Re: What is a "database"?

At 05:52 PM 12/29/1999 -0600, you wrote:
>> Data Mining is a new concept. Data Mining looks at data in
>> a different matter than a simple data base. Say, for instance,
>> you have all your sales in a file (most people do). You also
>> have your vendor file, and the dates.
>>
>> You now look at your data by dates, say, and see that a
>> certain product sells 25% more during a certain 3 month period
>> then any other months. Looking for a correlation you see the
>> months are November, December and January.
>>
>> By data mining you can, as administration, say you need to stock
>> up on umbrellas 25% more during the winter months <g>
>>
>> Stuff like that. I don't think the title should apply to a programmer,
>> though, as that's not really what programmers do. Do they ever
>> get titles right?
>
>Data Mining is intended to be used on a data warehouse rather than on
>normalized files. Designing files in a data warehouse is very much
>different than in your transaction processing system. One of the goals
>is to store as much needed data in a single file instead of accross
>multiple files. This reduces the joins and knowledge of how the files
>fit together.
>
>In a normalized database, you would have the following files for sales:

Joel there are a couple of Schemas for DW/ DM files.
One of which is the concept you mention.

Basically the DW/DM is a purified extraction/ replication of your production DB. You are absolutely right that it should function simply and transparent to the end user. The mainframe folks are not quite as sophisticated as the 400 when it comes to managing long running queries though.


Happy Holidays,

Glenn
__________________________________
Glenn Ericson,
IBM Certified Specialist
Phoenix Consulting LLC
East Elmhurst NY 11370-3164 USA
Phone 718 898 9805 Fax 718 446 1150
mailto:Glenn-Ericson@att.net
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