It was a great opportunity to attend user forum and interact with the other SAS users. Many topics were shared and discussed during the breakout tracks session. Data Warehouse, 7 Effective Tips from SAS Users and Integrated Business Intelligence Platform were some of the talks i attended.

In Data Warehouse-an enabler talk, it can’t further reinforce the importance of understanding the organization and ownership of data, the needs of its users’ and the different functions in the organization. With the SAS security framework, the organization is able to control who accesses what data and at what period of time.

A couple of tips were shared amongst the SAS users. Tricks like cleaning up work area, storing processes and variables you need, IF statements, Macros- SYMBOLGEN, MLOGIC, MPRINT,  PROC SQL Processing feedback methods are some ways to running more efficient processes. Data quality checks have to be performed at the beginning of the process.

A scenario in banking on an Integrated Business Intelligence Platform was also being shared. It showed how SAS provides an integrated solution with office tools, scheduled processes to prepare the data for report generation  and dashboard and analysis.

Of course, the event doesn’t end here. We were introduced to the new SAS 9.2 with newer features and interesting add-ons like color-coded codes, debugging capabilities, KPIs, reverse impact analysis etc. We also saw  a presentation by Singapore Pools on analyzing Singapore betting behaviors using SAS tools.

And the long awaited SAS Scholarship presentation.

Presenting the SAS 2009 Scholarship recipients from SMU (left to right): Jonathan Khoo Kay Chin, Su Mon Kywe, Ji JunYao, Aditya Hridaya Misra, Jeetesh Karthik.

Congratulations!

It was indeed an insightful workshop that shared current research works, and also showcased how the area of data mining in user generated content is going to be a topic so exciting! Speakers spoke with much enthusiasm with what they have to share and are optimistic on how these works can be useful and practical in organsations.

This workshop had a balance of both theories and demonstrations of applications. We had distinguished guest speakers from universities and from SMU too!  Research works presented can be drawn back to some of the basic concepts learnt in one of our modules – Data  Mining.  (^_^)

Professor Bing Liu  from University of Illinois at Chicago to share his research work on a technique that is able to mine opinions, by capturing the target object, the feature to be analysed, the opinion and time. He has suggested a way of creating a data structure to organise data such that opinion mining can be conducted. His concept of Divide and Conquer proofs convincing and workable, no wonder he is so optimistic of his work.

Professor Aixin Sun covered the topic using the approach of existing platforms like Wikipedia, Yahoo! Answers and Epinions. Professor Jing Jing also covered the area of domain adaptive information extraction in situations where training data is not available for information extraction. Professor Ee-Peng Lim also shared his study on Ratings intelligence using web 2.0. and how his idea of bia-ness and leniency affecting user ratings is able to discover the user’s behaviors.

Audiences had the privilege to witness how opinion mining works in a real application. We had a budding start-up company JamiQ (http://jamiq.com/; http://blog.jamiq.com/), to showcase the company’s product that provides opinion mining and sentiment analysis service. The application is able to understanding the sentiments of a sentence based on the score it generates. For e.g, “I like the user-friendliness of the iPhone.” will generate a positive score of  “0.8″. This application has shown its potentials and how it can be a powerful tool in the area of marketing where businesses wants to understand the opinions of its potential consumers.

Another interesting research is by Data Mining Department at Institute for Infocomm Research, where they showed how data mining is being used to identify rising stars in organizations. In their research context where the bibliography networks is being mined, their algorithm uses the concept of co-authorship relationship and creating a human social network. A live demonstation was able to pull out the research works of a person in a database and identify if he is a potential hire in the company.  It was really an amazing application that comes with visualisation that really aids decision making, and the potential such technology in organisations.

Well, this is indeed another insighful seminar that was not to be missed!

The recorded video of the seminar can be viewed at: http://media.smu.edu.sg/sistalk.htm

Recently, the BIA SIG organised an industry with Mr Shanmuga Sunthar, Solution Head, from SAS being the guest speaker. The topics included the current job market for BIA Professionals and the growing industry of BIA and why companies are still investing in BIA Solutions despite the seemingly gloomy economy. The talk was followed up with a Second Major talk by Associate Professor Kam Tin Seong from the School of Information Systems and current Director of the SMU- SAS Enterprise Intelligence Lab (SEIL). For more information, please email to bia@smu.edu.sg.

The two day event conducted by the SAS trainer Mr. Ramashish Singh, benefited those who attended as we were able to gain a firsthand experience on the features of the SAS Intelligence Platform applications as well as to be able to seek answers from Mr. Ramashish Singh  for our different expectations for the applications.

The course was attended by various groups of people, from the School Information Systems staff, the current Students from the Masters program and selected Undergraduates. Each group’s expectations was different for the training session however the benefit of an overview course allowed everyone to gain as the knowledge learnt would allow individuals to make use of the platform for our project or teaching needs.

The course covered a comprehensive hands-on overview of the SAS applications available at the SMU Enterprise Intelligence Laboratory (SEIL) and usage on the following applications, SAS Management Console, Data Integration Studio, OLAP Cube Studio, Enterprise Guide and Information Delivery Portal. Each application has its own unique functions that are capable of allowing an individual to perform the specific functions depending on his/her needs. From being able to publish web information which would allow users to access information online, to perform analysis and create business views of enterprise data.

After the two day event, students were left with higher appreciation of the applications and the ability to accomplish certain tasks and navigate through the SAS Intelligence Platform.

On the 6th of May, SMU marks a milestone in developing it’s business intelligence & analytics capabilities with the launch of the SAS Enterprise Intelligence Laboratory (SEIL). Our team from BIA SIG was there to witness this event and together with the launch made our first official opening in the SMU community. The team will be working closely with the school and our mentor Dr Kam Tin Seong to promote BI within the student commmunity and also the use of the lab.