Amazon.com: Secrets of the Best Data Warehouses in the World: Rob Armstrong, Tom Coffing, Rolf Hanusa: Books

Editorial Reviews

Review
'...first common sense book I've read about data warehousing and applying computers to business....c -- Tracy Austin, VP, IT Development Harrah's Entertainment, Inc.

“Excerpts from the book were incorporated into our Company's Global Decision Support Strategy... -- Kevin Bubeck, Data Warehouse Program Manager Coca-Cola USA

Product Description
This book is a fundamental guide for executives and decision makers involved in a data warehouse. This easy to read manual puts the business user and the IT staff on the same page for data warehousing. It gives you the six foundations and principles to follow that are essential secrets at the largest and best data warehouses in the world. It also gives you the red flags and warning signs to beware of when implementing a data warehouse.

See all Editorial Reviews

Tag this product

(What's this?)

Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items.

Help others find this product — tag it for Amazon search

No one has tagged this product for Amazon search yet. Why not be the first to suggest a search for which it should appear?

Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store

If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store. Learn more

Customer Reviews

9 Reviews

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

Average Customer Review

3.7 out of 5 stars (9 customer reviews)

Share your thoughts with other customers:

Create your own review

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars This book is misleading, May 16, 2001

By	Julie Kimball (Boulder Creek, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Advice from real experts who are actually succeeding in DW, October 4, 2003

By	Daniel P. Baker (Effort of the Poconos, PA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Narrow approach and vendor specific, January 7, 2002

By	witgenstein "witgenstein" (Eugene, OR) - See all my reviews

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.