1. A computer-based method for creating data mining task templates for utilization in data mining activities, said method comprising: receiving a task template for discovery of common patterns occurring within data mining events; creating example tasks from the task template by interpreting the task template with specific values of variables, wherein interpreting the task template comprises: creating a root element of a task from a root element associated with the task template when the variables are a collection data type; and generating attributes and child nodes of the task using the task root element and the task template root element, wherein generating attributes and child nodes of the task using the task root element and the task root template element comprises: looping through all the attributes of the task template root element; obtaining a list of text strings from a template string specified as a value of an attribute for each selected attribute in the task template root element; creating attributes using the task root element, an attribute name specified by an attribute in the task template root element, and the obtained list of text strings from the same attribute in the task template root element for each selected attribute in the task template root element; and creating child elements and text nodes using the task root element and the task template root element; running at least one of the example tasks; and refining the task template using results returned from execution of the at least one of the example tasks.
7. The method according to claim 1 wherein creating attributes using the task root element, an attribute name and a list of text strings comprises: if the list contains only a single string, creating an attribute for the task root element with a given name and the single string as the value; and if the list contains multiple strings, said method includes: removing the task root element from its parent element; looping through all strings in the list; and creating a new child into the parent task element where the new child is the same as the removed task root element plus a new attribute with a given name and a string as its value for each string in the list.