Chapter 4: Automating a Data-Mining Solution

 

You are a database developer for a large online retailer that has been in operation for several years. The retailer utilizes a customer specific ASP.NET application and maintains sales history records for each customer. The company plans to upgrade the Web site, and one feature they would like to add is the capability to make product recommendations to customers. The recommendations would be based on past sales history for that particular customer.

Your boss has asked you to evaluate ways to accomplish this and then make a recommendation for how the solution could be implemented. What strategy might you recommend to your boss?

Answers

 

The data-mining features available with SQL Servers Analysis Services (SSAS) enable you to locate trends in large sets of data for the purpose of making predictions. You could utilize SSAS to create a data-mining solution that processed the sales history data and predicted what products the customer would likely purchase.

In order to keep the recommendations up-to-date, and based on the latest sales data, the data-mining solution would need to be automated so that it was re-processed on a nightly or even hourly basis. Analysis Management Objects (AMO) could be used to accomplish this task. Not only could you develop code that automated the processing of the mining model, but this code could be added to your ASP.NET application to query the mining model for predictions. These predictions would then be presented to the customer as customized product recommendations.