European Project for Large Scale Data Mining

CRITIKAL, which stands for Client-server Rule Induction Technology for Industrial Knowledge Acquisition from Large databases, is a Pan European Project part funded by the European Community under the Esprit Programme, with a combined investment of $2 million (1.5 million ECU).
The partners in CRITIKAL:

Lloyds TSB Group - the major bank, UK
GEHE AG - the large pharmaceutical wholesaler, Germany
PAC - the Parallel Application Centre, UK
University of Stuttgart, Germany
XpertRule Software, UK

The basic premise for the project is the real business need for tools to enable in situ data mining against large databases in a client-server environment. The technological basis for the work of the project is XpertRule Software's mature, widely proven induction technology and its newly released XpertRule Profiler client-server induction technology which is aimed specifically at the data warehousing marketplace.

The objectives of the project:

Demonstrate the potential for adding value to the information assets of organizations in different sectors through effective client-server induction from large corporate data warehouses.
Develop and demonstrate an advanced client-server induction system capable of supporting efficient, effective data mining of large databases in business environments.
Generate prototypes of a series of enhancements to XpertRule Software's XpertRule Profiler product which are enabled by HPC (High Performance Computing) technology and which are commercially exploitable during the lifetime of the project.
Generate a body of large-scale data mining experiences, from both the financial and pharmaceutical wholesale sectors, which will form the basis for generic dissemination and specific marketing activities.

Product technology based on the results of the project will be rapidly exploited by XpertRule Software both during and after the time frame of the project. Products based on the software developed in the project will have the potential to make a significant impact on a huge world-wide marketplace which is eager to invest in demonstrable capabilities. The end-users will provide advice and guidance to XpertRule Software to assist the exploitation process.

The CRITIKAL project combines the technology and commercial exploitation capabilities of XpertRule Software, the HPC application enabling skills of PAC, the HPC research and the management decision support expertise of the University of Stuttgart, and the experience of two very different large database users - GEHE in the pharmaceutical wholesale sector and the Lloyds TSB Group in the financial sector.

The results of the two year CRITIKAL European project where presented on December 9th, 1998 at the seminar on large scale data mining at the Commonwealth Centre in London.