The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit Review

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The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit Reviewbut were afraid to ask. This is the definitive book on the DW lifecycle. After having worked on two not-so-perfect data warehousing projects, I found myself on more than one occasion seeing in print many of the ideas that I have either arrived at by trial and error or had a hunch were the right way to go. I would have given this book five stars, except for one thing: you really need to have read Kimball's first book, The Data Warehouse Toolkit, to get the proper foundation for reading the DW Lifecylcle Toolkit. I bought the DW Lifecycle Toolkit first thinking that I could jump right ahead. Not so. Much to my chagrin, I ended up buying the DW Toolkit and reading it first. These books really should be offered with the option to be purchased together. That way, the reader will know up front that both books are a must read.The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit Overview

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Pentaho Solutions: Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing with Pentaho and MySQL Review

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Pentaho Solutions: Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing with Pentaho and MySQL ReviewJos and Roland have done a great job explaining the tools and technology of the Pentaho BI Platform in the context of building real world Business Intelligence applications. They have taken some very complicated and technical concepts and presented them in an easy to follow case study. The case study they chose is simple to understand yet filled with the same kinds of real world complexities that make BI applications difficult to deliver.
The "Getting Started with Pentaho" section has all the information and documentation you wish you could find neatly arranged on the Pentaho community site. They do an excellent job explaining the entire Pentaho application stack from collecting data to presenting information. The book could have stopped here, being the Pentaho missing manual, and still have been worth buying.
The next section, "Dimensional Modeling and Data Warehouse Design" is an very good introduction/refresher on hows and whys of building data warehouses, data marts and OLAP cubes. Again they have taken a subject that is broad and complex and presented it in a way that is easy to understand and apply. Where appropriate, they refer the reader to other resources available for more in-depth coverage of specific topics.
A data warehouse is useless until you can reliably get good, complete and accurate data into it. The section on "ETL and Data Integration" is another section that could easily stand on it's own. After an introduction to ETL and Pentaho Data Integration, they show how to populate the database used for the case study including populating time dimensions. Other real world topics touched upon include; change data capture, data validation, data cleansing and issues with generating dimension tables.
The last section covers transforming data into information via metadata, reporting, analysis services, data mining and dashboards. Each topic is covered by an introduction, explanation of the tools available and examples using data from the case study.
I like the way Roland and Jos combine general BI knowledge with tutorials on the Pentaho applications and tie it all together with an interesting case study giving you a chance to stop and play as you follow along. I also enjoyed the many side notes with tidbits of history and pointers to other resources. Overall I found this book both informative and enjoyable.
I'm a fifteen year veteran of building BI software, one of the original Pentaho developers and am currently the Pentaho community guy. I'm not affiliated with Jos, Roland or Wiley and receive no benefit from this book beyond the satisfaction of having Pentaho software be so well represented.
Doug Moran
Pentaho
Pentaho Solutions: Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing with Pentaho and MySQL OverviewYour all-in-one resource for using Pentaho with MySQL for Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing
Open-source Pentaho provides business intelligence (BI) and data warehousing solutions at a fraction of the cost of proprietary solutions. Now you can take advantage of Pentaho for your business needs with this practical guide written by two major participants in the Pentaho community.
The book covers all components of the Pentaho BI Suite. You'll learn to install, use, and maintain Pentaho-and find plenty of background discussion that will bring you thoroughly up to speed on BI and Pentaho concepts.
Of all available open source BI products, Pentaho offers the most comprehensive toolset and is the fastest growing open source product suite
Explains how to build and load a data warehouse with Pentaho Kettle for data integration/ETL, manually create JFree (pentaho reporting services) reports using direct SQL queries, and create Mondrian (Pentaho analysis services) cubes and attach them to a JPivot cube browser
Review deploying reports, cubes and metadata to the Pentaho platform in order to distribute BI solutions to end-users
Shows how to set up scheduling, subscription and automatic distribution

The companion Web site provides complete source code examples, sample data, and links to related resources.

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Applied Microsoft Analysis Services 2005: And Microsoft Business Intelligence Platform Review

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Applied Microsoft Analysis Services 2005: And Microsoft Business Intelligence Platform ReviewApplied Microsoft Analysis Services 2005, at a first glance, appears to be THE book to get on SSAS 2005. Unfortunately, the beauty is only cover-deep.
While the author clearly has "encyclopaedic" knowledge of the product suite, examples I came across were incomplete and quite frankly frustrating. For example, in Chapter 6, the author introduces us to the concept of using dimension definition templates for creating our Inventory cube "top-down" (meaning, without a data source)... while the instructions are clear on how to use a template to satisfy our Product dimension requirement (using the "Product" template), the author provides absolutely NO indication on which template we should use to create our Location template-- all the author writes here is "...Follow similar steps to create the Location dimension". That's it, nothing else (Chapter 6, Page 200)... no explanation is provided as to whether we reuse the Product template or not.
This book has many other examples of such dead-ends (half-truths and other misleading information). For instance, in Chapter 5, Page 188, on the topic of optimizing performance by caching linked object queries, the author writes: "...both linked dimension and measure groups expose RefreshPolicy and RefreshInterval properties which can be set at design time....". However, when I went through the associated example, I found that only linked measure groups expose said properties in support of linked object caching.
Once again, I do share the enthusiasm of the other reviewers, and have (to be fair) found some solid value in this book in explaining some of the new concepts related to the UDM, and the attribute-centric approach to creating dimension hierarchies (among other things). I also find the greatest value in a technical book to be the balance between clear explanations of new and/or thorny concepts (which this book does rather well) and clear examples for the reader to work through (which this book often does not). Nevertheless, I question the integrity of any reviewer quick to give a book 5 stars without actually reading through, actually trying each and every example, and rating the work objectively. Granted: no first version of any technical book can be perfect, but to quickly rush to awarding a book 5 stars is a dodgy practice at best-- perhaps indeed luring us to purchase a book we may later regret.
Caveat empor. 2.5 stars for this book....Applied Microsoft Analysis Services 2005: And Microsoft Business Intelligence Platform OverviewKnowledge is power! As its name suggests, the promise of Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services 2005 is to promote better data analytics by giving information workers the right tool to analyze consistent, timely, and reliable data. Empowered with Analysis Services and Microsoft Business Intelligence Platform, you are well positioned to solve the perennial problem with data-that there is too much of it and finding the right information is often difficult, if not impossible.Applied Micrisoft Analysis Services 2005 shows database administrators and developers how to build complete OLAP solutions with Microsoft Analysis Services 2005 and Microsoft Business Intelligence Platform. Database administrators will learn how to design and manage sophisticated OLAP cubes that provide rich data analytics and data mining services.The book gives developers the necessary background to extend UDM with custom programming logic, in the form of MDX expressions, scripts and .NET code. It teaches them how to implement a wide range of reporting applications that integrate with Analysis Services, Reporting Services, and Microsoft Office.This book doesn't assume any prior experience with OLAP and Microsoft Analysis Services. It is designed as an easy-to-follow guide where each chapter builds upon the previous to implement the components of the innovative Unified Dimensional Model (UDM) in a chronological order. New concepts are introduced with step-by-step instructions and hands-on demos.What's Inside:o Design sophisticated UDM modelso Build ETL processes with SSISo Implement data mining taskso Enrich UDM programmatically with MDXo Extend UDM with SSAS stored procedures o Create rich end-user model o Optimize Analysis Services storage and processing o Implement dynamic security o Build custom OLAP clients o Author standard and ad-hoc reports with SSRS o Build Office-based BI applications and dashboards o and much more

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The Data Webhouse Toolkit: Building the Web-Enabled Data Warehouse Review

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The Data Webhouse Toolkit: Building the Web-Enabled Data Warehouse ReviewWow; what a powerhouse!
The Data Webhouse Toolkit is a crisp and clear recipe for successfully realizing the unprecedented opportunity that we have to better serve our customers, made possible by Web commerce, and for promoting the assimilation of these new insights through web based presentation to our decision makers.
Both sides of this symbiotic relationship: bringing the web to the warehouse, and bringing the warehouse to the web, are presented separately, but always with a holistic sensitivity.
I was also quite impressed with the terrific balance between "earth and sky"; pragmatic issues of performance, security, and web site structures are linked with non-religious, sensible discussions of privacy, corporate responsibility, and user interface philosophy.
All in all, a wonderful contribution to the field; congratulations to the authors. Highly recommended.
Jim Stagnitto
Llumino, Inc.
www.llumino.comThe Data Webhouse Toolkit: Building the Web-Enabled Data Warehouse Overview"Ralph's latest book ushers in the second wave of the Internet. . . . Bottom line, this book provides the insight to help companies combine Internet-based business intelligence with the bounty of customer data generated from the internet."--William Schmarzo, Director World Wide Solutions, Sales, and Marketing,IBM NUMA-Q.Receiving over 100 million hits a day, the most popular commercial Websites have an excellent opportunity to collect valuable customer data that can help create better service and improve sales. Companies can use this information to determine buying habits, provide customers with recommendations on new products, and much more. Unfortunately, many companies fail to take full advantage of this deluge of information because they lack the necessary resources to effectively analyze it.In this groundbreaking guide, data warehousing's bestselling author, Ralph Kimball, introduces readers to the Data Webhouse--the marriage of the data warehouse and the Web. If designed and deployed correctly, the Webhouse can become the linchpin of the modern, customer-focused company, providing competitive information essential to managers and strategic decision makers. In this book, Dr. Kimball explains the key elements of the Webhouse and provides detailed guidelines for designing, building, and managing the Webhouse. The results are a business better positioned to stay healthy and competitive.In this book, you'll learn methods for:- Tracking Website user actions- Determining whether a customer is about to switch to a competitor- Determining whether a particular Web ad is working- Capturing data points about customer behavior- Designing the Website to support Webhousing- Building clickstream datamarts- Designing the Webhouse user interface- Managing and scaling the WebhouseThe companion Website at www.wiley.com/compbooks/kimball provides updates on Webhouse technologies and techniques, as well as links to related sites and resources.

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