Customer Reviews

The Intranet Data Warehouse: Tools and Techniques for Building an Intranet-Enabled Data Warehouse

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If you are a Microsoft shop, this book is *not* for you. The book devotes only one thin chapter to Microsoft technologies, and that chapter is completely dated. I guess I should have figured as much, given that the book was published in 1997. Things have changed a lot with SQL Server 7.0, Office 2000, and Internet Explorer 5.0. A book just like this, except specific to the Microsoft platform and up-to-date, would be invaluable to me, but I'm sending this book back. For Microsoft shops, I recommend Kimball's books and "SQL Server 7 Data Warehousing" by Corey, Abbey, Abramson, Barnes, Taub and Venkitachalam. The latter is the only book I've found that tells you how to use today's Microsoft technologies to implement a data warehouse. It doesn't have quite as much as I'd like that is specific to intranet development, but it's the best book that I've found. Tony Rogers

Rick Tanler's "Intranet Data Warehouse" is well targeted for data warehousing professionals like me: stockpilers of expertise in the DW back-end issues that, up to now, have been critical success factors. We've been procrastinating dealing with the inevitable (and frightening) issues about making the these information services digestible to hundreds/thousands "real" people: casual computer users and other non-technical folks who have absolutely no interest in learning to use specialized OLAP or data mining tools. How can these services be packaged in a way that is gets managers to use them, and how can we as designers and architects engineer systems that address these requirements for extremes of ease of use and mass utilization?

Tanler suggests that its now time to address these issues head on. He introduces the concept of an Intranet Data Warehouse (a concept that has since been widely embraced by the BI community) and has written what many may consider to be the benchmark standard and high level blueprint for the Enterprise Information Portal (EIP).

I'd wholeheartedly recommend this book for data warehousing professionals seeking a view over the horizon to the age of mass utilization of BI tools , and those brave enough to begin to consider the technical implications of providing BI to Everyman.

"The Intranet Data Warehouse" might lead you to believe that this book focuses solely on data warehousing in relation to the web - don't be misled by that title - this book is packed with information covering the full spectrum of issues you want to read about.

Rich covers DW theory, implementation, and practice. The vision he articulates of a corporate "information factory" is perceptive of where DW'ing truly adds business value.

There is also an accessible but thorough discussion of architecture issues, platform pros and cons, and the leading DBMS choices in the market today. There is a particulary good section on the strengths and weaknesses of Red Brick Warehouse, and the special functions it brings to decision support databases.

Best of all, Rich carries forward his vision into a well-defined path to implementation, focused largely on the "big" issues you run into in real-world applications.

Last, he does a terrific job of explaining how to get all that information OUT and make intelligent business use of it.

If you are a Kimball, Inmon, or Hackney book owner, this is an excellent addition to that collection.

Steven Tracy October 1998