The Data Warehouse Toolkit: The Complete Guide to Dimensional Modeling (Classic Book)

The Data Warehouse Toolkit: The Complete Guide to Dimensional Modeling (Second Edition) - Ralph Kimball and Margy Ross

I consider this book a classical book about Dimensional Modeling. The first edition was published in 1996 and in this second edition, published in 2002, Ralph Kimball and Margy Ross updated, increased, and enhanced the original concepts of dimensional modeling with new and complementary techniques.

The book contains several case studies, where you can learn the design techniques by example, in the main business subjects. There is a chapter for subject, starting with Retail sales, that they consider the classical example to illustrate dimensional modeling. The next chapters are about Inventory, Procurement, Order Management, Customer Relationship Management, Accounting, Human Resources Management, Financial Services, Telecommunications and Utilities, Transportation, Education, Health Care, Electronic Commerce and Insurance.

There is an important chapter, called Building the Data Warehouse, where they introduce the Business Dimensional Lifecycle Road Map, starting in the project planning, passing by all steps to build a Data Warehouse, and finishing in deployment, maintenance and growth.

All the Kimball Toolkit books are excellent books about data warehousing techniques, but this in particular, should be read for everyone involved in dimensional modeling and data warehouse projects.