ARtool Overview
ARtool is a free Java association rule mining application that is
distributed under the GNU General Public License. It consists of three
components:
- a set of Java packages:
- laur.dm.ar - containing association rule mining
algorithms and data structures.
- laur.rand - containing a few classes for generating
random numbers or making random selections.
- laur.tools - containing various useful Java classes, not
all of them being used by ARtool.
- a set of command line utilities:
- minedb - mines association rules on a specified database.
- gendb - generates a synthetic database.
- dbtool - provides several useful database functions:
checking integrity, displaying information, setting a new description,
etc.
- diffcache - compares the contents of two cache files.
- asc2db and db2asc - programs for converting a
database to an ASCII format and back.
- a Graphical User Interface built on top of the Java packages. This
provides a more intuitive interface for the mining process but there
are some functions that can only be performed by using the command
line tools.
While I have tried to provide an easy to use interface, ARtool is not
a program targeted to the casual user. To use it you should already
know or want to learn more about association rules. These help pages
provide a quickstart, but for more information you should read the
papers mentioned in the References section, as well as looking
over the source code for ARtool.
What ARtool isn't:
- a mining application capable of extracting association rules from
any database - ARtool works only on binary databases stored in a
custom format.
- an application for the casual or commercial user - I wrote ARtool
for myself and for other people with an interest in researching
association rules algorithms. ARtool is more of an educational and
research tool than a practical data mining application.
To find more about ARtool read the ARtool User's Guide section and
check also the ARtool web site:
http://www.cs.umb.edu/~laur/ARtool/.