Overview

You can t manage what you can t measure.
Tom DeMarco

Pulling data together into an analysis environment called here a mining mart is an essential precondition to providing data in the right form and providing the right measurements in order to produce a timely and useful analysis. Mining mart assembly is the most difficult part of a data mining project: Not only is it time-consuming, but, if it is not done right, it can result in the production of faulty measurements, which no data mining algorithm, no matter how sophisticated, can correct.

It is important to understand the difference between a data warehouse, data mart, and mining mart. The data warehouse tends to be a strategic, central data store and clearing house for analytical data in the enterprise. Typically, a data mart tends to be constructed on a tactical basis to provide specialized data elements in specialized forms to address specialized tasks. Data marts are often synonymous with OLAP cubes in that they are driven from a common fact table with various associated dimensions that support the navigation of dimensional hierarchies. The mining mart has historically consisted of a single table, which combines the necessary data elements in the appropriate form to support a data mining project. In SQL Server 2000 the mining mart and the data mart are combined in a single construct as a Decision Support Object (DSO). Microsoft data access components provide for access through the dimensional cube or through access to a single table contained in a...