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A thorough review of current mapping software, as well as the availability of Census 2000 data, became a compelling need for me late last year. I was hired to do what appeared to be a simple database project as part of analysis for an IPO (Initial Public Offering - i.e., new company stock sale to the general public).
But first some background. I began my career as a librarian just when Dialog, Westlaw, and LexisNexis were emerging as products for research. Soon after, personal computers became a professional tool. Does anyone recall the days of Wordstar, Lotus 1-2-- 3, and dBase II? Suddenly a new world opened for us. We were not just the users of large, mainframe systems regurgitating data. It was now possible to build our own, albeit modest, systems for data storage and retrieval.
In my career, I have turned the skill of library research to database development and data mining. Accurate, useful information has always been my passion and I have had some wonderful assignments. In each case, the projects typically involve research, data mining, and data manipulation: find the information, organize the data, and present it in a way that meets a client's business need. Here are some examples:
* Track good news/bad news articles in local newspapers on politically sensitive topics 12 weeks prior to an election.
* Analyze a COBOL program to determine which fields stored wholesale, retail, and dealer prices for vehicles and how it computed the calculations.
* Identify certain products in an accounting system, locate the cost, sales price, and salesperson data, and provide a report of product margins for each person.
* Write a program to import a telephone log file and identify patterns as to frequency of numbers call, dates, and times.
By comparison, this latest project seemed reasonably simple. Steps in the assignment were as follows:
1. Build an address file for specific type of business with numerous locations (e.g., dry cleaners, coffee shops, doughnut stands, gas stations, convenience stores, toy stores, hardware stores).
2. Designate the following on the file: major competitors, minor competitors, and target locations to acquire.
3. Place the locations on maps for major metropolitan areas to visually compare the major competitors' penetration in an area, the number...