Microsoft® SQL Server® 2012 Bible

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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

M

any 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 profi les 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.

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