Pentaho Solutions book by Roland Bouman

Hi all !

Today’s book review is about “Pentaho Solutions – Business Intelligence and Datawarehousing with Pentaho and MySQL”, written by Roland Bouman and Jos Van Dongen. Thanks to Roland and Wiley for my own copy.

ISBN: 978-0-470-48432-6

Roland is an IT expert, ranging from web application development and business process analysis to business intelligence. He worked for Inter Access, MySQL AB, Sun Microsystem and is now working for Strukton Rail. He co-authored the MySQL Cluster 5.1 Certification Study Guide. Please, have a look to his blog.

Jos is a BI expert for more than 15 years. He is also a well know author and a presenter. After a long career in BI, he created his own consulting business in 1998 : Tholis Consulting. He is also covering BI developments for the Dutch Database Magazine.

This book is really an impressive work, I mean it. I’m quite used (and sometimes bored) to read technical books about BI, datamining, data management, etc … but this one has its own sound, a familiar sound. It’s like having Roland behind your shoulder for a private master class on Pentaho tools. Within some short minutes, you have a complete Pentaho system running on your server/workstation and ready for testing, developping, trying features … well, doing anything you always wanted to do with Pentaho. Roland and Jos have has succeeded within the challenge of writting a book for different kind of readers :

• The complete newbie in BI who wants to learn the basics of our datawarehousing and decision support, learn more about BI processes, tools, approaches, data modelling, datamining … with Pentaho tools.
• The expert in BI architecture design and implementation, who wants to learn how to deploy a Pentaho solution, how to set up a complete ETL hub with PDI, create PDI clusters …

Let’s have a look to the book agenda :

1. Getting started with Pentaho
   • Basics, from first installation to a complete and detailed view on the Pentaho stack.
2. Dimensional modelling and datawarehouse design
   • Learn (or refresh your knowledge) the dimensional modelling used in datawarehouses.
3. ETL and data integration
   • Discover PDI and learn how to developp transformations. From beginners to advanced users.
4. Business Intelligence Applications
   • Learn everything on metadata management, scheduling, bursting, dashboards, OLAP and datamining.

This book will help you to : 

• Discover Pentaho concepts and approach.
• Refresh your knowledge on dimensional modeling and data warehousing design (Kimball’s star schemas).
• Develop data transformations, jobs, decision streams with Pentaho Data Integration (PDI, aka Kettle).
• Use advanced and powerfull PDI features like variables, remote execution and clustering.
• Make complete design and deploy reports / charts using Pentaho Report Designer.
• Take advantage with OLAP engine and create flexible pivot tables with typical drill up/drill down features using Pentaho Analysis Services.
• Search for patterns in your data and make your first steps in datamining using Pentaho data mining.

I recommand this book to anyone involved in Business Intelligence and Open Source. If you are thinking about trying some Pentaho software (as a new project or with coexistence with your actual and proprietary – expensive - BI stack), this book is definitely for you. You will stop spending time reading forums, tech reviews, looking for feedback (frequent pains with open source …) and will access directly the knowledge you need. If you are currently developing an open source BI project with Pentaho, this book will help you to implement the whole stack with best practices and deliver a world class BI solution for a low TCO.

If you are a newbie into Business Intelligence, you will be pleased to discover a book you can easily understand thanks to Roland and Jon’s talent for popularizing datawarehouse fundamentals and technology. This book will go along with you and ease your work on BI and Pentaho, the most exciting open source BI suite available today.

You can buy this book on Amazon at an attractive price, here.