Data mining is available only when DB2 Intelligent Miner is installed.
Data mining attempts to find interesting and relevant patterns about customers and their behavior by analyzing information from the WebSphere Commerce database. This data is not directly related to the result of an SQL query, but is based on a trend in the data. For example, data mining may find that customers from North America are more likely to abandon shopping carts.
The WebSphere Commerce Analyzer Data Mining component handles the development and application of data mining models to the WebSphere Commerce Analyzer data mart. To develop a custom data mining base to complement the WebSphere Commerce Analyzer supplied data mining base, you can use the DB2 Intelligent Miner for Data tool.
WebSphere Commerce Analyzer provides data mining functions through the DB2 Intelligent Miner for Data tool. The DB2 Intelligent Miner for Data tool enhances the capability of the WebSphere Commerce Analyzer server by organizing, aggregating, summarizing, and mining the data.
WebSphere Commerce Analyzer provides the following data mining features:
- Support for answering a set of data mining-related business questions. WebSphere Commerce Analyzer provides mining models based on these questions.
- Setup of the environment for data mining during WebSphere Commerce Analyzer configuration. This setup includes data preparation, table setup, and mining model setup.
- Support for users to perform data mining operations through the DB2 Intelligent Miner for Data GUI. These data mining operations generate the information necessary for answering the data mining-related business questions from the data.
- Utilities for loading the DB2 Intelligent Miner for Data mining results into the WebSphere Commerce Analyzer data mart.
- Reports that incorporate the data mining results.
The WebSphere Commerce Analyzer installation installs the DB2 Intelligent Miner for Data server on the same computer as where it installs the WebSphere Commerce Analyzer server. You create the data mining-related database tables in the WebSphere Commerce Analyzer data mart by using the WebSphere Commerce Analyzer schema. DB2 Intelligent Miner for Data reads input data from the WebSphere Commerce Analyzer data mart. After you run the data mining sequences, use the utilities provided with WebSphere Commerce Analyzer to load the data mining results back into the WebSphere Commerce Analyzer data mart. You can incorporate these data mining results into the business reports.