Customer Reviews

Impossible Data Warehouse Situations: Solutions from the Experts

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
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More than anything this book helps you realize that you are not alone in your problems. I recognized (too) many problems in our warehouse project and the advice offered was helpful. The book is evenly divided into "impossible management situations" and "impossible technical situations". Ninety-one problems are presented, with common themes including tension between operational data and the warehouse, lack of clear business sponsor and clear requirements, use of consultants, lack of sharing of data and stovepipes, and quality issues in both the warehouse and the source operational data. Each problem is asked of the nine experts and the answers have a lot of redundancy, and occasionally interesting disagreements. In some cases I would have preferred the editor either integrating the answers or allowing a dialogue between the experts. This book does not present an introduction to data warehousing, and is most geared toward the data warehouse project manager.

I agree with the other reviewers, but I really come at this book from another angle. I see it as a comedy book. Having lived the Data Warehousing/Business Intelligence Architect life since, well, since before general industry acceptance of the term "BI", I have seen some pretty ludicrous situations. This book lets me know I'm not alone, it's not just my company, stupidity and politics is rampant everywhere. OK, OK, some of the situations in here are not that other-worldly, but those that are can be quite funny (assuming you're not the one faces with the problem). And it actually *can* be professionally useful to see the different approaches the panel of respected DW/BI pros advise to tackle the issues presented in this book. Some approaches you'll agree with, some you wont, but they should all make you think about how to best approach your unique situation.

If you're a BI professional, especially if you have management or project management responsibilities, buy this book. It might give you some ideas to deal with goofy political or business realities that threaten DW/BI implementations. If not, you'll at least find more than a few humorous situations that would resemble Dilbert cartoons if Scott Adams transferred Dilbert & crew to the BI Dept.

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I love the format. This format is very powerful because I can go right to the problems that are relavent to my company and review the suggested solutions. The suggested solutions are based on a lot of experience in the Data Warehouse field from a number of experts, not just one person. You can glean many good ideas from this book.

I have found this Sid Adelman book to be just as useful as his first book,"Data Warehouse Project Management", written with Lorissa Moss.

The increasing difficulties in achieving original results or, more likely, in developing non repetitive hints become quite clear in this textbook.
An averagely expert professional has happened to meet most impossibilities quoted in the book, and experienced how integration issues are often the synthesis of sociological, psychological, technical and economical facets. Unfortunately, the wider the scope an essay aims to, the more vagueness it risks.
Good writing, proper references and sound solutions are not enough to stand out against the equally good tens of publications available about the subject. Like as many of them, it becomes a very elegant source for material to speak ABOUT the work in data warehouse environment (a treasure for slide shows!), or that can be very useful to present the whole of it to a beginner, but carrying out an actual development is a different matter.

I enjoyed this book. We all hear about tough issues, but this book goes further and offers insightful opinions and sound advice. The format of the book makes it very easy to read. It's an interesting peek into the tough little realities that lurk inside data warehousing projects.