Oracle DBA Guide to Data Warehousing and Star Schemas

This book addresses all aspects of constructing star schemas within Oracle data warehouses, from modeling and design through high-speed loads and lightning fast queries. The book delivers meaningful examples complemented by empirical samples and benchmarks, such that readers will learn more than just the mechanics. This book transforms readers into subject matter experts for dimensional modeling, star schemas and data warehousing in general for the Oracle database environment. This book is based on research conducted for the multi-terabyte data warehouse for the 7-Eleven Corporation. Star schema: a data warehouse design that enhances the performance of multidimensional queries on traditional relational databases. One fact table is surrounded by a series of related tables. Data is joined from one of the points to the center, providing a so called `star query.` Previously announced in 2/2003 PTG catalog.

User review
Required reading
Excellent job of covering various types of databases. If you work with a data warehouse and cannot clearly define what a fact, dimension, or cube is, that's probably why your warehouse acts like a big slow-running database (i.e., it was never designed properly). This book will show you the way.

User review
Very objective and driven book for Oracle DWH
I bought this one in 2005. At that time I had some experience with MS SQL Server data warehouses but none with Oracle.
I had the fortune to use this book when I was member of the team for the creation of a DWH for a big company, as Oracle is in my opinion the only choice you have for medium to huge DWH.
As a DWH developer and designer I find this book really handy. There are some arguments I don't agree with the author since you cannot speak generally and each implementation has its own issues, but overall the book does help you lots.
I think it is a shame that is such an old version, these days everyone is using 11g or at least 10g but most of the material in the book can work as well with latest versions.
It is somehow difficult at the beggining to figure out how to use all the information in the book but Bert has done a great job describing each problem and pointing out the choices you have to solving them.
I really recommend this one for anyone with some knowledge of Oracle and who is interested in the creation of a Data Warehouse project. The price of the book gets paid off very quickly when you revieve congratulations for the improvement in running queries, and later on more sponsorship from management, which is at the end the ultimate goal of any Data Warehouse.
Thanks Bert, I look forward for your next edition.

User review
Practical Implementation Details
Gives the straight scoop on how to make the star transformation work right. Not wicked technical, a book for doers. Non-nonsense, read it in a day, then get the job done. Just what a practitioner needs (at least it is just what I needed). Thanks.

User review
Unprofessional style and lack of knowledge
The author definitely has an arrogant style of writing. The book just talks about one way of doing things without being open about other possible better ways of designing and implementing efficient techniques. Oracle features such as partitioning, materialized views, external tables are not done enough justice.

Data warehouse requirements are much more than the two-dimentional approach discussed. There is minimal or no discussion of performance at the system level taking into account infrastruture, architecture, query optimizaion, front-end tools etc.

A very narrow outlook on datawarehouse implementations.

User review
A Recipe for Success
Allow me to bestow some well-deserved praise upon Bert Scalzo's terrific `Oracle DBA Guide to Data Warehousing and Star Schemas`. A true gem - I won't go on another Oracle project without it.

What Bert provides here is nothing short of a clear and crisp recipe for success for implementing Oracle-based data warehouses. It fills in a much-needed area of dimensional data warehousing best practices, by describing precisely how to coax the best achieveable Oracle performance from dimensional data models.

I can't tell you how many projects I've been on where I've had to compromise physical data models in order to address perceived `shortcomings` in Oracle's ability to efficiently service dimensional queries. Using Bert's book on my most recent project, we followed his `recipe`, and were able to consistently achieve the ideal query optimization plans and aggregate navigation behaviors - simply - without any of the usual hassles that I have (unfairly) come to associate with large scale Oracle data warehousing.

To data warehousing newbies I humbly suggest: pick up any one of Ralph Kimball's terrific texts on data warehouse design, and then if you are rendering it in Oracle, buy this book and follow its advice. The resultant system will be simple, powerful, and fast.

Bravo Bert - a great contribution to the field.

Jim Stagnitto
Llumino, Inc (www.llumino.com)