Data Warehousing for Dummies

by Thomas C. Hammergren, Alan R. Simon

Data warehousing is one of the hottest business topics, and there's more to understanding data warehousing technologies than you might think. Find out the basics of data warehousing and how it facilitates data mining and business intelligence with "Data Warehousing For Dummies, 2nd Edition."Data is probably your company's most important asset, so your data warehouse should serve "your" needs. The fully updated Second Edition of "Data Warehousing For Dummies" helps you understand, develop, implement, and use data warehouses, and offers a sneak peek into their future. You'll learn to: Analyze top-down and bottom-up data warehouse designsUnderstand the structure and technologies of data warehouses, operational data stores, and data martsChoose your project team and apply best development practices to your data warehousing projectsImplement a data warehouse, step by step, and involve end-users in the processReview and upgrade existing data storage to make it serve your needsComprehend OLAP, column-wise databases, hardware assisted databases, and middlewareUse data mining intelligently and find what you needMake informed choices about consultants and data warehousing products

"Data Warehousing For Dummies, 2nd Edition" also shows you how to involve users in the testing process and gain valuable feedback, what it takes to successfully manage a data warehouse project, and how to tell if your project is on track. You'll find it's the most useful source of data on the topic!

Genres: Programming, Business

398 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 17, 2009

Reviews

[Gabriel Le Gall · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was rather interesting. I think 3.3/5 average is a little harsh. I feel like some technical aspects of the book could have been explained further (e.g OLAP). However, I was pleased to discover that few chapters are outdated (although I'm no expert). From what I have read, data warehousing technology is very different today - with In-Memory computing - and I think some aspects of the book about processing speed are no longer relevant. In spite of this, all chapters about project management ("Ten Mandatory Skills for a Data Warehousing Consultant", "Data Warehousing Projects: How to Do Them Right"...etc.) are more than ever on the agenda.

[Sateesh]

test

[David Roberts · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book I read to research this post was Data Warehousing For Dummies by Thomas C Hammergren which is a very good book which I read at
http://safaribooksonline.com
This book was written around 2008 so lacks some of the most recent developments like facebook marketing, cloud computing & microsoft azure to name but a few. It's interesting however as I think some companies and organisations especially with sensitive information might want an onsite solution rather than something like a cloud computing database. Also it has information on vendors of different types of database ie data mining and one of the main players is
http://sas.com
but anyway a lot of the information on vendors is relevent. There is also the option of a data mart a smaller version of a data warehouse which can be for a small company or be to summarize the results. In practice a data warehouse would probably be a server with several workstations connected and programmers and analysts would be working on these. The leading program for data marts is probably SQL Server by Microsoft & the leading players in heavy duty databases are probably IBM & Oracle. Of course a good data warehouse will more than pay back in dividends what the set up costs were. Typically you will store sales information, branch by branch and competitor information and maybe company information like employers etc. Of course the trend is to use relational tables and do crosstab queries to get information. Basically this means using lots of interrelated small tables. I did really enjoy reading this book and learned a lot from it. I would suggest though see what cloud offerings there are before building a data warehouse.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

My journey through data continues with DW. I had this book for over a year, but only now manage to finish it - enjoyably. DW is one of those terms that I hear about often for years. Finally gotten around to understanding the detail. The book provides a great explanation of DW and surrounding environment.
- importance of analyzing source data for its quality
- DW MW to extract-QA-transport-map-transform-load
- Uses like reporting, OLAP, data mining, dashboard
- relation with ODS, MDM and SOA
- centralized vs. distributed architecture
Expect continued DW evolution to deal with IoT and unstructured data.

[Dustin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was pretty much forced to read this for my job (my manager passive-aggressively left it on my desk after she showed me my office), but it lives up to what the For Dummies series is known for: a sublime combination of wit and knowhow.

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

I know way more about data warehousing now than I did before. Jokes are terrible, though.

[Dinesh]

YES

[Gustavo Lopez Carlessi · Rating 4 out of 5]

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