Rating: 
Summary: A much used reference on our projects!
Review: My project team and I have used this book extensively in developing our project plans, performing analysis, design and in tool selection. It is an excellent reference and the CD with all of the checklists and materials is VERY helpful. Why re-create the wheel when it is on a CD! Having read the book, taken classes taught by the authors and applying the concepts to our projects it is easy to say that this is simply the best reference book for building and deploying data warehouses and data marts that is currently available.
Rating: 
Summary: Good book, but could've been better
Review: Not enough examples....they keep referring to other books. The book would've been awesome if it had more examples (specially designing star schema models and aggregations). I don't like to spend $40-50 each on two books just to get the examples and lot of the repeat information. The book companies and the authors are making more money by doing this, but they're not winning fans (Wiley books and Kimball)
Rating:
Summary: This is clearly the BEST Data Warehouse book I've read!!
Review: Our organization has implemented a very successful Data Warehouse, due largely to following the design and deployment principles from Dr. Kimball's two textbooks. The key to a successful Data Warehouse is providing all business users an easy to use and high performance queryable system. The dimensional design is, without a doubt, the defacto standard for Queryable Data Warehouses, and the author does a superb job motivating its use and explaining how to develop your integrated, dimensional data warehouse. In addition, the author gives valuable advice on many, many other aspects of the process, such as assessing your readiness for proceeding with a warehouse effort. This book is a "must read" for anyone involved in a Data Warehouse project. You will have an excellent chance of succeeding with even a most complicated Data Warehouse System if you follow the wisdom in this book.
Rating:
Summary: Very good, but not a one-stop shop for Data Modellers
Review: PROS
- Offers invaluable advice based on the authors' experience so that you don't need to re-invent the wheel or make the same mistakes they made (and subsequently learned from).
- Most useful for Project Managers/DBAs; less so for Data Modellers.CONS
- I purchased this book on the assumption that it offered a comprehensive treatment of all stages of the Data Warehouse project lifecycle (as the cover would lead you to believe). However, it does not offer a comprehensive treatment of Dimensional Modelling. For this, the book actually assumes you have read Kimball's former book - "The Data Warehouse Toolkit - The Complete Guide to Dimensional Modeling" (which provides a full treatment and practical examples for several industry sectors).
- I did not like the writing-style. If the authors would have omitted all text like "we believe.." and "in our experience..." I'm sure the book wouldn't have used 800 pages. CONCLUSION
This book has remained by my side throughout the project lifecycle, giving great guidance and pointers to help manage the project optimally.
However, if you are responsible for Data Modelling, you will also need to buy "The Data Warehouse Toolkit", thereby doubling the overall cost.
Rating:
Summary: Number-one in Data Warehousing Literature
Review: Ralph and his colleagues wrote a wonderful book about Data Warehousing. Ralph's objective is to make user happy. He want's to build intuitive and user-friendly Data Warehouses with a good performance and in this book he tells us how to succeed. He guides you through the Data Warehouse process form initialize interviews to design staging area and dimension models and lots more. I found this book to be the perfect answer to bringing myself up to speed. Not too technical -- but enough information to answer all the important questions which can occur in a Data Warehouse project Easy reading as well for people who native language is not english. Just read it and lets make users happy. By the why: I would like to recommend this book to NCR's Rob Armstrong.
Rating:
Summary: Complete Book
Review: Ralph Kimball has authored a book that deals with providing an end-to-end reference for a Data Warehouse project. Lived up to my expectations based on the word "Lifecycle" in the title of the book. I am not sure if there's another book that's even close to this. All aspects of project management (Planning, implementation and deployment) are addressed in great detail. In one of our projects couple of years back, we used sample questions to formulate a 150 question list to be used for live Requirements Gathering. This book as a reference was very useful in that regard. This book does not talk about data modeling. There is another book on that. I would recommend this book for any data warehouse project management.
Rating:
Summary: Complete Book
Review: Ralph Kimball has authored a book that deals with providing an end-to-end reference for a Data Warehouse project. Lived up to my expectations based on the word "Lifecycle" in the title of the book. I am not sure if there's another book that's even close to this. All aspects of project management (Planning, implementation and deployment) are addressed in great detail. In one of our projects couple of years back, we used sample questions to formulate a 150 question list to be used for live Requirements Gathering. This book as a reference was very useful in that regard. This book does not talk about data modeling. There is another book on that. I would recommend this book for any data warehouse project management.
Rating:
Summary: how can i purchage this book in India?
Review: Sir, The article is covered is quite good, but How can i purchage all datawarehouse book in India with indian price? Give me contact person in Detail.
Thanks
Mr Patel
Rating: 
Summary: Definitely not Recommmended for Anybody
Review: Sorry to say! But I'm a student specializing in Data warehousing and Ralph Kimball is certainly not getting to any point in The Lifecycle Toolkit! 1. He gives to many unstructured examples!
2. He never gets to the point!
3. Ralph restates and contradicts himself again and again!
4. He could have summarized the book in 100 pages ( but then would not have made any $$$)
5. The book might just discourage most people from Data warehousing! And the list can go on and on! Sorry Ralph better luck next time
Rating:
Summary: Great Proj Mgmt Tools
Review: The book is worth it just for the project management tools and checklists/templates. Especially the Lifecycle Project Plan and all related templates on the CD-ROM. I felt that alone justified the purchase. I needed some ideas for an ERP, 21 CFR Part 11 Electronic Recrods/Electronic Signatures, implementation and verification/validation project, and some of the more strategic discussions and templates in the book provided some additional ideas and tools to structure my project (w/ modification, of course). So those interested in something more than data warehousing may still find this publication extremely useful as I did.
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