E-Data: Turning Data Into Information with Data Warehousing

Ms. Dyche has managed to do the impossible by writing a book that will appeal equally to business and technical folks. More importantly, she uncovers the real business value of data warehousing, as well as exposing the technical issues surrounding their design, implementation and ongoing management. And she does it through engaging writing that makes it impossible to put the book down. I read (devoured) this book in a single [long] evening, dwelling on every fact and marvelling at the width and breadth of the author's knowledge and experience.She begins by explaining in simple, but not condescending terms, what a data warehouse is, its value to business, and key objectives of data warehousing. While I admired her ability to describe complex facts in clear terms, I especially enjoyed the list of trite data warehousing aphorisms. Mr. Dyche's style is to always provide balance. She comes across as passionate about every topic, but is equally quick to show the darker side of things. This she does throughout the book, and it is one reason why this technical book is such a page-turner. The next chapter is a thorough discussion of decision support that covers the mechanics, and provides illustrative examples that transform concepts and theory into the practical and achievable. Chapter 3 is devoted to the topics of data warehouses and database marketing. This is where Ms. Dyche skillfully ties together the business and technical aspects. She also provides the most complete explanation of what exactly customer relationship management it (the term is so bandied about these days that most people have no idea what it really means). This chapter provides excellent material for marketing and MBA types, and will hopefully provide IS/IT folks with ideas on how data warehousing initiatives support business processes. The case studies in this chapter reinforces key points of facts and discussion, and also showed the bridge that needs to be built between IS/IT and business process owners. I came away with this chapter feeling as though I had a mandate to build such a bridge.The next chapter, 4, is a panoramic view of how various industries use data warehousing to their advantage. Ms. Dyche recommends that you read them all because you'll learn much by looking beyond the borders of your own industry segment, and I completely agree with her. I couldn't resist jumping to the telecom industry first, though, and was astonished at not only how well Ms. Dyche understood and articulated the issues, but in how well they were presented in 9 pages. She gave the same thorough and insightful treatment to retail, financial, transportation, government, health care, insurance and entertainment (although the page count varied from one industry to another). Chapter 5 delves deeper into the technology and can be easily understood by IS/IT folks who may not be data warehouse experts, as well as business process owners who don't want to be experts, but may be interested i

I consider myself a data warehouse expert (or at least the end-users that I support consider me one!), but I like this book for its clear explanations of terminology and concepts that I must have run into hundreds of times but probably couldn't explain to save my life (i.e. "affinity analysis"). I already understood quite a bit of the material in this book, but credit Ms. Dyche for presenting it in a fresh and un-jaded way. I ended up buying 14 copies of this book for my end-users (who I imagine are its target audience), and they each got something out of it. e-Data fulfills its intended purpose.

Yes, the author has a funny streak and the book is well-written, but the book's real value is in its case studies. I'm sick and tired of books whose "case studies" cite widely-known or already-published company stories. The author has actually interviewed key data warehouse users, and it's interesting to read about what Sears, Charles Schwab, BofA, and Allsport.com are doing with their data warehouses.

I learned a lot from this book..it was very timely for me and my company. I particularly liked the chapter on Data Warehousing. By industry, which reviews each industry and how it's using data warehousing for different business purposes. I work in banking and the financial services section was very up to date. I also liked the author's writing style. I bought the book for the industry and CRM chapters, but ended up enjoying the whole thing.

From the book's examples, it's clear that Ms. Dyche not only knows alot about database marketing, but about the technologies necessary to make it work. I bought this book to give to my non-techie boss, but ended up reading it cover-to-cover.