Customer Reviews

Microsoft OLAP Unleashed with CDROM

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

 

 

I have finally found a comprehensive book for OLAP solutions. I have read several good books that deal either exclusively with OLAP or exclusively with data warehousing. This book touches on all aspects.

And FINALLY, some examples and explanations on how to use the advanced aspects of DTS. I have been unable to find this anywhere else.

I also liked the fact, that although more detail was neeeded in some areas, it managed to touch on a large amount of all the aspects involved with OLAP and SQL.

While at times, it was a little too technical for me, and other times a little too general, this is by far the best book on SQL and OLAP I have come across yet.

I highly recommend this book for those who need a fairly complete reference to SQL/OLAP.

I have several books on data warehousing and OLAP, most of which I find to be too theoretical and lacking the basic recipes and plans for developing OLAP cubes. I found this book's descriptions and strategies for multidimensional modeling to be excellent.

This book also provides the best published information on DTS that I have found.

I read this book and the Wrox book on MS OLAP. The two books seem to complement each other with some overlaps of course. While this book has many good exmaples on DTS, MDX, and client access to OLAP data, the Wrox book is more organized and has better discussions of OLAP cubes and other aspects of DW as well as a better coverage of MDX. Maybe it is crazy, but it would have been a good idea if the authors of both books combined their efforts and produced one book (wishful thinking).

Admittedly not the most strightforward subject matter, but this book has too many serious problems. Errors in the code examples, code fragments that don't represent one complete task, etc. OK if you want a high level overview, but a code reference- NO WAY.

We've been waiting a long time for a truly good book on DTS and OLAP. It is finally here. My only wish is that there were two books instead of one. One book should have been called Microsoft DTS Unleashed and the other should be called Microsoft OLAP Unleashed with more OLAP discussion/examples content.

I see some poor ratings for this book. If you want a reference to ADO MD and DSO or a how-to program step-by-step, buy another book and specify how you tried to use the book in your review. In reading the reviews I almost did not buy this book, luckily I was in a hurry when I ordered and left it in my basket.

My responsibility is to assist clients in their implementation of OLAP solutions. I recommend the purchase of this book to all of my clients since I have read it. If you want to hand just one book to any computer professional who does not know OLAP, this has got to be it. Advanced Analysis Server knowledge will come from time and experience, but all of the fundamentals (DTS, Data Warehousing, Schema Types and implementation, performance issues, .mdx language basics, DSO basics and the use of .mdx in Excel) are all there, easily understandable and will provide a foundation for future growth. I strongly recommend this book, and the only reason I give it a 4/5 is because it suggests it will help you build an OLAP application, however it only introduces you to the concepts of application development for OLAP.

Covering the whole Data Warehousing process: Data Transformation, Creating Cubes, and the Olap front-end tools, this book explains all this subjects in a straight and clear way. The authors have a practical approach. The controversial issues are mentioned and soon pointed to other reference books, but they allways show their favourite solutions and the reasons driving them. It's a real and useful handbook for building Data Warehouse using Microsoft tools.

I was pretty disappointed with the material in this book. It was basically a re-hash of the microsoft documentation and it doesn't go into any depth.