ORE 1.4 New Parallel feature

Oracle R Enterprise (ORE) 1.4 has just been released and can downloaded from here. Remember there is a client and server side install required and ORE 1.4 is certified against R 3.0.1 and the Oracle R Distribution

One of the interesting new features is the PARALLEL option. You can set this to significantly improve the performance of your R server side code by using the PARALLEL database option. You can set the degree of PARALLEL at a global level in your code by using the ore.parallel setting.

The default setting for this ore.parallel setting is FALSE or 1. Otherwise it must be set to a minimum of 2 of more to enable the Parallel database option.

Alternatively you can set the ore.parallel setting to TRUE to use the default degree of parallelism that is set for the database object or set to NULL to use the default database setting

You will also be able to set the degree of parallel (DOP) using the parallel enabled functions ore.groupApply, ore.rowApply and ore.indexApply.

They have also made available or as they say exposed some more of the in-database Oracle Data Mining algorithms. These include the ODM algorithms for Association rules (ore.odmAssocRules), the feature extraction algorithm called Non-Negative Matrix Factorization (NMF) (ore.odmNMF) and the ODM Clustering algorithm O-Cluster (ore.odmOC)

Watch out of some blog posts on these over the coming weeks.

Check out the OTN page for the R Technologies from Oracle

ODM: Changing the bar chart format in Explore Node

In Oracle Data Miner you can use the Explore Node to gather an initial set of statistics for your dataset. As part of this you will also get a bar chart that shows the distributions of the values contained within each attribute. The following example shows the default layout of the bar charts.

These graphs a very useful for presenting the initial data exploration results from to your business users. In addition to these graphs you can also use the Graph node to give some additional graphical representations.

But the default bar chart that is produced by the Explore Node can appear to be a bit basic.

So what if we could change the layout to have a 3-D effect. People like 3-D bar charts.

Is this possible in Oracle Data Miner? If so then how can we do it?

Well it is possible and you can use the following steps to change your bar charts to 3-D.

To access the Explore Node settings go the the Tools menu and then select Preferences from the drop down menu.

Then the Preferences window opens scroll down to the Data Miner option and expand the available options.

The Explorer Data Viewer allows you to change the Precision settings. The section option is the Graphical Settings. You can change the Depth Radius setting. By default this is set to Zero. By increasing this value you can change the degree of the 3-D effect of the bar charts. You can also change the colour scheme too.

I'm not a fan of the other colour schemes that are available and mu favourite is still the default Nautical. The following bar chart is the same as the one at the top of this post but has the 3-D effect.

ODM Graph Node new feature

With the recent release of SQL Developer 4.0.1 there has been some very minor bug fixes for Oracle Data Miner. But there has been one particular enhancement that I wanted to have a look at. This blog post will look at this new feature and how you can use it too. In the previously released version of the Oracle Data Miner tool we had a Graph Node. This is really a new feature that came with SQL Developer 4 and was available in the Early Adopter releases since July 2013. During the Early Adopter releases and with the official release of SQL Dev 4, the Line Graph feature of the Graph Node only allowed you to have one line drawn i.e. for a single Y attribute. Now in SQL Dev/ODM 4.0.1 the Graph Node has been updated to allow you to have multiple Line Graphs that are stacked. To illustrate this we will need to define what data source we are going to use and to create a shell of a Graph Node in Oracle Data Miner. The following diagram illustrates this. In this example I'm using the CARS data set that is available on OTN.

When you have these nodes created you are now ready to create your graphs. To do this double click on the Graph Node. You can now set the attribute to use for the X-axis, in my example this will be MODEL_YEAR. Then for the Y-Axis select the attributes you want to include in the stacked graph by holding down the control key as you select each attribute

You are now ready to create the graph. To do this click on the OK button and you will have your stacked line graph.

OUG Ireland

The annual OUG Ireland Conference (or special event) will be on Tuesday 11th March.  Actually this year there are sessions spread over 2 days, for the first time ever in the 10+ year history of OUG Ireland. In addition to 2 days of sessions there are 7 streams of presentations on the Tuesday and then there is the RAC AttacK for the first time in Ireland.

The main conference event is on Tuesday 11th March in the DCC in Dublin. Things kick off at 9:20 with Debra Lilley welcoming everyone to the event. Then Jon Paul from Oracle in Ireland will do the opening keynote. Then we can break into the 7 streams with lots of local case studies and some well known speakers from around the world including many Oracle  ACEs and ACE Directors (my presentation is at 12:15).

The day ends up with 2 keynote presentations. There will be a keynote that will be focused on the App streams (Nadia Bendjedou, Oracle) and a separate keynote for Tech streams (by Tom Kyte).

Throughout the day there will be RAC Attack event. Look out for their tables in the exhibition hall. Again there will be some well known experts from around the world who will be on hand to help you get RAC setup and running on your own laptop, answer your questions and engage in lots of discussions about all thing Oracle. The RAC Attack Ninja will include Osama Mustafa, Philippe Fierens, Marcin Przepiorowski, Martin Bach and Tim Hall. Some of these are giving presentations throughout the day, so when they are not presenting you will find them at the RAC Attack table. Even if you are not going to install RAC drop by and have a chat with them.

On Wednesday 12th March the OUG Ireland Conference ventures into a second day of sessions. These sessions will be a full day of topics by Tom Kyte. This is certainly a day not to be missed. As they say places are limited so book your place today.

Click on the following image to view the agenda for the 2 days and to book your place on the 11th and 12th March.

I hope to see you there and make sure you say hello to me.

Ralph Kimball talks about Hadoop and the Enterprise Data Warehouse

On April 2nd Cloudera is hosting a webinar featuring Ralph Kimball who will "describe how Apache Hadoop complements and integrates effectively with the existing enterprise data warehouse. The Hadoop environment's revolutionary architectural advantages open the door to more data and more kinds of data than are possible to analyze with conventional RDBMSs, and additionally offer a whole series of new forms of integrated analysis.

Dr. Kimball will explain how Hadoop can be both:

•   A destination data warehouse, and also

•   An efficient staging and ETL source for an existing data warehouse

You will also learn how enterprise conformed dimensions can be used as the basis for integrating Hadoop and conventional data warehouses."

When you sign up to the event you will be able to download a chapter from Ralph Kimball's book called The Data Warehouse ToolKit, called Big Data Analytics.

SQL Developer 4.0.1 is out

Oracle have released an updated version of SQL Developer and it is available to download from here.

Jeff Smyth has a blog post on some of the bug fixes in SQL Developer.

and Kris Rice also has a blog post on the new updated release.

So what about Oracle Data Miner. There seems to be a couple of minor new features on being able to select statistical outputs for the transform node. Also the model and test results viewers now automatically refresh if they are open. ODM can not be installed on Oracle Personal Edition (I haven't tried this out yet). 

Plus the Graph node can not have line charts based on mulitiple y axis attributes.  I'll have a blog post on this soon.

World Experts discuss Testing for Accuracy of Predictive Models

A week or two ago there was an article on  www.softwareadvice.com called Predictive Analytics : Testing for Accuracy.  In this article there was 3 very well know data scientist/data miners/predictive modellers. One of these is a Karl Rexter (a friend of mine form the BIWA world) along with Dean Abbott and John Elder.

People keep asking me what is the best way to test their data mining model, with most people expecting that they have to do lots and lots of statistics. They are then confused when I say ‘Oh No you Don’t’, all you need to do is ….   All you need to do is to follow the approaches that are detailed in their article. One thing that they all have in common is that they keep in mind the business problem and how/what the results they obtain mean for the business problem.

They shared their knowledge on testing predictive models for accuracy in a report from Software Advice, a company that reviews business intelligence software. They offer helpful information for other data miners on when and how to use: 

• Lift charts and decile tables to compare performance against random results
• Target shuffling to determine validity of the results
• Bootstrap sampling to test the consistency of the model

Ok Some statistics are used but not too many!!

View highlights from the report below or read it in its entirety here.  Alternatively have a look at the article summary on SlideShare.

3 Tests Experts Use to Validate Predictive Model Accuracy from Software Advice

OUG Ireland Presenters on Twitter

The agenda for OUG Ireland 2014 is now live. You can view the agenda and to register for the event by clicking on the following link.

Over the past couple of weeks some of the presenters have been using Twitter to share the news that they will be presenting at OUG Ireland. If you are not following them on twitter now is time to follow them. So here is the list (in no particular order) and I’ll start it off with myself

Brendan Tierney       @brendantierney

Debra Lilley               @debralilley

Tom Kyte                  @OracleAskTom

Tim Hall                    @oraclebase

Jon Paul                   @jonpauldublin

Roel Hartman           @RoelH

Uli Bethke                 @ubethke

Antony Heljula           @aheljula

Stewart Bryson         @stewartbryson

Patrick Hurley            @phurley

Joel Goodman          @JoelJGoodman

Philippe Fierens       @pfierens

Simon Haslam          @simon_haslam

Martin Nash               @mpnsh

Uwe Hesse                @UswHesse

Martin Bach               @MartinDBA

 

If I’m missing anyone let me know and I’ll add you to the list

Busy start to 2014 Speaking at Conferences **Updated

UPDATED list of conferences

We are just a few weeks into 2014 and it has been a busy time with Oracle User Group Conferences.

January : BIWA Summit

In January I gave 2 presentations at the BIWA Summit. This conference was held in the Oracle Convention Centre at Oracle Head Office.

March : OUG Ireland

I also have one presentation at the OUG Ireland conference in Dublin on the 11th March. As always this is a great day fill with sessions for well known speakers from around the world. This year we will have 6 tracks packed full. It is also a great opportunity to catch up with some friends I have known for 20+ years. Click on the following image for details of the agenda and how to register for the conference.

April : OUG Norway

I’ve also received notice that I will have 2 presentations at the Norway Oracle User Group. I’m delighted with this, as I was at this conference last year and really enjoyed it. This conference will be on the ship again this year between April 3-5, getting back into Oslo around 10am on the 5th April. Click on the following image for details of the agenda and how to register for the conference.

June : OUG Finland

In the past few days I’ve also received news that I will have 2 presentations at the Finland Oracle User Group conference. This will be my first time in Finland and I hope to get a few hours to do some exploring of Helsinki when I’m there. One of my presentations will be on using Oracle Data Miner and the second presentation will be on using R in the Oracle Database (or more correctly Oracle R Enterprise). Click on the following link for more details of the conference.

Hopefully I will see you at one of these conferences. Do make sure you say hello to me and let me know if you have any questions about the Oracle Advanced Analytics Option.

 

Second half of 2014

This second half of 2014 will probably be a bit quieter, but hopefully I’ll be at Oracle Open World in September (speaking or not) and also at the UKOUG Annual Conference (TECH14 or whatever it will be called) in December (speaking or not).

 

My travels (flights and hotel costs) to present at these conferences is made possible thanks to the Oracle ACE Director program. Also to DIT for allowing me to go.

Oracle BigDataLite 2.4.1 is available to download

Oracle has made available the BigDataLite VM appliance to download. This VM is for evaluation purposes only and is a great way to try out the various products that Oracle has in the Big Data area.

Another major advanced of downloading and using the VM is that you don’t have the “fun” of trying to install everything yourself, getting everything configured and working together.

The BigDataLite 2.4.1 VM comes with the following:

• Oracle Database 12.1c
• Cloudera’s Distribution including Apache Hadoop (CDH4.5)
• Cloudera Manager 4.8
• Oracle Big Data Connectors 2.4
• Oracle NoSQL Database 2.1.54
• Oracle JDeveloper 11g (11.1.1.6.0 )
• Oracle SQL Developer 4.0
• Oracle Data Integrator 12c R1 
• Oracle R Distribution 3.0.1

There are a number of Hands-on-Labs that you can run on the VM and it comes with the MoviePlex demo data.

Get all the details and links for downloads at

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/bigdata-appliance/oracle-bigdatalite-2104726.html

WARNING: you will need a decent spec PC or laptop to host this VM. The recommendation is that you can dedicate 2 cores, at least 5GB RAM and >30G of disk for the VM. The install requires ~40G of space  So this might not be for everyone.

OUG Ireland 2014 Conference

The agenda has just gone live for the OUG Ireland Conference that will be on 11th March, 2014. The conference will again be in the Dublin Convention Centre (DCC). I’m on the conference committee again this year . Part of the duties includes the presentation selection and agenda planning.

This year we have over 100 submission from well know experts from around the world and from a variety of customer case students. With a limited number of slots available there was some VERY VERY difficult decisions made. To included everyone that I wanted to present at the conference we would need to run the conference over 3 days. Sadly this was not possible.

An new feature of the conference this years is that we will have Tom Kyte giving a fully day of sessions the day after the conference. This will be a paid for event.

To view the agenda for the conference you can click on the image below.

To register for the conference and the extra 1 day workshops with Tom Kyte or 12c Workshop with Joel Goodman and Uwe Hesse, go to.

http://www.ireland14.oug.org/default.asp?p=10500

I have one presentation at the conference, so hopefully I’ll see you there.

Some resources to get started with Hadoop

Cloudera and other sides have made available a number of resources for help all of us to get up to speed with using Hadoop etc.

So if you are starting out with Hadoop here is a short list of key resources that I have found very useful.

Cloudera Hapood Virtual Machine

The Hadoop FAQ for DBAs

Cloudera Newsletter for Developers

Cloudera New to Hadoop

Udacity course : Introduction to Hadoop and MapReduce