Oracle Data Mining Resources on the Oracle Technology Network
The Oracle Technology Network (OTN) is easily accessible and provides a wealth of information. You can visit the Oracle Data Mining home page at:
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/options/odm/index.html This site provides news and discussion forums as well as tools and educational materials for download. On this site, you will find:
■ Oracle Data Miner (download)
■ Oracle Spreadsheet Add-In for Predictive Analytics (download)
■ Sample code (download)
■ R-ODM information
■ White papers and web casts
■ Oracle Data Mining discussion forum
■ Blogs on data mining and analytics in the Oracle Database
Oracle Data Mining and Oracle Database Analytics
As described in "Data Mining in the Database Kernel" on page 2-1, in-database analytics offer significant advantages. When analytical capabilities are implemented where the data is stored, the data does not have to be exported to an external server for analysis. The results of analysis do not need to be imported; they reside in the database where they can be easily accessed, refreshed, and combined with other data.
Along with data mining and predictive analytics, Oracle Database supports a wide array of analytical features. Since these features are part of a common server it is possible to combine them efficiently. The results of analytical processing can be integrated with Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition and other BI tools and applications. Taken as a whole, these features make the Oracle Database a
powerful platform for developing analytical applications.
The possibilities for combining different analytics are virtually limitless. Example 2–1 shows data mining and text processing within a single SQL query. The query selects all customers who have a high propensity to attrite (> 80% chance), are valuable
customers (customer value rating > 90), and have had a recent conversation with customer services regarding a Checking Plus account. The propensity to attrite information is computed using a Data Mining model called tree_model. The query uses the Oracle Text CONTAINS operator to search call center notes for references to Checking Plus accounts.
Oracle Database PL/SQL Packages and Types Reference
How to use the Data Mining PL/SQL API syntax
Oracle Database SQL Language Reference How to use the Data Mining SQL function syntax
Oracle Database Reference How to query data dictionary views to obtain information about mining models, mining model attributes, and mining model settings
See Also: Oracle Database online documentation library at http://www.oracle.com/pls/db112/homepage
Table 2–5 (Cont.) Oracle Data Mining Documentation
Document Description
Oracle Data Mining and Oracle Database Analytics
Example 2–1 Combine Oracle Data Mining and Oracle Text in a SQL Query SELECT A.cust_name, A.contact_info
Some of the analytics supported by Oracle Database are described in Table 2–6. Use the links in the Documentation column to find related documentation.
Table 2–6 Overview of Analytics in Oracle Database Analytical
Feature Description Documentation
Data Mining Oracle Data Mining implements complex algorithms that sift through large volumes of data to find hidden information. Data Mining models discover patterns, predict probable outcomes, identify key predictors, and find other kinds of valuable information
Oracle Data Mining Concepts (this manual)
Complex data transformations
Data transformation is a key aspect of analytical applications and ETL (extract, transform, and load). You can use SQL expressions to implement data transformations, or you can use the DBMS_DATA_MINING_TRANSFORM package.
DBMS_DATA_MINING_TRANSFORM is a flexible data transformation package that includes a variety of missing value and outlier treatments, as well as binning and normalization capabilities.
Oracle Database provides a long list of SQL statistical functions with support for:
hypothesis testing (such as t-test, F-test), correlation computation (such as pearson correlation), cross-tab statistics, and descriptive statistics (such as median and mode). The DBMS_STAT_FUNCS package adds distribution fitting procedures and a summary procedure that returns descriptive statistics for a column.
Oracle Database SQL
Oracle Database supports analytic and windowing functions for computing cumulative, moving, and centered aggregates. With windowing aggregate functions, you can calculate moving and cumulative versions of SUM, AVERAGE, COUNT, MAX, MIN, and many more functions.
Oracle Database Data Warehousing Guide
Frequent Itemsets The DBMS_FREQUENT_ITEMSET supports frequent itemset counting, a mechanism for counting how often multiple events occur together. DBMS_FREQUENT_ITEMSET is used as a building block for the Association Rules algorithm used by Oracle Data Mining.
Oracle Database PL/SQL Packages and Types Reference
Linear algebra The UTL_NLA package exposes a subset of the popular BLAS and LAPACK (Version 3.0) libraries for operations on vectors and matrices represented as VARRAYs. This package includes procedures to solve systems of linear equations, invert matrices, and compute eigenvalues and eigenvectors.
Oracle Database PL/SQL Packages and Types Reference
Oracle Data Mining and Oracle Database Analytics
OLAP Oracle OLAP supports multidimensional analysis and can be used to improve performance of multidimensional queries. Oracle OLAP provides functionality previously found only in specialized OLAP databases. Moving beyond drill-downs and roll-ups, Oracle OLAP also supports time-series analysis, modeling, and forecasting.
Oracle OLAP User's Guide
Spatial analytics Oracle Spatial provides advanced spatial features to support high-end GIS and LBS solutions. Oracle Spatial's analysis and mining capabilities include functions for binning, detection of regional patterns, spatial correlation, colocation mining, and spatial clustering.
Oracle Spatial also includes support for topology and network data models and analytics. The topology data model of Oracle Spatial allows one to work with data about nodes, edges, and faces in a topology. It includes network analysis functions for computing shortest path, minimum cost spanning tree, nearest-neighbors analysis, traveling salesman problem, among others.
Oracle Spatial Developer's Guide
Text Mining Oracle Text uses standard SQL to index, search, and analyze text and documents stored in the Oracle database, in files, and on the web. It also supports automatic classification and clustering of document collections. Many of these analytical features are layered on top of ODM functionality
Oracle Text Application Developer's Guide Table 2–6 (Cont.) Overview of Analytics in Oracle Database
Analytical
Feature Description Documentation
Oracle Data Mining and Oracle Database Analytics
3
3
Introducing Oracle Predictive Analytics
This chapter presents an overview of Oracle Data Mining predictive analytics, an automated form of predictive data mining.
This chapter includes the following sections: