OLAP Solutions: Building Multidimensional Information Systems

OLAP enables users to access information from multidimensional data warehouses almost instantly, to view information in any way they like, and to cleanly specify and carry out sophisticated calculations. Although many commercial OLAP tools and products are now available, OLAP is still a difficult and complex technology to master.
* Substantially updated with expanded coverage of implementation methods for data storage, access, and calculation; also, new chapters added to combine OLAP with data warehouse, mining, and decision support tools
* Teaches the best practices for building OLAP models that improve business and organizational decision-making, completely independent of commercial tools, using revised case studies
* Companion Web site provides updates on OLAP standards and tools, code examples, and links to valuable resources

User review
Unclear and wordy
I had high hopes for this book since I am a data miner who senses the need for alternatives to the slow tools commonly used to assemble large data sets for analysis. Unfortunately, I found this book to be overlong and I did not emerge with a clear picture of what distinguished OLAP tools from the alternatives,,,,.

User review
Time is valuable. This book is not worth a developers time.
I have never written a book review, but I felt compelled to write about this book because there are not many good books on OLAP - and this one really misses the mark from a developer's perspective. If you want a book with good examples to get you going with Microsoft's Analysis Service I can highly recommend `MDX Solutions`.

I can only give the book two stars because
a.) I don't want to seem schrill.
b.) There may be people out there willing to devote a large amount of time reading a defensively written tome about generic concepts that don't translate into real world products - which in 2006 are way ahead of this book.

User review
Fundamental Olap principles
I was impressed by the quality of this book; this is probably the most complete book on OLAP theory and is a fundamental reading for professionals involved in the design of olap systems. In most cases it gives all the details and information needed to master this technology. It also contains some practical examples that are very useful to see how the theory can be applied in the real world.
I didn't read the first edition, but the second edition contains new sections and many updates, like a description of SQL-99 OLAP extensions.
The author chose to be vendor-independent, so all practical examples are based on a multidimensional language that he created, called Located Contents (LC). However, when I read it I had already used a couple of OLAP tools (Microsoft Analysis Services and Microstrategy), and I think that this helped me understand many of the concepts contained in the book.

User review
Good OLAP Methodology
OLAP is a somewhat arcane corner of the IT universe and this book is a good guide to it for information and business professionals. It covers the basics well and provides decent exaples to get you going.

Of course, the hardest part of OLAP is making the conceptual leap from relational databases and transactional processing to the world of analytical processing, but finance experts and accountants will appreciate OLAP and its ability to summarize data in a way that is hard to do in most ERP and legacy systems.

User review
A must read for anybody involved in Olap design
A book which gives you a comprehensive theoretical foundation together with useful, pratical techniques to design Olap solutions.
In the first half of the book the author explains you all you need to think clearly in N dimensions, in the second half he guides you through the design of a rather complex application, stepping into the purchasing process, the material inventory analysis, sales & marketing, and activity-based management. He teaches you using maieutics, Socrates' way of teaching, via a dialogue between two designers. This way, a lot of questions that usually arise during real-life development are examined and solved.
Whilst the examples in the first edition of this book were based on TM1, in this second edition they are written using a vendor-independent language, called LC (Located contents), which provides you with a solid, logically based foundation to multidimensional design.
The vendor languages, like those used by Microsoft Analysis Services (MDX), Applix TM1, Oracle Express and Hyperion Essbase, are kind of Plato's shadows in the cavern of this ideal language (which is sort of a tautology for MS Plato,,.), so if you start thinking in LC, you'll be able to work with all of these products.
Ideal complements to this book, if you use Microsoft Analysis Server, are `MDX Solutions` by George Spofford, and `Microsoft Olap Solutions`, by Thomsen (again!), Spofford and Chase.