googleVis R package for creating google charts in R

I've recently come across the 'googleVis' R package. This allows you to create a variety of different (typical and standard) charts in R but with the look and feel of the charts we can get from a number of different Google sites.

I won't bore you with some examples in the post but I'll point you to a good tutorial on the various charts.

Here is the link to the mini-tutorial.

Before you can use the package you will need to install it. The simplest way is to run the following in your R session.

> install.packages("googleVis")

Depending on your version of R you may need to upgrade.

Here is a selection of some of the charts you can create, and there are many, many more.

Some of you might be familiar with the presenting that Hans Rosling gives. Some of the same technology is behind these bubble charts from Google, as they bought the software years ago. Hans typically uses a data set that consists of GDP, Population and Life Expectancy for countries around the World. You too can use this same data set and is available from rdatamarket. The following R codes will extract this data set to you local R session and you can then use it as input to the various charts in the googleVis functions.

install.packages("rdatamarket")
library(rdatamarket)
dminit(NULL)

# Pull in life expectancy and population data
life_expectancy <- dmlist("15r2!hrp")
population <- dmlist("1cfl!r3d")

# Pull in the yearly GDP for each country
gdp <- dmlist("15c9!hd1")

# Load in the plyr package
library("plyr")

# Rename the Value for each dataset
names(gdp)[3] <- "GDP"

# Use plyr to join your three data frames into one: development 
gdp_life_exp <- join(gdp, life_expectancy)
names(gdp_life_exp)[4] <- "LifeExpectancy"
development <- join(gdp_life_exp, population)
names(development)[5] <- "Population"

Here is an example of the bubble chart using this data set.

There are a few restrictions with using this package. All the results will be displayed in a web browser, so you need to make sure that this is possible. Some of the charts are require flash. Again you need to make sure you are the latest version and/or you many have restrictions in your workplace on using it.

Cluster Sets using SQL with Oracle Data Mining - Part 3

This is the third blog post on my series on examining the Clusters that were predicted by an Oracle Data Mining model. Check out the previous blog posts.

• Part 1 - Examining predicted Clusters and Cluster details using SQL
• Part 2 - Cluster Details with Oracle Data Mining

In the previous posts we were able to list the predicted cluster for each record in our data set. This is the cluster that the records belonged to the most. I also mentioned that a record could belong to many clusters.

So how can you list all the clusters that the a record belongs to?

You can use the CLUSTER_SET SQL function. This will list the Cluster Id and a probability measure for each cluster. This function returns a array consisting of the set of all clusters that the record belongs to.

The following example illustrates how to use the CLUSTER_SET function for a particular cluster model.

SELECT t.customer_id, s.cluster_id, s.probability
FROM   (select customer_id, cluster_set(clus_km_1_37 USING *) as Cluster_Set
        from   insur_cust_ltv_sample 
        WHERE  customer_id in ('CU13386', 'CU100')) T,
      TABLE(T.cluster_set) S
order by t.customer_id, s.probability desc; 

The output from this query will be an ordered data set based on the customer id and then the clusters listed in descending order of probability. The cluster with the highest probability is what would be returned by the CLUSTER_ID function. The output from the above query is shown below.

If you would like to see the details of each of the clusters and to examine the differences between these clusters then you will need to use the CLUSTER_DETAILS function (see previous blog post).

You can specify topN and cutoff to limit the number of clusters returned by the function. By default, both topN and cutoff are null and all clusters are returned.

- topN is the N most probable clusters. If multiple clusters share the Nth probability, then the function chooses one of them.

- cutoff is a probability threshold. Only clusters with probability greater than or equal to cutoff are returned. To filter by cutoff only, specify NULL for topN.

You may want to use these individually or combined together if you have a large number of customers. To return up to the N most probable clusters that are greater than or equal to cutoff, specify both topN and cutoff.

The following example illustrates using the topN value to return the top 4 clusters.

SELECT t.customer_id, s.cluster_id, s.probability
FROM   (select customer_id, cluster_set(clus_km_1_37, 4, null USING *) as Cluster_Set
        from   insur_cust_ltv_sample 
        WHERE  customer_id in ('CU13386', 'CU100')) T,
      TABLE(T.cluster_set) S
order by t.customer_id, s.probability desc;

and the output from this query shows only 4 clusters displayed for each record.

Alternatively you can select the clusters based on a cut off value for the probability. In the following example this is set to 0.05.

SELECT t.customer_id, s.cluster_id, s.probability
FROM   (select customer_id, cluster_set(clus_km_1_37, NULL, 0.05 USING *) as Cluster_Set
        from   insur_cust_ltv_sample 
        WHERE  customer_id in ('CU13386', 'CU100')) T,
      TABLE(T.cluster_set) S
order by t.customer_id, s.probability desc;

and the output this time looks a bit different.

Finally, yes you can combine these two parameters to work together.

SELECT t.customer_id, s.cluster_id, s.probability FROM (select customer_id, cluster_set(clus_km_1_37, 2, 0.05 USING *) as Cluster_Set from insur_cust_ltv_sample WHERE customer_id in ('CU13386', 'CU100')) T, TABLE(T.cluster_set) S order by t.customer_id, s.probability desc;

Cluster Details with Oracle Data Mining - Part 2

This is the second blog post of my series on examining the clusters that are predicted for by an Oracle Data Mining model for your data. In my previous blog post I should you how to use CLUSTER_ID and CLUSTER_PROBABILITY functions. These are the core of what you will be used when working with clusters and automating the process.

In this blog post I will look at what details are used by the clustering model to make the prediction. The function that you can use is called CLUSTER_DETAILS. I had an earlier blog post on using PREDICTION_DETAILS to see some of the details that are produced when performing classification.

CLUSTER_DETAILS returns the cluster details for each row in the selection. The return value is an XML string that describes the attributes of the highest probability cluster.

Here is an example of using the CLUSTER_DETAILS function in a SELECT statement.

select cluster_details(clus_km_1_37, 14 USING *) as Cluster_Details
from   insur_cust_ltv_sample 
where  customer_id = 'CU13386';

The output is an XML string and the easiest way to view this is in SQL Developer. It will list the top 5 highest weighted attributes for the cluster centroid.

The returned attributes are ordered by weight. The weight of an attribute expresses its positive or negative impact on cluster assignment. A positive weight indicates an increased likelihood of assignment. A negative weight indicates a decreased likelihood of assignment. By default, CLUSTER_DETAILS returns the attributes with the highest positive weights in defending order.

Examining predicted Clusters and Cluster details using SQL

In a previous blog post I gave some details of how you can examine some of the details behind a prediction made using a classification model. This seemed to spark a lot of interest. But before I come back to looking at classification prediction details and other information, this blog post is the first in a 4 part blog post on examining the details of Clusters, as identified by a cluster model created using Oracle Data Mining.

The 4 blog posts will consist of:

• 1 - (this blog post) will look at how to determine the predicted cluster and cluster probability for your record.
• 2 - will show you how to examine the details behind and used to predict the cluster.
• 3 - A record could belong to many clusters. In this blog post we will look at how you can determine what clusters a record can belong to.
• 4 - Cluster distance is a measure of how far the record is from the cluster centroid. As a data point or record can belong to many clusters, it can be useful to know the distances as you can build logic to perform different actions based on the cluster distances and cluster probabilities.

Right. Let's have a look at the first set of these closer functions. These are CLUSTER_ID and CLUSTER_PROBABILITY.

CLUSER_ID : Returns the number of the cluster that the record most closely belongs to. This is measured by the cluster distance to the centroid of the cluster. A data point or record can belong or be part of many clusters. So the CLUSTER_ID is the cluster number that the data point or record most closely belongs too.

CLUSTER_PROBABILITY : Is a probability measure of the likelihood of the data point or record belongs to a cluster. The cluster with the highest probability score is the cluster that is returned by the CLUSTER_ID function.

Now let us have a quick look at the SQL for these two functions. This first query returns the cluster number that each record most strong belongs too.

SELECT customer_id, 
       cluster_id(clus_km_1_37 USING *) as Cluster_Id, 
FROM   insur_cust_ltv_sample
WHERE  customer_id in ('CU13386', 'CU6607', 'CU100');

Now let us add in the cluster probability function.

SELECT customer_id, 
       cluster_id(clus_km_1_37 USING *) as Cluster_Id,
       cluster_probability(clus_km_1_37 USING *) as cluster_Prob       
FROM   insur_cust_ltv_sample
WHERE  customer_id in ('CU13386', 'CU6607', 'CU100');

These functions gives us some insights into what the cluster predictive model is doing. In the remaining blog posts in this series I will look at how you can delve deeper into the predictions that the cluster algorithm is make.

PREDICTION_DETAILS function in Oracle

When building predictive models the data scientist can spend a large amount of time examining the models produced and how they work and perform on their hold out sample data sets. They do this to understand is the model gives a good general representation of the data and can identify/predict many different scenarios. When the "best" model has been selected then this is typically deployed is some sort of reporting environment, where a list is produced. This is typical deployment method but is far from being ideal. A more ideal deployment method is that the predictive models are build into the everyday applications that the company uses. For example, it is build into the call centre application, so that the staff have live and real-time feedback and predictions as they are talking to the customer.

But what kind of live and real-time feedback and predictions are possible. Again if we look at what is traditionally done in these applications they will get a predicted outcome (will they be a good customer or a bad customer) or some indication of their value (maybe lifetime value, possible claim payout value) etc.

But can we get anymore information? Information like what was reason for the prediction. This is sometimes called prediction insight. Can we get some details of what the prediction model used to decide on the predicted value. In more predictive analytics products this is not possible, as all you are told is the final out come.

What would be useful is to know some of the thinking that the predictive model used to make its thinking. The reasons when one customer may be a "bad customer" might be different to that of another customer. Knowing this kind of information can be very useful to the staff who are dealing with the customers. For those who design the workflows etc can then build more advanced workflows to support the staff when dealing with the customers.

Oracle as a unique feature that allows us to see some of the details that the prediction model used to make the prediction. This functions (based on using the Oracle Advanced Analytics option and Oracle Data Mining to build your predictive model) is called PREDICTION_DETAILS.

When you go to use PREDICTION_DETAILS you need to be careful as it will work differently in the 11.2g and 12c versions of the Oracle Database (Enterprise Editions). In Oracle Database 11.2g the PREDICTION_DETAILS function would only work for Decision Tree models. But in 12c (and above) it has been opened to include details for models created using all the classification algorithms, all the regression algorithms and also for anomaly detection.

The following gives an example of using the PREDICTION_DETAILS function.

select cust_id, 
       prediction(clas_svm_1_27 using *) pred_value,
       prediction_probability(clas_svm_1_27 using *) pred_prob,
       prediction_details(clas_svm_1_27 using *) pred_details
from mining_data_apply_v;

The PREDICTION_DETAILS function produces its output in XML, and this consists of the attributes used and their values that determined why a record had the predicted value. The following gives some examples of the XML produced for some of the records.

I've used this particular function in lots of my projects and particularly when building the applications for a particular business unit. Oracle too has build this functionality into many of their applications. The images below are from the HCM application where you can examine the details why an employee may or may not leave/churn. You can when perform real-time what-if analysis by changing some of attribute values to see if the predicted out come changes.

Advanced Analytics in Oracle Data Visualization Desktop

Oracle Data Visualisation Desktop has the feature of being able to include some advanced analytics. In a previous blog post I showed you how to go about installing Oracle R Distribution on your desktop/client machine. This will allow you to make use of some of the advanced analytics features of Oracle Data Visualization Desktop.

The best way to get started with using the advanced analytics features of Oracle Data Visualization Desktop, is to ignore that these features exist. Start with creating your typical analytics, charts etc. Only then you can really look at adding some of the advanced analytics features.

To access the advanced analytics features you can select the icon from the menu bar for advanced analytics. It is the icon with the magnifying glass.

When you have listed on this icon the advanced analytics menu opens displaying the 5 advanced analytics options available to you.

With your chart/graphic already created then you can click on one of the advanced analytics options and drag it onto your char or onto the palette for the chart. For example in the following diagram the Outlier option was selected and dragged into the Color section. This will then mark Outlier data on your chart with a different color.

You can follow a similar approach with all the other advanced analytics options. Click and drag. It is that simple. As you add each advanced analytics option, the chart will be updated automatically for you.

An alternative to clicking and dragging from the chart options palette, you can right click on the chart (or click on the wheel on the top right hand corner of the chart window), and then select the advanced analytics feature you want from the menu.

or what I prefer doing is to select Properties from the menu above. When you do this you get a new window opening and when you click on the icon with the magnifying glass you get to add and customize the advanced analytics features.

WARNING

I would urge caution when you are reading other demonstrations about Oracle Visualization Desktop that are showing examples of predictive analytics. There are a few blog posts out there and also some videos too.

What they are actually showing you is the embedded R execution feature of Oracle R Enterprise. Oracle R Enterprise is part of the Oracle Advanced Analytics Option, which is a licensed option.

So if you follow these blog posts and videos, thinking that you can do this kind of advanced analytics, you could be getting into license issues. This confusion is not helped with comments like the following on the Oracle website.

"Predictive Analytics: Analytics has progressed from providing oversight to offering insight, and now to enabling foresight. Oracle Data Visualization supports that progression, delivering embedded predictive capabilities that enable anyone to see trend lines and other visuals with a click, and extend their analysis using a free R download."

Personally I find this a bit confusing. Yes you can perform some advanced and predictive analytics with Oracle Data Visualization, but you need to ensure that you are using the client side R installation, for your analytics.

As with all licensing questions, you should discuss them with your Oracle Sales representative.

Oracle Data Visualisation Desktop : Enabling Advanced Analytics (R)

Oracle Data Visualization comes with all the typical features you have with Visual Analyzer that is part of BICS, DVCS and OBIEE.

An additional install you may want to do is to install the R language for Oracle Data Visualization Desktop. This is required to enable the Advanced Analytics feature of the tool.

After installing Data Visualisation Desktop when you open the Advanced Analytics section and try to add one of the Advanced Analytics graphing option you will get an errors message as, shown below.

In Windows, click on the Start button, then go to Programs and then Oracle. In there you will see a menu item called install Advanced Analytics i.e. install Oracle R Distribution on your machine.

When you click on this menu option a new command line window will open and will proceed with the installation of Oracle R Distribution (in this case version 3.1.1, which is not the current version of Oracle R Distribution).

By accepting the defaults and clicking next, Oracle R Distribution will be installed. The following images will step you through the installation.

The final part of the installation is download and install lots and lots of supporting R packages.

When these supporting R packages have been installed, you can now use the Advanced Analytics features of Oracle Data Visualisation Desktop.

If you had the tool open during this installation you will need to close/shutdown the tool and restart it.

Oracle Data Visualisation : Setting up a Connection to your DB

Using Oracle Data Visualisation is just the same or very similar as to using the Cloud version of the tool.

In this blog post I will walk you through the steps you need to perform the first time you use the Oracle Data Visualization client tool and to quickly create some visualizations.

Step 1 - Create a Connection to your Oracle DB and Schema

After opening Oracle Data Visualisation client tool client on the Data Sources icon that is displayed along the top of the screen.

Then click on the 'Connection' button. You need to create a connection to your schema in the Oracle Database. Other options exist to create a connection to files etc. But for this example click on 'From Database.

Enter you connections details for your schema in your Oracle Database. This is exactly the same kind of information that you would enter for creating a SQL Developer connection. Then click the Save button.

Step 2 - Defining the data source for your analytics

You need to select the tables or views that you are going to use to build up your data visualizations. In the Data Sources section of the tool (see the first image above) click on the 'Create Data New Data Source' button and then select 'From Database'. The following window (or one like it) will be displayed. This will contain all the schemas in the DB that you have some privileges for. You may just see your schema or others.

Select your schema from the list. The window will be updated to display the tables and views in the schema. You can change the layout from icon based to being a list. You can also define a query that contains the data you want to analyse using the SQL tab.

When you have select the table or view to use or have defined the SQL for the data set, a window will be displayed showing you a sample of the data. You can use this window to quickly perform a visual inspection of the data to make sure it is the data you want to use.

The data source you have defined will now be listed data sources part of the tool. You can click on the option icon (3 vertical dots) on the right hand side of the data source and then select Create VA Project from the pop up menu.

Step 3 - Create your Oracle Data Visualization project

When the Visual Analyser part of the tool opens, you can click and drag the columns from your data set on to the workspace. The data will be automatically formatted and displayed on the screen. You can also quickly generate lots of graphics and again click and drag the columns on the graphics to define various element.

Oracle Data Visualization Desktop - now available

After a bit of a long wait Oracle have finally release Oracle Data Visualization for the desktop. The desktop version of this tool is only available for Windows desktops at the moment. I'm sure Oracle will be bringing out versions of other OS soon (I hope).

To get you hands on the Oracle Data Visualization to to the following OTN webpage (click on this image)

After downloading has finished, you can run the installer.

When the Oracle Installer opens you will be prompted to enter the required details or to accept the defaults, as outlined below.

• Installation Location : Decide where you are going to have the Oracle Data Visualization tool installed on your desktop. The default location is C:\Program Files\Oracle Data Visualization Desktop . Click Next
• Options : There are 2 check boxes for 'Create desktop shortcut' and 'Deploy samples'. Leave both of these checked, as you will probably want these. Click Next.
• Summary : Lists a summary of the installation. There is nothing really for you to do here, so on the Install button.

• Progress : You can ten sit back and monitor the progress of the installation. The installation tool about 4 minutes on my small Windows VM

When the installation is complete you can now fire up Oracle Data Visualization and enjoy. If you have just installed the tool it will automatically be started for you.

When the tool has finished all the configurations that it needs to do, the tool will open with the following window and shows a sample projects for you to get an idea of some of the things that are possible.

For more details on the tool and on the Oracle Cloud hosted version click on the following image to get to the Oracle webpage for the product.

Accessing the R datasets in ORE and SQL

When you install R you also get a set of pre-compiled datasets. These are great for trying out many of the features that are available with R and all the new packages that are being produced on an almost daily basis.

The exact list of data sets available will depend on the version of R that you are using.

To get the list of available data sets in R you can run the following.

> library(help="datasets")

This command will list all the data sets that you can reference and start using immediately.

I'm currently running the latest version of Oracle R Distribution version 3.2. See the listing at the end of this blog post for the available data sets.

But are these data sets available to you if you are using Oracle R Enterprise (ORE)? The answer is Yes of course they are.

But are these accessible on the Oracle Database server? Yes they are, as you have R installed there and you can use ORE to access and use the data sets.

But how? how can I list what is on the Oracle Database server using R? Simple use the following ORE code to run an embedded R execution function using the ORE R API.

What? What does that mean? Using the R on your client machine, you can use ORE to send some R code to the Oracle Database server. The R code will be run on the Oracle Database server and the results will be returned to the client. The results contain the results from the server. Try the following code.

ore.doEval(function() library(help="datasets")) 

# let us create a functions for this code
myFn <- function() {library(help="datasets")}

# Now send this function to the DB server and run it there.
ore.doEval(myFn)

# create an R script in the Oracle Database that contains our R code
ore.scriptDrop("inDB_R_DemoData")
ore.scriptCreate("inDB_R_DemoData", myFn)
# Now run the R script, stored in the Oracle Database, on the Database server
#   and return the results to my client
ore.doEval(FUN.NAME="inDB_R_DemoData")

Simple, Right!

Yes it is. You have shown us how to do this in R using the ORE package. But what if I'm a SQL developer. Can I do this in SQL? Yes you can. Connect you your schema using SQL Developer/SQL*Plus/SQLcl or whatever tool you will be using to run SQL. Then run the following SQL.

select * 
from table(rqEval(null, 'XML', 'inDB_R_DemoData'));

This SQL code will return the results in XML format. You can parse this to extract and display the results and when you do you will get something like the following listing, which is exactly the same that is produced when you run the R code that I gave above.

So what this means is that evening if you have an empty schema with no data in it, and as long as you have the privileges to run embedded R execution, you actually have access to all these different data sets. You can use these to try our R using the ORE SQL APIs too.

		Information on package ‘datasets’

Description:

Package:       datasets
Version:       3.2.0
Priority:      base
Title:         The R Datasets Package
Author:        R Core Team and contributors worldwide
Maintainer:    R Core Team 
Description:   Base R datasets.
License:       Part of R 3.2.0
Built:         R 3.2.0; ; 2015-08-07 02:20:26 UTC; windows

Index:

AirPassengers           Monthly Airline Passenger Numbers 1949-1960
BJsales                 Sales Data with Leading Indicator
BOD                     Biochemical Oxygen Demand
CO2                     Carbon Dioxide Uptake in Grass Plants
ChickWeight             Weight versus age of chicks on different diets
DNase                   Elisa assay of DNase
EuStockMarkets          Daily Closing Prices of Major European Stock
                        Indices, 1991-1998
Formaldehyde            Determination of Formaldehyde
HairEyeColor            Hair and Eye Color of Statistics Students
Harman23.cor            Harman Example 2.3
Harman74.cor            Harman Example 7.4
Indometh                Pharmacokinetics of Indomethacin
InsectSprays            Effectiveness of Insect Sprays
JohnsonJohnson          Quarterly Earnings per Johnson & Johnson Share
LakeHuron               Level of Lake Huron 1875-1972
LifeCycleSavings        Intercountry Life-Cycle Savings Data
Loblolly                Growth of Loblolly pine trees
Nile                    Flow of the River Nile
Orange                  Growth of Orange Trees
OrchardSprays           Potency of Orchard Sprays
PlantGrowth             Results from an Experiment on Plant Growth
Puromycin               Reaction Velocity of an Enzymatic Reaction
Theoph                  Pharmacokinetics of Theophylline
Titanic                 Survival of passengers on the Titanic
ToothGrowth             The Effect of Vitamin C on Tooth Growth in
                        Guinea Pigs
UCBAdmissions           Student Admissions at UC Berkeley
UKDriverDeaths          Road Casualties in Great Britain 1969-84
UKLungDeaths            Monthly Deaths from Lung Diseases in the UK
UKgas                   UK Quarterly Gas Consumption
USAccDeaths             Accidental Deaths in the US 1973-1978
USArrests               Violent Crime Rates by US State
USJudgeRatings          Lawyers' Ratings of State Judges in the US
                        Superior Court
USPersonalExpenditure   Personal Expenditure Data
VADeaths                Death Rates in Virginia (1940)
WWWusage                Internet Usage per Minute
WorldPhones             The World's Telephones
ability.cov             Ability and Intelligence Tests
airmiles                Passenger Miles on Commercial US Airlines,
                        1937-1960
airquality              New York Air Quality Measurements
anscombe                Anscombe's Quartet of 'Identical' Simple Linear
                        Regressions
attenu                  The Joyner-Boore Attenuation Data
attitude                The Chatterjee-Price Attitude Data
austres                 Quarterly Time Series of the Number of
                        Australian Residents
beavers                 Body Temperature Series of Two Beavers
cars                    Speed and Stopping Distances of Cars
chickwts                Chicken Weights by Feed Type
co2                     Mauna Loa Atmospheric CO2 Concentration
crimtab                 Student's 3000 Criminals Data
datasets-package        The R Datasets Package
discoveries             Yearly Numbers of Important Discoveries
esoph                   Smoking, Alcohol and (O)esophageal Cancer
euro                    Conversion Rates of Euro Currencies
eurodist                Distances Between European Cities and Between
                        US Cities
faithful                Old Faithful Geyser Data
freeny                  Freeny's Revenue Data
infert                  Infertility after Spontaneous and Induced
                        Abortion
iris                    Edgar Anderson's Iris Data
islands                 Areas of the World's Major Landmasses
lh                      Luteinizing Hormone in Blood Samples
longley                 Longley's Economic Regression Data
lynx                    Annual Canadian Lynx trappings 1821-1934
morley                  Michelson Speed of Light Data
mtcars                  Motor Trend Car Road Tests
nhtemp                  Average Yearly Temperatures in New Haven
nottem                  Average Monthly Temperatures at Nottingham,
                        1920-1939
npk                     Classical N, P, K Factorial Experiment
occupationalStatus      Occupational Status of Fathers and their Sons
precip                  Annual Precipitation in US Cities
presidents              Quarterly Approval Ratings of US Presidents
pressure                Vapor Pressure of Mercury as a Function of
                        Temperature
quakes                  Locations of Earthquakes off Fiji
randu                   Random Numbers from Congruential Generator
                        RANDU
rivers                  Lengths of Major North American Rivers
rock                    Measurements on Petroleum Rock Samples
sleep                   Student's Sleep Data
stackloss               Brownlee's Stack Loss Plant Data
state                   US State Facts and Figures
sunspot.month           Monthly Sunspot Data, from 1749 to "Present"
sunspot.year            Yearly Sunspot Data, 1700-1988
sunspots                Monthly Sunspot Numbers, 1749-1983
swiss                   Swiss Fertility and Socioeconomic Indicators
                        (1888) Data
treering                Yearly Treering Data, -6000-1979
trees                   Girth, Height and Volume for Black Cherry Trees
uspop                   Populations Recorded by the US Census
volcano                 Topographic Information on Auckland's Maunga
                        Whau Volcano
warpbreaks              The Number of Breaks in Yarn during Weaving
women                   Average Heights and Weights for American Women

DAMA Ireland: Data Protection Event 5th May

We have our next DAMA Ireland event/meeting coming up on the 5th May, and will be in our usual venue of Bank of Ireland, 1 Grand Canal Dock.

Our meeting will cover two topics. The main topic for the evening will be on Data Protection. We have Daragh O'Brien (MD of Castlebridge Associate) presenting on this. Daragh is also the Global Data Privacy Officer for DAMA International. He has also been invoked in contributing to the next version of the DMBOK, that is coming out very soon.

We also have Katherine O'Keefe who will be talking the DAMA Certified Data Management Practitioners (CDMP) certification. Katherine has been working with DAMA International on updates to the new CDMP certification.

To check out more details of the event/meeting, click on the Eventbrite image below. This will take you to the event/meeting details and where you can also register for the meeting.

Cost : FREE

When : 5th May

Where : Bank of Ireland, 1 Grand Canal Dock

PS: Please register in advance of the meeting, as we would like to know who and how many are coming, to allow us to make any necessary arrangements.

Oracle Advanced Analytics on Oracle Cloud

You have heard about the cloud? Right? Even the Oracle Cloud?

If you haven't, then maybe we need to look at how you can learn more about the Oracle Cloud.

Over the past while, and in the past few weeks in particular, Oracle has been advertising about how you can get a trail Oracle cloud service setup for FREE. Well it is free for one month when you set it up on the Oracle website (cloud.oracle.com).

As I like to talk about and use the Oracle Advanced Analytics (OAA) option (a lot), I thought I'd just give you some pointers on how to use OAA on the Oracle cloud.

To do this you need to set up an account on the Oracle cloud website (your Oracle single sign on should help with making that process a lot quicker). There are lots of websites and blog that will talk/show you through the process. Then you need to select what Database as a Service that you want to setup

OAA is not available on the Database Schema Service just yet (maybe one day they will)

Although Oracle Advanced Analytics comes pre-installed in the Oracle Enterprise Edition database (yes it is a separately priced option) when you install it on your own servers, but for the Enterprise Edition DaaS OAA is not part of it.

DaaS has the following versions

• Standard Edition Service 
• Enterprise Edition Service 
• High Performance Service 
• Extreme Performance Service

OAA is only available for these last two versions of the DaaS.

High Performance DaaS: Multitenant, Partitioning, Real Application Testing, Advanced Compression, Advanced Security, Label Security, Database Vault, OLAP, Advanced Analytics, Spatial and Graph, Diagnostics Pack, Tuning Pack, Database Lifecycle Management Pack, Data Masking & Subsetting Pack and Cloud Management Pack for Oracle Database.

Extreme Performance DaaS: In-Memory Database, RAC (Real Application Clusters), Active Data Guard, Multitenant, Partitioning, Real Application Testing, Advanced Compression, Advanced Security, Label Security, Database Vault, OLAP, Advanced Analytics, Spatial and Graph, Diagnostics Pack, Tuning Pack, Database Lifecycle Management Pack, Data Masking & Subsetting Pack and Cloud Management Pack for Oracle Database.

Oracle Advanced Analytics has two main products or components. The first is the in-database Oracle Data Mining features. This are part of the High Performance and Extreme Performance DaaS offerings. But Oracle R Enterprise is not installed on these DaaS. Well if kind of is if you can get an 11g DaaS, but at time of writing this post ORE is not part of the 12c DaaS images. So you will need to factor in some time to go and install ORE, if you need to use it.

I've been lucky to have one of these DaaS with OAA trials and with thanks to Thomas Kurian he has extended these trials to 12 months for all Oracle ACE Directors. Thank you Thomas.

When you get your DaaS setup you just need to configure your connection privileges, ssh, etc and away you go. All you need to do is to move your data across the internet to your own Oracle DaaS, and once it is in the DaaS all your OAA and other analytics is performed on the Database Server. Only the results are returned to you and displayed in your tool. This significantly reduces the processing time for your data and removes the need to constantly extract your data (in whole or in parts) to feed into other advanced analytics tools.

So if you haven't tried Oracle Advanced Analytics yet, then go ahead and setup your free trial of Oracle DaaS and try it out. You never know what you might discover by using Oracle Advanced Analytics (in the cloud)