Corporate Information Factory, 2nd Edition

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 400 pages
• Published by: Wiley
• Edition: 2nd Edition December 18, 2000
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0471399612
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0471399612
• Book Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.5 x 1 inches
• Weighs: 1.6 pounds

Product Description
The "father of data warehousing" incorporates the latest technologies into his blueprint for integrated decision support systems

Today's corporate IT and data warehouse managers are required to make a small army of technologies work together to ensure fast and accurate information for business managers. Bill Inmon created the Corporate Information Factory to solve the requirements of these managers. Since the First Edition, the design of the factory has grown and changed dramatically. This Second Edition, revised and expanded by 40% with five new chapters, incorporates these changes. This step-by-step guide will enable readers to connect their legacy systems with the data warehouse and deal with a host of new and changing technologies, including Web access mechanisms, e-commerce systems, ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems. The book also looks closely at exploration and data mining servers for analyzing customer behavior and departmental data marts for finance, sales, and marketing.

Back Cover Copy
The father of the data warehouse incorporates the latest technologies into his blueprint for integrated decision support systems

Having invented the corporate information factory (CIF) to help IT and database managers cut through the jungle of information technologies out there, bestselling author Bill Inmon again teams up with experts Claudia Imhoff and Ryan Sousa to show you how to integrate all key components of the modern information system architecture in a way that meets your evolving business needs.

You'll get clear explanations on how to integrate the enterprise data warehouse with a host of new technologies and solutions that have emerged since this groundbreaking work was first published in 1998. You'll also discover how to leverage these technologies to ensure broad access to information for end users, while reducing costs and improving scalability across the enterprise. Ultimately, you'll learn to design, build, and implement a company-wide information ecosystem that:
* Integrates with legacy systems and the Web
* Leverages third-party ERP, CRM, and eBusiness applications
* Exploits the latest in data exploration and mining technologies
* Takes advantage of low-cost alternative storage
* Scales across the enterprise through the use of data marts and operational data stores
* Accommodates the use of multiple data warehouses
* Can start small and grow incrementally

Reader Reviews
Evaluating "overview" books such as these is difficult. If this is a new subject to you or you are a manager needing an overview, you'll probably find it a good introduction to the Inmon-style Data Warehouse (the other being Kimball-style). But after giving the book a "once-over", that's it. Nothing is handled in enough detail to make this any kind of reference or guide. So from the novice perspective this is a "must read" and as good an introduction to CIF as you will get, from the people that define the standards - give it 4 stars (why not 5 stars will be discussed later). If you have worked on Data Warehousing projects in the past but your environment was not particularly designed with much forethought, then by all means whiz through this book and you'll see that all the pieces can be part of a cohesive strategy - 3 stars. If you are experienced then you'll probably see this as a waste of time, too high level. You can get everything in here from various web sites, whitepapers or other books - 1 star. Regardless of where you're coming from though this is one of the few books that actually use pictures in a way that is detrimental to clarity. Some are repeated so many times, so inane or so large that you have to surmise that they are mostly there to thicken the book. The appendix, CIF Architecture Guidelines, is also the largest section of the book yet I have no idea what the point is. I think it would be more appropriately titled - Incomplete Ruminations on Random Topics.