Applications and Trends in Data Mining

The advent of Computing Technology has significantly influenced our lives and two major impacts of this effect are Business Data Processing and Scientific Computing. During the early years of the development of computer techniques for business, computer professionals were concerned with designing files to store the data so that information could be efficiently retrieved. There were restrictions on storage size for storing data and on the speed of accessing the data. Needless to say, the activity was restricted to a very few, highly qualified professional. Then came an era when Database management System simplified the task. The responsibility of intricate tasks, such as declarative aspects of the programs was passed on to the database administrator and the user could pose his query in simpler languages such as query languages. Thus almost any business-small, medium or large scale began using computers for day-to-day activities.

Now, what is the use of all this data? Up to the early 1990’s the answer to this was “NOT much”. No one was really interested in utilizing data, which was accumulated during the process of daily activities. As a result of a new discipline in computer science, Data Mining gradually evolved.