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Title: Building the Data Warehouse by William H. Inmon ISBN: 0-471-56960-7 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 01 January, 1992 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $44.95

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Average Customer Rating: 3.35 (17 reviews)

Rating: 3
Summary: Good Intro to Concepts and Benefits - Light on Tech
Comment: Bill's books are good conceptual books aimed at explaining the Business Benefits and Overall Technical concepts that are fundamental to data warehousing. This book is a classic that people serious about Business Intelligence should read. HOWEVER - Inmon's technical details are light and sometimes generalized, whereas Kimball's books tend to be more nuts-n-bolts and include usable examples. I RECOMMEND (a) read Inmon for how BI environments should be built under ideal situations, (b) read Kimball (warehouse toolkit) for how to do an actual project. For Project Management and Infrastucture issues, read Kimball's "Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit". (c) Read Inmon's Corp Information Factory to understand the BI architecture most companies try to build (whether they know it or not!), and (d) STOP wasting time comparing Inmon to Kimball - their paradigms are complimentary, not contradictory.
CHECK OUT "Data Warehousing Fundamentals" by Paulraj Ponniah - it covers concepts by Inmon, Kimball and other leading thinkers and is very useful when -planning projects, -working with management to explaing BI environments.

Rating: 4
Summary: Dwh at the beginning
Comment: Data warehouse development relies on a scientific substrate, but usual target reader is not a computer scientist, nor a programmer, rather an advanced user who has to present dwh projects to management. So most books are mainly business-level presentations, and this book is not an exception. It contains some technical issues, more in the form of hints and tips than fully developed solutions, that have nowadays become common and wide-known features. Most books about dwh, OLAP and even mining look like as they have been written some years ago (typically late ninety) in order to present to a wide audience those new disciplines, and then submitted to further and slight revisions to work out new editions. In my experience, user community's skill has grown up, but many publications have not been able to keep its pace.
However, though this does not seem not a mandatory step in a dwh basic education, it still retains all its historical importance.

Rating: 2
Summary: Inmon vs. Kimball????
Comment: The two approaches, Inmon and Kimball are complimentary. Kimball is not "BS" and "stupid" as stated by one reviewer. In fact, it is the PRACTICAL techniques and elegant SIMPLICITY that makes Kimball's work so valuable. Inmon is strong on theory, while Kimball is strong on the day-to-day tools required to build a useful and understandable decision support environment. This reviewer has observed many huge "pure Inmon" projects fail (and none observed succeeded) while all pure Kimball projects observed have thrived and exceeded expectations. Strong words, to be sure, but accurate to the reality observed by this reviewer. While the failures might be attributed to the particular technical teams and management groups, many of those same groups did succeed with a dimensional approach.

If you want to debate academics, read both authors and have at it. I have to actually deliver... on time or early and on budget or below. Thus, my rating reflects that reality. Give me Kimball. The techniques have worked for me (and teams of all sizes) since 1986 at many Fortune 100 and 500 clients.

Inmon provides a great perspective on the issues and on how to think about information management for decision support and this book provides some of his latest thinking on the topic. Kimball provides an excellent and proven way to get there in the real world.