BW数据挖掘.docxVIP

BackgroundIn the last 20 years, the cost of computer hardware has decreased dramatically whilst its capability to process large volumes of data has increased exponentially. This resulted in a rapid increase in master and transactional data volumes collected and stored in digital format – some claim that the quantity of data held worldwide doubles approximately once a year.This growth does not necessarily provide companies with the information required to react dynamically in an increasingly competitive business environment. Companies are required to rapidly organise and sift through their terabytes of data to obtain insights into their customers and markets, and to guide their future marketing, investment, and management strategies. Various toolsets are deployed in this quest.?Data Warehouses are software tools designed for the collection, manipulation, display and utilization of data to support executives and managers when analysing large volumes data in order to respond faster to market changes and to improve the quality of their decisions. However, storing and reporting historical data from a data warehouse has limited value and is often dependent on the knowledge and experience applied by the data consumer. Companies therefore need more flexible and informative methods to manipulate and display their data in order to improve their working knowledge of their customers and markets – and (most importantly) to predict the future.This has lead to a new technology called Data Mining, which is a powerful new technology that enables companies to focus on the most important aspects of the intelligence hidden within the data in their domain. Various time-tested tools, techniques and algorithms (proven in real-world applications) are deployed to generate predictive result sets that drive business strategy and decisions. This, in turn, improves business performance through allowing customers to focus on how to apply their limited resources in order to derive maximum busines