Customer Reviews

Data Warehousing with Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 Technical Reference (Microsoft Technical Reference)

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

 

 

This book has many useful examples and explanations about OLAP, ADOMD, and MDX. It also explains the basics of MS OLAP. However, the examples have many errors. Besides, if you are looking for depth, you will not find this book very helpful. The book is really designed for beginners who have little knowledge (or none) and want to learn about OLAP and the OLAP tools. These basics can be found in the online help and in the MSDN articles. If you want to learn about the cool functions in MDX and how they can be used to solve some of the drill-down and data presentation problems, this is not the book for you. I will have to give it only 3 stars because of the lack of depth and the errors in the examples.

This is an excellent book. It has three detailed chapters on MDX, good descriptions on how to build data warehouses with SQL 7, a discussion on DTS, and includes an introductory chapter on OLAP for those not familiar with it. Great chapter on optimizing a SQL DW, too. My only negative comment is that I found chapter 9 wasn't that useful, and read it after I read the other chapters. I also skipped the code sample in the appendix. Everything else in the book is good. I highly recommend the book.

I've actually recommended this book on two occaisions to OLAP beginners because it is the only book I know of that covers OLAP from star schemas to DTS to cubes to MDX to ADOMD. That is this book's one redeeming quality. So if you read this, you'll get a good idea of what is going to be involved in an OLAP project. But don't expect to learn much else, however. There is very little in this book that you could not learn from Books Online or MSDN for free. The book is riddled with typos, grammar errors, spelling mistakes, and technical mistakes. I wonder if the editors were paid--they shouldn't have been! Don't be fooled by the "Technical Reference" moniker at all--it is not going to be much help to a technician, especially one who has even basic OLAP knowledge. Bottom line: get this book for a beginner who needs a broad, sweeping overview. Beyond that, skip it and read the free articles in BOL, MSDN, and SQL Server Magazine.

goob this book is very good for cetifications