The Kimball Group Reader: Relentlessly Practical Tools for Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence Remastered Collection

by Ralph Kimball, Margy Ross

The final edition of the incomparable data warehousing and business intelligence reference, updated and expanded The Kimball Group Reader, Remastered Collection is the essential reference for data warehouse and business intelligence design, packed with best practices, design tips, and valuable insight from industry pioneer Ralph Kimball and the Kimball Group. This Remastered Collection represents decades of expert advice and mentoring in data warehousing and business intelligence, and is the final work to be published by the Kimball Group. Organized for quick navigation and easy reference, this book contains nearly 20 years of experience on more than 300 topics, all fully up-to-date and expanded with 65 new articles. The discussion covers the complete data warehouse/business intelligence lifecycle, including project planning, requirements gathering, system architecture, dimensional modeling, ETL, and business intelligence analytics, with each group of articles prefaced by original commentaries explaining their role in the overall Kimball Group methodology.

Data warehousing/business intelligence industry's current multi-billion dollar value is due in no small part to the contributions of Ralph Kimball and the Kimball Group. Their publications are the standards on which the industry is built, and nearly all data warehouse hardware and software vendors have adopted their methods in one form or another. This book is a compendium of Kimball Group expertise, and an essential reference for anyone in the field.

Learn data warehousing and business intelligence from the field's pioneers Get up to date on best practices and essential design tips Gain valuable knowledge on every stage of the project lifecycle Dig into the Kimball Group methodology with hands-on guidance Ralph Kimball and the Kimball Group have continued to refine their methods and techniques based on thousands of hours of consulting and training. This Remastered Collection of The Kimball Group Reader represents their final body of knowledge, and is nothing less than a vital reference for anyone involved in the field.

Genres: Bisexual, Programming, Reference, Nonfiction, Technology, Technical

883 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 1, 2010

Reviews

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book, though according to the authors meant for reference and not a cover-to-cover read, was highly readable and very well-organized. It brought me up-to-date on a host of data warehousing issues in general and introduced me to the Kimball methodology specifically. I particularly appreciated that the content was platform- and tool-independent, focusing on the need for business involvement as opposed to technical expertise. Highly recommended for data warehousing professionals!

[Dimitri · Rating 4 out of 5]

📕 Why (Not) to read this book (Target Audience)

Extensive book featuring articles written by the Kimball Group. Due to being a bundle off publications a repletion off some topics does occur. This makes it also a hard read, but it does contain treasure off information to be found.

👀 How this book changed my daily live (Takeaways)

The real purpose of the fact table is to be the repository of the numeric facts that are observed during the measurement event. It is critically important for these facts to be true to the grain. We never include other numeric measurements that violate the grain.

⁉ Spoiler Alerts (Highlights)

We generally encourage you to handle many-to-one hierarchical relationships in a single dimension table rather than snowflaking. Snowflakes may appear optimal to an experienced OLTP data modeler, but they're suboptimal for query performance.

[Scott Edwards · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kimball Group's last book doesn't disappoint

I've enjoyed reading the Kimball Group's design tips on their site for years. As a wonderful parting shot before retiring the group, all those nuggets have been collected and conformed into this wonderful anthology. The last chapter is particularly rewarding to read, as it consists of one final article from each of the four surviving members. They don't disappoint!

[Daniel Galassi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very well organised book covering modelling and lifecycle of business intelligence and data warehousing projects.
Clearly written, it is a great collection of articles a seasoned professional will find interesting.

[Louis Marier · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like all the Kimball Group books, it’s a "must-read". You can also download the content of this book as "design tips" from the Kimball Group web site but in the book, the articles are organized in a more coherent way, sometimes updated and the index is really convenient.