My co-author on Smart (Enough) Systems, Neil Raden, has written a great white paper on in-database analytics that is available from Sybase – Analytics from the start. This paper introduces the key concepts, discusses some of the key issues (our book contains more tips in this area) and describes some strong case examples. Well worth a read. As Neil says:
Advanced analytics will be adopted by most organizations and attain the status of “must have.” While the majority of people in organizations will not become quantitative experts and modelers, the affect of predictive models will be felt across the organization and beyond. They already are. It would be wise to take steps now, and a good first step is to begin evaluating technology solutions that will be suitable for the development and implementation of analytics. From a technology perspective, one clear requirement is an analytic engine embedded in your analytical database technology.
The approach Neil describes is one we see more and more as in-database and
in-warehouse analytics become more common. This particular paper talks about the Fuzzy Logix libraries embedded in Sybase IQ but . Fuzzy Logix is one of the sponsors (with SAS, Oracle, Adaptive and Aha!) of the operational analytics research I am doing for BeyeNetwork. Look for it on the BeyeResearch site in a couple of months and, meanwhile, participate by taking the survey.
