Data Mining with Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008

Chapter 17. Extending SQL Server Data Mining

One of the drawbacks of any data mining tool is that no matter how many features and algorithms the tool provides, it becomes useless the moment you require features and algorithms not provided by the tool. SQL Server Data Mining addresses this problem by providing extensibility mechanisms and allowing you to augment the functionality of the server and tools. There are four main ways to extend the SQL Server Data Mining system:

• Using stored procedures to add business logic or enhanced intelligence on top of SQL Server Data Mining

• Using the Visual Studio extensibility mechanisms to extend and enhance the data mining tools

• Developing plug-in algorithms that extend the algorithm set available on the server

• Writing new viewers to visualize data mining models

The use and implementation of stored procedures is detailed in Chapter 16. Extending Visual Studio is beyond the scope of this book—details, white papers, and samples are available at http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/extend.

This chapter briefly describes the potential of and mechanisms used in developing plug-in algorithms and viewers. It covers the topics in enough detail for you to understand the basic architecture of each extensibility method, as well as how and why you would use such methods. The precise details of the interfaces involved are described in white papers and tutorials that are available in the SQL Server Books Online, or by visiting the SQL Server Data Mining Web site at ...