Implementing Enterprise Data Warehousing by Alan Schlukbier (Lulu.com, 2007) is the world’s first meta book. (No, a meta book is not a book about metadata. Read on.)

The subject of enterprise data warehousing is a large and intimidating subject, and there are volumes of books and articles written about it. To read everything on the subject is a large task, to say the least. And most executives just don’t have time to become an expert in this complex field.

Accordingly, Alan Schlukbier has approached the enterprise data warehousings from the standpoint that executives have a lot on their minds and that they don’t have the time or motivation to read everything that they need to know about building and implementing enterprise data warehouses. He has written an imminently readable book that covers the subject at an executive level. It is an executive summary for all of the other works that exist on enterprise data warehousing.

As such, the book is short (which is one of its virtues). It is not intimidating, which is another of its virtues. An executive truly can pick it up, read it and learn the larger framework that the executive needs to know.

The book does not pretend to be the last word on enterprise data warehousing (EDW) implementation. Instead, it is positioned as the first word.

In case after case, Schlukbier points the reader to other works in the industry. This is why it is a meta book.

The book is complete in that it introduces the reader to the many different aspects of EDW development and implementation. Some of the topics that are covered include:

• Data quality
• 
  
• Data stewardship
  
  
• Data modeling
  
  
• Data governance
  
  
• ETL
  
  
• Data mining
  
  
• Master data management (MDM)

The aim of this book is breadth, not depth. And maybe on occasion this is exactly what executives need.

A final thought is that the book is peppered with anecdotes. These pithy anecdotes drive home the central themes of discussion and lend an air of realism to the book.

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