Rating: 
Summary: One of the best computer books I have ever read.
Review: For people who have a transactional database background, such as myself, and are moving into the data warehouse arena, this book should be the bible! Kimball eloquently shows how a company's business model and thier data needs can be meshed perfectly, and leaves the reader wondering why this is not done in every case. In fact, he actually answers that question several times throughout the book.The real-world examples serve to cement Kimball's concepts in your mind and you try to forget most of you've learned about how to construct normalized, transactional databases. This is actually the first software "textbook" I've enjoyed reading in my 15 years as a database designer.
Rating:
Summary: Well-balanced informative reading
Review: For those that wants a book on that data warehousing that deals very well with the fundamental issues, this book is an excellent buy. It is primarily concerned with multi-dimensional modeling, which forms the core of data warehousing design. This aspect it does in an extremely readable fashion. The author made an effort to ensure that the "case studies", which comes from an very wide variety of industries build onto one another. Each chapter introduces just enough new concepts so that you can keep up without straining yourself too much. The chapters that deal with the implementation issues are less detailed and maybe not as easy an read as the design chapters. Nevertheless, it provides a very nice broad overview of the implementation and maintenance issues. Read together with the design chapters, the information is sufficient to give you a jump start into the field of data warehousing. This book is widely referenced in the more academic literature on data warehousing, attesting to its acceptance from an academic viewpoint - a fact that should not be taken lightly in view of the highly practical, example-driven approach the book takes. All in all, some of the best value for money that I've ever found in a book. For those that are interested more in the implementation and maintenance issues, The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit, may be additional reading (although its not quite in the same class).
Rating:
Summary: Well-balanced informative reading
Review: For those that wants a book on that data warehousing that deals very well with the fundamental issues, this book is an excellent buy. It is primarily concerned with multi-dimensional modeling, which forms the core of data warehousing design. This aspect it does in an extremely readable fashion. The author made an effort to ensure that the "case studies", which comes from an very wide variety of industries build onto one another. Each chapter introduces just enough new concepts so that you can keep up without straining yourself too much. The chapters that deal with the implementation issues are less detailed and maybe not as easy an read as the design chapters. Nevertheless, it provides a very nice broad overview of the implementation and maintenance issues. Read together with the design chapters, the information is sufficient to give you a jump start into the field of data warehousing. This book is widely referenced in the more academic literature on data warehousing, attesting to its acceptance from an academic viewpoint - a fact that should not be taken lightly in view of the highly practical, example-driven approach the book takes. All in all, some of the best value for money that I've ever found in a book. For those that are interested more in the implementation and maintenance issues, The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit, may be additional reading (although its not quite in the same class).
Rating:
Summary: Great Starter
Review: Great place to start learning about DW. The author builds the concepts layer upon layer. Very easy to follow the progression. Once you'e finished this book, then move on to Ralph's Lifecycle Toolkit for some nitty-gritty examples and much more about building data marts into datawarehouses.
Rating:
Summary: Great Starter
Review: Great place to start learning about DW. The author builds the concepts layer upon layer. Very easy to follow the progression. Once you'e finished this book, then move on to Ralph's Lifecycle Toolkit for some nitty-gritty examples and much more about building data marts into datawarehouses.
Rating: 
Summary: Dimensional Modeling Made Simpler
Review: Hello This book will be helpful for people who are tasked with building Data Marts that could benefit from the use of dimensional modeling and can also be represented as a dimensional models. Dimensional data models, which have been around for a very long time, have proved quite useful in a number of business decision making scenarios where decsision making power - through an intentionally limited but versatile set of information - can be made available to business users. This book focuses on the data modelling for decision support in a Data Mart environment, and also where star schemas - intuitive data models - are used to represent business information in a business-people friendly structure and format. In this area - dimensional modeling and sophisticated use of SQL - the author is probably the best around at this moment in time. So yes, buy this book if you need a rapid learning aide for dimensional modelling and if you want to know more about the general area of Data Warehousing and some of is best principles and practices then also go for a couple of books by Bill Inmon - the father of data warehousing. Best regards, Martyn R Jones iniciativa
Rating: 
Summary: It¿s a sad commentary if this is the best DW book available
Review: I am so tired if technical book authors who just go blah, blah, blah endlessly in an effort to impress themselves, their publishers, and their readers with technical jargon. Just give me straight-forward and common-sense approaches to how I can tackle the job at hand - in this case, data warehousing. The book contains useful information but could have been reduced to 1/3 of its size without all the non-essential fluff. If you are involved in building a Data Warehouse, buy it and read it (drink lots of coffee while reading). If someone out there knows of a better reference for building data warehouses, please let the rest of us know before we fall into a technical-jargon-induced coma.
Rating:
Summary: A very practicle guide
Review: I have been working in the commercial reporting / data warehousing market for over 5 years. I have read many books on the subject, most of which deal with the higher level conceptuality of data warehousing and implementation. Since reading this book I have designed and implemented a multi-dimensional data warehouse, using most of the techniques laid out in this book, with a European manufacturing company in BD2/400 and SQL datamarts. I found this book outstanding in terms of breaking down the problems of creating a multi-dimensional data warehouse and giving a very practical analysis to implementation model. It is possible within the right company to implement a large data warehouse following the methods in this book. To complement this book I would recommend reading other books that deal with client expectation management and the use of middle ware tools to ease the actual building and management of a multi dimensional design. Also look at other design models, make sure that a multi-dimensional design fit's the client situation, there are other designs...
Rating: 
Summary: Humm?
Review: I've read the book... and think my end-users, who are SQL savey, will not want Dimensional Modeling with low cardinality. I believe that I could not achive the proper relationships between business and end-user's needs with a DM schema. For me... this would not work. Great book... just didn't work for my real world applications.
Rating:
Summary: The best book on dimensional modeling
Review: IBM and Teradata say that Kimball is dangerous. I say he is "right on". What he describes make a lot of sense. And, he is a hands on practitioner. Not like the people that naysay him. Anyway, buy the book and READ IT!! You won't be sorry you did - I promise.
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