Abstract: A system for optimizing the promotional sale of a product, a product segment, or a category which may take into account related products or competing products comprising means for generating a three-dimensional data structure corresponding to the sales history for a product, the data structure dimensions corresponding to an event type domain, a time domain, and a unit of measurement domain, means for populating the three-dimensional data structure, a neural network, means for training the neural network and means for applying sales objectives and constraints to the neural network.

Abstract: Data mining system including a user interface 102, a plurality of data sources 114, at least one top-down data analysis module 104 and at least one bottom-up data analysis module 104' in cooperative communication with each other and with the user interface 102, and a server processor 106 in communication with the data sources 114 and with the data analysis modules 104, 104'. Data mining method involving the integration of top-down and bottom-up data mining techniques to extract 208 predictive models from a data source 114. A data source 114 is selected 200 and used to construct 202 a target data set 108. A data analysis module is selected 203 and module specific parameters are set 205. The selected data analysis module is applied 206 to the target data set based on the set parameters. Finally, predictive models are extracted 208 based on the target data set 108.