e-Data: Turning Data into Information with Data Warehousing (Addison-Wesley Information Technology Series)

Author: Jill Dyché List Price: $39.95 Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price ISBN: 0201657805 Publisher: Addison-Wesley Pub Co (15 February, 2000) Edition: Paperback Sales Rank: 60,515 Average Customer Rating: 4.62 out of 5

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Customer Reviews

* Business value is threaded throughout every page - this book is written for both IS/IT people and business process owners. Both groups will have no problems understanding every chapter and neither group will get bored.

* The chapters on decision support and the primer on the underlying technology were particularly interesting to me because each are complex subjects and Ms. Dyche managed to present both in a concise manner without leaving out any detail.

* Implementation issues provided in chapter 6 should be required reading by every IS/IT professional and project manager before they are allowed within a mile of a data warehouse project. This chapter is filled with advice that could have only been accrued by surviving numerous tough projects and learning from them. It appears that Ms. Dyche did just that and one would be foolish to not read this chapter carefully.

* Case studies are real, go into a lot of depth and provide an array of insights and ideas. I recommend that all of them be thoroughly read - there is a lot to learn.

* Perils and Pitfalls cited in chapter 9 are brutally honest and hit home. The same for the "dirty little secrets", which expose some dumb practices by vendors, IS/IT and other players. Read and heed.

Other things that I personally liked about this book include questions to ask vendors (a list of questions for hardware, database, application, data mining and various tools vendors provided in Chapter 6), and the 5 questions your consultant should ask you (as a consultant I immediately incorporated this information).

This is a book for everyone, business and technical, and is written by someone who is obviously experienced and knowledgeable. It is also represents some of the wittiest, clearest writing I've encountered in a long time, which makes reading what could have been a dry tome a real pleasure. The book deserves a solid 5 stars and Jill Dyche deserves congratulations for writing when I consider to be the best book on information business value ever published.

She begins by explaining in simple, but not condescending terms, what a data warehouse is, its value to business, and key objectives of data warehousing. While I admired her ability to describe complex facts in clear terms, I especially enjoyed the list of trite data warehousing aphorisms. Mr. Dyche's style is to always provide balance. She comes across as passionate about every topic, but is equally quick to show the darker side of things. This she does throughout the book, and it is one reason why this technical book is such a page-turner.

The next chapter is a thorough discussion of decision support that covers the mechanics, and provides illustrative examples that transform concepts and theory into the practical and achievable.

Chapter 3 is devoted to the topics of data warehouses and database marketing. This is where Ms. Dyche skillfully ties together the business and technical aspects. She also provides the most complete explanation of what exactly customer relationship management it (the term is so bandied about these days that most people have no idea what it really means). This chapter provides excellent material for marketing and MBA types, and will hopefully provide IS/IT folks with ideas on how data warehousing initiatives support business processes. The case studies in this chapter reinforces key points of facts and discussion, and also showed the bridge that needs to be built between IS/IT and business process owners. I came away with this chapter feeling as though I had a mandate to build such a bridge.

The next chapter, 4, is a panoramic view of how various industries use data warehousing to their advantage. Ms. Dyche recommends that you read them all because you'll learn much by looking beyond the borders of your own industry segment, and I completely agree with her. I couldn't resist jumping to the telecom industry first, though, and was astonished at not only how well Ms. Dyche understood and articulated the issues, but in how well they were presented in 9 pages. She gave the same thorough and insightful treatment to retail, financial, transportation, government, health care, insurance and entertainment (although the page count varied from one industry to another).

Chapter 5 delves deeper into the technology and can be easily understood by IS/IT folks who may not be data warehouse experts, as well as business process owners who don't want to be experts, but may be interested in how the moving parts fit together.

Implementation and finding the right vendors are covered in the next two chapters. I had to smile when I read the accurate portrayal of "Good vs. Evil: A tale of Two Project Plans." This is required reading for every project manager who finds her- or himself managing a data warehouse project. Here Ms. Dyche takes a poorly developed project plan that is unfortunately representative of most and shows the flaws. She then shows what a good project plan looks like. Also pay close attention to what she has to say about qualifying and selecting vendors in chapter 7. Although she herself is a consultant who works for a small firm she is not the least bit reticent about providing a balanced view of the good and bad of consultants and vendors, as well as the relative strengths and weaknesses of large firms vs. small ones. Both honesty and humor come through here.

Because I have a "thing" for cost analysis and ROI I especially liked chapter 8 that covers the data warehouse business value proposition. Like every other chapter this was one the mark and insightful. However, the real insights (not to mention a touch of wit) come in chapter 9 - the perils and pitfalls. First she discards the tired list of pitfalls that have been circulating and comes up with a fresh set of "New Top 10" pitfalls, which hit home and impart more wisdom that you can imagine. She then segues into an expose of ten dirty little secrets, which are refreshing in their frankness and insight. Ms. Dyche really steps up to the plate here. Apparently she was on a roll when writing this chapter because she caps it off with a piece on the politics of data warehousing and eight signs of data warehouse sabotage. She ends with a chapter titled, "What to Do Now" that offers yet more advice and insight about how to proceed if you need a data warehouse or if you already have one.

This book is packed with facts wrapped in wit and sparkling prose. It contains advice and wisdom that would take years to accrue, and is usually jealously guarded by consultants and vendors. Yet the author, a consultant, freely dispenses this advice and wisdom, which makes this book so valuable. It earns far more than the 5 stars available and is strongly recommended.

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