This document discusses data mining and the architecture of data mining systems. It describes data mining as extracting knowledge from large amounts of data. The architecture of a data mining system is important, with a good system facilitating efficient and timely data mining tasks. Different levels of coupling between data mining systems and database/data warehouse systems are described, including no coupling, loose coupling, semi-tight coupling, and tight coupling. Tight coupling provides the most integrated and optimized system but is also the most complex to implement.