DATA WAREHOUSING FUNDAMENTALS: A Comprehensive Guide for IT Professionals

FOREWORD

I am delighted to share my thoughts with information technology professionals about my faculty colleague Paulraj Ponniah's textbook Data Warehousing Fundamentals. In the spring of 1998, Raritan Valley Community College decided to offer a course on data warehousing. This was mainly through the initiative of Dr. Ponniah, who had been teaching our database design and development course for several years. It was very difficult to find a good textbook for a college course on data warehousing. We had to settle for a book that was not quite suitable. In order to make the course effective, Paul had to supplement the book with his own data warehousing seminar materials. Our students, primarily IT professionals from local industries, received the course very well. Now this magnificent textbook on data warehousing comes to you through the foresight and diligent work of Dr. Ponniah, along with the insightful support of the publishers, John Wiley and Sons.

This book has numerous features that make it a winner:

• The order of topics is very logical.

• The choice of topics is quite appropriate for a comprehensive introductory book. The coverage of topics is also very well balanced.

• The subject matter is logically structured, with chapters covering essential components of the data warehousing field. The sequence of topics is well planned to provide a seamless transition from design to implementation.

• Within each chapter, the continuity of topics is excellent.

• None of the topics included in the ...