Mining Sequential Patterns With Constraints In Large Databases

Abstract

Constraints are essential for many sequential pattern mining applications. However, there is no systematic study on <i>constraint-based sequential pattern mining</i>. In this paper, we investigate this issue and point out that the framework developed for constrained frequent-pattern mining does not fit our missions well. An extended framework is developed based on a <i>sequential pattern growth</i> methodology. Our study shows that constraints can be effectively and efficiently pushed deep into sequential pattern mining under this new framework. Moreover, this framework can be extended to constraint-based structured pattern mining as well.