The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit

This book is terrific. I've been involved in implementing a data warehouse, and I wish I'd had this book then, as the author proposes solutions to several problems we encountered, but had less elegant, or no, solutions for. I have read a number of books on data warehousing, and a major portion of every one of them is devoted to the politics of getting management to adopt, and then support, building a data warehouse, and very little on the concrete aspects involved. This book is almost entirely on the nuts and bolts of actual doing the implementation, assuming it is already supported by management. Presents how to do dimensional (star schema) models from elementary to highly advanced. Every important aspect of implementing a data warehouse is covered with real content at all points. Wonderful resource book for the experienced warehouse person, while also extremely helpful the the novice, and anyone in between. Read this book first, then peruse any others in the book store before buying--you may not need a second book.

After 21 years in software development, which includes managing three data warehouse projects, I had decided to write a book trying to capture whatever wisdom I had accumulated. After reading this book I no longer feel the need to. This book not only provides detailed techniques for building a data warehouse and managing the process, it also deals with the realities faced in these projects. If you've ever been frustrated with those abstract tomes written by strict methodologists while you were burdened with a tight budget, a dysfunctional company (is that redundant?), immature technology, underskilled technologists and waffling user support -- then this is the book for you. It is filled with recommendations for conducting every phase of the project, yet is always careful to acknowledge that no two projects are alike and there is no one guaranteed blueprint for managing the project. My only regret is that this book wasn't available before my first data warehouse projects. Although our teams ended up at many of the same conclusions, it was only after a lot of hard thought, insecurity, and trial and error.If you are going to develop a data warehouse or a data mart, read this book first.

Our organization has implemented a very successful Data Warehouse, due largely to following the design and deployment principles from Dr. Kimball's two textbooks. The key to a successful Data Warehouse is providing all business users an easy to use and high performance queryable system. The dimensional design is, without a doubt, the defacto standard for Queryable Data Warehouses, and the author does a superb job motivating its use and explaining how to develop your integrated, dimensional data warehouse. In addition, the author gives valuable advice on many, many other aspects of the process, such as assessing your readiness for proceeding with a warehouse effort. This book is a "must read" for anyone involved in a Data Warehouse project. You will have an excellent chance of succeeding with even a most complicated Data Warehouse System if you follow the wisdom in this book.

We were at a lose on how to proceed with putting together an historical database that would track 10,000 discrete survey items from over 800 surveys per year, including survey indications, and official estimates. The real problem was doing it such a way as to make it easy to use, understandable, and accessible to all of our data analysts. We read Inmon's book and decided it would be too complicated and slow if we used his approach. Besides, we wanted true ad-hoc capabilities, and did not want to be hampered by a system that had too little data, or was being controled by someone trying to save nickles on DASD by spending dollars of our time. Kimball's book gave us what we were looking for: a way to build a data warehouse incrementally, using and tracking the lowest level of granularity in our data, and offering simplicity and service without an army of IT consultants. His engineering approach to dimensional modeling, particularly his notion of conforming dimensions puts the traditionalists, like Inmon, out to pasture.

Ralph and his colleagues wrote a wonderful book about Data Warehousing. Ralph's objective is to make user happy. He want's to build intuitive and user-friendly Data Warehouses with a good performance and in this book he tells us how to succeed. He guides you through the Data Warehouse process form initialize interviews to design staging area and dimension models and lots more. I found this book to be the perfect answer to bringing myself up to speed. Not too technical -- but enough information to answer all the important questions which can occur in a Data Warehouse project Easy reading as well for people who native language is not english. Just read it and lets make users happy.By the why: I would like to recommend this book to NCR's Rob Armstrong.