Forecast Model

Hi

I am new to Data mining in SQL Server. I am using SQL 2005 to create a forecast model for Product sales. I two fact tables that I am using. One has all the Orders historically with the line item details. The other table is a time dimension table which has the value of each of the time values referenced in the Orders. So the time dimesion has multiple values for one day as it goes down to the hour the order was placed.

Can I create a forecast using the time series algorithm in the Data mining module. When I tried to use this algorithm, I got an error that the time is not synchronized with starting series "Unknown" and I should try to set the missing_value_Substitution parameter to previous.

Can some one explain to me how this will resolve my issue. I read in one of the articles on Data mining that in order to use the time series algorithm , I need to have unique set of values for the time. Can some one help me with this

Thanks

AY

You should probably do some upfront data preparation before you build your time series model. Do you want to do a daily sales forecast per product? In that case, you should aggregate sales figures per item at that level.

If you have data for multiple products, then you have a series for each one and each series needs to have values for all time slices present in the data. For example, if you have daily data, you need to have a sales figure for each product for each day and all the series need to begin/end at the same point. The error you're seeing is due to this issue. Specifying MISSING_VALUE_SUBSTITUTION will allow missing data points for a time slice across multiple series to be filled in with the specified value.

|||Thanks for the reply. Yes it is a Daily Sales Forecast that I am trying to build. I will try your suggestion