You should know this...

This is an excellent book. From the start, you will find yourself in awe over the volume of information you are absorbing and skills you are acquiring. Regardless of your perspetive, you will be pleased with your investment of time and effort toward the ambitious goals set by the author. And Brian Larson has a comfortable, easy-flowing style that keeps you involved through the detail and complexity. Unfortunately, this book is also seriously flawed. Let me try to explain.

First, understand that the book targets a wide audience. Depending on your objectives, you may find the book complete or completely lacking. BI covers a broad range. This book offers an introduction and takes you to the next level. Experienced BI pros will probably find the level too light. Brian covers BI from beginning to end, with narritave and exercises titled "Learn by Doing". The hands on exercises comprise about 1/3 of the book and there-in lie the book flaws.

I'm incredibly curious to know how many of this book's 5-star reviewers actually completed all the exercises. For me, much of the satisfaction with this book came from realizing the fruits of my effort working through the exercises. And this book requires a focused effort to complete all the "learn by doing" exercises. For the novice like me, it's an effort richly rewarded--if you can get there.

I took on the challenge and, like any good analyst, figured out the problems with the data and Brian's instructions. It can be done, but I'm left with a sense of letdown from the author and publisher. At the very least, these problems could be noted in the errata. There are quite a few problems and unless you figure them out, your hands on efforts will be rewarded with a Visual Studio result of: #value!

If your goal is to "learn by doing" you might be terribly disappointed. The book's errors present a significant hurdle to a successful "hands-on" learning experience. Note that most of the exercises work just fine. Its just that one exercise failure and the end result, a working cube, might very well elude you. More on this later...

With that said, this book has a tremendous amount to offer. Regardless of your perspective, the numerous examples offer a wonderful insight to cube creation, data mining and business intellligence. The examples are understandably simple and straightforward for appeal to a broad audience. Still, they provide a tangible insight to the software's capabilities. The book does not pretend to serve as a comprehensive source of functions and syntax. Yet, it more than covers the basics. For someone experienced with Visual Studio, the first half of the book may be review. The later chapters dig deeply into data mining, reporting and working with Excel...

The data mining section of the book delivers on a grand scale. It does use one of the cubes developed earlier in the book. However, a backup, completed cube can be downloaded and installed. If your objective centers on mining (~1/3 of the book) you can (with some effort) build and install a ready-made cube to work with throught the exercises. Note: this process isn't bullet-proof either. For content and style; 5 stars. For problem riddled exercises, 2-stars. Hope this helps, good luck.

FYI
I am an alalyst by trade. Good with Excel, ok with Access. I've never seen Visual Studio before starting this project. To learn BI, I bought this book, SQL Server 2008 Developer and downloaded a Demo version of windows Server 2008: ~$100. I borrowed an old IT server, formatted the drive, installed software and got to work. I am comfortable that I know enough to build cubes, begin mining the data and delivering reports.

The project has taken 10 days (and a couple of late nights :-)

Other Reviews

• You should know this...
• Good BI Overview
• Do Not Bother!
• good hands-on book to have!