Oracle Data Miner 10.2.0.1 Beta

October 2005

Table of Contents

Support and Feedback

What’s New in Oracle Data Miner?

What's New in Oracle Data Mining?

ODM Documentation

Oracle Data Miner Tutorial

How to Start Oracle Data Miner

Define a Database Connection

Oracle Data Miner Install and Uninstall

Oracle Data Miner Requirements

Text Mining Requirements

Publish to OracleBI Discoverer Requirements

Upgrading Oracle Data Miner

Install on Microsoft Windows

Install on UNIX or Linux

Uninstall

Oracle Data Miner Notes

Oracle Data Miner Bugs

Oracle Data Miner 10.2.0.1.0 is the user interface to Oracle Data Mining (ODM) 10.2. Oracle Data Miner replaces all previous user interfaces to ODM, including Oracle Data Miner 10.1 and Data Mining for Java (DM4J). Oracle Data Miner 10.1 and DM4J cannot be used with ODM 10.2. This document provides a brief overview of new features of ODM and Oracle Data Miner along with installation instructions.

NOTE: ODM 10.2 Java Code Generator Extension is not available.

Support and Feedback

If you encounter problems when using Oracle Data Miner, you can report them to Oracle Support (requires current product support contract) at Oracle MetaLink.

You can post general comments and suggestions to the Data Mining Discussion Forum on Oracle Technology Network.

What’s New in Oracle Data Miner?

Oracle Data Miner 10.2.0.1.0 targets data analysts more directly than previous releases. Oracle Data Miner is designed to increase the analyst’s success rate in properly utilizing ODM algorithms. These goals are addressed in several ways: Oracle Data Miner also supports the new ODM 10.2 features, as described in What's New in Oracle Data Mining?.

Users can use the native import/export facilities to move mining objects to other schemas. This is often a required step during deployment. Model import/export is not supported by Oracle Data Miner; it is supported by the ODM Java and PL/SQL programmatic interfaces. For information, see Oracle Data Mining Administrator's Guide.

The rest of this section briefly describes the following new features of Oracle Data Miner 10.2:

Mining Activity Redesign

A Mining Activity is a step-by-step guide for model build, apply, or test. A Build Activity outlines steps for data preparation, model build, and model test, where appropriate; the exact steps depend on the algorithm selected. An Apply Activity guides users through data preparation and model apply for a model created using a Build Activity or a model created outside of Data Miner using either the ODM 10.2 Java or PL/SQL API. A Test Activity guides users through data preparation and model test for a model created using a Build Activity or a model created outside of Data Miner using either the ODM 10.2 Java or PL/SQL API.

Mining Activities store metadata about model creation to simplify processing. For example, data that a model is applied to must be prepared in the same way as the data used to build the model. An Apply Activity uses the metadata from the Build Activity to prepare the data correctly for the apply operation.

The Mining Activities for Oracle Data Miner 10.2 have improved heuristics, especially for the data preparation steps.

Mining Activities are now available from the Activity menu. You can select a Build activity, an Apply activity, or a Test activity.

Mining Activities support the new functionality of Oracle Data Mining 10.2. For example, there are anomaly detection activities and classification activities that use the Decision tree algorithm.

You can run an activity in several ways:

Support for Data Specified as Joins to a Case Table

You can specify data as joins to a case table for input to a mining activity. The joins can be one-to-one or one-to-many. One-to-many joins support transactional data.

Support for Mixed Case Names

Names of tables and views, clolumns in tables and views, schemas, and mining objects except for model names and test metrics names may have mixed case. If you want a name to have both uppercase and lowercase letters in it, enclose the name in double quotation marks (").

Model names and test metric names, however, are restricted to 25 or fewer characters and must be uppercase letters.

Improved Transformation Wizards

Oracle Data Miner has revised versions of the Sample and Stratified Sample transformation wizards that are easier to use.

New Model and Results Viewers

Model and results viewers were redesigned, and new viewers were created for new models and results. The new model viewers are the Decision Tree Viewer, the Residual Plot Viewer, and the Anomaly Detection Viewer. The new results viewers are viewers for Predict and Explain, the new ROC viewer, and combined test metric viewers. The new Association Rules viewer incorporates lookup on item code. Model viewers now support automatic model transparency: a model is built on transformed data, so the results must be converted based on transformations so that they reflect values in the original input data.

Model Evaluation

Oracle Data Miner supports Receiver Operator Characteristics (ROC) for classification models. Oracle Data Miner also supports Test activities.

Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) analysis is a useful method for evaluating classification models. ROC curves can be used to compare individual models and to determine thresholds which yield a high proportion of positive hits.

Residuals plots for regression models allow you to identify regions where the predictions are more accurate and less accurate.

Publish to OracleBI Discoverer Gateway

Tools | Publish to Discoverer Gateway uses OracleBI Discoverer Gateway to publish data mining result in OracleBI Discoverer. You can publish the following results: You can also compare classification test metrics.

For requirements, see Publish to OracleBI Discoverer Requirements.

Follow these steps to publish data mining results to OracleBI Discoverer:

Automated Data Mining

Oracle Data Miner include the automated data mining of DBMS_PREDICTIVE_ANALYTICS described at the end of What's New in Oracle Data Mining 10.2?. Oracle Data Miner includes the following new wizards:

Model Wizards Removed

The model build, apply, and test wizard are no longer supported. The only way to build, apply, or test a model using Oracle Data Miner is to use an appropriate mining activity.

What’s New in Oracle Data Mining?

The Oracle Data Mining 10g Release 2 (10.2) includes the following new algorithms and features: Oracle Data Miner builds, tests, and applies models using the Java interface. Models built using the ODM 10.1 Java interface are not compatible with models built using the ODM 10.2 Java interface. There is no automatic way to migrate ODM programs written using the ODM 10.1 Java interface to programs that use the ODM 10.2 Java interface. Models built using the ODM 10.2 PL/SQL interface and the ODM 10.2 Java interface are compatible.

Data mining models may need to be moved between Oracle databases or schemas. For example, data mining specialists may build and test data mining models on one dedicated system. After the models are built and tested, selected models may be deployed to another system used by applications. Because the system where the models are developed and the system where the models are deployed usually do not share the same database, the model must be exported from the system where it was developed and then imported to system where it will be used by applications.

Anomaly Detection models use the one-class SVM algorithm to build models when there are no counterexamples.

Predictive Analytics is based on the PL/SQL package DBMS_PREDICTIVE_ANALYTICS that automates the later stages of data mining; it provides the following functionality:

For more information about the new features, see ODM Documentation.

ODM Documentation

Oracle Data Mining 10g Release 2 (10.2) documentation is part of the Oracle Database 10g Release 2 Documentation Library. To find ODM documentation, view or download the library; then click the Data Warehousing tab.

Oracle Data Miner Tutorial

The tutorial for Oracle Data Miner 10.2 is not available for Beta.

How to Start Oracle Data Miner

Start Oracle Data Miner as follows:

Define a Database Connection

When you start Oracle Data Miner for the first time, you must define a database connection.

NOTE: The user name and password that you specify when you define a connection must satisfy the requirements of Oracle Data Mining. Oracle Data Mining requires a small number of database permissions, plus SELECT access to the tables containing data for analysis. For details, see the Oracle Data Mining Administrator's Guide.

The first time that you start Oracle Data Miner, a dialog appears asking for the following information:

Click OK when you finish the definition. You are returned to the Choose Connection dialog. You can now select the connection that you just defined from the dropdown box.

You may need to contact your ODM DBA for this information.

You can define additional connections and edit existing ones:

Oracle Data Miner Install and Uninstall

Installation instructions depend on the target operating system; you can install Oracle Data Miner on the following operating systems: Before you can use Oracle Data Miner, you must connect to an appropriate account in an Oracle 10gRelease 2 database. Before you can connect, you must install ODM 10g Release 2 and create at least one user account for data mining. For information about how to do this, see Oracle Data Mining Administrator's Guide and the installation instructions for the platform that you are using.

Oracle Data Miner Requirements

The following describe Oracle Data Miner requirements. These requirements must be satisfied before you try to build models. Note that Oracle Data Miner and ODM do not have to be installed on the same system. For example, you could install ODM on a system running UNIX and Oracle Data Miner on a PC running Windows.

Text Mining Requirements

The following restrictions apply to text mining using Oracle Data Miner:

Publish to OracleBI Discoverer Requirements

If you just want to publish data mining results to the Oracle Data Miner Discoverer Gateway, no software is required in addition to Oracle Data Miner. If you intend to use published mining results in OracleBI Discoverer, the following software is required; in each case click the link to download the software: After you install the software, register the Oracle Data Miner Discoverer Gateway in the EUL to be able to access the published data mining results from a Discoverer Administrator:
  1. If an EUL does not exist, create a new EUL.

  2. Click these links for information about creating an a EUL in two different cases:

  3. Register the Oracle Data Miner Discoverer Gateway with the EUL:

  4. Execute the following SQL script in the EUL user to register the Oracle Data Miner Discoverer Gateway with the EUL:

    -- registration script
    insert into EUL5_GATEWAYS( 
          gw_id,             -- Gateway ID
          gw_type,           -- Type of Gateway
          gw_gateway_name,   -- Name of Gateway
          gw_product_name,   -- Name of the product
          gw_description,    -- Description of the gateway
          egw_version,       -- version of the gateway
          egw_database_link, -- For remote DB provide dblink
          egw_schema,        -- Gateway owner
          egw_sql_paradigm,  -- SQL paradigm
          gw_element_state,  -- element state
          gw_created_by,     -- who created this gateway
          gw_created_date,   -- when it was created
          gw_updated_by,     -- who updated this gateway
          gw_updated_date,   -- when it was updated
          notm
          )
            values
                       (
                 EUL5_ID_SEQ.NEXTVAL,
                             'EGW',
                             'ODMr 10.2 Discoverer Gateway',
                 'Oracle Data Mining',
                             'This gateway provides data mining results accessible to OracleBI', 
                             '1.1',
                             NULL, -- dblink if dmuser is in remote
                 'DMUSER', -- Change to the schema as needed
                 'OBJECT',
                             0,
                             USER,
                             SYSDATE,
                             USER,
                             SYSDATE,
                             0
                            )

Upgrading Oracle Data Miner

Models built using Oracle Data Miner 10.1 cannot be used with Oracle Data Miner 10.2.

Oracle Data Miner requires Oracle 10g Release 2; you cannot connect to any other version of Oracle Database.

Oracle Data Miner 10.1 preferences and connection information will be migrated automatically when you first launch Data Miner 10.2. You may have to reenter passwords.

You can have both Oracle Data Miner 10.1 and Oracle Data Miner 10.2 installed on the same system.

Installation on Microsoft Windows

Follow these steps to install Oracle Data Miner on Microsoft Windows:
  1. Download odminer.zip.
  2. Unzip the entire contents of odminer.zip to the desired Oracle Data Miner root directory, for example, unzip to C:\odminer.
  3. Run (double click) MINER_HOME\bin\odminerw.exe, where MINER_HOME is the folder where Oracle Data Miner is installed. For example, execute C:\odminer\bin\odminerw.exe
  4. Define a connection as described in Define a Database Connection.
NOTE: odminer.exe (without the w in its name) displays a console window that can be used for troubleshooting purposes.

Installation on UNIX or Linux

Installation on UNIX or Linux is similar to installation on Microsoft Windows:
  1. Oracle Data Miner on UNIX or Linux requires Java JDK 1.4.2. To check the version of Java, use the command:
  2. java -version
  3. Download odminer.zip.
  4. Unzip odminer.zip to the desired Oracle Data Miner root directory; for example, use the following command to unzip the file to the directory odminer in the current working directory using the unzip command:
  5. unzip odminer.zip -d odminer

    This command creates the directory odminer (in the current working directory) and inflates the archive into it.
  6. To start Oracle Data Miner, run the script odminer in the directory MINER_HOME/bin, where MINER_HOME is the directory where Oracle Data Miner is installed. If the script is not executable, reset the permissions:
  7. chmod +x odminer
  8. Define a connection as described in Define a Database Connection.

Uninstall

To uninstall Oracle Data Miner on any platform, delete the directory where you installed Oracle Data Miner. Make sure that you delete all of the subdirectories of the directory where you installed Oracle Data Miner.

Oracle Data Miner Notes

The following notes apply to Oracle Data Miner:
  1. This version of Oracle Data Miner is Beta software. All features of Oracle Data Miner are present.
  2. Help is not available for many features; complete help will not be available until final release.
  3. The tutorial is not available for Beta.
  4. Oracle Data Mining 10g Release 2 supports two interfaces, a Java interface and a PL/SQL interface. The ODM 10.2 Java and PL/SQL interfaces are compatible; for example, you can use the Java interface to apply a model built using the PL/SQL interface. Oracle Data Miner builds models and creates results using the ODM 10.2 Java interface. Oracle Data Miner can be used with mining objects created using either the ODM 10.2 Java or PL/SQL interface.
  5. File Import requires SQL*Loader. You must install Oracle Administrative Client to have SQL*Loader installed.
  6. The user name that you specify when you connect must be the name of a database user account with the appropriate permissions. See Oracle Data Mining Administrator's Guide for information about how to create such accounts.
  7. Data Miner ships with English only.

Oracle Data Miner Bugs

The following are Oracle Data Miner bugs and Oracle Data Mining bugs that affect Oracle Data Miner:
 
  1. 4610865 - PERFORMANCE ISSUE WITH DISPLAYING HISTOGRAMS ON LARGE DATASET
  2. 4551579 - MISSING/INCONSISTENT DISPLAY OF NULL VALUES IN SUMMARIZATION
  3. Online Help is incomplete.
  4. Localization implementation (number rendering) is not validated.
  5. ABN Rules not available in Apply Result. Will be fixed with DB 10.2.0.2.0 Patch
  6. Model Build Activity Data Usage Validations are not complete.
  7. Disco Gateway Publishing of Association Rules is not picking up the item lookup descriptions.
  8. Disco Gateway Publishing of Classification Test Metrics fails.
  9. Model Activity Apply is currently generating a table from the selected case table. This will be changed to a view.
  10. Sample Step will fail if you change the default options inappropriately. For example, for a non-classificaiton model you set sample to stratified sample.
  11. Text processing - JDM api bug results in the column name being used to generate internal feature id table. You can only use the column name once per account.
  12. Performance issues with build activity when processing large tables/views.



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