A Data Warehousing Book

There are many different titles that qualify as a data warehousing book available for purchase. A data warehousing book will focus on all or just about most of the functions of a data warehouse. A Data warehousing book can range from the Kimball Groups data warehousing training books to Data warehousing for dummies. Any data warehousing book available to readers or potential users that wish to fully understand the decision support system have common themes and topics. A data warehousing book will almost always first begin with defining the decision support system then go into more details about what the data warehouse can do, what it could be used for and other general topics. This article will briefly highlight some of the topics data warehousing books should, and most likely already have, covered.

Data warehousing book, definition

Most data warehousing books will tend to start of with a definition of the decision support system. Often times these definitions can be somewhat complex and vary depending on the data warehousing book one decides to pick up and read. Unfortunately some of the definitions authors give in their books are unnecessarily long and complicated and often times also describe what the decision support system can do for users. This is unfortunate because users would like to know first what a data warehouse is physically not what it can do or how it works. Those topics should be saved for later. The simplest definition of a data warehouse is that it is a virtual warehouse where data is gathered and stored from various different sources.

Data warehousing book, what the decision support system can do

Data warehousing books often describe what the system can do for users in the definition. However, in doing so the author takes the risk of complicating things. The reader might not be technically trained, for example a management team that has no background in technology. Data warehousing can do a lot of different things for different users. This all depends on what the user is hoping to achieve and gain from the data warehouse. Data warehousing books should describe how the system works and all the potential uses users can gain out of it. Data warehousing books should ultimately inform the reader that the data warehousing is a decision support system that allows them to extract information from their existing data and use that to make better informed decisions.

Data warehousing books and the design stages

Data warehousing books will more than devote some time to the design phase of a data warehousing project. This is crucial to the reader of a data warehousing book and the whole project because it is the foundation of the entire project. The design phase involves deciding whether or not the system is right for the user's purpose, determining their goals, and setting up guidelines for the entire project.

Data warehousing books how-to guide

One of the most beneficial chapters in data warehousing books it the how-to section. Not all data warehousing books devote time to a how to this guide, but its something that users should look for when researching a data warehousing book. Data warehousing can be a costly and time consuming project with many challenges, having a how to guide in a data warehousing book would give the user something to fall back on in case they run into some issues with the project or don't get the results they were hoping for. Data warehousing books with how to guides will often start with the design phase, move into the implementation and so on.