The Data Miner: SQL Server Data Mining Newsletter (February 2005)

[Database Administrator]

the data miner

SQL Server Data Mining News
Volume 2, Issue 1

February 2005





Welcome to the February 2005 issue of 'The Data Miner' - the official newsletter of SQL Server Data Mining. This periodic newsletter keeps you up-to-date with the latest happenings in the SQL Server Data Mining world and gives you useful tips to help you get the most from SQL Server Data Mining.
In This Issue:

a.. Plugging Into SQL Server Data Mining

b.. SQL Server Magazine Features "Data Mining Reloaded"

c.. Multiple Data Mining Customers Visit The SQL Customer Lab

d.. What's New In The Upcoming SQL 2005 Community Technology Preview

e.. Data Validation Source Code Now Available

f.. Find Quick Answers To Your SQL Data Mining Questions

g.. SQL Server Data Mining Resources

Plugging Into SQL Server 2005 Data Mining
SQL Server 2005 Data Mining offers an extensible platform that lets third parties add their own data mining algorithms to our server. By implementing a small set of interfaces, third-party developers can write plug-in algorithms that look exactly like native Microsoft algorithms to data mining application developers as well as to end users. Plug-in algorithms can take advantage of all the server infrastructure, including storage, security, multi-user training and querying capabilities as well the design, deployment and management tools included with SQL Server 2005.



The plug-in architecture for data mining in SQL Server 2005 includes a mechanism for third parties to either re-use one of the built-in Microsoft viewers for their plug-in algorithms or register their own custom plug-in viewers for visualizing their trained model content.



Deep integration with OLAP and other SQL Server 2005 components like Integration Services and Reporting Services is another advantage that comes at zero development cost for ISVs.



The SQL Server Data Mining team has put together several resources to help third party developers succeed with their plug-in algorithm implementations:

a.. SQL Server Data Mining: Plug-In Algorithms, a white paper describing the architecture, interfaces and other requirements for implementing a plug-in algorithm
b.. A Tutorial for Constructing a Plug-In Algorithm that includes source code for a sample implementation
c.. A Tutorial for Constructing a Plug-In Viewer that integrates into the SQL Server 2005 Business Intelligence design and management tools
SQL Server Magazine Features "Data Mining Reloaded"
Check out "Data Mining Reloaded", an article by SQL Data Mining Research team members Alexei Bocharov and Jesper Lind that gives you a broad overview of all the cool, new data mining features in SQL Server 2005.

Multiple Data Mining Customers Visit The SQL Customer Lab
In the past month, the SQL Lab hosted three customers who visited Microsoft with SQL Server Data Mining as either their primary agenda or part of it. The product team helped these beta customers understand new features and to boost performance - in one case by 6000% - by tweaking their queries to take advantage of new SQL 2005 DMX language features and by making product changes. Applications being developed by these customers include:

a.. cross-sell using the Microsoft_Decision_Trees and Microsoft_Association_Rules algorithms
b.. a data mining score card using the Microsoft_Neural_Network algorithm
c.. a plug-in algorithm in collaboration with Microsoft Research (see the lead article in this newsletter about plugging into SQL Server 2005 DM)
What's New In The Upcoming SQL 2005 Community Technology Preview
There will be an updated Community Technology Preview version of SQL Server 2005 available to beta customers this month. Look for the following SQL Server Data Mining updates in this drop:

a.. New DMX syntax for creating mining structures (CREATE MINING STRUCTURE) and adding models to existing mining structures (ALTER MINING STRUCTURE ADD MINING MODEL)
b.. Two new algorithms: Microsoft_Linear_Regression and Microsoft_Logistic_Regression; these algorithms are specializations of the Microsoft_Decision_Trees and Microsoft_Neural_Networks algorithms respectively that were determined by customer feedback to be important enough to call out explicitly.
c.. Updates to plug-in interfaces; plug-in algorithm developers should note that they will need to consume the updated definitions in the dmalgo.h header file and recompile their code
Data Validation Source Code Now Available
Data validation is another non-obvious application of data mining that forms developers will find a useful addition to their toolset. A sample SQL Server Data Mining web application has been available in the Live!Samples section of SQLServerDataMining.com for a while. We have now made the source code and the associated PMML model available as well in the Downloads section.

Find Quick Answers To Your SQL Data Mining Questions
SQLServerDataMining.com now provides an easy interface to Microsoft's SQL Server Data Mining newsgroup that not only allows you to post your questions without leaving the site but also lets you do a full-text search on historical archives. Perhaps you won't even need to post that burning question and wait for a response from the helpful folks on the forum!

SQL Server Data Mining Resources
· SQL Server Data Mining Community Site

· SQL Server 2005 Newsgroups

· Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Web Site

· SQL Server Developer’s Center

Talk to us
We appreciate your feedback on the product. Please post your questions and comments to our newsgroups:

· SQL Server 2005 Beta: microsoft.private.sqlserver2005.analysisservices.d atamining

· SQL Server 2000: microsoft.public.sqlserver.datamining

Back Issues
You can find previous issues (as well the current edition) of this newsletter here.



Thank you

The SQL Server Data Mining Team



Questions or comments? E-mail newsletter@sqlserverdatamining.com.