The subject invention leverages scaleable itemsets and/or association
rules to provide dynamic adjustment of memory usage. This allows the
subject invention to provide association rules and/or itemsets with the
highest support while utilizing a bounded amount of memory. Thus, a data
analysis system and/or method utilizing the subject invention can
self-adjust to provide the best association rules and/or itemsets based
on available system resources. One instance of the subject invention
employs dynamically adjustable minimum support values for data itemsets
and/or association rules to facilitate in compensating for memory
availability. In yet another instance of the subject invention a prefix
tree data structure is utilized to facilitate in constructing itemsets.
Memory utilization is then adjusted via pruning and/or reallocation of
counter vectors and/or pointer vectors and/or reallocation of nodes of
the prefix tree data structure for scaleable data itemsets and/or
association rules.