Data mining is within the “Data Warehousing” a systematically use of methods what are mainly baized on statistics as well as mathematics to identify patterns (hidden, predictive information) in databases. Data mining tools work very efficiently with large databases but they are also used for smaller databases. The tools are just extracting knowledge instead of creating it.

• OLAP can only answer questions you are certain to ask
• Data mining answers questions you don't necessarily know you should ask