Customer Reviews

Data Warehouse Design Solutions

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
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If you do not have 'The Data Warehouse Toolkit' by Ralph Kimball yet, you may want to buy this book. The techniques and approaches discussed in these two books are almost the same. The way this book is structured is very much alike that of the Kimball's book. But I liked the fact that the chapters are dedicated to particular business areas, not particular industries. In the chapter about marketing you will find examples for three industries. I liked Chapter 13, 'Presenting Infomation' which is full of tips on effective reporting. I liked also the chapter on financial reporting which gives a technical reader basic ideas of what finance is about. You will learn about balance sheets, income statments, cost allocation from the point of view of a data modeler. Of course, the book has all the terms and techniques one has to know to successfully build dimensional models. I did not like though the last two chapters which deal with methodology questions. You will only get a slight idea about how to integrate dimensional modeling into your data warehousing project. You will have to buy one of those books on methodologies to get a better insight into the question. In general, the book is very interesting. I gave it four stars for minor flaws - no one is perfect!

The authors have written a stunning example of how to make complex issues simple for both newcomers and the experienced.

If you have no idea of what the problems are in a product or service fulfillment business or any other of a variety of industries, you can look them up here and get an overview of the problems and a simple design of a star schema that can help resolve the issues.

Invaluable for both IT types, Business Analysts and Consultants who want to get beyond the theory and into the real world.

Follows Kimball's teachings closely which makes the content even more valuable for those who use "The Data Warehouse Toolkit" as their bible.

What is great about this book is that it discusses design issues in the context of real and common business problems that data warehouses address. Most authors on data warehousing make abstract assertions about the strengths of data warehousing. This intelligent book gives the reader the material to make up his own mind as to what benefits data warehousing brings to a business.

This book provides down-to-earth models for star schemas. And with each example, the authors examines different approaches for designing the stars and later gives the pros/cons of each approach. A very good book. A must for anyone who designs data warehouse databases.

I highly recommend this book and I think that it's a very good complement to Ralph Kimball books. It's based on the same principles and theory, and expands the number of practical examples based on real industry implementation, so if you are lucky you can find many tips and data models that can be immediately applied in your projects.
You need to read the Kimball books first in order to fully understand this one, and of course some of the example are based on US companies, but most of the material can be immediately applied to other markets and Countries as well (like Italy where I work).
I think that the last chapters (13/14/15) which deal with topics like presenting information and the process to build a DW are a little less interesting, but they still contain some useful tips.

I highly recommend this book and I think that it's a very good complement to Ralph Kimball books. It's based on the same principles and theory, and expands the number of practical examples based on real industry implementation, so if you are lucky you can find many tips and data models that can be immediately applied in your projects.
You need to read the Kimball books first in order to fully understand this one, and of course some of the example are based on US companies, but most of the material can be immediately applied to other markets and Countries as well (like Italy where I work).
I think that the last chapters (13/14/15) which deal with topics like presenting information and the process to build a DW are a little less interesting, but they still contain some useful tips.

A great book full of relevance if you are implementing a data warehouse. It blends technical and business issues perfectly and provide advanced analysis of sophisticated applications

This book from 1st page onwards talks about Data Modeling issues for Datawarehouse in a mature way. Also covers an important issue of integration of datamarts.