Oracle Data Miner 10.2.0.1 Beta

October 2005

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:

Users need more assistance in applying a methodology that addresses both data preparation and algorithm selection. Oracle Data Miner meets this need by providing Data Mining Activities to step users through the proper methodology.
Oracle Data Miner includes improved and expanded heuristics in the model building and transformation wizards to reduce the chance of error in specifying model and transformation settings.

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:

Support of ODM 10.2 Java interface
Mining activity redesign, with improved heuristics
Support for data specified as joins to a case table
Support for mixed case names
Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) for classification model evaluation
Residuals Plots for regression model evaluation
Publish data mining results to OracleBI Discoverer
Predict and Explain automated data mining

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:

Run the activity as soon as the activity definition is complete.
Run the activity step by step.
Complete the activity by clicking Start; this option runs all remaining steps of the activity.

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:

Attribute Importance
Association Rules
Apply Results
Decision Tree Rules
Clustering Rules
Classification Test Metrics

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:

Install required BI and OracleBI Discoverer components.
Create a new EUL using OracleBI Discoverer.
Register the Oracle Data Miner Gateway with the EUL.
Use Oracle Data Miner to publish results to OracleBI Discoverer.
Add Oracle Data Miner gateway objects as folders in a business area using OracleBI Discoverer Administration.

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:

Data | Explain
Data | Predict

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:

Decision Tree, a classification algorithm that always returns rules
Revised Java interface compliant with the Java Data Mining (JDM) standard
Native model import and export between different Oracle 10.2 instances
One-class Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifiers for anomaly detection
Predictive Analytics to automate the later stages of certain data mining problems

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:

Explain to rank attributes in order of influence in explaining a target column
Predict to predict the value of a target attribute (categorical or numerical)

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:

On Microsoft Windows systems, double-click MINER_HOME\bin\odminerw.exe, where MINER_HOME is the folder where Oracle Data Miner is installed.
On UNIX and Linux systems, run the script odminer in the directory MINER_HOME/bin, where MINER_HOME is the directory where Oracle Data Miner is installed.

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:

Connection Name, the name of the connection
User, the name of the ODM user schema where data mining will take place
Password, the ODM user password
Host, the system where ODM is installed
Port, the port number for the connection
Sid, the SID for the database where ODM is installed

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:

To define a new connection, click New in the Choose Connection dialog.
To edit an existing connection, select the connection in the Connection dropdown that you want to edit, and click Edit.

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:

Microsoft Windows
UNIX and Linux

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.

The Data Mining option to Oracle 10g Release 2 (10.2) Enterprise Edition must be installed.
Anyone who wants to use Oracle Database must have a user name and password. Oracle Data Mining requires a small number of database permissions, plus SELECT access to the tables containing data for analysis. The dmshgrants SQL script assigns all of the necessary permissions. For details, see Oracle Data Mining Administrator's Guide.
On all platforms, you must have JDK 1.4.2.
If you wish to use the ODM sample programs, you must install them from Companion CD, as described in Oracle Data Mining Administrator's Guide.

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:

You can include one text column in a mining operation.
The text column must reside in a table, not a view. A mining activity will create a table, if necessary.
The text column must have data type CLOB, BLOB, BFILE, LONG, VARCHAR2, XMLType, CHAR, RAW, or LONG RAW.
You must have Oracle Text installed on the Server. Oracle Text is required for indexing text columns. Oracle Text is part of Oracle 10g server; the required INDEXTYPE ctxsys.context is part of the Seed Database. Oracle Text is installed by default when you install the Oracle Database. If you explicitly exclude it, you will not be able to use Oracle Data Miner for text mining.

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:

Oracle BI 10.1.2.0.0 or higher
Oracle Developer Suite 10.1.2.0.0 or Higher: OracleBI Discoverer Administrator is required; other components of the suite are optional.
Patch 7595805 for OracleBI Discoverer Administrator, available from Patch Request 7595805; if this patch is not installed, the gateway will not work.

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:

If an EUL does not exist, create a new EUL.

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

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:

Download odminer.zip.
Unzip the entire contents of odminer.zip to the desired Oracle Data Miner root directory, for example, unzip to C:\odminer.
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
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:

Oracle Data Miner on UNIX or Linux requires Java JDK 1.4.2. To check the version of Java, use the command:

java -version

Download odminer.zip.
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:

unzip odminer.zip -d odminer

odminer

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:

chmod +x odminer

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:

This version of Oracle Data Miner is Beta software. All features of Oracle Data Miner are present.
Help is not available for many features; complete help will not be available until final release.
The tutorial is not available for Beta.
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.
File Import requires SQL*Loader. You must install Oracle Administrative Client to have SQL*Loader installed.
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.
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:

4610865 - PERFORMANCE ISSUE WITH DISPLAYING HISTOGRAMS ON LARGE DATASET
4551579 - MISSING/INCONSISTENT DISPLAY OF NULL VALUES IN SUMMARIZATION
Online Help is incomplete.
Localization implementation (number rendering) is not validated.
ABN Rules not available in Apply Result. Will be fixed with DB 10.2.0.2.0 Patch
Model Build Activity Data Usage Validations are not complete.
Disco Gateway Publishing of Association Rules is not picking up the item lookup descriptions.
Disco Gateway Publishing of Classification Test Metrics fails.
Model Activity Apply is currently generating a table from the selected case table. This will be changed to a view.
Sample Step will fail if you change the default options inappropriately. For example, for a non-classificaiton model you set sample to stratified sample.
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.
Performance issues with build activity when processing large tables/views.

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Oracle Data Miner 10.2.0.1 Beta

Table of Contents

Support and Feedback

What’s New in Oracle Data Miner?

Mining Activity Redesign

Support for Data Specified as Joins to a Case Table

Support for Mixed Case Names

Improved Transformation Wizards

New Model and Results Viewers

Model Evaluation

Publish to OracleBI Discoverer Gateway

Automated Data Mining

Model Wizards Removed

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

Installation on Microsoft Windows

Installation on UNIX or Linux

Uninstall

Oracle Data Miner Notes

Oracle Data Miner Bugs