Data Management Wonk’s 2012 Reading List

101 Lightbulb Moments in Data Management: Tales from the Data Roundtable – Phil Simon, Dylan Jones, Jim Harris, Jill Dyché, Joyce Norris-Montanari, David Loshin, Rich Murnane

Given the technology space in which I make my living, it would have been completely irresponsible of me to not read this book as soon as it came out.

It’s a great book written by a solid list of data management rock stars.  I’ll write the book report for this book as soon as I can, but don’t wait for me.  If you are a data management professional, you should get and read this book ASAP.  You won’t regret the time or the money.

Agile Analytics: A Value-Driven Approach to Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing – Ken W. Collier

"Agile" is one of those terms for me that has really been watered down over the years, so much so that I haven’t been getting too excited about "Agile" books in general for a while now.  However, the tag line on this one grabbed my attention, "A Value-Driven Approach to Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing."  I am all about "Value" when it comes to data and analytics.

Looking at the author’s website, I found a small slice of serendipity.  He has the following quote which speaks to my statement above on the “Agile” term,

I fear that, “agile as the latest magic bullet” has crossed the chasm, but that “agile as a different way of behaving” has not." – Ken Collier

With this, I know that he understands his audience and the environment that we are all working in.

I also see that there are two forwards to the book, one from Jim Highsmith and another from Wayne Eckerson.  This adds quite a bit of clout to Mr. Collier’s work (at least to me).  He is also speaking at the TDWI conference in Feb. of this year on Agile Data Warehousing, so many others have obviously found value in his work.

Art of Enterprise Information Architecture, The: A Systems-Based Approach for Unlocking Business Insight – Mario Godinez, Eberhard Hechler, Klaus Koenig, Steve Lockwood, Martin Oberhofer, and Michael Schroeck

Basically, I bought this book from a vendor at a conference last year (at a heavy discount on the last day) based only on the title and a quick scan to the table of contents.

The book begins with a handful of chapters that define enterprise information architecture and its supporting concepts, such as data domains, information governance and security, along with conceptual and logical views, component models, and operational model.  It then moves on to information architecture topics like cloud computing, meta data management, master data management, and dynamic warehousing.

Of course, this is an IBM-sponsored book, so I have total faith that it will discuss which IBM products align with the problem spaces defined within.  IBM isn’t a big part of my world so hopefully the authors keep this kind of stuff to a minimum.

DAMA Guide to the Data Management Body of Knowledge, The (DAMA-DMBOK) – DAMA International

The good folks at DAMA International have created this book to add structure to the world of data management.  They have organized the field into 10 core functions, such as data governance, data quality management, and data security management, to name a few.  Within each function are numerous activities that make up the function.  The bulk of the book is spent describing each level in the structure in detail.

I’ve found this structure to be very helpful in communicating data management concepts with others, both on the business side and within IT.

It’s not an easy book to sit down and read, but it has a tremendous amount of information that can be quickly put to use within your organization.

Data Analysis Using SQL and Excel – Gordon S. Linoff

This book focuses on three key tasks to “effectively transform data into actionable information: retrieving data with SQL, presenting data with Excel, and understanding statistics as the foundation of data analysis.”

The bulk of this book looks like it would make a great gift to a business analyst in your life that wants to focus on the data side of things.  The first couple of chapters are nothing more than primers for SQL and database tables, and the third chapter covers some very basic data analysis concepts.  From there, the book starts delving into different types of data analysis such as geography, time series, event analysis, and market basket analysis; worthwhile things to have in your tool belt.

Finally, about three-fourths of the way through the book, the author digs into data mining and the various models that can be built using standard relational databases and SQL.

Yes, there are lots of really cool analytics tools out there (cooler than Excel anyway), but not everyone has access to those tools.  However, most business people have Excel on their workstations and access to one or more databases.  This book is for those folks.

DW 2.0: The Architecture for the Next Generation of Data Warehousing – William H. Inmon, Derek Strauss, Genia Neushloss

I read the 1st edition of Mr. Inmon’s “Building the Data Warehouse” back in the mid-90’s and I’ve read quite a few of his other books as well since then.  Did you know that he’s written over 60 books?  Talk about prolific.

The story behind this book is that Mr. Inmon was frustrated (extremely?)that the data warehouse tool vendors had hijacked the term “data warehouse” and morphed it into whatever was needed to sell their own product.  He then set out to refine and update his vision of what the data warehouse is (and its associated architecture) and called it “DW2.0” (which he then trade marked so that no one could ever hijack it again).

I have already read this book.  The biggest differences in his latest definition of the data warehouse is that he incorporates both unstructured data and data lifecycle management to define a complete (?) architecture rather than just a really big database.

As a slight aside, try not to get caught up in the whole Kimball vs. Inmon thing.  It really is a waste of one’s energy.  The two approaches are very complementary; I’ve been implementing solutions that are a blend of both Inmon and Kimball for over 10 years now.

Enterprise Architecture As Strategy: Creating a Foundation for Business Execution – Jeanne W. Ross, Peter Weill, David Robertson

I read “IT Savvy” by Mr. Ross and Ms. Weill from last year’s reading list.  I got so many implementable ideas from that book that I went out and bought their other two titles (this one on Enterprise Architecture and the other on IT Governance (see below)).

I’m particularly interested in this one because I feel that it will more closely align with my present responsibilities and have that much more great info that I can apply right away.  I’ll let you know how well this book hits that mark once I’ve finished it.

Event-Driven Architecture: How SOA Enables the Real-Time Enterprise – Hugh Taylor, Angela Yochem, Les Phillips, Frank Martinez

I’m not just a data guy.  I really love the enterprise architecture aspects of my job as well, and I still look for any good excuse to code.  SOA/web services, simple/complex event processing, event stream processing, and messaging projects are just plain fun.

This book covers that entire spectrum of technologies, as well as discussing case studies that show how and where they add business value.

Executing Data Quality Projects: Ten Steps to Quality Data and Trusted Information – Danette McGilvray

Who doesn’t want to have access to a framework for implementing data quality within an organization, especially one that can be done in 10 steps.  Mr. Deming has his 14 points.  Mr. English has created a set of 20 steps – from Improving Data Warehouse and Business Information Quality (I haven’t yet read his more current tome Information Quality Applied so I’m not quite sure how many steps he has now, but it looked like a lot).

To be fair, Ms. McGilvray’s 10 steps are high-level process steps, so there is still a lot of work to be done within each step, but you should have expected that right? 

What I like about this is that it appears to be a practical book that assumes that you’ve already learned about data quality from somewhere else (Mr. English perhaps, or maybe Mr. Loshin?), so she doesn’t spend a lot of time on that stuff.  This book shows you how to apply that theory to the data quality opportunities that you have in front of you right now.

IT Governance: How Top Performers Manage IT Decision Rights for Superior Results – Peter Weill, Jeanne Ross

This was actually Mr. Weill and Ms. Ross’ first book together, written back in 2004.  However, it is the last of their three books that I will have read.  It seems that I am reading them backwards from their publishing date (not on purpose mind you; it’s just how that worked out).

The theme throughout all three of their books is that of getting the IT projects and resources efficiently and effectively aligned with business objectives and strategy.

Governance in the data management world is crucial to the success of all business intelligence initiatives.  I’m looking for the parallels between IT governance and data governance.

Kimball Group Reader, The: Relentlessly Practical Tools for Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence – Ralph Kimball, Margy Ross, Warren Thornthwaite, Joy Mundy, Bob Becker

Never mind that most (all?) of the information within this book can be found online, people still went out and bought this book in droves.  I bought it simply because I prefer reading books (go figure).

Over the years, I have gone to the Kimball University website to review their Design Tips and I always seem to either learn something new or be reminded of something that I had forgotten.  And the old articles from DBMS Magazine and Intelligent Enterprise are worthy of re-reading again and again (over a span of years of course).

Anyway, this book collects all of that great information into a single place, and that by itself was worth the cost of paying for stuff that I’ve already read before, multiple times.

Making Enterprise Information Management (EIM) Work for Business: A Guide to Understanding Information as an Asset – John Ladley

I picked up this book at the same conference mentioned above for the same heavy discount.  It was worth the extra weight in my bag on the flight home.

This is another one of those sweet-spot books for me.  This discusses what Enterprise Information Management (EIM) is and how business value is realized by actively managing data as an asset.

Mr. Ladley has written this book for the business executives and middle managers rather than the technical folks.  I like that.  From a technical perspective, there are plenty of resources available to educate us technical folks.  However, as a technical person, improving your ability to communicate these concepts to the business folks is key to your success.  Read it with this end-goal in mind and you will gain a ton of new insight.  This is valuable to both you and your company.

Who Owns the Data? Using Internal Customer Relationship Management to Improve Business and IT Integration – Frank L. Eichorn

When I first came across this book, I assumed it to be about data stewardship and ownership.  Of course the book’s tagline set me straight once I actually started looking into the book; it’s another business and IT alignment book targeted at the business executive.

I love these type of books.  I just wish more business executives and managers would actually read these things.  I read them for perspective, but they are the ones that have the most to gain from them.

It’s not a very big book; probably a weekender for most.  As I stated previously, as a technical person, having this perspective is valuable to both you and your company.

Why New Systems Fail: An Insider’s Guide to Successful IT Projects – Phil Simon

When I see this title, I think of big ERP implementation failures.  Having had the good fortune to NOT have been an active participant on a major system conversion project like that, I have my outsider’s thoughts and opinions on why these things didn’t work out as originally intended, but I don’t have true first-hand knowledge.

However, after poking through the TOC and scanning the meat of the book, I suspect that I’ll find that there is a very significant amount of overlap of failed ERP implementations to that of failed data warehouse and business intelligence projects.  Let’s take a look, shall we.  There are discussions on vendor selection, contracts, roles and responsibilities, outside consultants, documentation…

Yep, this is as much a data management book as any of the others in this list.  My first clue should have been that is was written by Mr. Simon.  Silly me.