Back in November 2009, I
reported on PMML and
Open Source Data Mining, highlighting the support open source tools
offered for PMML.
It is
obvious that open source tools for predictive analytics are gaining more
and more momentum. Just last month, the KDNuggets.com website ran a
poll which asked visitors to vote for the tools they had used for a real
project in the last 12 months. The result … more than 50% of the
respondents said they used open-source tools such as R, KNIME, and
RapidMiner. Now, it may be that the responses are really not that
representative of the entire data mining community, but they do reflect a
trend: open source data mining tools are here to stay and their use is
growing as they become better and easier to use. And, guess what? Their
support for PMML is stronger than ever.
Rapid-I has just released
an extension for RapidMiner offering the export of PMML for several
modeling techniques. KNIME continues to expand its PMML support with new
capabilities … and Weka has just announced support for Support Vector
Machines (in addition to several other PMML elements). Augustus from
Open Data supports segmented models expressed in PMML. The Zementis PMML
Converter tool, which unifies the different versions of PMML into a
single version is now also a corrector and it will soon support PMML
4.0.
There is also news from commercial vendors, Pervasive has
announced support for PMML in DataRush. The Zementis ADAPA decisioning
platform which is available as a service on the Amazon Cloud now offers
the seamless integration of models expressed in PMML and business rules.
Last
but not least, the Data Mining Group (DMG), which is responsible for
developing PMML is constantly expanding. NASA has recently joined the
DMG, so chances are PMML will grow out of this world and into the stars.
According to the DMG website (dmg.org):
“The
NASA Data Mining & Trending Working Group (DMTWG) was established
to strengthen data/text mining and trending within and across NASA
datasets, to aid in the identification and mitigation of adverse
trends and to raise the awareness and capability of data/text mining
within the agency. “
From down under, Togaware has also joined
the DMG. Togaware’s most well known product is Rattle, an open-source
data mining tool built on top of R that produces and consumes PMML.
Togaware maintains the PMML package for R which can be obtained from
CRAN, the free “app store” for R users.
PMML Discussion Forums
For an on-going discussion and to read about the
latest PMML news, feel free to join the PMML group in LinkedIn or the discussion forum in
the PMML
group on Analytic Bridge, a social network community for analytics
professionals.
