Data View node

Use the Data View node to include data defined in an IBM® SPSS® Collaboration and Deployment Services analytic data view in your stream. An analytic data view defines a structure for accessing data that describes the entities that are used in predictive models and business rules. The view associates the data structure with physical data sources for the analysis.

Predictive analytics requires data organized in tables with each row corresponding to an entity for which predictions are made. Each column in a table represents a measurable attribute of the entity. Some attributes may be derived by aggregating over the values for another attribute. For example, the rows of a table could represent customers with columns corresponding to the customer name, gender, zip code, and the number of times the customer had a purchase over $500 in the past year. The last column is derived from the customer order history, which is typically stored in one or more related tables.

The predictive analytic process involves using different sets of data throughout the lifecycle of a model. During initial development of a predictive model, you use historic data that often has known outcomes for the event being predicted. To evaluate the model effectiveness and accuracy, you validate a candidate model against different data. After validating the model, you deploy it into production use to generate scores for multiple entities in a batch process or for single entities in a real-time process. If you combine the model with business rules in a decision management process, you use simulated data to validate the results of the combination. However, although the data that is used differs across the model development process stages, each data set must provide the same set of attributes for the model. The attribute set remains constant; the data records being analyzed change.