An Architecture for Advanced Services in Cyberspace Through Data Mining: A Framework With Case Studies in Finance and Engineering

Abstract

The proliferation of online databases has led to a dramatic increase in the availability of services provided through the Internet. To date, however, online services have largely taken the form of supplying basic data or information on an "as is" basis. This is exemplified by the provision of magazine articles or stock prices in electronic form. The deployment of data mining tools, however, promises a new level of utility to harness the ocean of online data, to filter basic information, and to generate new knowledge. In this article, I present a generic architecture for constructing intelligent systems to provide knowledge-based services in cyberspace. The heart of the architecture consists of data mining tools to provide advanced services on the Internet. The ideas are presented through case studies in forecasting interest rates and in configuring personal computers.