Generally, data mining (sometimes called data or knowledge discovery) is the process of analyzing data from different perspectives and summarizing it into useful information - information that can be used to increase revenue, cuts costs, or both. Data mining software is one of a number of analytical tools for analyzing data. It allows users to analyze data from many different dimensions or angles, categorize it, and summarize the relationships identified. Technically, data mining is the process of finding correlations or patterns among dozens of fields in large relational databases.

Data mining consists of five major elements:

Extract, transform, and load transaction data onto the data warehouse system.
Store and manage the data in a multidimensional database system.
Provide data access to business analysts and information technology professionals.
Analyze the data by application software.
Present the data in a useful format, such as a graph or table.

Generally there is a large collection of data, but the term "Data" differs a lot from "Information". Data mining is the process of getting information from the collection of raw data. It simple tells the story from the term mining, mining gives the valuable things from some raw materials and data mining also analyzes the collection of data from different perspective and summarize into useful information. It allows analyzing data from different dimensions or angles.

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