Customer Reviews

The MicrosoftData Warehouse Toolkit: With SQL Server2005 and the MicrosoftBusiness Intelligence Toolset

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Excellent book for middle to upper management to learn the 10,000 foot overview of data warehousing. Reading this book can give you all the jargon you'll need to smooze your fellow IT personnel across a conference room table about data warehousing.

Unfortunately, I was looking for a book that would actually spell out HOW TO use SQL Server 2005 Integration Services and Analysis Services.

Perhaps, like me, you consider yourself a data warehousing professional with some hard-won expertise? Perhaps you too have stockpiled a number of assumptions about "what works" and "what doesn't" when it comes to building large, grown-up data warehouses? Candidly - for me - the "what doesn't" category - for some years now - has included the Microsoft SQL Server DBMS. This perception was shaped by some bad experiences - 100 years ago - with early SQL Server products. Beautiful interfaces and literature promising administration-lite databasing did little to instill confidence back then, and (in my unscientific survey) the products failed way too frequently (and sometimes in spectacular fashion) when dealing with data volumes larger than a breadbox. But, in typical Microsoft fashion, the shortcomings of these early releases get addressed - slowly yet relentlessly - over time. And I've known for awhile that I'm seriously remiss in having a second serious look at Microsoft's data warehousing suite.

Enter Warren Thornthwaite and Joy Mundy's terrific new book: "The Microsoft Data Warehouse Toolkit":

The clearly written and lint-free text describes the now-mature suite of Microsoft data warehousing technologies and tools in the context of the super-powerful Ralph Kimball design techniques that are now fully recognized as best practice in the field. Warren & Joy provide expert advice in how to leverage these tools to build industrial-strength, contemporary, end-to-end business intelligence solutions.

This is another home run from the Kimball Group.

None of the tough design challenges in the Kimball Toolkit series have been glossed over, and the authors are refreshingly candid in their advice on how best to exploit the MS tools' strengths - with pragmatic advice on how best to dodge their weaknesses.

The power of Ralph's design techniques, in concert with the undeniably compelling price/performance of the MS product line, is going to be very disruptive to the data warehousing status quo. I believe that we specialists in the field have a choice: embrace this new reality, or quietly fade away. Sadly, I'm in no position to retire yet, so I choose the former. The "Microsoft Data Warehouse Toolkit" has actually got me excited about building my first end-to-end Microsoft data warehouse. Given my historical biases - believe me - there can be no stronger endorsement!

Congratulations to the authors for a wonderful contribution to the field.

Jim Stagnitto
Data Warehouse Architect
Llumino, Inc. (www.llumino.com)

It should come as no surprise to readers of Ralph Kimball's work that this latest offering from two members of the Kimball Group is every bit as insightful, practical, and useful as previous books in the toolkit series.

This book is not another "condensed software manual" nor is it an idealized or theoretic idea of how someone thinks a project ought to be done. Rather, this book is "roll up your sleeves, hands on, this is how to make it work in the real world" kind of material from authors who have been there and done that many times over.

Experience is a dear teacher, especially in data warehousing, and Joy, Warren, and Ralph freely share their insights. At pertinent points, they provide pointers to external references for digging deeper. An example of this are the references provided on page 411 related to image density and information display. The companion web site already has several useful tools and the collection will likely grow in the coming weeks.

While this book builds on the previous Data Warehouse Toolkit, Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit, and Data Warehouse ETL Toolkit books, it is self contained and comprehensive. The previous books provide much additional detail of course. This book takes those ideas and shows us how to implement them using Microsoft's SQL Server 2005 suite of tools.

Instead of providing a bunch of disjoint "tips" or examples, a complete project is taken from start to finish to show how the design choices and strategies - based on requirements - lead to implementation choices and techniques and how all the components are brought together in a comprehensive end result.

The book hadn't been on my desk 30 minutes before co-workers were already trying to borrow it. I think they each need to buy their own copy!

This book brings together the Kimball Groups solid work around Dimensional Modeling with Microsoft's latest version of SQL Server. While the other books by the Kimball Group have excelled on explaining Dimensional Modeling, they often fell short in giving practical advice for implementation. For example the ETL Toolkit frequently used awd, sed, etc. - although often found in legacy systems these tools generally aren't the first choice when building a new DW. The Microsoft Data Warehouse Toolkit took the hit (chose a vendor) and uses SQL Server's Integration Services, Analysis Services, Reporting Services, etc. to build very practical and useful examples. And through excellent use of references to the other Kimball Group books and a `conformed' terminology approach this book serves as an excellent guide for building a Data Warehouse in SQL Server 2005.

Having spent more time doing data warehousing than reading about it, I didn't realize what a phenomenon the Kimball Method had become. I was interviewing with a company that mentioned Kimball and wanted to use his methods to build a data warehouse on SQL Server 2005, so I turned to Amazon, found this book, used my Amazon Prime to get the tome and got the job. So how was the book? Honestly, it covers the Kimball Method well and most experienced analysts will not find much new other than the jargon. The practical advice from Mundy and Thornthwaite is valuable and will help you make some practical decisions on implementation, if not spell out all the steps. My feeling was that if you are comfortable with implementing data marts or data warehouses, this book will give you the advice you need for setting up a SQL Server 2005 data warehouse and implementing Analysis Services. For a more in depth look at how to implement Analysis Services, I recommend Melomed's book as a follow on.

The only complaint I have with this book is it over sells SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) as an ETL tool. That is probably Mundy's Microsoft viewpoint speaking rather than actual experience with the tool. After using SSIS, I look at it as Data Transformation Services (DTS) with a nice face on it, but really its just lipstick on the same pig. I have picked up several books on SSIS to try find out how to do all the wonderful things it promises, but they pretty much echo the documentatiion, so I can't really recommend any of them.

Overall, this is book well worth reading. After spending the last year on an Oracle/Teradata project, its refreshing to get back to SQL Server 2005 and Analysis Services. If you are just making the jump to data warehousing on SQL Server 2005, this is a must read. If you are already familiar with Kimball, you will skip a lot but get some good implementation advice and that makes it worth the price. If you want to know more about MDX or SSIS, this isn't what you are looking for.

Absolutely loving the book! It's exactly what I was looking for... practical advice for applying the Kimball Method to the new SQL2005 toolset. Their experience with the toolset bleeds through the pages. (And how much experience they have with SQL2005 is amazing considering when it went RTM!) Highly recommended.

This is the first book I bought alongside with Data Mining with SQL Server 2005 for my first ever data BI project.

Having spent a few years designing and architecturing conventional database application, it has long puzzled me is there a framework available for people to build BI solutions? Or are there any process out there to build BI solutions? I also question whether the conventional wisdom in building OLTP DB apps apply to building BI applications.

With the Kimball Group name heard a few times when I was browsing thru datawarehousing books, I believe this group of people are the authority in building Enterprise grade data warehouse. True enough I learnt about Business Dimension Lifecycle that was production proven and how it is practically implemented with Microsoft SQL Server 2005. It is also one of the few books which introduce me to how to define a metadata model.

Last but not the least, the book presented an end to end overview on operation and maintenance of a datawarehouse. If you are a PM, architect, or developer who is try to get a kick on building BI solution on MS platform, this is the book you should read before anything else.

Basically, the kimball group , joined the book The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit (TDWLT) + MS BI Toolset.
Equally like in all the books of Kimball Group, does more emphasizes is the roadmap end to end for the solutions of BI.
This book in contrast to the TDWLT, does more emphasis on the skills related to the design and construction of the front-end of BI.
Finally it is a book more focused in methodology than in technology MS BI. For the technologies MS BI (Integration Services, Olap Services, Reporting Services),
I recommend to read any book of the series Wrox,these books have a more interesting practical approach. NSV (La Plata - BA - AR)

I have read a 100 pages thus far, and I will read the rest. The book continues to refer the reader to read "The Data Warehouse Toolkit" (Second Edition), by Ralph Kimball. I recommend purchasing the latter book. I have read it, and it is more helpful than this book.
TC

This is a very good book about the process of building a DW/BI application. It is not good for an example of how to build a DW/BI. In fact the examples they give I found to be impossible to follow. This book could have been much better if they had a solid example to follow their excellent process.