Abstract:

The amount of information in the world is estimated to double every 20 months. It is spread among data warehouses all around the world in different formats, on different security level etc. Data warehouses today can range in size up to terabytes. Somewhere within these masses of data lies hidden information of strategic importance. The main question is how to find this needle in the haystack.
The newest solution to this problem is Data mining (DM). It is a result of a long process of research and product development but it is not a magic wand. It won’t supervise your data warehouse and notify you when it espies an interesting pattern. On the other side it doesn’t eliminate the need to know your problem as well as understand your data or analytical methods. It’s just an assistant that can help you classify your data, predict later behavior, extract association rules or detect sequences. But with the efficient use of DM in your projects you could also reduce costs and increase revenues.
Data mining can be defined as automated extraction of predictive information from various data sources. It’s a powerful technology with great potential to help users focus on the most important information stored in data warehouses or streamed through communication lines. DM can answer questions that were to time consuming to resolve in the past. Also DM can predict future trends and behaviors, allowing us to make proactive, knowledge-driven decisions.