Book Review: Oracle Warehouse Builder 11g Getting Started (Packt Publishing, 2009)

Packt Publishing got in contact recently and kindly offered to send some Oracle BI and Data Warehousing books over for review. The first one that was sent over was a new one on Essbase System 9 that I'll be reviewing shortly, but shortly afterwards a new one on Warehouse Builder came along which I took a look at on my flight over to LA this weekend.

"Oracle Warehouse Builder 11g Getting Started" by Bob Greisemer (Packt Publishing, ISBN 978-1-847195-74-6) is just over 350 pages long and is written by someone I've not heard of before in the OWB world, but who works for Northrup Grumman. The book itself is aimed at beginners and takes you through the basics of building an OWB project using OWB 11gR1, together with Oracle Database and Microsoft SQL Server data sources. The writing style is easy to read and follow (though his continued referral to Warehouse Builder as the Warehouse Builder" and the Oracle Warehouse Builder" bugged me) and is best seen as a tutorial for those new to the tool.

Technically, the content looks accurate and does a good job of explaining some of the more tricky concepts such as dimension and cube data modeling and defining non-Oracle sources. The scope fo the book is quite limited though and doesn't cover any of the more advanced features of OWB such as the data quality or profiling features, transportable modules, error handling and the like, and it doesn't look at any of the more complex project issues such as migrating code between environments, managing multiple configurations or the like. That said, the book is clearly aimed at people getting started with the tool and there's always a danger that you'll overwhelm people with detail if you include this type of content too early on.

So, in summary, this book looks like a useful alternative to the manuals or the Oracle-by-Example tutorials on OTN, and if you want a book to put on your bookshelf that concisely explains how to get a project up and running, this would be a good choice. If you are looking for something that covers the more complex issues that you run in to when working with Warehouse Builder, this book doesn't cover them, but maybe Bob or someone else will follow-up this book with advanced-level topics in the future. Thanks also to Packt for the review copy, and for also making it available in PDF form which makes it so much easier to carry around on your laptop for reference and review purposes.