Project Title: Mining for data in a large database

The Challenge

Among business intelligence technologies, data mining has become indispensable in many industries. In wireless operators’ practice, it is not uncommon that an individual subscriber or an organization signs up for multiple accounts. Ability to identify subscribers with multiple accounts helps better handle delinquency in payment of monthly charges. Should one account of a person or a business go delinquent, there is a good chance that the others will follow suit. Finding and identifying such accounts in a database may be far from trivial because subscribers sometimes sign up under different mailing addresses, use alternate spelling of their names, and provide different contact phone numbers. Artezio inked a deal with an international consulting company to develop a system for searching a customer database of a large European wireless provider to identify subscribers with multiple accounts.

The Solution

An estimated count of records in a customer database was measured in millions. A must-have feature of the system was that queries returned results fast, so system architecture and database structure were optimized for speed. An important requirement was zero tolerance for commission errors in search results, e.g., confusing two subscribers who were twins was a taboo. The application processed name and address data recorded in several European languages using various character sets and ran on several operating system platforms including Microsoft Windows 2000/XP, Linux, and HP-UX 11i. A Web interface provided access to the duplicate account search tool across company intranet for users in various departments including billing, collection and marketing. A command line search utility supported batch mode search functionality.
A full-featured version of the system included support of multiple customer databases per one system installation, customization of record matching rules, customizable plug-ins for various data and system configuration formats, and user-defined algorithms for standardizing customer data and transforming it to special simplified codes needed for matching rules to work. The tool was designed to integrate with a corporate SAP R/3 system, so that SAP users could directly submit queries to search for duplicate subscriber accounts, update records, and insert new ones. System installation and setup was made user-friendly and was accomplished by a GUI installer that had a similar look and feel on each of the supported operating system platforms. The system allowed an easy customization of its Web interface.

Tools and Technologies

• C++
  
• CORBA (omniORB broker)
  
• Oracle 9i Database
  
• Oracle Call Interface
  
• Apache HTTP Server
  
• Python 2.2
  
• Microsoft Windows 2000/XP
  
• Linux Red Hat 7.2
  
• SUSE Linux 9.0 Professional
  
• HP-UX 11i
  
• Plug-ins

Related links

http://www.artezio.com/experience/casestudies/telecommunications/

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