Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Bible

Chapter 57

Data Mining with Analysis Services

In This Chapter

Considering an Overview of the Data Mining Process

Creating Mining Structures and Models

Evaluating Model Accuracy

Deploying Data Mining Functionality in Applications

Mining Algorithms and Viewers

Mining Integration with OLAP

Many business questions can be easily answered by directly querying a database; for example, “What is the most popular page on our website?” or “Who are our top customers?” Other questions require deeper exploration — for example, the most popular paths through the website or common characteristics of top customers. Data mining provides the tools to analyze the answers to these questions.

Data mining is the algorithmic discovery of patterns from large quantities of data. You can create a variety of data mining algorithms within the Analysis Services environment.

Analysis Services implements algorithms to extract information addressing several categories of questions:

• Segmentation: Groups items with similar characteristics. For example, develop profiles of top customers.
• Classification: Places items into categories. For example, determine which e-mails are likely to be spam.
• Association: Sometimes called market basket analysis, this determines which items tend to occur together. For example, “Customers who bought this book also bought….”
• Estimation: Estimates a value. For example, estimate revenue from a customer.
• Time Series or Forecasting: Predicts what a time series looks like in the future. ...