Customer Reviews

Building a Data Warehouse: With Examples in SQL Server (Expert's Voice)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A very hands-on book about implementing a Data Warehouse using Microsoft SQL Serveer 2005. In fact, it is a bit too hands-on in the sense that it guides you through all clicks and keystrokes but is rather thin and vague on general design principles.

The author has set out to write "a book containing all the essential subjects of building a data warehouse" (quote from the introduction). However, given the breadth of the material the author tries to cover (and given the sometimes annoyingly plentiful screenshots and SQL code) there is not enough room to give the necessary background and generalize the examples enough to be more useful than just that, examples.

For a much better attempt to cover both principles and a specific platform, a much better choice is The Microsoft Data Warehouse Toolkit (by Joy Mundy and Warren Thornthwaite), also covering SQL Server 2005.

For someone looking for just the practical part on how to use the Microsoft tools (SQL Server, SSIS, SSAS) to implement a Data Warehouse and already knows the general principles of data warehousing is probably better off buying a book or several books that cover just those specific tools.

I have read all the major DW books for sql server. All of them fall short in practicality. This book is deceivingly thin (500 some pages), but it covers all the practical side of building a data warehouse using SQL server 2005. The author's experience shows through his handling of many of the practical issues encountered in implementing data warehouse. This book has excellent coverage on ETL process, oftentimes list several alternatives that suited people from different background.

This book is a must read for anyone embarking on a Data Warehouse project or who wants to learn more about a particular aspect of Data Warehousing. The book guides the reader through the principles underpinning Data Warehousing, with easy to understand definitions. It gives detailed insight into the design, build & testing phases essential to any successful Data Warehousing project. It even covers reporting; including using the Data Warehouse for Business Intelligence and Customer Relationship Management. Throughout the book the author describes potential problems and gives techniques on how to overcome them.
There are tons of practical examples from an author who has a wealth of technical experience in this field.

This book is highly recommended.

I can tell - this author has built real data warehouses. This book has so many real world application concepts, distilled into less than 500 pages. I.E. it is not not a bible book, that which puts you to sleep, although it is a great reference book. It is Inmon and Kimball agnostic - huge benefit here. While the DW toolkit books are great, they are only great for Kimball warehouses. Being in the Inmon camp, I appreciate the authors' coverage of the concepts of the Operational Data Store, and Normalized Data Store. This book should be the first book you read in building a data warehouse. Although the specific sql code examples show SQL Server code, all concepts can be applied to Oracle, etc. Only a couple complaints. There is a lack of coverage for modeling localization, i.e. modeling for local language requirements of the users. The author should also mention that Data Modeling tools, such as ErWin, PowerDesigner (best IMO), or ER/Studio can really enhance metadata modeling, and documentation, although he covers metadata very well. That aside, I still give this book a 5 star rating, in lieu of all the theory books out there, which lack real world application examples.

An excellent book on data warehousing: well structured, methodical and didactical.
Assuming little knowledge on behalf of the reader it goes thru all the principles and down to earth examples related to building a state of the art DW: requirements analysis, the differences between transactional and DW systems, differences between the normalized models and the dimensional / multi-dimensional databases, extract-transform-load (ETL) as well as ELT, data quality assurance processes, metadata, architectural considerations, business intelligence applications, cubes slice and dice, analytical requirements, populating and testing a DW as well as maintenance and configuration changes.
The book is using a real life scenario of a large organization having multi-media stores on several continents as well as a web based e-commerce presence and provides numerous examples of MS SQL 2005 (which are supposed to be similar to MS SQL 2008).
The only disadvantage I found is that if one does not intend to follow the SQL as verbatim there are quite a lot of pages which do not contribute much to the reader. It would have been better if the SQL lengthy examples were left on the book web site for download.

Still - a great, easy to read book that will bring you up-to-speed on the subject of data warehousing without much pain of boredom.

This is a great book for folks who are hands-on and are not just looking for theoretical knowledge. Obviously this book was written by a doer who had many years of actual field experience. The book is full of extremely useful examples that can be followed step by step. It's also written in a way such that even data warehouse beginners wouldn't have difficulties following. The book covers all the basic premises of data warehousing as we know it today. There are some great topics talking about SOA, MDM and data warehouse integration.

I would definitely recommend the book to anyone looking to gain knowledge on data warehousing and SQL server data warehousing in particular.