Describes a framework from the original scoping of an overall data warehouse through development and deployment and the final steps of planning the next phase. Two themes underlie the book: the business dimensional lifecycle approach and the data warehouse bus architecture. The accompanying CD-ROM contains complete data warehouse project plan tasks and responsibilities, sample models of bus architecture, blank versions of the templates and tools in the book, and checklists for use throughout the project. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews@booknews.com)

Lifecycle refers to all the steps in the complete software development process: planning, design, coding, testing, implementing, and managing. This book is a step-by-step methodology for designing, developing, and deploying data marts and data warehouses.

A comprehensive, thoughtful, and detailed book that will be of inestimable value to anyone struggling with the complex details of designing, building, and maintaining an enterprise-wide decision support system. Highly recommended. -Robert S. Craig, Vice President, Application Architectures, Hurwitz Group, Inc.

In his bestselling book, The Data Warehouse Toolkit, Ralph Kimball showed you how to use dimensional modeling to design effective and usable data warehouses. Now, he carries these techniques to the larger issues of delivering complete data marts and data warehouses. Drawing upon their experiences with numerous data warehouse implementations, he and his coauthors show you all the practical details involved in planning, designing, developing, deploying, and growing data warehouses. Important topics include:

* The Business Dimensional Lifecycle(TM) approach to data warehouse project planning and management

* Techniques for gathering requirements more effectively and efficiently

* Advanced dimensional modeling techniques to capture the most complex business rules

* The Data Warehouse Bus Architecture and other approaches for integrating data marts into super-flexible data warehouses

* A framework for creating your technical architecture

* Techniques for minimizing the risks involved with data staging

* Aggregations and other effective ways to boost data warehouse performance

* Cutting-edge, Internet-based data warehouse security techniques

The CD-ROM supplies you with:

* Complete data warehouse project plan tasks and responsibilities

* A set of sample models that demonstrate the Bus Architecture

* Blank versions of thetemplates and tools described in the book

* Checklists to use at key points in the project

* Checklists to use at key points in the project