Taking a multidisciplinary user/manager approach, this text looks at data warehousing technologies necessary to support the business processes of the twenty-first century. Using a balanced professional and conversational approach, it explores the basic concepts of data mining, warehousing, and visualization—with an emphasis on both technical and managerial issues and the implication of these modern emerging technologies on those issues. Data mining and visualization exercises—using an included fully-enabled, but time-limited version of Megaputer's PolyAnalyst and TextAnalyst data mining and visualization software—give students hands-on experience with real-world applications.