Constraint-Based Sequential Pattern Mining: A Pattern Growth Algorithm Incorporating Compactness, Length and Monetary

Sequential pattern mining is advantageous for several applications. For example, it finds out the sequential purchasing behavior of majority customers from a large number of customer transactions. However, the existing researches in the field of discovering sequential patterns are based on the concept of frequency and presume that the customer purchasing behavior sequences do not fluctuate with change in time, purchasing cost and other parameters. To acclimate the sequential patterns to these changes, constraint are integrated with the traditional sequential pattern mining approach. It is possible to discover more user-centered patterns by integrating certain constraints with the sequential mining process. Thus in this paper, monetary and compactness constraints in addition to frequency and length are included in the sequential mining process for discovering pertinent sequential patterns from sequential databases. Also, a CFML-PrefixSpan algorithm is proposed by integrating these constraints with the original PrefixSpan algorithm, which allows discovering all CFML sequential patterns from the sequential database. The proposed CFML-PrefixSpan algorithm has been validated on synthetic sequential databases. The experimental results ensure that the efficacy of the sequential pattern mining process is further enhanced in view of the fact that the purchasing cost, time duration and length are integrated with the sequential pattern mining process.