This is my professional bookshelf with a review of each book. Most of them are related to analytics, development and automation. Rating is indicated by 0-5 stars.

1. Daniel’s Professional Bookshelf
Just to be clear, I have no vested financial interest in any book mentioned in this
document, and I receive no monetary compensation from authors or publishers.
DATA WAREHOUSE DESIGN
The Data Warehouse Toolkit by Ralph Kimball
Review: This is probably one of those books that every business intelligence professional should read.
Dimensional modelling is not always properly understood by practitioners but this book will help a whole
range of professionals do a better job at analysing requirements, defining metrics, creating reusable models
(logical and physical) and implement flexible analytical solutions.
The Kimball Group Reader by Ralph Kimball
Review: Very well organised book covering modelling and lifecycle of business intelligence and data
warehousing projects.
Clearly written, it is a great collection of articles a seasoned professional will find interesting.
Agile Data Warehouse Design by Lawrence Corr
Review: I think the authors put together two important aspects of BI solution design, a design methodology
and a good introduction to dimensional modelling. I found the methodology easy to follow and formulated in
a way that can be used with business users.
The methodology is probably easier to implement in greenfield implementations, since "reverse engineering"
a mid-sized data warehouse and generate the necessary supporting elements may be a time consuming
activity. That said, the methodological approach of BEAM* would help consulting teams tremendously. Big
thumbs up!
Mastering Data Warehouse Design: Relational and Dimensional Techniques by Claudia Imhoff
Review: A very interesting data warehousing implementation guide. Good coverage of data modelling
techniques and subject area design.
Dimensional Modeling: In a Business Intelligence Environment by Chuck Ballard
Review: Very good guide to dimensional modelling, comparable (for the most part) in depth and breath to
Kimball’s Data Warehouse Toolkit.

2. DATA VISUALISATION
Information Dashboard Design by Stephen Few
Review: This is one of the few books I re-read every couple of years. The amount of information and the
simplicity in the way important concepts are described makes it a volume I recommend to most information
management (BI in particular) professionals.
If you need to design or deliver dashboards or reports, consolidate data and show meaningful organised
information, Stephen Few packaged a really large number of excellent recommendations here.
Designing Data Visualizations by Noah Iliinsky and Julie Steele
Review: This book covers pretty much the same topics found in Stephen Few's Information Dashboard
Design.
It is good and interesting but I was probably looking for new details.
Interesting reading only if you haven't read Stephen Few's books before.
Now You See It by Stephen Few
Review: Good book, contents described by the author are really similar to those in Information Dashboard
Design.
The Wall Street Journal Guide to Information Graphics by Dona Wong
Review: This book was, in hindsight, a lighter and shorter version of Stephen Few's books. Easy to read but a
bit incomplete since it doesn't contain some of the critical contextual information that a reader needs to
become a more educated information management worker or professional.

3. DEVELOPMENT PRACTICES
Continuous Delivery by Jez Humble and David Farley
Review: Excellent book covering continuous delivery practices and principles. Highly recommended for IT
teams. IT managers and professionals can benefit from it.
Agile Analytics by Ken Collier
Review: Good coverage of agile topics and practices including user stories, team work, project automation
and how to introduce agile aspects to BI projects. There are some practical pieces of advice to improve the
way agile software configuration management and agile release management work.
Some of the practices may be difficult to implement if you are using COTS or off the shelf BI tools. Case in
point: version control and continuous delivery, given the nature of the BI "code". Overall great description of
agile projects.
Scrum Shortcuts by Ilan Goldstein
Review: This book is packed with practical and simple tweaks to Scrum practices. I found particularly
interesting the chapters describing estimates, quality, monitoring and metrics, and retrospectives and risks.
Worth reading if you feel "this feels scrum-waterfall-ish all over again".
Jenkins The Definitive Guide by John Ferguson Smart
Review: Excellent introduction to Jenkins, with an extensive description of build pipelines and (to some
extent) deployment pipelines. A good range of plugins are discussed and serve as a great presentation to
Jenkins extensibility. Unfortunately, it is heavily focussed on Java development projects, it requires a bit of
experience to extrapolate the same concepts and examples to projects in my field, business intelligence.
Pragmatic Project Automation by Mike Clark
Review: This book was written well before the Continuous Delivery movement and in many ways, it contains
most of the advice perceived as ground-breaking over the last few years.
Most concepts are not only still relevant but more effectively and efficiently delivered through CI and CD tools
and practices.
The Cathedral and the Bazaar by Eric Raymond
Review: This is a book full of interesting ideas regarding software development, the driving passion behind
the practice and the economics behind old and new paradigms.
Since the author wrote this volume years ago, some of the concepts are now commonplace but will remind
the reader of the evolution experienced in the industry over the last 20 or so years.
DBA Survivor by Thomas LaRock
Review: Not a technical book but it covers a broad range of topics. It does cover the basics regarding
housekeeping, protecting your infrastructure and thinking about your service offering (as a DBA). I felt it
did provide a considerable amount of advice in the first few chapters. The second part of the book is
really not focussed on DBA domain knowledge.

4. Unit Test Frameworks by Paul Hamill
Review: This book may be useful to cover the fundamentals of five xUnit frameworks but if you are
particularly interested in JUnit and XMLUnit, you might not get much information. While the author doesn’t
go beyond the basics, this book is a good introduction to xUnit implementations and unit testing examples
featuring Java, C# and Python.
The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford
Review: Pros: Part 1 and 2 are well written, no shortage of Hollywood-like drama but balanced by, based on
my experience, a great description of doomed corporate IT environments. Blame war, upper management
myopia, manual processes and bottleneck issues.
Cons: Part 3 is a too little too late attempt to introduce DevOps really. The plot becomes unplausible when
the good guys win and the bad guys lose.
I like the idea behind the book, wrapping the description of complex processes around narrative style.
However, that intent is spoiled by the ill depiction of DevOps, feedback loops and control processes.
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Agile Data Warehousing by Ralph Hughes
Review: While it contains a good introduction to Scrum, the lack of details regarding agile methodologies for
business intelligence / data warehousing projects makes it of limited use.

5. ORACLE TECHNOLOGY
Cost-based Oracle fundamentals by Jonathan Lewis and Thomas Kyte
Review: After asking myself why some of the solutions were performing so poorly I realised I had to read this
book (sure, among others). But this was the first book about cost-based optimisation I was able to read from
cover to cover... and understand how to use the myriad of features Oracle databases have to offer.
The authors know CBO extremely well and the book is written in a way that a good developer (doesn't need
to be a seasoned or expert) will take huge advantage of.
Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g : A Hands-On Tutorial by A Ward et al
Review: This is a very good introduction to all features OBIEE 11g has to offer. The authors have years of
experience in implementing Oracle BI solutions and at least 2 of them, have maintained a constant online
presence for quite a few years.
It is hard to pour years of experience, advice and technical details in just about 600 pages. I suspect that made the
topics in this book as varied as possible and sometimes, less orientated to developers than I expected.
Overall, this is a good book for those planning for a migration from the earlier OBI version or to relatively
inexperienced support teams.
Beginning Oracle Database 11g Administration by Iggy Fernandez
Review: This book is about the fundamentals of database administration. It’s great to get someone
acquainted with DBA tasks and practices but it doesn’t cover really advanced topics for seasoned
professionals.
Troubleshooting Oracle Performance by Christian Antognini
Review: The author has done a terrific job at analysing different scenarios. The chapters systematically guide
the reader through the steps required to perform a root cause analysis. Performance tuning is not an easy
task, it requires a serious amount of technical knowledge and this book does contain a great deal of it.

6. METADATA MANAGEMENT
Building and Managing the Meta Data Repository – A full lifecycle guide by David Marco
Review: This is a book that was ahead of its time in terms of setting out the guidelines for metadata
management in data warehousing environments. Back then, most of the books or articles described
metadata in too abstract terms, not only meaningless to a business audience but also lacking in substance for
technical people. This book describes what DW metadata is and how to implement a knowledge system
around it (years later, the concept was popularised with “data dictionaries” or “business glossaries”.
Business Metadata by Bill Inmon
Review: I initially thought of reading this book because I wanted to learn to properly organise a business
dictionary for our data warehouse. This book clearly describes concepts such as stewardship, ownership,
unstructured metadata and information management.
Practical RDF by Shelley Powers

7. VERSION CONTROL / CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT
Software Configuration Management Patterns by Stephen Berczuk and Brad Appleton
Review: Oldie but goodie. This book covers the basics of software configuration management such as version
control repositories, branching and merging. A few of the concepts overlap SCM patterns with continuous
integration which suggests the authors were on the right path back in 2003.
Pro Git by Scott Chacon
Review: This is a book I recommend to any developer that is / will be using Git day in and day out. Covers all
the technical topics and gives the reader a good idea of how to place Git front and centre in the development
workflow. If Git is the source of truth in a development environment, knowing the basics won’t do in many
cases and this book provided with the knowledge to be confident when working with Git repos.
Mercurial: The Definitive Guide by Bryan O’Sullivan
Review: Having used Centralised version control systems for over a decade, this book was a pretty good
introduction to Distributed VC in general and Mercurial in particular.
Git Best Practices Guide by Eric Pidoux
Review: I was actually expecting a score of great tips regarding most, if not all, topics in the table of contents
(from configuration to continuous integration). This is a good book, with great information about Git, a few
minor mistakes but it doesn’t pack enough best practices to make it up to its title.
Version Control by Example by Eric Sink
Review: Good introduction for a developer new to version control systems.

8. SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
Coders at Work by Peter Seibel
Review: I enjoyed reading this book but I couldn't feel excited about some of the interviews in it.
Something I have been always annoyed with is the lack of relevant background while I went through college
courses, it was more about learning a specific algorithm rather than anything else. Or even the, quite relevant
sometimes, stories behind software projects... I guess this book covers some of those gaps.
I did enjoy finding so many programming icons interviewed on a single volume, I guess it missed Steve
Wozniak and a couple of other great programmers but the list of interviewees easily covers 40 years of IT
programmers and programming.
Ansible – From Beginner to Pro by Michael Heap
Review: Definitely a concise intro to Ansible worth a read. It did gave me good foundation in terms of “code”
organisation, playbooks, roles and modules. Good style, good examples and it did get me started in the world
of automation beyond bash-scripting-the-world.
xUnit Test Patterns by Gerard Meszaros
Review: Extensive and detailed description of the most widely used test patterns. The weakness of this book
is not the content but the fact that using JUnit on a single, average-size project would provide as much
information as its 800 pages. Excellent book if you want a textbook-style volume on xUnit.
Responsive Web Design with HTML5 and CSS3, 2nd
Edition by Ben Frain
Review: While most of the time I am satisfied with great performance and efficient UIs, a great front-end
goes a long way. Being primarily focussed on back-end development, being exposed to these new techniques
was quite interesting (if not downright enlightening). After 20+ years of web development, browser
compatibility is still in its infancy.
Core Java 2 – Volume I / Fundamentals by Cay S. Horstmann
Review: This (definitely thick, 900+ pages) book offers great coverage of all standard / basic features of the
language. Easy to understand and packed with explanations of each topic.
Core Java 2 – Volume II / Advanced Features by Cay S. Horstmann
Review: I bought this volume after reading the first few chapters of Core Java 2 - Volume 1. While nowadays
much more information is available online, this is an excellent one-stop-shop reference for topics such as
i18n, streams and files, an introduction to database programming (persistence) and networking.
Software Test Engineering with IBM Rational Functional Tester: The Definitive Resource by Chip Davis
Review: A good book describing numerous RFT features. While the classic ‘record & play’ paradigm does not
apply to my needs, the rest of the chapters contain really useful information regarding the anatomy of a an
automated test suite and automation options using Rational Functional Tester.

9. Reversing – Secrets of Reverse Engineering by Eldad Eilam
Review: I found this book interesting, quite bulky though and the style in which it is written does not make it
an easy read.

10. OTHER TOPICS
DATAANALYSIS
Head First - Data Analysis by Michael Milton
Review: This book covers a wide range of topics with a good balance of depth and non-academic
scenarios. It will not make the reader a mathematician but it will certainly introduce them to a variety of
data analysis tools.
ENGINEERING
Engineers’ Data Book by Clifford Matthews
ITPROCESSES
NIST Special Publication 800-34 – Contingency Planning Guide for IT Systems by Marianne
Swanson
Review: This book was probably the first one I read about contingency planning. Good advice on how to
plan for emergencies in the IT enterprise.