Building the Data Warehouse (3rd Edition)

A little over fifteen years ago, I was working for the then great, and now deceased, Chicago area consulting firm of Greenbrier and Russel. On their behalf, I was often called upon to speak publicly on matters relating to logical data modeling and relational database design. One of these occasions was a meeting of the Milwaukee chapter of the Data Administration Management Association. When I spoke before these wonderful folks, the speaker following me was one Bill Inmon. How could I have known then how close was I to one of the real future "rock stars" of the Data Warehousing World? (I must also report that some folks said I gave the better presentation that day. But that had everything to do with the excellent presentation graphics put together by the outstanding staff at G&R. Inmon, obviously, still lacks such artistic, professional support.) In any case, Inmon's book, now reviewed, is really quite a good introduction to the important, and still emerging, topic of corporate data warehousing. It is, as some other reviewers have averred, a bit light technically. However, it does provide something of a "soup to nuts" introduction to the topic. I was particularly struck by how nicely Bill dealt with the evident controversy still extant between what is styled as his data warehousing approach versus that of Ralph Kimball. Inmon respectfully cites Kimball in the corpus of this text. In so doing, he simply, and I'd judge fairly, illustrates the difference between the approaches, allowing his readers to reach their own conclusions. In the sometimes acrimonious world of technical debate, I found this approach refreshing and praise worthy. As a practitioner of many years in the discipline, I can recommend Inmon's book as an excellent and comprehensive introduction to the important and still emerging topic. God bless.