It is sad that so many data modelers are just playing it by ear and have never read anything on the topic. I'm finding this to be more and more true throughout programing though. Nobody reads the definitive books anymore, just blog posts and SO, and maybe some online bootcamp. And engineering quality is declining accordingly.
From my years of exp I feel that Kimball is not exactly the best solution for those techs. They typically involve very large amount of data, fast iteration (of anything, including data warehousing), columnar database and real-time streaming requirement.
This book though is to be clear (and that's in the first about sections) does not have much on product/event based analytics nor giant scale data as judged as 100+ TB data management.
We need new data books, so we started one: Cloud Data Management - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21411893 - Oct 2019 (47 comments)
"E-books offered from Wiley.com are delivered on the VitalSource platform. To download and read them, users must install the VitalSource Bookshelf Software."
So no epub, you have to read it through some other third-party software.
Matt/Dave I am the host of The Data Project podcast and I would love to talk about this with you at some point next year. Here is the project page: https://www.datafoundations.com.au/the-data-project
If you want to explore this, drop me an email at: podcast [at] datafoundations.com.au
Cheers!
Also, digital has a lot of advantages for books that are likely to get updates.
My peers have it worse than I do, anything with a screen is snapchat, tiktok, insta, text messages, etc etc. There's so much distraction almost programmed into us.
I do respect that though. Some people learn better digitally or at least don't mind it, and that is the most accessible method. Thank you for your thoughts.
That said, the best option might be a $19 ACM student membership. That will get you free online access to all O'Reilly titles.
Or.. When I was doing an internship, my boss said they'd basically buy me any books I'd want. (the cost of a few books is a rounding error for any company who's paying engineers)
The core problem is ease of access. With loaning out a book there's anxiety with what happens if you damage or lose it, as there's so much stuff that slips through the cracks with the constant diverse requirements of university work.
My peers also will not be bothered to go through the effort, because it would be most likely a loan that comes from another uni so they'd have to specifically know the title, request it, wait for it to show up, etc.