Oracle 9iR2 data Mining for newbie

I'm in charge of starting a datamining project( best to use Oracle 9i native mining capabilities), even with years of experience of Oracle DBA and developer, I have never done any data mining before, so any suggestions and hints are greatly appreciated.

Q1: How useful is Oracle data mining tools ?

    It has a Java API and some mining models, is it easy     to use?
    what we are trying to do is trying to predict inventory numbers     down the road of 2 months, 4 months, 6 months...      also predict hot sale items, hot sales periods..... Q2: I learned Statistics while at school ( years ago), what else   should I know to start a mining project? Q3: can I use the production database for mining also?

Regards,

sean chang

-----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =----- http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! -----== Over 100,000 Newsgroups - 19 Different Servers! =----- Received on Thu Dec 11 2003 - 15:49:19 CET