A preionization device for a gas laser comprises an internal preionization electrode having a dielectric housing around it and an external preionization electrode displaced from the dielectric housing by a small gap. Preferably, the present invention enables the QOS for the user application to be determined by setting a plurality of such parameters for a specific AAL2 CID. The integration allows direct conversion of data values from the relational database to data mining identifiers used for data mining operations by the data mining engine, and vice-versa.