, marketing professionals can understand, within minutes, a customer's tastes and preferences by identifying major topics of conversation.

INFORMIX DYNAMIC SERVER TAKES A BITE OUT OF CRIME DOWN UNDER

Informix Corporation, the technology leader in enterprise database-powered solutions, has announced that the New South Wales (NSW) Police Service, the third-largest police organization in the English-speaking world, has selected Informix Dynamic Server with Universal Data Option and Advanced Decision Support to form the basis of the new state-wide police data warehouse.

MIT RECOGNIZES NET PERCEPTIONS AS TOP TECHNOLOGY INNOVATOR FOR WEB-BASED BUSINESSES

Net Perceptions has received the first-ever Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan E-Commerce Technology Innovator Award. The announcement was made recently at an awards ceremony held at MIT's Cambridge, Mass., campus.

ACTION ITEMS

NDC Health Information Services Announces Pharmaceutical Data Mining Produces Marketing Results
NDC Health Information Services has announced that three industry-leading pharmaceutical manufacturers have achieved significant results using NDC's pharmaceutical data mining and database marketing solutions.

BioComp Systems, Inc. and COM/Energy Technologies Form Alliance to Provide State of the Art Energy Demand Forecasting, Information and Control Systems
BioComp Systems' genetic algorithm and neural network modeling and forecasting capabilities will be coupled with COM/Energy Technologies' Energy Connections brand of advanced energy metering and monitoring products. The combination of these capabilities enables energy users to manage their costs more efficiently than ever before.

NCR Solution for Targeted Marketing and Campaign Management Helps Retailers Attract and Retain Their Most Profitable Customers
NCR retailDecisions for Targeted Marketing and Campaign Management is a strategic solution combining the Ceres Targeted Marketing application with NCR's Teradata Warehouse and services for retail data warehousing.

BMC Software's PATROL DB-Unload Dramatically Decreases Unload Time
BMC Software at IDUG announced that recent tests on BMC Software's PATROL DB-Unload product at the IBM Teraplex Integration Center demonstrated a dramatic 10-to-1 improvement in unload rates for large data warehouses.

Sybase Launches Industry Warehouse Studios for Business Intelligence Applications for Insurance, Healthcare, Telecommunications and Retail Banking
Sybase, Inc. has announced the availability of four Industry Warehouse Studios for business intelligence that provides database independent applications for the insurance, healthcare, telecommunications and retail banking industries.

Viador Introduces First Enterprise Information Portal for IBM S/390 Enterprise Servers
Viador Inc., a leading provider of Enterprise Information Portals (EIPs), has announced plans to make its breakthrough Viador E-Portal Suite available on the IBM S/390 Parallel Enterprise Server platform. The Viador E-Portal Suite is a web-based suite of products that provides a single architecture for securely searching, analyzing, and delivering all types of corporate data, giving users a "portal-like" view into a corporation's business information.

Cognos Selects MapInfo's MapX for New Business Intelligence Solution
MapInfo Corporation has announced an agreement with Cognos to include mapping functionality in Cognos Visualizer, a new business intelligence solution for advanced visual reporting and analysis, released last month. MapInfo's MapX object technology delivers a strong geographic capability, enabling users to easily analyze large amounts of complex business data.

DCI Adds the Gordian Institute's "Data Mining: Principles And Practice" Course to its Information Technology Seminar and Conference Offerings
DCI has entered into an agreement with The Gordian Institute (Gordian) to host its popular "Data Mining: Principles and Practice" course. The two day offering covers the subject of data mining from the ground up.

Computron Launches New Business Intelligence Product
Unlike any other product available on the market, COOL iMergence software allows strategic data to be collected from multiple sources, including databases, data marts, data warehouses, OLAP reporting tools, internal or external reports, and historical archives, then merged for analysis and production of meaningful graphical reports.

SAS Institute Announces Open OLAP Server Solution
SAS Institute Inc., a market leader in integrated data warehousing and decision support, has announced the production availability of its OLE DB for OLAP data provider, the Open OLAP Server.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"The data warehouse will unleash the data resources we have always had available, but could not easily access."

CONFERENCES & SEMINARS 05.25.99

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