by Steve Bolton

                It may set a SQLServerCentral record for the thickest alphabet soup of acronyms ever crammed into a single title, but this post neatly wraps up numerous alternative means of accessing SQL Server Data Mining (SSDM) programmatically. In four previous posts in the series of amateur self-tutorials on… Read more

Read more

by Steve Bolton

                Anyone who’s gotten this far in this series of amateur self-tutorials on SQL Server Data Mining (SSDM) is probably capable of using it to unearth some worthwhile nuggets of wisdom in their data. One of the key remaining questions at this step of our rickety stairway is… Read more

 
by Steve Bolton

               In the last two installments of this series of amateur self-tutorials on SQL Server Data Mining (SSDM), I discussed how to performed Data Definition Language (DDL) and Data Manipulation Language (DML) tasks with Data Mining Expressions (DMX), the SQL-like language used to administer SSDM. These topics were… Read more

by Steve Bolton

                The three introductory posts in this series of self-tutorials on SQL Server Data Mining (SSDM) and the separate articles on the nine algorithms Microsoft ships with it covered the most complex and essential elements of of the most under-utilized and underestimated component of the product. Most of… Read more

by Steve Bolton

                As users become more familiar with software, they typically follow a progression that begins with learning the GUI, followed by how to perform the same functions programmatically, then perhaps becoming adept at writing custom code. Other instructional material on SQL Server Data Mining (SSDM), such as that… Read more

by Steve Bolton

                The data mining method known as Time Series is aptly named, because it seems to take a long series of time to get it right.
                Out of the nine algorithms included in SQL Server Data Mining (SSDM), Time Series is on a par with Neural Networks in… Read more

by Steve Bolton

               In last week’s edition of this amateur series of self-tutorials[i] on SQL Server Data Mining (SSDM), we covered Clustering, an algorithm with an exceptionally wide variety of uses in comparison to the other eight Microsoft includes with the product. Sequence Clustering may be derived from that… Read more

by Steve Bolton

                In last week’s installment of this amateur series of self-tutorials on SQL Server Data Mining (SSDM), we covered my least favorite of the nine algorithms Microsoft includes with the product. There is a right time and place for every tool, but the times and places where Association… Read more

by Steve Bolton

                In last week’s installment of this series of self-tutorials on SQL Server Data Mining (SSDM), we covered my favorite algorithm, Neural Networks, which is also among the most intricate but productive of the nine data mining methods Microsoft provides. The major drawback is that its inner workings… Read more

by Steve Bolton

                Anyone who has been following this series of self-tutorials has probably grown accustomed to me adding some kind of disclaimer about my shortcomings as a data miner. These blog posts are designed to simultaneously give the most under-utilized part of SQL Server some badly needed free press,… Read more

  by Steve Bolton

              In the last installment of this series of self-tutorials on SQL Server Data Mining (SSDM), A Rickety Stairway to SQL Server Data Mining, Algorithm 3: Decision Trees, I glossed over an algorithm that built upon the data mining methods touched on in my first two posts,… Read more

by Steve Bolton 

                This series of self-tutorials is an elementary-level introduction to SQL Server Data Mining (SSDM), not the product of someone who’s done postgraduate work in statistics. Instead of being the last word on the subject, it is a little more like a child learning to speak its first… Read more

            An algorithm that starts with the word “regression” seems an unlikely candidate to move forward with this series of self-tutorials in SQL Server Data Mining (SSDM), but don’t let the name fool you: Linear Regression is a powerful data mining tool that represents a logical second step in any workflow,… Read more

            Thankfully, the simplest of SQL Server’s algorithms is not quite as naïve about data mining as I am.
            As mentioned in my last post, I had to delay my article on the simplest of Microsoft’s data mining algorithms due to a number of factors, the worst of which turned out… Read more

         This third part in my series of self-tutorials in SQL Server Data Mining (SSDM) was delayed for several weeks due to some unforeseen mishaps, like an antibiotic resistant infection that almost put me in the hospital for the holidays, but most of the delay was due to performance problems stemming… Read more

I’ve had to delay my series of self-tutorials on data mining for a few weeks following an antibiotic resistant infection that almost put me in the hospital for the holidays, plus some unexpected performance problems with Analysis Services. I’ve had my next two posts on the Naive Bayes and Linear… Read more

                 In the first of a series of amateur tutorials on SQL Server Data Mining (SSDM), I promised to pull off an impossible stunt: explaining the broad field of statistics in a few paragraphs without the use of equations. What other SQL Server blog ends with a cliffhanger like that?… Read more

 
      As I mentioned in my column in June, one of the many lessons I learned at the first-ever SQL Saturday event hosted by the Professional Association of SQL Server (PASS) Rochester chapter was that data mining is perhaps the least understood feature of Microsoft’s industry-leading database server software. It’s… Read more

                I haven’t seen this many fake ID’s since I was in college.
                Back on April 26, Grant Fritchey (of execution plan fame) reported a strange bug in the newly released version of SQL Server, in which the values of certain identity columns are suddenly incremented by about 1,000. Since then,… Read more