We all have been to a supermarket at some time or the other. One of the prime responsibilities of the manager of the supermarket is to sell the highest volume of products and to achieve this goal, knowledge of the purchasing patterns of the customers is required. When we know what or how our customers purchase certain products, we can suggest them products that they might be interested to buy and reorganize the store so that the items most frequently bought together are placed together. The algorithm that will help us in this endeavor is the Microsoft Association algorithm.
The input to the Microsoft Association algorithm is often in the form of a case table and a nested table. The case table consists of a unique record of each customer, while the nested table consists of multiple rows pertaining to the items purchased by the customer. The MSDN article at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms175659(v=sql.110).aspx gives a detailed explanation of...