The Data Warehouse Toolkit: Practical Techniques for Building Dimensional Data Warehouses [Paperback]

Ralph Kimball (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0471153370 | ISBN-13: 978-0471153375 | Publication Date: February 2, 1996

". . . one of the definitive books of our industry. If you take the time to read only one professional book, make it this book." -W. H. Inmon

One of the most dramatic new developments in database design, the dimensional data warehouse is a powerful database model that.significantly enhances managers' ability to quickly analyze large, multidimensional data sets. Written by the leading proponent of this revolutionary new approach, this valuable book/CD toolkit outfits you with all the nuts-and-bolts information you need to design, build, manage, and use dimensional data warehouses for virtually any type of business application, as well as software for querying dimensional data warehouses.

Employing many real-life case studies of data warehouses, Ralph Kimball provides clear-cut guidelines on how to model data and design data warehouses to support advanced multidimensional decision support systems. Beginning with the relatively simple example of a data warehouse for a grocery store, he progresses, step-by-step, through an increasingly complex array of business applications in retail, manufacturing, banking, insurance, subscriptions, and airline reservations. By the end of the book, you will have mastered the full range of powerful techniques for creating, controlling, and navigating dimensional business databases that are easy to understand and navigate.

On the CD-ROM you'll find:
* Software for querying dimensional data warehouses.
* Working models of all the databases described in the book.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Ralph Kimball's The Data Warehouse Toolkit translates the author's extensive real-world design experience into a truly useful guide to building data warehouses for today's corporations. Written in a no-nonsense prose style, the author gives developers and managers the basics of designing, building, and running data warehouses that are effective and useful to upper management.

This book begins with the fundamentals of what data warehouses are and how they differ from traditional databases used in online transaction processing (OLTP). (Basically, data warehouses look at trends in millions of database records drawn from across organizations.) Once the author establishes this foundation, he solidly introduces the issues of data-warehouse design, using samples drawn from a wide variety of industries, including grocery stores, inventory warehouses, shipping, financial services, cable TV subscriptions, insurance, and travel. The author succinctly describes the relevant "dimensions" of each industry. (These are the values or features that management will most likely want to track for each industry. The data warehouse must be prepared to answer these "questions.")

The last section of the book covers the process of actually designing a data warehouse, from conducting user interviews to planning for the hardware needed to run a data warehouse (where databases easily run in gigabytes and include millions of records). This text also includes a discussion of how to create effective front ends for users (which will report the results of data-warehouse queries).

For its scope and intelligence, The Data Warehouse Toolkit is required reading for any developer or manager who wants to get a perspective on data warehouses before building one. --Richard Dragan

Review

"Ralph Kimball provides clear-cut guidelines on how to model data and design data warehouses to support advanced multidimensional decision support systems. With Kimball's step-by-step instructions, readers will have mastered the full range of powerful techniques for creating, controlling and navigating dimensional business databases that are easy to understand and navigate." (Fatbrain.com; Ganthead.com, 9/01)

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 374 pages
• Publisher: Wiley (February 2, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471153370
• ISBN-13: 978-0471153375
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #532,403 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Ralph Kimball has been a leading visionary in the data warehouse industry since 1982 and is one of today's most internationally well-known speakers, consultants, and teachers on data warehousing. He writes the "Data Warehouse Architect" column for Intelligent Enterprise (formerly DBMS) magazine. Dr. Kimball's coauthors have each founded their own very successful data warehouse consulting firms: Laura Reeves of StarSoft Solutions; Margy Ross of DecisionWorks Consulting; and Warren Thornthwaite of InfoDynamics LLC.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An execllent book on Dimensional Data Warehouse Modeling, August 23, 1998

By 

Bipin Divakaran([e-mail] (Houston,US) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Data Warehouse Toolkit: Practical Techniques for Building Dimensional Data Warehouses (Paperback)

Kimball has done an excellent job by writing this book. You don't require any mentionable knowledge about data warehousing or dimensional modeling to completely comprehend this book. He has explained all of the concepts of Dimensional Data Warehouse with the help of real-life examples. Perhaps that makes this book so unique and pragmatic.It is easy to read and also chapters are well arranged to gain a very systematic progression of the subject. All the concepts are explained and postulated in the context of some examples. So don't plan to skip any chapters. That doesn't work with this book.

I would recommend this book, to anybody who wants to practice DDW, as the first book to be read on the subject to gain most.

Because of its entirely example-based approach, the book may not be of much use in an exclusive conceptual/academic perspective.

The only omission I have noticed in this book is, it doesn't speak much about data extraction complexities. Even though Kimball dedicates a few pages towards the end of the book for this purpose, it is largely insufficient and gives no worthful advice to a practioner of data extraction process. So if you are looking for a solution to your data extract nightmare, this book is of little use.

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best choice for beginner, December 20, 1999

By 

Andris Rozenbahs - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Data Warehouse Toolkit: Practical Techniques for Building Dimensional Data Warehouses (Paperback)

This book is writen in very good language and very easy to understand. For the beginner it's the best choice, but for the advanced project manager or system analyst i will recommend other one from R. Kimball : The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit. Thanks to Ralph and to their team - it's one of the best books about DW in the market.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Second Time is Charmed, December 2, 1999

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Data Warehouse Toolkit: Practical Techniques for Building Dimensional Data Warehouses (Paperback)

A good book, but a bit tough reading, especially when you get to the examples and building of fact tables and dimensions. I would suggest reading the content and skipping the examples the first time and the read the entire book. It helped to have that understanding first. A few of my colleagues have put the book aside for lack of wanting to "Plow through" the examples. I managed to read through the book this way in a matter of a few days. It helped to clarify what pieces I was missing ans strengthened what I knew.