Blog - Book review: Oracle Warehouse Builder 11g: Getting Started by Robert Griesemer
Introduction
Oracle Warehouse Builder 11g: Getting Started by Robert Griesemer – ISBN 1847195741
Packt Publishing offer me the chance to review this book and I want to thank them as the author Robert Griesemer because writing a book is never an easy task.
The book is a step by step tutorial offering to construct a complete datawarehouse environment from the capture of the data, through their integration to the construction of a cube.
Review
Robert Griesemer has written a book for the beginners. With Oracle Warehouse Builders, you have three kinds of beginner :
- the complete beginners in datawarehousing design
- the beginner in datawarehousing database techniques
- the beginner with the tool
The book have clearly a great focus on the only use of the tool. Although you have a description of some datawarehouse concept (ROLAP, MOLAP), you will not find wide answer on technical and design questions such as :
- What is an OLTP system and what is the difference with a DSS/OLAP system ?
- What is a BI Application and where Oracle Warehouse Builder fit in ?
- Why do we use a bitmap index in a cube rather than a btree index ?
- Why do we have to build a cube when we can simply report against table in a dimensional model ?
By the way, the author send the reader for more datawarehouse design concepts to this book : The DataWarehouse Tool Kit by Ralph Kimball.
The book compete with the Oracle By Example Series (OBE) and one of its strength is that :
- You will play with three different data capture connections (ODBC with SQL Server, direct against an Oracle schema, and import of a flat file) where OBE use only the last one.
- The author take his time and give tips.
I have done only the first two chapters to see if I could follow them easily and it’s the case.
For the others chapters, as the book is really rich in information, I only searched to see if I could find answer to the questions that I had as beginner. Then my review can be inaccurate.
If you search a book which explain well how to use Oracle Warehouse Builder, you can find it on the website of the publisher. Beside, the book is available in electronic format and it’s good for the environment.
You can also get your own opinion by reading this extracts :
Environment Installation
The installation of the environment is completely explained and delivered in this archive. You can find below extra article which explain in more details and images the installation instructions.
SQL Server
See SQL Server Database ACME_POS Installation for the book Oracle Warehouse Builder Getting Started 11g
Oracle Database
In the ACME_POS archive from the Packt web site, you can find the file create_acme_ws_orders.sql.
The original instructions can be found in the file readme.
Copy it in a directory (for instance C:TEMP5746_Code) and perform the actions below in a command dos :
Microsoft Windows [Version 5.2.3790]
(C) Copyright 1985-2003 Microsoft Corp.
C:Documents and SettingsAdministrator>cd C:TEMP5746_Code
C:TEMP5746_Code>sqlplus / as sysdba
SQL*Plus: Release 10.2.0.3.0 - Production on Mon Oct 19 05:45:16 2009
Copyright (c) 1982, 2006, Oracle. All Rights Reserved.
Connected to:
Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.2.0.4.0 - Production
With the Partitioning, OLAP, Data Mining and Real Application Testing options
SQL> start create_acme_ws_orders.sql