Data analysis and mining environment: a distributed intelligent agent technology application

There is a tremendous explosion in the amount of data that organizations generate, collect and store. Managers are beginning to recognize the value of this asset, and are increasingly relying on intelligent systems to access, analyze, summarize, and interpret information from large and multiple data sources. These systems help them make critical business decisions faster or with a greater degree of confidence. Data mining is a promising new technology that helps bring business intelligence into these systems. While there is a plethora of data mining techniques and tools available, they present inherent problems for end-users such as complexity, required technical expertise, lack of flexibility and interoperability, etc. These problems can be mitigated by deploying software agents to assist end-users in their problem solving endeavors. This paper presents the design and development of an intelligent software agent based data analysis and mining environment called IDM, which is utilized in decision making activities.