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Filter a Rule in an Association Rules Model

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Applies to: SQL Server 2019 and earlier Analysis Services Azure Analysis Services Fabric/Power BI Premium

Important

Data mining was deprecated in SQL Server 2017 Analysis Services and now discontinued in SQL Server 2022 Analysis Services. Documentation is not updated for deprecated and discontinued features. To learn more, see Analysis Services backward compatibility.

You can use filtering with association models to restrict the results to just the associations that interest you. For example, you might filter the rules to show only those that include a specific product.

In Data Mining Designer, you use the controls on the Rules tab of the Microsoft Association Rules Viewer to filter the rules that are displayed. You can also create a query on the model to see only itemset that contains a particular value.

Note

This option is available only for mining models that have been created by using the Microsoft Association Algorithm.

Filter a rule in an association model

  1. Open the mining model by using the Association Rules Viewer. To do this in SQL Server Management Studio, right click the model name and select Browse. To do this in SQL Server Data Tools, double-click the mining structure that contains the model, and then click the Mining Model Viewer tab of Data Mining Designer.

  2. Click the Rules tab of the Association Rules Viewer.

  3. Type a rule condition into the Filter Rule box. For example, a rule condition might be "Bike Stand", which also returns "Bike Stands".

    The Filter Rule text box supports regular expressions as defined by the .NET language. Therefore, you can use expressions such as the following: ((.Helmets.*Fenders.*)|(.*Fenders.*Helmets.*)). This expression would return any itemsets that include attributes with the words Helmets and Fenders, in any order.

  4. For Minimum probability, increase the value of probability to see fewer rules, or decrease the value to see more rules.

  5. For Minimum importance, increase the value of importance to see fewer rules, or decrease the value to see more rules.

  6. For Show, select one of the following options: Show attribute name and value, Show attribute name only, or Show attribute value only.

  7. For Maximum rows, increase the value to increase the total number of rules that meet the specified conditions, or decrease the value to limit the number of rules returned. Rules are ordered by probability, so you might eliminate additional rules that meet the specified conditions for probability or importance.

  8. Select or deselect the Show long name check box to toggle the way that the rules names are displayed.

    The rules are now filtered to only display rules that contain the indicated item. The filter condition applies to attribute values either before or after the rule delimiter, "->".

    Note

    The viewer caches the initial list of rules, based on a query to the mining model, and does not refresh the list of rules unless you change the conditions of the query by setting the maximum rows, the probability, importance, or the display of long names. Therefore, if you type a condition and the display does not immediately refresh, you can force the viewer to refresh the data by selecting and then deselecting the Show long names check box.

Create a query on the itemsets in an association model

See Also

Mining Model Viewer Tasks and How-tos
Browse a Model Using the Microsoft Association Rules Viewer
Lesson 3: Building a Market Basket Scenario (Intermediate Data Mining Tutorial)