In The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit, authors Ralph Kimball, Laura Reeves, Margy Ross, and Warren Thornthwaite present a structure for undertaking the awesome task of implementing a data warehouse. As part of a rather select group of professionals actually experienced in building data warehouses, the authors attempt to convey their expertise about how to approach the job. The book focuses on the "Star Lifecycle"--a high-level project-planning approach to evolving existing information systems into an ever-changing data-warehouse solution.


From Book News, Inc.
Describes a framework from the original scoping of an overall data warehouse through development and deployment and the final steps of planning the next phase. Two themes underlie the book: the business dimensional lifecycle approach and the data warehouse bus architecture. The accompanying CD-ROM contains complete data warehouse project plan tasks and responsibilities, sample models of bus architecture, blank versions of the templates and tools in the book, and checklists for use throughout the project. Book News, Inc.®, Portland, OR


Review
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Das Buch richtet sich primär an Designer und Informations-Manager im Umfeld von Data-Warehouse-Anwendungen. Diese Zielgruppe erhält Ratschläge und Handlungsanleitungen, um deren Anforderungen optimal zu bewältigen. Dabei ist der ganzheitliche Ansatz zu betonen, der eine evolutionäre Weiterentwicklung besser als singuläre Schnellschüsse unterstützen kann. auch der zugrundeliegende Architekturcharakter trägt zur Festigung dieser Intension bei. Zu knapp werden die Themen Data Mining und Parallelverarbeitung angesprochen; ebenfalls fehlen zur Vertiefung weiterführende Literaturhinweise. Insbesondere SMP und MPP bieten für die praktische Realisierung wichtige Unterstützungshilfen. Wobei zur Verbesserung der Performance die Fähigkeit einiger DBMS Abfragen zu optimieren und parallel zu verarbeiten nützlich ist.
IT-Director 10/2000


Book Description
"A comprehensive, thoughtful, and detailed book that will be of inestimable value to anyone struggling with the complex details of designing, building, and maintaining an enterprise-wide decision support system. Highly recommended." -Robert S. Craig, Vice President, Application Architectures, Hurwitz Group, Inc.

In his bestselling book, The Data Warehouse Toolkit, Ralph Kimball showed you how to use dimensional modeling to design effective and usable data warehouses. Now, he carries these techniques to the larger issues of delivering complete data marts and data warehouses. Drawing upon their experiences with numerous data warehouse implementations, he and his coauthors show you all the practical details involved in planning, designing, developing, deploying, and growing data warehouses. Important topics include:
* The Business Dimensional Lifecycle(TM) approach to data warehouse project planning and management
* Techniques for gathering requirements more effectively and efficiently
* Advanced dimensional modeling techniques to capture the most complex business rules
* The Data Warehouse Bus Architecture and other approaches for integrating data marts into super-flexible data warehouses
* A framework for creating your technical architecture
* Techniques for minimizing the risks involved with data staging
* Aggregations and other effective ways to boost data warehouse performance
* Cutting-edge, Internet-based data warehouse security techniques

The CD-ROM supplies you with:
* Complete data warehouse project plan tasks and responsibilities
* A set of sample models that demonstrate the Bus Architecture
* Blank versions of the templates and tools described in the book
* Checklists to use at key points in the project


Card catalog description
In The Data Warehouse Toolkit, Ralph Kimball showed you how to use dimensional modeling to design effective and usable data warehouses. Now, he carries these techniques to the larger issues of delivering complete data marts and data warehouses. Drawing upon their experiences with numerous data warehouse implementations, he and his coauthors show you all the practical details involved in planning, designing, developing, deploying, and growing data warehouses.


The publisher, John Wiley & Sons
Ralph Kimball's bestselling The Data Warehouse Toolkit explained how to design data warehouses using the dimensional modeling technique he developed. This perfect complement to that book shows how dimensional design fits in the overall lifecycle of planning, designing, developing, and deploying data marts and data warehouses. Based on the real experiences of four leading data warehouse developers and offering timely case studies, this book provides developers with the fine details on how to master each step in the process. It also covers how to design data marts that are well integrated with the overall data warehouse design.


From the Back Cover
"A comprehensive, thoughtful, and detailed book that will be of inestimable value to anyone struggling with the complex details of designing, building, and maintaining an enterprise-wide decision support system. Highly recommended." —Robert S. Craig, Vice President, Application Architectures, Hurwitz Group, Inc.

In his bestselling book, The Data Warehouse Toolkit, Ralph Kimball showed you how to use dimensional modeling to design effective and usable data warehouses. Now, he carries these techniques to the larger issues of delivering complete data marts and data warehouses. Drawing upon their experiences with numerous data warehouse implementations, he and his coauthors show you all the practical details involved in planning, designing, developing, deploying, and growing data warehouses. Important topics include: The Business Dimensional LifecycleTM approach to data warehouse project planning and management Techniques for gathering requirements more effectively and efficiently Advanced dimensional modeling techniques to capture the most complex business rules The Data Warehouse Bus Architecture and other approaches for integrating data marts into super-flexible data warehouses A framework for creating your technical architecture Techniques for minimizing the risks involved with data staging Aggregations and other effective ways to boost data warehouse performance Cutting-edge, Internet-based data warehouse security techniques

The CD-ROM supplies you with: Complete data warehouse project plan tasks and responsibilities A set of sample models that demonstrate the Bus Architecture Blank versions of the templates and tools described in the book Checklists to use at key points in the project


About the Author
RALPH KIMBALL has been a leading visionary in the data warehouse industry since 1982 and is one of today's most internationally well-known speakers, consultants, and teachers on data warehousing. He writes the "Data Warehouse Architect" column for Intelligent Enterprise (formerly DBMS) magazine. Dr. Kimball's coauthors have each founded their own very successful data warehouse consulting firms: Laura Reeves of StarSoft Solutions; Margy Ross of DecisionWorks Consulting; and Warren Thornthwaite of InfoDynamics LLC.

ANNOTATION

This book is an evolution of the author's prior publication The Data Warehouse Toolkit. Primarily intended for IT managers, data warehouse builders and designers, it expands and builds upon many topics only briefly mentioned before. The authors present a data warehouse framework that has matured over time and that incorporates underlying themes such as the "Star" lifecycle approach, "Star" dimensional models and "Bus" architecture. This architecture allows successive data marts to be linked into an overall data warehouse.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In The Data Warehouse Toolkit, Ralph Kimball showed you how to use dimensional modeling to design effective and usable data warehouses. Now, he carries these techniques to the larger issues of delivering complete data marts and data warehouses. Drawing upon their experiences with numerous data warehouse implementations, he and his coauthors show you all the practical details involved in planning, designing, developing, deploying, and growing data warehouses.

FROM THE CRITICS

Bill Carmada

There are now thousands of functioning, efficient data warehouses, and the number one lesson that has been learned is this: successful data warehouses never stop evolving. The best of them are built and managed from a lifecycle perspective by IT professionals who are "half DBA and half MBA." The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit delivers actionable skills and tools for creating data warehouses flexible enough to survive the most dynamic organization.

Kimball shows how to build a series of high-performance, understandable data marts that deliver business results immediately-and can be organized into an enterprise-wide data warehouse as you move forward. You'll master crucial dimensional modeling techniques, and learn to build a "Data Warehouse Bus Architecture"-a backbone all your warehouse components can connect to. You'll discover how backroom, "front room," infrastructure, metadata and Internet components can all be architected for consistency, performance and security. The accompanying CD-ROM is full of checklists, templates and forms, plus a complete sample design.

Don't try to build a house without a plan-or a data warehouse without The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit.

Bill Carmada @ Cyberian Express

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