Customer Rating: 
Summary: Good intro for the novice
Comment: I knew nothing about it but now I do thanks to this simple book on the subject and well laid out to get a good overview and now I could easily get involved and learn more knowing the basics.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Good foundation, but getting rapidly obsolete
Comment: I enjoyed reading this book and found it an excellent foundation to issues in data warehousing. However, note that this book was published in 1997, so it does not include anything that was developed after that date. (To be fair, it accurately predicts some trends.) I wish the author would update the book to 2004!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Good Only for Beginners
Comment: This book is good for total beginners, to get familiar with the Data-Warehousing Lingo's. Though the author does tend to give some wague out of the blue examples, it is an interesting read. Buy it only if you have no clue what a database or data warehousing is.
Customer Rating:
Summary: OK for total beginners and laypeople
Comment: This book is good for the person completely new to data warehousing, as long as they DON'T take it as the complete or last word on the subject. Most of the basic concepts are presented well, but there are various errors in some of the specifics, and there are some theories described that are 'old school' and not necessarily relevant with todays technology (in the last 5 years data warehousing has changed in the capability of tools and in approaches & architecture).RECOMMENDATIONS: If you are a business person trying to understand what your computer people are talking about re data warehouses, data marts or business intelligence, this is a good starting point.
But, if you are an IT/IS/computer person, skip this book and read Ralph Kimball's "Data Warehouse Toolkit", then graduate to his "Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit" (covers many more aspects), and Bill Inmon's "Corp Information Factory". These 3 books, and a DBMS specific book (e.g. "Oracle 8i Data Warehousing") will be all you need for your first few projects.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A great DW book for beginners
Comment: Look, this look isn't for experienced DW people. However, it wouldn't hurt some of the DW "experts" I know to read it.The author gived down to earth comments and examples of what the industry entails and what DW is all about. He covers most of the issues and gave me some interesting insight into some areas that I haven't yet delt with.
I've been working in DW for over 5 years. Even so, I think this book is worth reading. I'm gald I did.
