Beginners
Despite our best efforts over the last 10 years not everyone in the world is
familiar with what data warehousing is all about. This page is for those
of you who are beginners. If you know little about data warehousing I recommend you walk
through some of these resources. If you could read all this material and
actually know it well you would know more than 90% of the data warehouse
community.
By the way, I am only putting books/links on this list that I have actually read myself. So
if there is a book missing that you think is great, feel free to email me at peter@peternolan.net.
Perhaps I will be able to get myself a copy too.
Happy surfing.
Books to Read
Despite all the technology around today, the book remains the
most cost effective communication/learning mechanism available to us. For less
than $US80 in most cases you can gain access to the finely distilled knowledge
of many years experience. That's a bargain.
If you can
learn from books, you have the opportunity to go far in the data warehousing
business because there are now quite a few available. The rather astounding
sales numbers for 'The Data Warehouse Toolkit' has encouraged quite a few others
in the industry to turn their hands at writing books.
These are the books I recommend a person new to data warehousing go
out, buy and actually read.
Link
|
Description
|
| Building the Data
Warehouse |
This was the first major book published on building a data
warehouse. It has been revised and extended. This book formed the core of
Bills early seminars on data warehousing. A must read. |
| Building the
Operational Data Store |
Not long after people started building data warehouses that
centralised all customer information into one place other people in the
organisations started hanging call centres off the data warehouse.
This was because often times the data warehouse was the only place that
all customer information was readily available in one relational database,
hence it's value as the major input for the call centre. This,
unfortunately, destroyed the use of the data warehouse for analysis
because the transaction needs of the call centre superseded the analytical
needs of the data warehouse users. So, in a lot of places, an
integration layer was introduced to provide access too customer
information for the call centre. This was the 'genesis' of something
that finished up being called the 'Operational Data Store'. The ODS
has evolved a long way from being a call centre database and this book
tells you pretty much all you need to know about building one. A must read if you are
going to build an ODS within your informational systems. |
| Corporate Information Factory |
As time has gone on the architecture of 'information
systems' has evolved and become more thoroughly understood. Bill
Inmon, Claudia Imhoff and Ryan Sousa have published 'The Corporate
Information Factory' as one proposed architecture for implementing
'Information Systems'. The Data Warehouse has evolved into being
just one component of the CIF. There is public debate over whether
the CIF is the 'one true' way to implement information systems. My
opinion about that is you could do much worse than to use the CIF as input
to what you are doing. A must read. |
| The Data Warehouse Toolkit |
I, for one, was very pleased when Ralph published this book. For
one thing, DBAs stopped kicking me out of the building without even talking
to me because there seemed to be more to this 'star schema' thing than just
my 'rants and raves'. Indeed, I bought and gave away many copies of
this book as well as recommended it to endless customers. This book
provides an excellent foundation for learning about multi-dimensional
modelling. The example databases can be used to learn on. If you
ever intend to build a star schema database this is a must read. |
| The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit |
What Ralph did not talk about in his first book was how to
actually build a star schema data warehouse. This book was the follow up
which contains a great deal of detail as to how to build a star schema
data warehouse. It puts the whole data warehouse project into a
proposed architecture called the 'BUS Architecture' and provides a
methodology which is quite serviceable. What I liked most about it
was the advanced dimensional modelling techniques. Again, a must read if
you are going to build a star schema data warehouse. It would help greatly
if you had read the first book when reading this one. So buy them both and
read them one after another. |
| The Data Webhouse Toolkit |
With the hype of the internet it was almost inevitable that
many authors would come out with books about it. Ralph's book on the
topic is a good effort. Unfortunately I have not had the chance to
actually build a web warehouse so I can't comment as to whether everything
works as advertised. Perhaps other people who have used it would like to
provide comment. I would think that if you are going to build a data
warehouse based on web logs this book is an excellent place to
start. |
| Data Warehousing in Action |
This was the second effort by Sean Kelly after 'Mass
Customisation'. It provides excellent coverage of all aspects of data
warehousing for beginners and takes a look into the future about what
might be next. The 'what next' is happening now. A must read if
you are starting out. |
| Data Warehouse Design Solutions |
With the success of Ralphs book, The Data Warehouse Toolkit,
it was inevitable that other 'data model toolkit' books would come
out. The one I like the best is this one. It provides good working
models for a variety of functions that are common in many companies. This
is a very useful book for people who are consulting across numerous
companies or who have an EDW to implement in a sizable company. |
Link
|
Description
|
| Larry Greenfield |
Larry's site is the best set of links to further material
available on the web. If you are looking for a vendor or good
article you are
pretty sure to find what you want on this web site. |
| Bill Inmon White Papers |
Bill has published a lot of 'white papers' and 'tech topics'
over the years. You should browse through these to see which ones are
relevant to exactly what you want to learn. Sign up for the newsletters,
they are often interesting reads. |
| Ralph Kimball Design
Tips |
Ralph has published a series of Design Tips, many of which
are over and above what has been published in his books. If you are
going to build dimensional models you should print and read these design
tips. |
| The OLAP Report |
The OLAP Report has a small amount of well researched public
information available. Worth a browse to understand where the front end
tools market is at. The market share and changes in market share
give you a quick view of how vendors are doing. The subscription based
report has the most comprehensive report on the OLAP space that money can
buy. I was working with a customer a while ago and we used the OLAP report
to assist us in evaluating products. It was very good. It's not cheap though. |
| Intelligent
Enterprise Data Warehousing Page |
The Intelligent Enterprise Magazine is one of the best
sources of articles and information on what is happening lately in the
data warehousing world. The articles stored on the data warehouse
page are interesting and informative. Well worth a look. |
