data mining

[THY02K]

Hi all.

QUESTION 1:
I want to know how Microsoft's data mining solution measures up to those provided by other vendors.

QUESTION 2:
OLAP/Analysis Service comes with Microsoft SQL Server. In addition to the regular data drilling and presentation/charting layer support, it supports two analytical components: Microsoft Clustering (Expectation Maximization) and Microsoft Decision Tree (predictive, classification).

QUESTION 3:
I have no experience with Oracle, PL-SQL, digimine, Cognos, SAS... Can anyone tell me how these products compared to OLAP that comes with SQL server? I know some applications are more specialized for a very specific purpose - clickstream for example.

QUESTION 4:
Software like SPSS, minitab. mathematica offers a whole bunch of analytical tools - from simple column average to clustering to regression. Does any of the OLAP solutions comes with these capability?

QUESTION 5:
What are the most important features that one can expect from a BI solution?

QUESTION 6:
general/specific comment, case studies/application, price and licencing cost estimates will be helpful.

thanks a bunch.

norm