3
Using the OP Administrative UI

This chapter walks you through the administrative tasks of creating an RE Farm with one recommendation engine, building a package, and deploying that package to the RE Farm.

To perform these steps, you will need information that was established during installation and configuration, such as database and schema names and locations. If the OP Administrative UI isn't still up, bring it up by typing the following in the URL field of your browser.

http://<hostname-oracle9i>/OP/Admin/

where <hostname-oracle9i> is the name of the system on which Oracle 9i and the OP components associated with the database are installed.

Log in with a user name and password as advised by your DBA.

Create an RE Farm with an RE

The first step is to create an RE Farm. There are two ways to start:

• On the Home page, click the Create new farm link to bring up the Create Recommendation Engine Farm page.

• Click the Farms tab to go to the Farms page. On the Farms page, click Create Farm (lower right), which brings up the Create Recommendation Engine Farm page.

On the Create Recommendation Engine Farm page,

1. Enter a name for the farm.

2. Click Add Recommendation Engine.

3. On the Add Recommendation Engine page, enter a name for the recommendation engine.

   For the database connection details, you will need information that was provided during installation.

   • For Host ID, Port, SID, and Database alias, you will need the database information you provided when you installed the database.

   • For DB schema name, User name, and Password, you will need the information provided when you installed and configured the RE schema. The default values for these are RE, RE, and REPW.

4. After filling in all the fields, click Test Connection to determine whether the database connection is successful.

5. Assuming the database connection is successful, click OK (lower right), which takes you back to the Create Recommendation Engine Farm page, where you will see listed the recommendation engine you defined.

   Note: If you click Cancel instead of OK, the information you have entered is lost.

Create a Package

Next, create a package.

To create a package, you must have a connection to the MTR. If you do not have an MTR connection,

1. Click Options (upper right) and go to the MTR database connections section. The information needed for an MTR connection comes from entries provided when you installed and configured the MTR schema.

2. To check the database connection, click Test Connection.

3. Assuming the connection is successful, click OK, which returns you to the Create Farm page.

Now you can create a package:

1. Click the Packages tab, which brings up the Packages page.

2. On the Packages page, click Create Package (lower right), which brings up the first of three pages of the Create Package wizard.

3. Give the package a name (required), a description (optional), confirm the name of the MTR connection, and click Next.

4. Specify the settings to be used to build and tune the new package, and click Next.

5. Review the settings you have specified, leave the Schedule a build box checked, and click Finish. This takes you to the Create Build Schedule page.

Schedule a Build

On the Create Build Schedule page, select

1. Build as soon as possible.

2. Leave the Schedule deployment box checked.

3. Click OK. This takes you to the Create Deployment Schedule page.

Schedule a Deployment

On the Create Deployment Schedule page,

1. Select Deploy every time the package is built.

2. Leave the default for Frequency, Once.

3. Click OK. This returns you to the Packages page.

Summary

You have created an RE Farm with one RE, and you have created a package and scheduled its build and deployment.

Check back after a few minutes to see whether the package has yet built and deployed. When the package has built and deployed successfully, you can use it to collect data and make recommendations using the Recommendation Engine API.

MTR Sample

Next, browse the contents of the Mining Table Repository (MTR) database used to build the model. This is the prepopulated MTR that is installed when OP is installed if you select that option. This prepopulated MTR provides the data needed to perform the exercises described in this manual.

Use SQL*Plus commands to examine the contents of any of the database tables. The table below shows what part of one of the MTR database tables looks like. It contains movie ratings by customers, demographic data on those customers, an ID for each movie that was rated, the rating given the movie by the customer, and the data source type.

CUSTOMER_ID	ITEM_ID	ITEM_TYPE	ATTRIBUTE_ID	BIN_VALUE	DATA_SOURCE_TYPE
2	264	MOVIE	1	1	2
2	389	MOVIE	2	1	3
2	153	MOVIE	2	2	3
2	354	MOVIE	2	2	3
2	264	MOVIE	2	3	3
2	153	MOVIE	3	1	4
2	264	MOVIE	3	1	4
2	354	MOVIE	3	1	4
2	389	MOVIE	3	1	4
2	0	NONE	4	3	1
2	0	NONE	5	1	1
2	0	NONE	6	2	1

This sample comes from a large database table that contains movie ratings by customers, demographic data on those customers, an ID for each movie that was rated, and the rating given the movie by the customer. Table columns are as follows:

• CUSTOMER_ID:

• ITEM_ID: The ID numbers identify particular movies.

• ITEM_TYPE: Refers to kind of item being rated; here the type is movie.

• ATTRIBUTE_ID: Values 1, 2, and 3 are attributes from purchasing, rating, and navigational data; values 4, 5, and 6 are from demographic data, where 4 = age, 5 = gender, and 6 = marital status.

• BIN_VALUE: Ratings were binned into 3 bins; the values here correspond to those bins.

• DATA_SOURCE_TYPE: (what kind of data) 1 = demographic, 2 = purchases,
  3 = ratings, 4 = navigational.

For more information about the OP schemas, see the Oracle9iAS Personalization Administrator's Guide, especially Chapter 8.