Star Schema The Complete Reference by Christopher Adamson, McGraw-Hill Education

by Christopher Adamson

Learn the best practices of dimensional design. Star Schema: The Complete Reference offers in-depth coverage of design principles and their underlying rationales. Organized around design concepts and illustrated with detailed examples, this is a step-by-step guidebook for beginners and a comprehensive resource for experts.

This all-inclusive volume begins with dimensional design fundamentals and shows how they fit into diverse data warehouse architectures, including those of W.H. Inmon and Ralph Kimball. The book progresses through a series of advanced techniques that help you address real-world complexity, maximize performance, and adapt to the requirements of BI and ETL software products. You are furnished with design tasks and deliverables that can be incorporated into any project, regardless of architecture or methodology.

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

Unknown Binding

First published July 7, 2010

Reviews

[Felix · Rating 5 out of 5]

Christopher’s assertion that Star Schema: The Complete Reference is written for the data warehouse practitioner caught my attention. His claim that “If your work in any way involves stars, snowflakes, or cubes, then this is your guide to all things dimensional” prompted me to pick it up. His stressing that “No assumptions are made regarding your skill level, role, or preferred architecture” got me hooked. I have not been disappointed.

This is the only book on dimensional modelling I could find that is both architecture-neutral and product-independent. Most of the books written on the subject are based on either W.H. Inmon or Ralph Kimball’s architecture. The author takes the time to explain how each of the discussed items are applicable to the various architectures making it the best book for a beginner.

The book is a definitive guide to the star schema. Beginning with the very basics of fact tables and dimensions, the book gradually progresses into advanced topics such as having multiple stars and concludes having covered effects of dimensional modelling on both the ETL process and Business Intelligence tools. The very crucial process of designing and documenting a dimensional model is not left out. The fact that the book is written in a practical approach makes it very appealing to read.

There is evidence throughout the book to the fact that Christopher Adamson is a data warehousing expert eager to share his knowledge. His many years of experience as a teacher, blogger and author make him an authority on the subject. He has consulted with many companies on data warehousing and prides himself as having Fortune 500 companies, government agencies and data warehousing software vendors among his costumers.

This is a worthy investment for anyone whose role falls under business analysis, business intelligence and reporting, data integration, data administration, project management, database administration and data warehousing. It’s written for both the beginner and the professional and could be the only data warehousing book you need for your project. I highly recommend it.

[Damir · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant book! Comprehensive and a great introduction to Data Warehouse design. Strongly recommended. It also doesn't favour or discuss commercial products in the space which keeps the book more focused on the design and implementation of a data warehouse solution. If you are in the space of designing reporting solutions or business intelligence solutions, this book should be on your bookshelf!

[Kevin Narvaes · Rating 5 out of 5]

A super excellent introductory text on the complex world of dimensional modeling, putting on emphasis the importance of the star shema. Very easy to follow and provides lot's of details and examples for the understanding of many abstract terms.

[Don Leone]

This a great book. Reading it gave me a better understanding of the structure of star schema databases. Although it did not focus on MS SQL Server, it was written generically enough to allow me to apply the concepts in my work. Cleared up a lot stuff. I recommend!

[Abdullah · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent reference book on data warehousing concepts (Dimensional Modeling, ETL, Kimball, Inmon) covering the concepts rather than the technical details. I liked the easy language used and the figures and graphs that deliver the concepts clearly.

I found this book easier to grasp compared to Kimball's famous book.

[Erik · Rating 4 out of 5]

For years I have heard about the difference between relational, 3rd-normal-form data models and star schemas, but I had never really gotten to the bottom of why star schemas were so special and different until I read this book. It has very thorough, easy to understand coverage of what star schemas are and how to design great star schemas. The author spends a lot of time trying to explain the 'why' behind his best practices. My only complaint is that he goes into a little too much detail and so I felt I could have learned the same material from a shorter book.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book for understanding the concepts around star schemas. I think a lot of developers like me cut our teeth trying to make all of our data models conform to BCNF or better. Unfortunately that's not very effective when you're trying to do well-defined queries requiring aggregation. This book was clearly written and easy to follow.

[JJ · Rating 5 out of 5]

I refer back to this book frequently and each time I'm reminded just how well written it is.

[Luca Zavarella · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometimes it is redundand, but in generale it's clear and well done. It's really useful for those who approaches the data warehousing matter. Recommended!

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great introductory book and I'm anticipating that it will become a great reference book. I liked the fact that it was platform agnostic.

[Ian Tuomi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well-written and useful, time well spent if you need to implement a star schema