Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2008 All-In-One Desk Reference For Dummies®

VI.3.1. An Introduction to Data Mining

Data mining is another element of Business Intelligence (BI) available within SQL Server 2008. BI is a group of tools and technologies used to extract actionable information from a large database. Data mining is one of the BI tools.

In addition to traditional Business Intelligence analysis, data mining looks at the data and performs predictive analysis. Predictive analytics are designed to identify patterns and trends that exist in the data, and as the name implies, predict what will happen next.

Some of the benefits of predictive analysis are

• Forecasting sales (of specific products, in specific locations, from specific customers, and so on)

• Targeting mailings to specific customers

• Identifying products to bundle

• Tracking customer activity in a Web site

Some of the terms associated with data mining are

• Data mining: Data mining is the process of retrieving the relevant data from a database and then using that data to perform predictive analysis. Within SSAS, data mining is achieved by retrieving the data from a data mining structure.

• Data mining structure: A data mining structure identifies the database schema shared by all mining models. It includes the data source, the data source view, and the number and types of columns that can be used from within the data source view. It can include one or more mining models.

• Data mining model: A data mining model is used to describe the business problem you're trying to solve through data mining. You can ...