Michael J. Swart

We’re deep in the heart of spring time, a time to celebrate renewal. And if you’re living in Southwestern Ontario, the weather is making it really easy to do. Also coming out in April is a number of new titles (in more than one sense of the word). Here are some that I’d like to share with everyone.

1. The Data Warehouse Toolkit by Richard Kimball

Okay, so this isn’t a new book, but it’s new to me. What follows here is a review of that book. What I write will seem uncritical, but I’m not going to make up some bad stuff for the sake of balance. It’s that good.

So about a month ago I asked a friend/B.I. Expert Todd McDermid for a good head start on Business Intelligence and he recommended this book.

And after some more digging, I find that he’s not the only B.I. expert to recommend this book. In SQL Server MVP Deep Dives Erin Welker also writes about Business Intelligence:  “From here my best recommendation is to start the way I started, with a book I cannot recommend enough: The Data Warehouse Toolkit by Ralph Kimball”

So the book has been out for a long time and time has shown that the methods established in the book are proven and accepted. I’ve read a number of chapters so far and I’m impressed. I’m averaging a couple AHA moments a chapter. I now have a pretty good idea why the reporting projects I’ve seen in the past have suffered from poor user adoption.

As I’m about to start on some new B.I. project,  I realize that there’s so much I still don’t know. But the book is a good start.

2. Brad Schulz’s New Title, MVP

Last October I had the fortune to be able to interview someone I thought was underexposed, Brad Schulz. His commitment to the SQL Server community was recognized late last week when he was awarded Microsoft’s Most Valuable Professional.

Brad maintains a blog and his latest post was a very gracious thank you. Congratulations Brad! To everyone not Brad, double check that his blog’s feed is in your RSS reader.

3. Brent Ozar’s New Title, MCM

Brent is a prolific blogger and respected DBA. He’s been sharing his experiences with the grueling Microsoft Certified Master training course.

How do I know the course is grueling? Certainly not from personal experience. I just read it on someone’s blog. Now where did I see that… Oh that’s right. Somehow Brent found time to blog about his own MCM training experiences despite the heavy course workload.

And it doesn’t seem to have cramped his writing style either. Whereas I try to generate interest in my blog through drawing cartoons or by generating nifty images (see I’m doing it again), Brent generates interest the old fashioned way. By writing SQL articles which somehow turn into human interest stories. He’s a human being and by design or not, his emotions (and bacon) show in his posts more often than not.

He took the final lab this weekend and describes the experience.  If any exam can be called an experience I understand this one can. Congratulations Brent.