Customer Reviews

Secrets of the Best Data Warehouses in the World

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

 

 

This book is more closely related to the NCR/Teradata approach to data warehousing than is divulged in the book and the authors' bios. It's a vendor specific sales tool masquerading as a book. This kind of "book" is what consultants might like to hand over with a sales proposal tucked inside to add legitimacy. I would suggest that any reader of this book read it critically in light of the NCR/Teradata connection given that the "secrets" are consistent with the NCR/Teradata approach to data warehousing, but not the wider world of data warehousing.

Too many professional books are written by "experts" with only a shallow understanding of what they're writing about.

"Secrets of the Best Data Warehouses..." is a happy exception. I'm a market analyst who tracks the telecom IT industry. I know one of the authors, Rolf Hanusa, has been the technical architect and driving force behind SBC Communications' enterprise data warehouse since 1993. And believe me, 10 years is an incredibly long time in the IT hot seat, especially considering the many failures in the telecom warehouse space.

In fact, the SBC Communications data warehouse is today's largest telecom warehouse with 10s of thousands of users and 35 terabytes of on-line data. Not only is the warehouse handling an average 100,000 queries a day, but it's steadily taking over the reporting functions of operational systems such as billing, provisioning, and finance. It's one of those rare cases where the textbook "one-version-of-the-truth" warehouse is actually working.

The "secrets" Hanusa et al. reveal are not technical tricks, but the guiding principles that make for a successful data warehouse implementation and on-going program.

If you're a technical guy looking for speeds and feeds, system diagrams, and hardware specs, this book is not for you. Instead, it's written for the executives and technical managers whose jobs are on the line when a data warehouse fails.

The book is written in plain English. Caricatures and analogies break up the text into bite-sized kernels. While it's an easy read, the book doesn't skirt the tough subjects. You'll get advice on things like: ensuring data integrity, handling the "query from hell", cost justifying the warehouse, central vs. decentralized structure, detailed vs. summarized data, and winning executive support.

Several of the reviews I read suggest the book is biased towards the Teradata warehouse. This is hogwash. Teradata is not even mentioned in the book, but the book *does* take the concept of a centralized data warehouse to heart. In other words, don't buy this book if you're building a case for a stovepiped data mart. This book advocates just the opposite.

I believe this book will only be useful to companies using NCR Teradata systems. The approach is very vendor-specific and uses methods that are most practical with NCR. If you want to learn about good data warehouses and such, you'd be better off looking at "Best Practices" presentations and papers at the Data Warehouse Institute.

An outstanding contribution to the Data Warehousing world. Who should read this book? Top executives ,directors and those who want a data warehouse constructed. Secrets of the Best Data Warehouses in the World focuses on good common sense and a logical approach to building a successful warehouse. To develop a successful data warehouse begins with the education of those funding and sponsoring it, and this book provides that education. As a warehousing professional and project manager, I have seen all too often the unsuccessful implementation of a data warehouse due to lack of commitment and a misunderstanding as to the rewards that can be reaped. Note to those who are engaging in a data warehouse project...buy this book!

At Harrah's we have a very successful data warehouse implementation called Marketing Workbench. During 2000 we began a large initiative to expand our data warehouse to other business areas. As we begin to work with a new area, we distribute this book to both the business users as well as new IT team members. The book is easy to read and provides a common understanding of key (& Successful) data warehousing principles.

Coffing, et al have written the definitive book on Data Warehousing approaches. It is true that the book appears slanted toward NCR's Teradata. However, the approaches and insights offered in the book apply across all platforms and vendors until you grow an extremely large data warehouse. Still think it's slanted? Read reports from Gartner, Mehta, and the other big consultants that cover general data warehouse approaches, and you'll see that Coffing, et al have the right approach. Once you do that, THEN you can go look for the right vendor. A Must Read for anyone interested in a non-technical view of data warehousing.

This is the first book on the subject that focuses on practical management advice as well as technical issues. It is also a quick and easy read.

Knowing that the authors included the technical architect for the largest data warehouse in the world (at SBC), I found that the experiences and advice carried much more credibility and applicability. My company and I are very interested in data warehouse development and will work to avoid the pitfalls laid out in this roadmap.

After reading this book and other Teradata manuals it seems very obvious to me that Teradata is just not suited for using BI Tools such as Business Objects , Cognos etc.Some of the observations are

1> Strong language and baseless disparaging remarks in Teradata books calling Datamarts as data junkyards , data basements giving examples that can be described as overly idiotic.

2> Strong support of views and not acknowledging that FACT that
less tables in a query means faster response. They actually propose a 5 table join over a 2 table join.

3> Lack of understanding of BI Tools and how they operate .

4> Teradata has painted themselves in 'Normalized' corner so much that it is too late for them to get anywhere, because they predate recent BI surge when normalized database design was the only known way.

5> It would be interesting to know what BI tools most of these 'Teradata Experts' use with a highly normalized designs that are proposed, as hand coded SQL seems the best thing for Teradata

6> Teradata is finally catching up with rest of the DB world with Join Indexes ( their version of materialized views) but it might be too little too late......

I have not read the book, but looking over the people who have reviewed it, could not help noticing the name Julia Kimball who has given only 1 star. Just wondered if any relation to the famous Ralph Kimball who is the data warehousing guru, also from Boulder CA. ?