Data Warehousing Books

Margaret Chu's book is a delightful book with the just the right amount of humor and sophistication. She takes a complex subject, data warehousing, and presents it in a non threatening, easy to understand, plain English style, that makes the book a quick read. In addition to being able to finish the book quickly you'll come away with a feeling of satisfaction and you'll know a lot of the dos and don'ts of data warehousing.

I have been saying for years that the company that can harness its collective information across the supply chain can increase market share and profits by maximizing customer service through maximizing effective resource utilization to drive down total costs. This is what Margaret Chu has shown you can do with a well thought out and planned data warehouse initiative. But it won't be a cake walk. It takes discipline to do it right. However, with Margaret's book, which is full of insights, remember this sections, and humorous but poignant nursery rhymes you will learn how to apply the finer points of her book to create a successful data warehouse initiative.

Margaret starts off with a simple and clear explanation of a data warehouse. She then explains how a data warehouse and a data mart are different. She further explains that a data mart is type of data warehouse with a very specific purpose. She emphasizes that the type of data warehouse you choose needs to be aligned with the corporate strategy and that you need to think through the why of what you are trying to accomplish before you can choose the correct type of data warehouse.

The last chapter of "Blissful Data" is dedicated to two case studies to further arm the reader with a positive road map to data warehouse success. The first is a success story and the second is a failure. However, Margaret goes further than just telling stories of success and failure. In each case study she reviews what went well and what didn't. Yes even in successful projects some things could have been done better and even in failed projects there are things that went well and need to be capitalized on.

Well I have now told you about the beginning and the end but I suggest you now go out and purchase this book to fill in the middle, I guarantee you won't be disappointed.

In a very enjoyable read, Margaret lays out the major lessons people need to know in order to provide a true environment for business to see, understand, and act upon their data. She outlines the lessons with humorous analogies, relevant stories, and practical experiences.

Margaret also provides a very natural progression of the information so the book is good for the novice as well as the experienced. Extremely useful were the "remember" points sprinkled throughout the chapters and the impactful quotes that encapsulate important ideas and messages.

Margaret Chu brings a unique blend of technical insight and practical organizational acumen to this beguiling field. I've been associated with data as a corporate resource since early testing of IBM's GIS in the 60's decade, early use of Software AG's ADABASE in the 70's, and beneficial application of early PC-based relational databases of the 80's. Those expecting a treatise on the mechanics of data warehousing to gain a marginal advantage might be disappointed. They should put aside their geek-bias; this readable book can give them a quantum leap advantage to build a data warehouse that actually delivers what the sponsors expect. The two chapters on "Politics: ...Who Owns It Anyway? and ...Who's Going to Pay? are the heart of this practical book.

If you've ever tackled a project where you set out to track woozles and ended up fleeing from heffalumps, this is just the book to save you from future tramplings. Blissful Data is not merely about data warehouses, though you'll find that subject thoroughly rendered. Margaret Chu analyses all the factors that make or break a project of any kind, with a particular focus on data warehouse implementation. You'll come away from this book with a substantial introduction to modern Project Management principles. As Ms Chu points out, the issues inherent in creating data warehouses are largely human issues, and she shows how best to view and handle those issues, in addition to the technical ones.

Was I beginning to sound pedantic? Fortunately Blissful Data smooths the path through dense underbrush with lots of personal examples and whimsical analogies. For example, we precede the discussion of corporate culture with one of Village People culture--complete with illustration of said singers, in case you'd forgotten what they looked like. And yes, my opening line concerning woozles and heffalumps was inspired by Ms Chu's other references to A. A. Milne's fabled stories. I was repeatedly struck with amusement and even a few guffaws, and was thereby refreshed to undertake the analyses and explanations. There is enough serious medicine in Blissful Data to keep me coming back for repeated doses, but a spoonful of sugar eases the swallowing.

This is definitely not a book reserved for tech geeks or business managers or execs. It speaks to everyone who has ever tried to improve the way they do their job. With a career spanning 20 years of Information Technology projects, I consider myself well versed in all aspects of system implementation. Yet as Zen teacher Sunryu Suzuki noted, "Everything is perfect, but there is a lot of room for improvement." Blissful Data is the sort of book that will provide lasting benefits in improving on my perfection. I highly recommend it to anyone who ever works with people or performs a job.

Margaret Chu leads us into and through the world of Data Warehousing with a writing style unique to "IT primers."
This book was fun to read. Blissful Data informs and entertains. The examples and the book's illustrations facilitate the readers' education in all aspects of projects involving large amounts of data.
For me, it's indeed rare for such a valuable learning experience to be so enjoyable!

In my estimation The Data Warehouse ETL Toolkit is a good source of information for the topic that covers the majority of your Data Warehouse efforts, the ETL process (or ECCD if you prefer, which you probably will after finishing this volume). I took away some good ideas on items that I probably would not have considered, mostly due to my own ignorance, relating to Meta Data, QA and Error Corrections, Data Lineage and Scoring, etc.

The Authors (Kimball and Caserta) do a good job of pointing out other source books for items that the user will probably want to look at in depth.

There is also a pretty good section explaining how to manage your ETL project, the different roles of people who should be involved and a pretty good project plan / checklist to use as you are getting started.

My only complaint is that I did not read this prior to starting my own project and am instead having to correct items as I try to implement these best practices.

The book was mailed well within time mentioned by seller and is a new book.

A great basic tool book for datawarehousing and ETL. I've purchased for my teams here and in India.

This is a very good book from the Data Warehouse toolkit series by Ralph Kimball et al. This one is all about ETL - extract, transform and load, although the authors may put it a little bit different sometime:

[quote]
We expand the traditional ETL steps of extract, transform, and load into the more actionable steps of extract, clean, conform, and deliver, although we resist the temptation to change ETL into ECCD!
[/quote]

Anyhow, ETL or ECCD, it's the same thing - fetching the data from your live operational systems and putting it in your data warehouse.

The book thoroughly covers the entire ETL process. Believe me, I tried to squeeze a digest here. A few times. It goes out of hand. A lot, a huge lot of all sorts of information. Useful, extensive, clear and interesting to read.

Having read the first (?) book in the series - The Complete Guide to Dimensional Modeling -
helps greatly in understanding, because this book uses the same (standard) terminology - dimensions, facts, and so on.

Probably the only thing to whine about is the pictures. They could have definitely been better. Some of them are cryptic and some of them have no real value. Let's put it this way - some of the pictures do not help.

Anyhow, great book.

This book gives practical guidelines to follow through the ETL cycle, it does not matter if you are using an Industry Standard ETL tool or writing your own ETL process from scratch, this book will be useful for both. I found it very useful. Definitely worth a read for anyone who is new to ETL.

This is the book I used to introduce myself to data mining as graduate student in computer science. At the time I thought it was a very well organized and self contained book. Since then I have been studying machine learning full time and I still use this book to get really great explanations of key algorithms and concepts. Every time I go back to this book I'm surprised to find all sorts of topics covered that I hadn't noticed on previous readings. Basically it covers a good breadth of topics in an easy to understand manner. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in data mining or machine learning.

If you think you are interested in Data Mining this is a great place to start. This book would work well for people interested in self study, or someone who is considering going to grad school to pursue a field utilizing data mining, or doing data mining research directly.

The book covers the core data mining concepts, with clear examples on how the concepts could be applied to toy problems. The book is light on math and heavy on application, which is great at maintaining interest. This book is not commonly used as a course textbook at the grad level because of its shallow treatment of the underlying math.

Sometimes you just want to know how, and worry about why later.

Also, if you think data mining might be of use to your research or your professional work, this book provides a broad overview of topics. If you are unfamiliar with data mining, and have just heard the term, running through the introductions of each chapter will quickly point you to techniques that will be most useful to you.

I agree with the other reviews: The book is amazingly well-written, and the two chapters on cluster analysis are second-to-none;
Though I am particularly enthusiastic about this book, I believe that it cannot deserve 5 stars, for the following reasons:
- Kernel methods: like most books on this subject, the authors do not explain how to choose the most appropriate kernel(s)
- Cluster analysis: No examples of time-series
- Fully worked-out real-world examples are missing
- no solutions to the exercises

If not possible to wait for a second edition, do not hesitate, this is definitely the best introduction you can find.

This book gives an excellent overview of data mining techniques, and gives thorough information about machine learning fundamentals. The key advantages of this book are its clean structure and high quality content and illustrations.

This book is amazingly well written. Everything is explained in a very clear and to-the-point style. The book can be read from front to back or used as a reference book. It contains countless diagrams and the structure of the content is immediately apparent.

The book covers a lot of the important aspects of data mining. It provides algorithms and techniques for classification, clustering, association analysis, and anomaly detection. Every algorithm is not only formally stated, but also explained in a way that conveys intuition.

I only wish other authors also wrote books this way.

I have a ton of Oracle DW books and this one is still the gold standard for real world administration of large Oracle data warehouses. The others just plain suck because they lack details or have tons of errors. This along with Bert Scalzo's short DW book for Oracle and the older Oracle 8i Data Warehouse book by Oracle Press written by M. Corey and Abbey are still the best ones on the market.

Uses clear examples to demonstrate the best techniques for designing, building and administering efficient data warehouse solutions using Oracle. This book will give you the information you need to make your data warehouse successful. I wish I could give it more than 5 stars.

The heart of data warehousing is the database - Oracle, despite the bugs, is one of the most practical databases for large data repositories.

I have designed and installed Oracle data warehouses on Unix (and lately Linux) since the early nineties. The secret to a fulfilling relationship with an Oracle database set-up is knowing which stable Oracle release to use and the suitability with the operating platform.

Essential Oracle 8i Data Warehousing is focused on giving readers an objective understanding of using Oracle for implementing data warehousing repositories.

This book is better suited to technical users, who already have some understanding of Oracle, about to embark on the data warehousing process. This is not a book that is heavy on the side of data warehousing design nor dimensional modeling. There are other books that serve these subject areas well.

Please let me know if you have found this review helpful.

This book has everything: a brief, high-level, overview of oracle "concepts" like background processes, sga, init parameters, etc. and, ultimately, as its name implies, a good, solid overview of 8i features, tools, and enhancements to make designing, loading, monitoring, and querying large Oracle databases (I think the term "data warehouse" is something of a misnomer) almost, well, FUN. I highly recommend it over Oracle's own, fragmented, documentation and immediately proceeded to partition my large, date-stamped, tables. Mr. Dodge, et al, have raised the bar for successful database projects. Kudos all around.

I am a veteran Oracle DW designer and tuning specialist. This is a great book - very easy to read, technically accurate, and comprehensive (an unusual combination!). I can say from experience that the emphasis is in the right places. The Oracle manuals tell you how to do things - this tells you what to do and why. I highly recommend it for any Oracle DBA involved in building a data warehouse.

Received book in record time. It was in new condition as promised. Great Seller and would order from him again.

This is the third in a series of books the author has written. While some of the concepts in e-commmerce are outdated due to the dotcom crash, the architectures, data management and functional aspects are still useful for e-business and e-commerce. The author discusses many of the challenges in managing databases on the web and shows the need for this technology for web data management.

This is an excellent book on e-commerce and databases. However it is somewhat outdated as the book was presumably written during the dotcom boom. Nevertheless many of the ideas are still very useful. I would suggest that the author updates this book to reflect the recent developments.

The book covers a great deal and provdes a broad overview of web data management and e-commerce. It starts with a lot of background material on database systems, the web, data mining, etc. and then focuses on web data management technologies in Part II. Finally it describes how the technologies may be used for e-commerce. I like the writing style of the author, rather casual and takes a building block approach. He sort of tells a story about supporting technologies, web technologies and e-commerce. My one concern is that the book was written during the dotcom boom years. While the technologies are all still valid and useful, although they have advanced quite a lot today, the idea that the web and e-commerce will take over is long gone. At one time we may have thought that we will be doing all of our shopping even buying groceries on the web. But this has still not happened in large scale. Therefore, it may be time to take another look at the ideas and perhaps get another edition out reflecting what is real today. But then one never knows what the future will be. Maybe once the technologies mature and our approach to the web evolves, the dotcom ideas may take off again.

I found this book extremely useful. The author starts with some excellent background material on web data management and then goes into more details on architectures and models for web databases. Finally, she discusses their applications to e-commerce. At times I thought the book was too detailed (e.g., in data management) and at other times I felt that the book ought to have given more details (e.g. in e-commerce). Nevertheless the book emphasizes on web data management and all aspects of this topic. It was very easy to read and as a newcomer to the field I found it very thought provoking. I thought the author explained the security aspects extremely well, partly because she is an expert in database secruity. At times she dwelt more than it was necessary on security as the focus of the book was not on security. I would have liked to have seen more discussions on how specific organizations carry out e-commerce. Since the field is evolving so rapidly I would love to see a follow-on book giving details and examples on e-commerce and the applications of web data management to e-commerce. On the whole an excellent, easy to read book.

Dispite the 300+ pages, I was able to finish this book in a day. It provides clear and concise information on how to manage a data warehousing project, caveats & pitfalls, and differences between DW technologies & strategies. The first half of the book focuses on step-by-step DW project management and methodology. The second half focuses on technologies and concepts. However, I felt that the second half of the book was not as strong as the first (probably because technology changes constantly). If you want a book that gives you a step-by-step task list that can be easily transferred to a MS Project plan, then this is the book you want!

This is a good introduction to data warehousing for business process owners, project managers and service delivery and support professionals. Like all books in the Enterprise Computing series this one follows the people-process-technology pattern, with a focus on business value.

The authors start by showing how data warehouses fit into the context of IT architecture, and how this relates to fulfilling business needs. This is followed by a clearly presented section on concepts that will be easily understood by non-technical readers, especially business process owner who are exploring the benefits and advantages of data warehousing.

Scope and complexity of designing, implementing and deploying a data warehouse are discussed in detail in Section II, starting with some excellent material for developing a business case and determining the cost/benefit ratio of a data warehouse initiative. Information in this section is also useful for planning a data warehouse project because it provides low-level details on roles and responsibilities. A key point here is the way the project is structured with both technical and business resources. I like this approach because it involves all of the major stakeholders and IT customers from the beginning instead of the more common practice of waiting until the last minute to involve the business. This approach will go a long way towards making a data warehouse project a success and ensuring that the business gets what it really needs instead of what IT thinks the business needs.

The technology section of this book is an excellent description of data structures, meta data and topics that need to be understood in view of the large difference between a data warehouse and an online transaction processing system. I learned a lot from this section and appreciated the way the information was clearly presented. I also liked the fact that the authors included a section on production and maintenance. Other books stop short of this important milestone in a development life cycle, which leaves a lot of unaccounted for issues. This section completes the total picture of a data warehousing initiative and sets realistic expectations for the true costs, resources and effort required to implement and maintain a data warehouse throughout its entire life cycle.

This is a nicely done book that is accessible to both technical and non-technical readers, and is one of the best resources with which to get up-to-speed on data warehousing without getting bogged down with too many technical details.

Data Warehousing covers a lot of territory, but does not go into depth. If you know this in advance it sets your expectations that this book is more of an educational tool for managers than a "how-to" for data architects and DBAs. I recommend The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit by Ralph Kimball for those who are seeking an in-depth technical treatment of the subject.

This book will give you a solid foundation of the basics, expose the issues and provide a high-level process for planning and implementing a data warehouse. It is divided into sections, the first three covering people, process and technology.

Section One starts with an overview enterprise IT architectures, how data warehousing fits into the scheme of things, and associated business and technical perspectives. I like the way the authors emphasize business perspectives, which is a consistent thread throughout the book. They use a framework called "InfoMotion", which covers all of the requirements, but (to me) is too wrapped-up in "consultant-speak". For example, they litter this section with nonsense such as "InfoMotion = Information/Data * motion. While it makes perfect sense from a conceptual viewpoint, there is no way to compute it, so why express it as a formula? Parenthetically, data is easy to quantify; measuring information is difficult, but can be done. The motion part of the equation is plain silliness because there is no basis given for measurement. But I am nitpicking here.

You are next introduced to data warehouse concepts. This gives a foundation that is complete and covers all key elements, such as reports, definitions of data warehouse and data mart and operational data stores. I thought this was an excellent introduction. Also included is a brief piece on cost/benefit and return on investment. It was short and hit all of the key points, but would have fit better in the prior discussion of the business perspective.

The next section addresses the people part of a data warehousing project, begining with the project sponsor. Answers to some incisive questions are given in this part, such as "how will the data warehouse affect decision-making processes?", "how will it improve financial, marketing and operations processes?" and similar business-focused questions. These draw your attention to the real reasons for data warehousing. This section moves naturally into project management considerations, and exposes some common problems like defining project scope, underestimating time and project overhead or factoring the operational support issues after the data warehouse is rolled out and in production. One of the best parts of this section is how the authors counter common problems and risks with advice on how to eliminate or mitigate them. I liked the approach to measuring results, which gives some sound key performance indications that you can use to baseline some total cost of ownership drivers after the data warehouse is in production. This section continues with roles and responsibilities of the project team. The authors have crafted a sound team structure that consists of business and technical representatives who are overseen by a steering committee. This is an excellent approach. I thought the inclusion of users from various business domains was one of the key strengths, because these people know the data's value to the business a lot better than the technical side of the team. On the other hand, I thought it was naive of the authors to state that this group would be required 80% of the time during the project. While I fully agree with this estimate, it is nearly impossible in practice. I wish the authors would have shared how they sold the business side on making an 80% commitment of their best and brightest.

As this section moves into the actual project there are some things I loved about their approach: breaking the project into four parallel tracks and the proposed rollout strategy. These give you a good understanding of the scope and magnitude of a typical data warehouse project.

Section 4 covers technology, and gets a little too technical for a business user in some places, but is just right for an IT manager who is not a DBA or data architect. I liked the discussion of metadata, why normalization is not appropriate for data warehousing, and the treatment of fact and dimension tables.

The final section discusses maintenance requirements once the data warehouse is in production. This prepares you for the realities of managing these systems. I wish the authors would have addressed some of the workload and scheduling issues that are a part of the territory - refreshing the warehouse is going to require a fine balancing act that is going to affect maintenance windows, other production jobs and a plethora of other production headaches if not planned for in advance.

Overall this is a good book for the audience I cited above. I strongly recommend anyone considering a data warehouse to also read Improving Data Warehouse and Business Information Quality by Larry P. English.

Excellent book that explains all the steps necessary to implement successful warehouse project. It approaches it from organizational point of view as oppossed to technical. It will complement many technical warehousing books out there.

A serious textbook about Data warehouse real world issues.

It provides material not covered by other textbook, the laterial about meta data in particular.

A must read

This book makes it easy to fix Access. Simply look in the table of contents for the annoyance that is plaguing your database and go to the page that fixes it. Most of the fixes are simple ones that are either hidden from the user or just not documented well in the Access help. Just one of the fixes was worth the price of the book. The rest were bonuses. My database now works the way I had envisioned it would.

0-596-00852-X
Reviewed: 1st Edition

If you work with Access (or are thinking about it) you really need this book. Access is a very capable and powerful app and can certainly handle the majority of small business needs (and even enterprise class as well, say if you're using Access as a front end to a backend SQL database). The catch of course, is that Access is full of inconsistencies, irksome quirks, weird "features" that don't work as expected, and of course (like all complex software) bugs. (Although to be fair there are many things that MS probably can't change to ensure compatibility with already written applications).

This book notes the weird stuff that can crop up in using Access and more importantly how to work around same.
In my case I had never done any development with Access before but wanted to develop a custom application using it. Before starting however I bought this book - and am REALLY glad I did. There were many pitfalls that I would have fallen into unless otherwise warned (of course at the start it was kind of discouraging seeing all the "issues" one can have with Access, but better to be advised than sorry after!)

The format of the book is primarily a question and answer format, like "I'm trying to do XXX but it doesn't work" with an explanation of what's going on and *why* it's not working and solutions for accomplishing the task at hand (which may include VBA code or diagrams to help illustrate the point). The Q&As are organised into chapters dealing with a specific topic (i.e. Forms, Queries, Reports, Code Modules etc). In the course of my app development I have reached for this book more often than some of the thicker and heavier (not to mention more expensive) Access books, but you will undoubtedly need other books for reference as well (this book isn't a tutorial nor for absolute newbies to database or Access development, even though there are explanations describing normalisation, relationships, etc).

Aside from the Q&As there are very useful tips regarding recommended options to enable/disable ("Access's Bad Defaults"), Optimization ("How can I speed up a slow combo box?") and avoiding database corruption. This kind of "real world" information is exactly what you NEED to know when you do development and is precisely the kind of thing you'll NEVER find in the help files.

There's also other information such as a list of common Visual Basic functions (and what they do) which is useful when you need to do some task but don't know the name of the function. Likewise there's a similar list for Access Events which is helpful in figuring out which event you need to attach code to in order to have something happen. Lastly there's a Glossary of terms ("What's the difference between a bound & unbound control?").

Unlike other books this one doesn't come with a CD. But that's OK, because typically to solve problems you don't need a lot of code once you understand what's going on (in any case code will have to be customised for your app).

If you're developing an application in Access using custom forms, reports, VBA etc you'll get the most benefit from this book. Overall, I think this book's value exceeds the purchase price.

Wow what a great idea for a book series!!

I thought I had seen it all, but then when I picked up my first "Annoyances" book I learned there was a whole new niche out there that had yet to be exploited.

For many of us out there, we pick up technical books for a few typical reasons: to learn a new skill or a reference for an existing skill. What about if you already use an application and there is a whole known set of pitfalls and problem areas that you either need to find a workaround for, or you just want to learn about so if the need arises, you know how to deal with these?

Well, enter the "Annoyances" line of books.

'Access Annoyances' by Phil Mitchell is a great companion book for anyone that has a lot of Access books on the shelf or uses Access on a daily basis and needs to read up more on the problems that will be seen at some point. With a layout that takes each problem one at a time, the flow is very good, and the writing style is clear and concise. Unless you are the MOST experienced of Access users/developers, you will be able to pick up something from this book, and it's more likely that you'll pick up a LOT of things.

Some of the O'Reilly prices on books blow me away because they are so low. It's like you are paying x amount and getting xxxxxx in return. If you use Access on a daily basis, you owe it to yourself to pick up a copy of 'Access Annoyances' right away.

***** HIGHEST POSSIBLE RECOMMENDATION

I wish I had this book when I began programming Access, it would have saved me a lot of frustration. The writing is easy to follow and it contains a wealth of information I had to either learn through trial and error or lots of searching google groups.

That said, there isn't much of value here for someone with a couple of years Access experience--you've already learned this stuff through trial and error or searching google groups!

I only found one piece of incorrect information--it is possible to create page headers on a subreport by creating a dummy grouping level (=1) and putting your headers there. The book says the only way to do it is by putting the headers on the parent report.

I consider myself fortunate that I converted my last regularly used database off of Access awhile back. While the software served me well in learning about database systems when I first made the move to PCs, I always found myself fighting with things that should have been easier than they were. Now I find out that it wasn't just me. Phil Mitchell and Evan Callahan have put together a great book titled Fixing Access Annoyances. If you spend any time in Access, this ought to be on your bookshelf.

Contents: Access Basics; General Annoyances; Performance, Versions, Security, and Deployment; Data, Tables, and Database Design; Queries; Forms; Reports, Mailing Labels, and Charts; Expressions, Macros, Code Modules, and Custom Controls; Appendix; Glossary; Index

The Annoyances series is set up in such a way that each chapter covers a series of "questions" posed as to why a particular software package behaves in a certain way. The questions range from minor "why does Access always do x" to "my #$@%@ database is corrupted!", and the conversational tone between the questioner and the authors is fun to read. After reading some of these things, you wonder why *anyone* would use Access! Mitchell and Callahan, although experts in Access, maintain a healthy cynicism towards the product's features and foibles, and all it would take is for you to find three to five annoyances that bug you to no end in order for you to think this is the best money you've spent in a long time. They also try and cover a range of things, from beginner to advanced level gripes, so that you should see value wherever you are in the continuum of Access experience.

If I had this book available to me a year ago, I might still be running my reading log database in Access instead of in Notes. I certainly would have experienced far less frustration than I did. After making sure you have a solid Access reference guide on your shelf, this should be your second purchase on the subject...

If you are responsible for delivering results from your company's data warehouse, you owe it to yourself to read this book. Chris Adamson has lived and breathed this stuff and he knows first hand the challenges facing those who enable the business intelligence systems that more and more organizations have come to rely on. The implementation of aggregates in your data warehouse is not trivial. Make a mistake and the consequences can be very serious indeed. Mr. Adamson is more than an author. He is a scholar, an educator, and an experienced practitioner in the data warehousing world and the information he shares in this book is worth many times the cover price.

I must confess that I was skeptic before reading the book, because I thought that it could not add very much to Kimball's books. However, I was wrong: this turned out to be a very useful book. Not only it contains the most detailed explanation of DW aggregates available, but it also contains a very good discussion of the loading process for various types of dimensions and facts, which forms the bulk of data warehouse "back room processing".
One more final plus: the author completely adopts the Kimball approach to Data Warehousing, so this book fits very nicely with other books from Wiley's describing Kimball methodology.

Mr. Adamson is certainly the foremost expert in this area. He has many years of hands-on experience, research, and knowledge in Data Warehousing. I have been able to consult his books and find answers and solutions to problems that I encounter every day in my work. You shouldn't waste your time by not buying this book. Definitely don't waste your money by buying a book written by some else.

Recently, a colleague recommended "Mastering Data Warehouse Aggregates" and I have already applied many of the powerful techniques so ably presented by Mr. Adamson. Although experienced in the implementation of the Dr. Kimball's star schema approach, I have never been able to exploit its full performance potential - until now.

Despite the complexity of the material, the book is concise and easy to understand. NOTE: Adamson's approach is not tied to any proprietary HW or SW product. The book guided me from design fundamentals to a performance-optimized upgrade of an existing data warehouse. And it didn't take a long time to do it, either.

If you're a performance-oriented data warehousing professional, you'll find this book deserves a place on your book shelf of essential references. Highly recommended.

Chris does a great job of laying out both the good and bad associated with using aggregates as a means to support Business Intelligence and Hierarchical-type queries within a Data Warehouse environment. As a disciple of Ralph Kimball's Chris kept true to the doctrine and helped the reader understand why he recommended the tacts he did throughout the manuscript. The material was easy to follow and his illustrations were clear representations of the material being presented. I especially liked that he added platform-specific hints and scenarios to tailor the material to the reader's environment. While I do not necessarily agree that building aggregate tables are the solution to many of the challenges in a Business Intelligence use of Data from a Data Warehouse, I do feel that Chris' book is a great place to start to learn the challenges and start down the path of solution to the problem. Add on material might include mention of other solutions that are not manual that also address the same challenge - such as the software package from HyperRoll.

This book is compatible for Access 2007 and 2003(title of book doesn't let you know that), what it does is answer questions that the author poses. Many of these scenarios are relevant. I have never bought an o'reilly cookbook previously, but this book is very refreshing especially when you look at the current books out there. This book isn't for new people, this book is for people who want real solutions to the problems that they might face. If your looking for a first book to get a real grasp of access, get Access 2007 Inside and Out, if your someone who has read a book or two, or has some experience but still runs into hurdles in data manipulation, get this book.

Any involved in database management in general and Access in particular will want the ACCESS DATA ANALYSIS COOKBOOK, a survey which shows how to solve common problems of extracting data and performing calculations from large databases. From developing better queries and applying them to inserting, updating and deleting data to managing text-based data and using arrays, this offers a wealth of high-level technical Access information perfect for managers who already have the basics down.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

I am not sure if this was the intention of the authors, but I find this book to be amazingly helpful given my set of circumstances: I am pretty skilled in Excel and very new to Access, and I want to use Access in the same way I use Excel, but with much larger quantities of data. Of all the Access books I have been referencing, this one is by far the most useful. It provides lots of information on SQL if you are interested, but I'm ignoring that for now and still the book is great at providing the answers I need. I suspect there are lots of people in my shoes (heavy Excel background, but little experience with Access) and so I want to let you know about this excellent reference. I hope it helps you as much as it is helping me!

To be more specific, if you are skilled at constructing formulas in Excel to convert and reformat and analyze data, and you have at least a rudimentary understanding of Access (I have attended a few 2-hour workshops and that's all), and you find yourself stumped in terms of how to do something in Access that would be easy for you to do in Excel, but you can't do it in Excel because you have millions of rows of data, then I'm guessing you will love this book.

This book is not about designing forms, primary keys, or the use of built-in wizards to make easy queries or reports. This book is about applying Access to real-world business problems. The book addresses how to query data, how to move data to and from Access in various ways, the calculation of different financial and investment terms, and other such problems. The reader of this book should already have some Access experience and thus know how to get around the Access user interface, know basic table structures and relations among them, and how to construct simple queries. As long as you know this much or more, the book should be quite useful to anyone interested in business solutions using Access to analyze the data that is involved. The book consists of a series of recipes that provide example queries, programming tips, and also some requisite math. The following is a summary of each chapter's contents. Each section of each chapter is actually a recipe consisting of a problem - the section title - and its solution(s).

1. Query Construction - A variety of query issues are addressed, including the use of the AND, OR, IN, and NOT operators; creating union queries; and understanding join types.
1.1. Finding Unmatched Records
1.2. Making AND and OR Do What You Expect
1.3. Working with Criteria Using the IN Operator
1.4. Excluding Records with the NOT Operator
1.5. Parameterizing a Query
1.6. Returning a Top or Bottom Number of Records
1.7. Returning Distinct Records
1.8. Returning Random Records
1.9. Fine-Tuning Data Filtering with Subqueries
1.10. Combining Data with Union Queries
1.11. Inserting On-the-Fly Fields in Select Queries
1.12. Using Aliases to Simplify Your SQL Statements
1.13. Creating a Left Join
1.14. Creating a Right Join
1.15. Creating an Outer Join

2. Calculating with Queries - More on using queries to find solutions to business problems. It demonstrates how to apply aggregate functions, custom functions, regular expressions, and crosstabs.
2.1. Finding the Sum or Average in a Set of Data
2.2. Finding the Number of Items per Group
2.3. Using Expressions in Queries
2.4. Using Custom Functions in Queries
2.5. Using Regular Expressions in Queries
2.6. Using a Cartesian Product to Return All Combinations of Data
2.7. Creating a Crosstab Query to View Complex Information

3. Action Queries - How to apply queries to perform activities such as inserting, updating, and deleting data.
3.1. Running an Update Query
3.2. Appending Data
3.3. Deleting Data
3.4. Creating Tables with Make-Table Queries

4. Managing Tables, Fields, Indexes, and Queries - Introduces how to programmatically create and manipulate tables and queries.
4.1. Creating Tables Programmatically
4.2. Altering the Structure of a Table
4.3. Creating and Using an Index
4.4. Programmatically Removing a Table
4.5. Programmatically Creating a Query

5. Working with String Data - Recipes on managing text-based data. Shows how to isolate parts of a string, how to remove spaces at any place in a string, and how to manipulate numbers stored as text.
5.1. Returning Characters from the Left or Right Side of a String
5.2. Returning Characters from the Middle of a String When the Start Position and Length Are Known
5.3. Returning the Start Position of a Substring When the Characters Are Known
5.4. Stripping Spaces from the Ends of a String
5.5. Stripping Spaces from the Middle of a String
5.6. Replacing One String with Another String
5.7. Concatenating Data
5.8. Sorting Numbers That Are Stored as Text
5.9. Categorizing Characters with ASCII Codes

6. Using Programming to Manipulate Data - How to use arrays, access the Windows Registry, encrypt data, and use transaction processing. Also covered are search methods, charts, and manipulating data relationships.
6.1. Using Excel Functions from Access
6.2. Working with In-Memory Data
6.3. Working with Multidimensional Arrays
6.4. Sorting an Array
6.5. Flattening Data
6.6. Expanding Data
6.7. Encrypting Data
6.8. Applying Proximate Matching
6.9. Using Transaction Processing
6.10. Reading from and Writing to the Windows Registry
6.11. Creating Charts
6.12. Scraping Web HTML
6.13. Creating Custom Report Formatting
6.14. Rounding Values
6.15. Running Word Mail Merges
6.16. Building a Multifaceted Query Selection Screen

7. Importing and Exporting Data - Different ways of moving data into and out of Access. Covers import/ export specifications, using the FileSystemObject, XML with XSLT, and communicating with SQL Server. Exchanging data with other applications in the Office suite is also covered. Also covers how to create an RSS feed.
7.1. Creating an Import/Export Specification
7.2. Automating Imports and Exports
7.3. Exporting Data with the FileSystemObject
7.4. Importing Data with the FileSystemObject
7.5. Importing and Exporting Using XML
7.6. Generating XML Schemas
7.7. Using XSLT on Import or Export
7.8. Working with XML via the MSXML Parser
7.9. Reading and Writing XML Attributes
7.10. Creating an RSS Feed
7.11. Passing Parameters to SQL Server
7.12. Handling Returned Values from SQL Server Stored Procedures
7.13. Working with SQL Server Data Types
7.14. Handling Embedded Quotation Marks
7.15. Importing Appointments from the Outlook Calendar
7.16. Importing Emails from Outlook
7.17. Working with Outlook Contacts
7.18. Importing Data from Excel
7.19. Exporting Data to Excel
7.20. Talking to PowerPoint
7.21. Selecting Random Data

8. Date and Time Calculations - How to add time, count elapsed time, work with leap years, and manage time zones in your calculations.
8.1. Counting Elapsed Time
8.2. Counting Elapsed Time with Exceptions
8.3. Working with Time Zones
8.4. Working Around Leap Years
8.5. Isolating the Day, Month, or Year
8.6. Isolating the Hour, Minute, or Second
8.7. Adding Time

9. Business and Finance Problems - Ways of calculating depreciation, loan paybacks, and return on investment are introduced, and investment concerns such as moving averages, Head and Shoulders patterns, Bollinger Bands, and trend calculations are discussed. One recipe explains how latitude and longitude are used to determine distances between geographical areas.
9.1. Calculating Weighted Averages
9.2. Calculating a Moving Average
9.3. Calculating Payback Period
9.4. Calculating Return on Investment
9.5. Calculating Straight-Line Depreciation
9.6. Creating a Loan Payment Schedule
9.7. Using PivotTables and PivotCharts
9.8. Creating PivotTables
9.9. Charting Data
9.10. Finding Trends
9.11. Finding Head and Shoulders Patterns
9.12. Working with Bollinger Bands
9.13. Calculating Distance Between Zip Codes

Chapter 10. Statistics - The most math intensive of the chapters, it discusses statistical techniques such as frequency, variance, kurtosis, linear regression, combinations, and permutations. All the recipes here have great value in data analysis.
10.1. Creating a Histogram
10.2. Finding and Comparing the Mean, Mode, and Median
10.3. Calculating the Variance in a Set of Data
10.4. Finding the Covariance of Two Data Sets
10.5. Finding the Correlation of Two Sets of Data
10.6. Returning All Permutations in a Set of Data
10.7. Returning All Combinations in a Set of Data
10.8. Calculating the Frequency of a Value in a Set of Data
10.9. Generating Growth Rates
10.10. Determining the Probability Mass Function for a Set of Data
10.11. Computing the Kurtosis to Understand the Peakedness or Flatness of a Probability Mass Distribution
10.12. Determining the Skew of a Set of Data
10.13. Returning a Range of Data by Percentile
10.14. Determining the Rank of a Data Item
10.15. Determining the Slope and the Intercept of a Linear Regression
10.16. Measuring Volatility

One final word of advise is to purchase "Head First SQL" or some other good book on SQL if you don't already feel proficient. Although the book briefly explains each query it shows, I don't think the explanation is sufficient unless you see the stuff every day. A good thing about the book is that it shows screenshots of the application in just about every recipe and usually gives directions in clear numbered steps.

I came to the project on an executive level having little to no expertise in Warehouse Software Management (WMS). From the onset of my reading "Selecting Warehouse Software from WMS & ERP Providers" it proved to be everything and far more than I could have ever begin to appreciate. But, when I became armed with the companion work Supply Chain Terminology, I was empowered to understand the language of the industry. Hence, intuition fueled by grasping the concepts with added clarity allowed for our project to advance in a far more professional and efficient manner; discussions amongst team members was enhanced and leadership could be more effectively provided. We are now positioned to accomplish what many other reputed multi-million dollar enterprise have not been able to achieve in its supply chain software solutions, because we have an executive staff who has invested the time and have had the good fortune of sound advice and business practices from the Philip Obal series of reading materials.

The glossary is very comprehensive, and helpful both to people new to the industry as well as those who have been in it for several years. Hard to think of any other place where one could find a compilation so comprehensive. Great reference manual.

I have found Mr. Obal's Glossary of Supply Chain Terminology invaluable in keeping current and specific with the constantly changing Supply Chain lingo.

It is as concise and current as any reference book on this subject that I have seen. I find the EDI Code definitions particularly helpful.

Very highly recommended especially for logistics professionals who must communicate across companies, industries, stages, and modes in the supply chain.

The terminology in this industry seems endless. So it's great to have something for reference when unfamiliar terms or phrases are brought into conversation. I would recommend this for anyone who wants to gain familiarity with the buzzwords of the industry. It seems like a perfect tool for college graduates who don't want to be caught off guard in a job interview. And it also is great for someone like me, who's been in the business for a while. Easy read.

Sincerely,
Rick Howard

Information Technology Director
Whiting Distribution Systems, Inc.