The data mining engine
The data mining engine is the true heart of our data mining architecture. It consists of tools and software employed to gain insights and knowledge from data acquired from data sources, and stored within data warehouses.
What makes a data mining engine?
As you should be able to imagine at this point, a good data mining engine is composed of at least three components:
- An interpreter, able to transmit commands defined within the data mining engine to the computer
- Some kind of gear between the engine and the data warehouse to produce and handle communication in both directions
- A set of instructions, or algorithms, needed to perform data mining activities
We are going to look a bit closer at these three components, remembering that the most important one, the set of instructions, is actually the theme of the whole book, and will therefore be fully developed throughout all the remaining chapters.
The interpreter
We have actually already met this character before in our story; the...