6. The process of claim 1 wherein said business process problem is to predict future sales of each item at each store in a retail chain.
1. A process of transforming data residing in databases into forms suitable as input to data analysis tools, the process including the steps of defining a business process problem to be solved and identifying data requirements, the improvement of computer implemented method for automatically transforming data for use in data analysis tools used to build predictive models comprising the steps of: specifying by a database administrator database metadata information of data to be transformed, said specification encapsulating said database metadata information; creating by an analyst from said database metadata specification a mining transformation profile comprising a specification of key fields and desired data transformations, said specification being relative to said database metadata information and suitable for use by said data analysis tools to build predictive models; generating executable data transformation code automatically from the encapsulated database metadata information and the mining transformation profile, execution of said data transformation code producing at least one of said desired transformations aggregated relative to at least one of said key fields for input to one of said data analysis tools; and iteratively executing the data transformation code by said analyst to build a predictive model according to said data analysis tool, the model generating an output that provides a solution to the business process problem, the iterative execution by a computer of said data transformation code replacing repeated interactions between the database administrator and the analyst.