Technical Support

DALSolution for Windows 95/98 and Windows NT

DALSolution complements data collection and management systems.

How many mouse-clicks does it take to produce a table? In DALSolution – only two. Another click– displays a chart. Three mouse-clicks – copy your chart or table to a report. The questions and answers from your survey documents form the language of DALSolution’s data management. No technical terms. No “black boxes”. These features make DALSolution easy to work with and save time.

DALSolution processes and analyses both paper and digital documents

Besides questionnaires, DALSolution works with medical records and histories, records of scientific measurements, time series, and genetic sequences.
The software has a modern design, and supports all stages of survey document processing, from data input and import/export to analysis and report generation. It can be used independently, or as an analytical module within other systems for data collection and management.

Database integration, Tables and charts

DALSolution exchanges data in digital form with many software packages via import/export procedures. Most popular import/export formats are supported: Text (Windows ANSI, DOS and OS-2 (PC-8)), MS Access, MS Excel, dBase, Paradox, FoxPro, SPSS). DALSolution also supports convenient manual data entry.
With DALSolution, tables, and about a hundred various 2D and 3D charts and diagrams, are extremely easy to construct from any document subset.

The “gist” of DALSolution: Analysis of Rules

“If one action occurs instead of another, what will happen?” When you need to answer this and other similar questions, it is not enough to browse documents, or build tables and charts. You need rules.
Rules are conditional statements of the form “If something holds, than something else will happen.”
Rules are used for forecasting: “If something occurs, then something else should occur.”
Recommendations are derived from rules: “Do this, and the result will be such and such.”
Rules can explain what happened: “This happened because that occurred.”
Rules are latent in the data you analyze. You just need to find them. DALSolution finds the rules you need to solve your particular problem.

Example 1. A large wholesale company serving thousands of clients was carrying a heavy debt of unpaid invoices. DALSolution found a “critical day” (Friday), and helped identify the rule:

“If an invoice for any amount between 12.74 and 15 thousand dollars is submitted on a Friday,
the payment will be substantially delayed with 100% certainty”.

After the “risky” invoices were found, company managers started to focus more attention on these transactions, which decreased losses.

Where DALSolution is used

The combination of universality and ease of use makes DALSolution software beneficial for a wide range of users. These users include marketing and analytical divisions of corporations and banks, municipal analytical services, hospitals and medical centers, universities and research units, departments of social services and public health, sociological, marketing, public relations and political consultants.
Medical doctors use DALSolution because rules assist in the creation of diagnoses, drug use instructions, and treatment recommendations.

Example 2. 20% of patients in the “placebo” group recovered, while recovery of patients treated with Drug A was two and a half times greater, 50%.

The Student’s test showed that the difference was statistically significant. This type of conclusion is useful for science, but medical practitioners need rules such as: Treatment with drug A leads to recovery under conditions C, D and E, and to complications under conditions F, G, and H. DALSolution helps you find, examine and analyze such rules.

Example 3. Election campaign consultants are attracted to DALSolution because it saves time. The software provides fast data input from pre-election polling documents, facilitating analysis and drafting of recommendations on how to chart the direction of the campaign. When time is especially valuable, this approach is beneficial.

DALSolution helps find rules even where their existence is not obvious

In the financial market, this software is commonly used for marketing analysis of the clientele, and there are tasks where the analysis of rules produces unique results. Consider, for example, short-term forecasting of stock prices. Time series of stock prices look like the edge of a saw blade, with teeth showing price oscillation in time. By looking at price changes, an expert can sometimes detect smooth trends that appear on time intervals with tens or hundreds of observations. However, predicting what will happen tomorrow based on today or yesterday is practically impossible. For any two to three day span, the “sawteeth” of prices look completely random. Analysis of a series of examples with DALSolution showed that the observed price volatility is deceiving. It is difficult to extract non-random regularities from the noise of generally unpredictable oscillations, but they exist, and DALSolution enables you to find them.

Example 4. Within the period from January 1994 to June 1998, the following regularity held for the New York Stock Exchange:

“If today the Dow Jones index went down, and the relative increase in the price of General Electric stock was between 0.01031 and 0.01147, then tomorrow General Electric stock price will go up.”

This rule worked in 12 cases out of 13, i.e. with probability 0.92. The problem is in finding the bounds on the stock price dynamics leading to a reliable rule. DALSolution solves this very task. So far, this procedure provides timely assessment for financial analysts. However, it creates the foundation for a tool enabling stock traders on the NYSE floor to develop and use short-term forecasting rules in real time, when minutes and seconds do count.

Market segmentation

Analysis of rules helps find clients who prefer certain products or services. Using DALSolution, an investment and insurance company determined groups of potential clients likely to purchase particular insurance packages. Often, neural networks are used to solve such problems. However, the technology behind DALSolution is easier and more understandable. It is transparent in the sense that it does not contain mathematical “black boxes”, and results are easily tested and reproduced.

Independent expert inquiry

A group of independent experts conducted an analysis of DALSolution’s capabilities for solving marketing problems. The experts noted that the tasks where DALSolution is especially useful, include:

Market segmentation
Analysis of external factors affecting market conditions
Risk estimation in market decision-making
Evaluation of factors influencing market trends

The experts also noted the following advantages of the software package:

Only a short time is needed to master the software
Both experienced and novice users adapt to the software with equal ease

The analysis of rules is based on fundamental mathematical studies

Behind the apparently simple solutions provided by DALSolution software, there are decades of research from the best research institutes of the former USSR. First prototypes of the package were developed in the Research Institute of Systems Studies in the late 70s. DAL-related research by Russian scientist Sergey Chesnokov was supported by Academician Stanislav Shatalin (Gorbachev’s economics advisor during Perestroika), and by Academician Leonid Kantorovits, a famous mathematician and a Nobel laureate in economics.

Soon to come

A new version of DALSolution will be released in late 1999. It will provide for joint analysis of several related datasets. This release will introduce a new class of database management systems, combining the advantages of relational databases with the capabilities of the analysis of rules.
The coming versions will include a module for logical analysis of rule systems.
We plan to develop a series of products that will share underlying technology but target different market segments, different experience levels and different classes of tasks. Areas of first priority include medicine, marketing and sociology, special tool for web-based analysis, software developer's kit for third parties-vendors to help them implement DAL analytical capabilities into their systems.

New markets

The DALSolution software package at CeBIT99 represents the newest information technologies from Russia. Since late 1998, DALSolution has been available worldwide, from our partners in Sweden (www.itsv.com/itss ), USA (www.elzaresearch.com ), and Australia (FDavies@tig.com.au).