The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit

A thorough update to the industry standard for designing, developing, and deploying data warehouse and business intelligence systems The world of data warehousing has changed remarkably since the first edition of The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit was published in 1998. In that time, the data warehouse industry has reached full maturity and acceptance, hardware and software have made staggering advances, and the techniques promoted in the premiere edition of this book have been adopted by nearly all data warehouse vendors and practitioners. In addition, the term "business intelligence" emerged to reflect the mission of the data warehouse: wrangling the data out of source systems, cleaning it, and delivering it to add value to the business. Ralph Kimball and his colleagues have refined the original set of Lifecycle methods and techniques based on their consulting and training experience. The authors understand first-hand that a data warehousing/business intelligence (DW/BI) system needs to change as fast as its surrounding organization evolves. To that end, they walk you through the detailed steps of designing, developing, and deploying a DW/BI system. You'll learn to create adaptable systems that deliver data and analyses to business users so they can make better business decisions.

This old edition was published in 2002. The current and final edition of this book is The Data Warehouse Toolkit: The Definitive Guide to Dimensional Modeling, 3rd Edition which was published in 2013 under ISBN: 9781118530801. The authors begin with fundamental design recommendations and gradually progress step-by-step through increasingly complex scenarios. Clear-cut guidelines for designing dimensional models are illustrated using real-world data warehouse case studies drawn from a variety of business application areas and industries, including: Retail sales and e-commerce Inventory management Procurement Order management Customer relationship management (CRM) Human resources management Accounting Financial services Telecommunications and utilities Education Transportation Health care and insurance By the end of the book, you will have mastered the full range of powerful techniques for designing dimensional databases that are easy to understand and provide fast query response. You will also learn how to create an architected framework that integrates the distributed data warehouse using standardized dimensions and facts.

Updated new edition of Ralph Kimball's groundbreaking book ondimensional modeling for data warehousing and businessintelligence! The first edition of Ralph Kimball's The Data WarehouseToolkit introduced the industry to dimensional modeling,and now his books are considered the most authoritative guides inthis space. This new third edition is a complete library of updateddimensional modeling techniques, the most comprehensive collectionever. It covers new and enhanced star schema dimensional modelingpatterns, adds two new chapters on ETL techniques, includes new andexpanded business matrices for 12 case studies, and more. Authored by Ralph Kimball and Margy Ross, known worldwide aseducators, consultants, and influential thought leaders in datawarehousing and business intelligence Begins with fundamental design recommendations and progressesthrough increasingly complex scenarios Presents unique modeling techniques for business applicationssuch as inventory management, procurement, invoicing, accounting,customer relationship management, big data analytics, and more Draws real-world case studies from a variety of industries,including retail sales, financial services, telecommunications,education, health care, insurance, e-commerce, and more Design dimensional databases that are easy to understand andprovide fast query response with The Data WarehouseToolkit: The Definitive Guide to Dimensional Modeling, 3rdEdition.

Cowritten by Ralph Kimball, the world's leading data warehousing authority, whose previous books have sold more than 150,000 copies Delivers real-world solutions for the most time- and labor-intensive portion of data warehousing-data staging, or the extract, transform, load (ETL) process Delineates best practices for extracting data from scattered sources, removing redundant and inaccurate data, transforming the remaining data into correctly formatted data structures, and then loading the end product into the data warehouse Offers proven time-saving ETL techniques, comprehensive guidance on building dimensional structures, and crucial advice on ensuring data quality

This groundbreaking book is the first in the Kimball Toolkit series to be product-specific. Microsoft’s BI toolset has undergone significant changes in the SQL Server 2005 development cycle. SQL Server 2005 is the first viable, full-functioned data warehouse and business intelligence platform to be offered at a price that will make data warehousing and business intelligence available to a broad set of organizations. This book is meant to offer practical techniques to guide those organizations through the myriad of challenges to true success as measured by contribution to business value. Building a data warehousing and business intelligence system is a complex business and engineering effort. While there are significant technical challenges to overcome in successfully deploying a data warehouse, the authors find that the most common reason for data warehouse project failure is insufficient focus on the business users and business problems. In an effort to help people gain success, this book takes the proven Business Dimensional Lifecycle approach first described in best selling The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit and applies it to the Microsoft SQL Server 2005 tool set. Beginning with a thorough description of how to gather business requirements, the book then works through the details of creating the target dimensional model, setting up the data warehouse infrastructure, creating the relational atomic database, creating the analysis services databases, designing and building the standard report set, implementing security, dealing with metadata, managing ongoing maintenance and growing the DW/BI system. All of these steps tie back to the business requirements. Each chapter describes the practical steps in the context of the SQL Server 2005 platform. Intended Audience The target audience for this book is the IT department or service provider (consultant) who is: Planning a small to mid-range data warehouse project; Evaluating or planning to use Microsoft technologies as the primary or exclusive data warehouse server technology; Familiar with the general concepts of data warehousing and business intelligence. The book will be directed primarily at the project leader and the warehouse developers, although everyone involved with a data warehouse project will find the book useful. Some of the book’s content will be more technical than the typical project leader will need; other chapters and sections will focus on business issues that are interesting to a database administrator or programmer as guiding information. The book is focused on the mass market, where the volume of data in a single application or data mart is less than 500 GB of raw data. While the book does discuss issues around handling larger warehouses in the Microsoft environment, it is not exclusively, or even primarily, concerned with the unusual challenges of extremely large datasets. About the Authors JOY MUNDY has focused on data warehousing and business intelligence since the early 1990s, specializing in business requirements analysis, dimensional modeling, and business intelligence systems architecture. Joy co-founded InfoDynamics LLC, a data warehouse consulting firm, then joined Microsoft WebTV to develop closed-loop analytic applications and a packaged data warehouse. Before returning to consulting with the Kimball Group in 2004, Joy worked in Microsoft SQL Server product development, managing a team that developed the best practices for building business intelligence systems on the Microsoft platform. Joy began her career as a business analyst in banking and finance. She graduated from Tufts University with a BA in Economics, and from Stanford with an MS in Engineering Economic Systems. WARREN THORNTHWAITE has been building data warehousing and business intelligence systems since 1980. Warren worked at Metaphor for eight years, where he managed the consulting organization and implemented many major data warehouse systems. After Metaphor, Warren managed the enterprise-wide data warehouse development at Stanford University. He then co-founded InfoDynamics LLC, a data warehouse consulting firm, with his co-author, Joy Mundy. Warren joined up with WebTV to help build a world class, multi-terabyte customer focused data warehouse before returning to consulting with the Kimball Group. In addition to designing data warehouses for a range of industries, Warren speaks at major industry conferences and for leading vendors, and is a long-time instructor for Kimball University. Warren holds an MBA in Decision Sciences from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, and a BA in Communications Studies from the University of Michigan. RALPH KIMBALL, PH.D., has been a leading visionary in the data warehouse industry since 1982 and is one of today's most internationally well-known authors, speakers, consultants, and teachers on data warehousing. He writes the "Data Warehouse Architect" column for Intelligent Enterprise (formerly DBMS) magazine.

Ralph Kimball's three data warehousing books, The Data Warehouse Toolkit, The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit, and The Data Webhouse Toolkit, provide you with everything you will need to create, manage, and use your data warehouse. His first book, The Data Warehouse Toolkit, is the definitive guide to building a data warehouse. Kimball uses actual case studies of existing data warehouses developed for specific types of business applications such as retail, manufacturing, banking, insurance, subcriptions and airline reservations. Using the techniques learned in Kimball's first book, The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit carries them to the larger issues of delivering complete data marts and data warehouses. The book shows you all the practical details involved in planning, designing, developing, deploying, and growing data warehouses. The Data Webhouse Toolkit is a groundbreaking guide which introduces the Webhouse, a powerful new way of capturing valuable information flowing into a Web site and ordering it in ways that are useful to managers, strategic decision-makers, and customers.

The final edition of the incomparable data warehousing and business intelligence reference, updated and expanded The Kimball Group Reader, Remastered Collection is the essential reference for data warehouse and business intelligence design, packed with best practices, design tips, and valuable insight from industry pioneer Ralph Kimball and the Kimball Group. This Remastered Collection represents decades of expert advice and mentoring in data warehousing and business intelligence, and is the final work to be published by the Kimball Group. Organized for quick navigation and easy reference, this book contains nearly 20 years of experience on more than 300 topics, all fully up-to-date and expanded with 65 new articles. The discussion covers the complete data warehouse/business intelligence lifecycle, including project planning, requirements gathering, system architecture, dimensional modeling, ETL, and business intelligence analytics, with each group of articles prefaced by original commentaries explaining their role in the overall Kimball Group methodology. Data warehousing/business intelligence industry's current multi-billion dollar value is due in no small part to the contributions of Ralph Kimball and the Kimball Group. Their publications are the standards on which the industry is built, and nearly all data warehouse hardware and software vendors have adopted their methods in one form or another. This book is a compendium of Kimball Group expertise, and an essential reference for anyone in the field. Learn data warehousing and business intelligence from the field's pioneers Get up to date on best practices and essential design tips Gain valuable knowledge on every stage of the project lifecycle Dig into the Kimball Group methodology with hands-on guidance Ralph Kimball and the Kimball Group have continued to refine their methods and techniques based on thousands of hours of consulting and training. This Remastered Collection of The Kimball Group Reader represents their final body of knowledge, and is nothing less than a vital reference for anyone involved in the field.

Three books by the bestselling authors on Data Warehousing! The most authoritative guides from the inventor of the technique all for a value price. The Data Warehouse Toolkit, 3rd Edition (9781118530801) Ralph Kimball invented a data warehousing technique called "dimensional modeling" and popularized it in his first Wiley book, The Data Warehouse Toolkit. Since this book was first published in 1996, dimensional modeling has become the most widely accepted technique for data warehouse design. Over the past 10 years, Kimball has improved on his earlier techniques and created many new ones. In this 3rd edition, he will provide a comprehensive collection of all of these techniques, from basic to advanced. The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit, 2nd Edition (9780470149775) Complete coverage of best practices from data warehouse project inception through on-going program management. Updates industry best practices to be in sync with current recommendations of Kimball Group. Streamlines the lifecycle methodology to be more efficient and user-friendly The Data Warehouse ETL Toolkit (9780764567575) shows data warehouse developers how to effectively manage the ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) phase of the data warehouse development lifecycle. The authors show developers the best methods for extracting data from scattered sources throughout the enterprise, removing obsolete, redundant, and inaccurate data, transforming the remaining data into correctly formatted data structures, and then physically loading them into the data warehouse. This book provides complete coverage of proven, time-saving ETL techniques. It begins with a quick overview of ETL fundamentals and the role of the ETL development team. It then quickly moves into an overview of the ETL data structures, both relational and dimensional. The authors show how to build useful dimensional structures, providing practical examples of beginning through advanced techniques.