JDM Strategy - Java Data Mining: Strategy, Standard, and Practice - page 109

5.2.2 What Do Data Mining Standards Enable?

The evolution of data mining standards speaks to the maturing of the
market and the technology. By standardizing model representations,
as is done via the Predictive Model Markup Language (PMML)
[DMG-PMML 2006], users have greater potential to interchange
models among different vendor data mining systems. By standardiz-
ing the mining operations, their input parameters, and output
results, as is done via JDM, users have greater potential to develop
more portable applications, as well as interchange settings and min-
ing objects among vendors. Moreover, developers of advanced ana-
lytic applications can learn a single paradigm and leverage that
across vendors. Applications that leverage multiple vendor mining
systems are greatly simplified since a common framework can be
used to invoke functionality in each mining system.
Extensible data mining standards such as JDM also provide a
framework for integrating proprietary, new, or evolving algorithms
and mining functions. Vendors can provide the needed delta func-
tionality while reusing definitions, objects, and common functional-
ity of the underlying framework.
As noted, the JDM standard enables more flexible application archi-
tectures, which provide application developers and businesses greater
choice in how they address data mining solutions. These include:

• Avoiding vendor lock-in
• Multivendor solutions
• Best of breed interoperability

With most software purchases that involve extensive application
development, business management is concerned with vendor
lock-in. That is, after investing much time, resources, and money
into a project using a vendor's proprietary interface, if the software
supporting a key piece of that solution needs to be changed, this
will require rewriting much of the application. Such a cost makes
management afraid to choose certain solutions or to undertake a
particular project until standard solutions are available. This places
smaller vendors at a disadvantage due to concerns of longevity, but
also larger vendors for fear of being held hostage to price increases.
Figure 5-1 depicts the objective to enable an application using JDM
with Vendor 1 to be able to write the application in such a way that
the user can switch to Vendor 2 without significant modification to
the application.