Data Mining - Professional SQL Server Analysis Services 2005 with MDX - page 717

lem you are trying to solve. Having a good understanding of the data
and the problem is a critical step before you start using the software to
perform mining. You will learn more about understanding the problem
space and data in subsequent sections. Having the hardware and right
software setup is a necessary pre-cursor to the data mining process. If
data miners had to go through a pre-flight checklist like pilots and co-
pilots do, it might look something like this:
Data Miner 1: "Ready to start pre-mine check."
Data Miner 2: "Ok, data store on-line with verified access?"
Data Miner 1: "Roger on the data store with access."
Data Miner 2: "Software loaded and ready to run?"
Data Miner 1: "Check."
Data Miner 2: "Data visualization tools; loaded and ready to run?"
Data Miner 1: "That's affirmative."
Data Miner 2: "Then we're ready to start, call it in."
Data Miner 1: "Sysadmin, sysadmin, this is miner 1, come in."
{the static crackles over the voicom interop}
Sysadmin: "This is Sysadmin, go ahead miner 1."
Data Miner 1: "Checklist complete, request clearance on server tango."
Sysadmin: "Roger, miner 1, you are cleared for mining on
tango. Over."
Once you have hardware and software requirements satisfied you then get into the
process of building a model or representation of your data which helps you to visu-
alize and understand information in your data better. Over time, through systematic
efforts and by trial and error, several methodologies and guidelines emerged. Fig-
ure 14-1 shows the typical process of data mining divided into just five steps. First
and foremost you need to understand the domain area and what your business