The latest edition of the single most authoritative guide on dimensional modeling for data warehousing!Dimensional modeling has become the most widely accepted approach for data warehouse design. Here is a complete library of dimensional modeling techniques-- the most comprehensive collection ever written. Greatly expanded to cover both basic and advanced techniques for optimizing data warehouse design, this second edition to Ralph Kimball's classic guide is more than sixty percent updated.The authors begin with fundamental design recommendations and gradually progress step-by-step through increasingly complex scenarios. Clear-cut guidelines for designing dimensional models are illustrated using real-world data warehouse case studies drawn from a variety of business application areas and industries, including:* Retail sales and e-commerce* Inventory management* Procurement* Order management* Customer relationship management (CRM)* Human resources management* Accounting* Financial services* Telecommunications and utilities* Education* Transportation* Health care and insuranceBy the end of the book, you will have mastered the full range of powerful techniques for designing dimensional databases that are easy to understand and provide fast query response. You will also learn how to create an architected framework that integrates the distributed data warehouse using standardized dimensions and facts.This book is also available as part of the Kimball's Data Warehouse Toolkit Classics Box Set (ISBN: 9780470479575) with the following 3 books:The Data Warehouse Toolkit, 2nd Edition (9780471200246)The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit, 2nd Edition (9780470149775)The Data Warehouse ETL Toolkit (9780764567575)

Updated for the latest database management systems -- including MySQL 6.0, Oracle 11g, and Microsoft's SQL Server 2008 -- this introductory guide will get you up and running with SQL quickly. Whether you need to write database applications, perform administrative tasks, or generate reports, Learning SQL, Second Edition, will help you easily master all the SQL fundamentals. Each chapter presents a self-contained lesson on a key SQL concept or technique, with numerous illustrations and annotated examples. Exercises at the end of each chapter let you practice the skills you learn. With this book, you will:Move quickly through SQL basics and learn several advanced features Use SQL data statements to generate, manipulate, and retrieve data Create database objects, such as tables, indexes, and constraints, using SQL schema statements Learn how data sets interact with queries, and understand the importance of subqueries Convert and manipulate data with SQL's built-in functions, and use conditional logic in data statements Knowledge of SQL is a must for interacting with data. With Learning SQL, you'll quickly learn how to put the power and flexibility of this language to work.

If you're looking for a scalable storage solution to accommodate a virtually endless amount of data, this book shows you how Apache HBase can fulfill your needs. As the open source implementation of Google's BigTable architecture, HBase scales to billions of rows and millions of columns, while ensuring that write and read performance remain constant. Many IT executives are asking pointed questions about HBase. This book provides meaningful answers, whether you’re evaluating this non-relational database or planning to put it into practice right away.Discover how tight integration with Hadoop makes scalability with HBase easier Distribute large datasets across an inexpensive cluster of commodity servers Access HBase with native Java clients, or with gateway servers providing REST, Avro, or Thrift APIs Get details on HBase’s architecture, including the storage format, write-ahead log, background processes, and more Integrate HBase with Hadoop's MapReduce framework for massively parallelized data processing jobs Learn how to tune clusters, design schemas, copy tables, import bulk data, decommission nodes, and many other tasks

Useful business analysis requires you to effectively transform data into actionable information. This book helps you use SQL and Excel to extract business information from relational databases and use that data to define business dimensions, store transactions about customers, produce results, and more. Each chapter explains when and why to perform a particular type of business analysis in order to obtain useful results, how to design and perform the analysis using SQL and Excel, and what the results should look like.

You're beyond the basics, so dive right in and really put your database skills to work! This supremely organized reference is packed with hundreds of timesaving solutions, troubleshooting tips, and workarounds. It's all muscle and no fluff. Discover how the experts tackle Access 2010 -- and challenge yourself to new levels of mastery!Master essential data management and design techniques Import and link to data from spreadsheets, databases, text files, and other sources Use action queries to quickly insert, update, or delete entire sets of data Create custom forms to capture and display data Design reports to calculate, summarize, and highlight critical data--and learn advanced techniques Automate your application with macros and Visual Basic® for Applications (VBA) Use Access Services to extend your database application to the Web A Note Regarding the CD or DVD The print version of this book ships with a CD or DVD. For those customers purchasing one of the digital formats in which this book is available, we are pleased to offer the CD/DVD content as a free download via O'Reilly Media's Digital Distribution services. To download this content, please visit O'Reilly's web site, search for the title of this book to find its catalog page, and click on the link below the cover image (Examples, Companion Content, or Practice Files). Note that while we provide as much of the media content as we are able via free download, we are sometimes limited by licensing restrictions. Please direct any questions or concerns to booktech@oreilly.com.

Best practices and invaluable advice from world-renowned data warehouse expertsIn this book, leading data warehouse experts from the Kimball Group share best practices for using the upcoming “Business Intelligence release” of SQL Server, referred to as SQL Server 2008 R2. In this new edition, the authors explain how SQL Server 2008 R2 provides a collection of powerful new tools that extend the power of its BI toolset to Excel and SharePoint users and they show how to use SQL Server to build a successful data warehouse that supports the business intelligence requirements that are common to most organizations. Covering the complete suite of data warehousing and BI tools that are part of SQL Server 2008 R2, as well as Microsoft Office, the authors walk you through a full project lifecycle, including design, development, deployment and maintenance.Features more than 50 percent new and revised material that covers the rich new feature set of the SQL Server 2008 R2 release, as well as the Office 2010 releaseIncludes brand new content that focuses on PowerPivot for Excel and SharePoint, Master Data Services, and discusses updated capabilities of SQL Server Analysis, Integration, and Reporting ServicesShares detailed case examples that clearly illustrate how to best apply the techniques described in the bookThe accompanying Web site contains all code samples as well as the sample database used throughout the case studiesThe Microsoft Data Warehouse Toolkit, Second Edition provides you with the knowledge of how and when to use BI tools such as Analysis Services and Integration Services to accomplish your most essential data warehousing tasks.

The definitive guide to dimensional design for your data warehouse Learn the best practices of dimensional design. Star Schema: The Complete Reference offers in-depth coverage of design principles and their underlying rationales. Organized around design concepts and illustrated with detailed examples, this is a step-by-step guidebook for beginners and a comprehensive resource for experts. This all-inclusive volume begins with dimensional design fundamentals and shows how they fit into diverse data warehouse architectures, including those of W.H. Inmon and Ralph Kimball. The book progresses through a series of advanced techniques that help you address real-world complexity, maximize performance, and adapt to the requirements of BI and ETL software products. You are furnished with design tasks and deliverables that can be incorporated into any project, regardless of architecture or methodology. Master the fundamentals of star schema design and slow change processing Identify situations that call for multiple stars or cubes Ensure compatibility across subject areas as your data warehouse grows Accommodate repeating attributes, recursive hierarchies, and poor data quality Support conflicting requirements for historic data Handle variation within a business process and correlation of disparate activities Boost performance using derived schemas and aggregates Learn when it's appropriate to adjust designs for BI and ETL tools

SummaryMahout in Action is a hands-on introduction to machine learning with Apache Mahout. Following real-world examples, the book presents practical use cases and then illustrates how Mahout can be applied to solve them. Includes a free audio- and video-enhanced ebook. About the TechnologyA computer system that learns and adapts as it collects data can be really powerful. Mahout, Apache's open source machine learning project, captures the core algorithms of recommendation systems, classification, and clustering in ready-to-use, scalable libraries. With Mahout, you can immediately apply to your own projects the machine learning techniques that drive Amazon, Netflix, and others. About this BookThis book covers machine learning using Apache Mahout. Based on experience with real-world applications, it introduces practical use cases and illustrates how Mahout can be applied to solve them. It places particular focus on issues of scalability and how to apply these techniques against large data sets using the Apache Hadoop framework.This book is written for developers familiar with Java -- no prior experience with Mahout is assumed. What's InsideUse group data to make individual recommendations Find logical clusters within your data Filter and refine with on-the-fly classification Free audio and video extrasTable of ContentsMeet Apache Mahout PART 1 RECOMMENDATIONS Introducing recommenders Representing recommender data Making recommendations Taking recommenders to production Distributing recommendation computations PART 2 CLUSTERING Introduction to clustering Representing data Clustering algorithms in Mahout Evaluating and improving clustering quality Taking clustering to production Real-world applications of clustering PART 3 CLASSIFICATION Introduction to classification Training a classifier Evaluating and tuning a classifier Deploying a classifier Case study: Shop It To Me

You know the rudiments of the SQL query language, yet you feel you aren't taking full advantage of SQL's expressive power. You'd like to learn how to do more work with SQL inside the database before pushing data across the network to your applications. You'd like to take your SQL skills to the next level. Let's face it, SQL is a deceptively simple language to learn, and many database developers never go far beyond the simple statement: SELECT columns FROM table WHERE conditions. But there is so much more you can do with the language. In the SQL Cookbook, experienced SQL developer Anthony Molinaro shares his favorite SQL techniques and features. You'll learn about:Window functions, arguably the most significant enhancement to SQL in the past decade. If you're not using these, you're missing outPowerful, database-specific features such as SQL Server's PIVOT and UNPIVOT operators, Oracle's MODEL clause, and PostgreSQL's very useful GENERATE_SERIES functionPivoting rows into columns, reverse-pivoting columns into rows, using pivoting to facilitate inter-row calculations, and double-pivoting a result setBucketization, and why you should never use that term in Brooklyn.How to create histograms, summarize data into buckets, perform aggregations over a moving range of values, generate running-totals and subtotals, and other advanced, data warehousing techniquesThe technique of walking a string, which allows you to use SQL to parse through the characters, words, or delimited elements of a string Written in O'Reilly's popular Problem/Solution/Discussion style, the SQL Cookbook is sure to please. Anthony's credo is: "When it comes down to it, we all go to work, we all have bills to pay, and we all want to go home at a reasonable time and enjoy what's still available of our days." The SQL Cookbook moves quickly from problem to solution, saving you time each step of the way.

Implement a Robust BI Solution with Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Equip your organization for informed, timely decision making using the expert tips and best practices in this practical guide. Delivering Business Intelligence with Microsoft SQL Server 2012, Third Edition explains how to effectively develop, customize, and distribute meaningful information to users enterprise-wide. Learn how to build data marts and create BI Semantic Models, work with the MDX and DAX languages, and share insights using Microsoft client tools. Data mining and forecasting are also covered in this comprehensive resource. Understand the goals and components of successful BI Design, deploy, and manage data marts and OLAP cubes Load and cleanse data with SQL Server Integration Services Manipulate and analyze data using MDX and DAX scripts and queries Work with SQL Server Analysis Services and the BI Semantic Model Author interactive reports using SQL Server Data Tools Create KPIs and digital dashboards Use data mining to identify patterns, correlations, and clusters Implement time-based analytics Embed BI reports in custom applications using ADOMD.NET