Software

Preview of KXEN Version 3.3

This version is still in beta form, but I did get a preview of it. My initial impression is ... wow! When this version is released, it will provide the capabilities of a complete data integration and data mining workbench. Insightful Miner is the only tool that comes close. It will have many new tools to facilitate a full-range of data operations from legacy source systems to automated model scoring. The new ETL capabilities will work with most common databases to permit virtually anything you can do in SQL, but without the pain of writing the code. This ETL function generator is so strong, I can imagine that some of my old data warehousing cronies might use it just as a SQL front end. My favorite new tool, though, is a wonderful automatic iteration tool, which permits you find the minimum number of variables that produce above a user-definable threshold percentage of the total performance. For example, you can set the threshold to 98 percent, and it will find the fewest variables that meet the threshold, using one of several loss functions. I have spent many days performing this operation manually.

From DM Direct Special Report, March 28, 2006, By Robert A. Nisbet.

Click here to learn more about KXEN Version 3.3.