Multi-Relational Data Mining A Comprehensive Survey

Multi-Relational Data Mining or MRDM is a growing research area focuses on discovering hidden patterns and useful knowledge from relational databases. While the vast majority of data mining algorithms and techniques look for patterns in a flat single-table data representation, the sub-domain of MRDM looks for patterns that involve multiple tables (relations) from a relational database. This subdomain has received an increased research attention during the last two decades due to the wide range of possible applications. As a result of that growing attention, many successful multi-relational data mining algorithms and techniques were presented. This chapter presents a comprehensive review about multi-relational data mining. It discusses the different approaches researchers have followed to explore the relational search space while highlighting some of the most significant challenges facing researchers working in this sub-domain. The chapter also describes number of MRDM systems that have been developed during the last few years and discusses some future research directions in this sub-domain.