most comprehensive, practical guide to designing, building, and implementing a data warehouse on the market today. Barry Devlin--one of the worlds leading experts on data warehousing--is also one of the first practitioners in this area. In this book, he distills the insights and experiences gained over 10 years of designing and building data warehouses. Included are: *An explanation of the optimal three-tiered architecture for the data warehouse, with a clear division between data and information *A full description of the functions needed to implement such an architecture, including reconciling existing, diverse data and deriving consistent, valuable business information *A detailed methodology for building a data warehouse in a way that provides business value and strategic infrastructure at each stage *A high-level approach to justifying the effort involved *A view of the organizational aspects of building and maintaining a warehouse This book will become the key reference for any team undertaking the construction of a data warehouse. It is aimed primarily at the IS managers, architects, and designers involved in this process, as well as the end users having a key role in the ev