Web Farming for the Data Warehouse (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems) [Paperback]

Richard D. Hackathorn (Author)

Book Description

Series: The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems | Publication Date: November 13, 1998

Web Farming is an exciting new area emerging out of data warehousing and web technology. It is defined as systematic business intelligence by farming the information resources of the Web. The objective is to enhance the contents of a data warehousing system. Data warehouses are usually based upon the contents of internal operations databases. With Web Farming, the focus can be balanced with external business factors, dealing moment by moment with global changes in the business environment.

Instead of surfing the Web haphazardly or gathering massive search results, Web Farming concentrates on an evolutionary process to systematically discover, acquire, structure, and disseminate content, constantly guided by business-critical intelligence to the enterprise. A four-stage methodology is suggested, along with growth strategy in the supporting architecture. Extensive coverage of standards, tools, and resources for Web Farming is given, along with an in-depth discussion of the important societal issues of privacy, confidentiality, intellectual property, and information espionage.

This is the first book that focuses on the critical features of Web Farming. This book will appeal to both a technical and business audience. The technical audience is anyone interested in the use of Web technology for data warehouse development, including corporate IT professionals, database administrators, network administrators, and all others who are responsible for data warehouse and data mining. The business audience is anyone interested in establishing effective business intelligence, such as strategic planners, business development managers, competitive intelligence analysts, and market researchers.

* Discusses the issues surrounding the requirements and benefits of web farming in business, as well as the practical issues of software tools, techniques, and standards that provide a wealth of knowledge for the database professional
* Provides a discussion of methodology and architecture required to successfully implement web-farming techniques
* Includes access to author's resource center for web farming which is updated on a regular basis and provides links, references, reviews for relevant software and software tools, and colleague interaction.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In Web Farming for the Data Warehouse, author Richard D. Hackathorn applies his 30-plus years of information expertise to the novel concept of "Web farming." He lays out the methodology of cultivating the global Web for information relevant to an enterprise's operation. Although this title is targeted at information managers in large organizations, the basic ideas contained within can easily be applied to businesses of all sizes to some degree.

The first part of the book, aptly titled "Plowing the Soil," presents the importance of gathering information to build institutional knowledge for competitive reasons. The author explains how Web farming fits in with the more established concept of data warehousing and emphasizes the way high-capacity information gathering can change business processes.

In the central portion of the book, the author explains the process of moving an organization to Web farming from both technological and managerial perspectives. Then he gets into the details, explaining all of the related Internet standards, information tools, and online databases waiting to be tapped. This section is amazingly comprehensive.

The book finishes with a discussion of privacy and the effects of new information technology on society. If you're interested in Web farming or simply want a taste of where the Internet is likely to take us, this title is sure to provide a fresh perspective. --Stephen W. Plain

Review

"Frankly, the book is ahead of its time. I think that not only will it help readers think outside the proverbial box, but also give them the roadmap for implementing their own Web farming."
—Karen Watterson, data and knowledge warehouse design consultant

"What makes this book doubly useful, aside from the easy to read writing style, is that Richard has melded together the three biggest trends in our industry into a single strategy. Combining the internet, data warehousing, and knowledge management into one vision, Richard gives us insight into the next wave that will crash upon the industry ... I've been preaching this message to our customers only to find someone has written an entire book on it!"
—Dan Graham, Strategy & Solutions Executive, IBM Global Business Intelligence Solutions

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann; 1 edition (November 13, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1558605037
• ISBN-13: 978-1558605039
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,200,418 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Toward a deeper level of understanding, May 29, 2000

By 

Jim Stagnitto (New Hope, PA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Web Farming for the Data Warehouse (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems) (Paperback)

Those of us that build Data Warehouses and Business Intelligence systems for a living have, for too long, focused on the analysis of internal corporate performance indicators, and short-changed the integration of external information that provides the context that leads to knowledge. Yes, we can report units sold, costs and profits, perhaps even ROI; but we have not done all that we can do to describe the relationship between these things and the theatre in which we operate: the stock market, interest rates, monetary exchange rates, the weather, political events, disasters, changing laws and regulations, new competitors appearing and old competitors dying off, etc., etc.

In short, we've been pretty good at answering "what" is happening within our organizations, but not so good at answering "why".

How best to remedy this? Richard Hackathorn does the industry a huge service by describing, in the most pragmatic way, why it is a good idea to take the acquisition and integration of external information with our operational business data very seriously, and he provides a number of pragmatic techniques for exploiting the expanding resources available on the Internet for precisely this purpose.

This is really quite exciting stuff - and my company, along with (I suspect) many others, has actually evolved its business model in order to more fully embrace the potential of some of the ideas expressed within this excellent book; I'm not sure that a more positive endorsement is possible.

Jim Stagnitto
Llumino, Inc.
www.llumino.com

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Guide to exploiting the Web as an information resource, April 18, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Web Farming for the Data Warehouse (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems) (Paperback)

Web Farming is a vital source of information about making intelligent use of the Web. The author (Richard Hackathorn) is a recognized expert in enterprise computing and middleware. He provides a roadmap for farming the Web to feed data warehouses -- planning, building the infrastructure, identifying information sources, extracting data, analyzing it, and presenting information.

Although Hackathorn co-authored Using the Data Warehouse (Wiley) with Bill Inmon, Web Farming is more than a data warehousing text. This book explains content-providers, protocols, standards, tools, discovery services, knowledge management, Web agents, and data mining software. It is a "must-read" for anyone who wants to exploit the potential of the Web as a virtual library and information delivery service.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book on an Important Subject, November 24, 1998

By 

Christopher Ryan ([e-mail]) (Colorado Springs, Colorado) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Web Farming for the Data Warehouse (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems) (Paperback)

Dr. Hackathorn's new book on web Farming is an important look at the merger of two major technologies - data warehousing and the World Wide Web. Readers will see the enormous value that can be gained from a systematic approach to collecting web information. Hackathorn's writing style makes the subject understandable to both the business manager and IT professional. The extensive list of resources is helpful to those who wish to quickly implement Web Farming systems.