9 ms·

We need new data books, so we published one

171 points by thingsilearned 5y ago

mpfundstein 5y ago
Cant buy it on amazon.de nor amazon.nl :(
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
cpard 5y ago
Amazing work Dave. I’m super happy to see the book finally being published.
- thingsilearned 5y ago
  Thanks! It was definitely a long time in the works!
dang 5y ago
The previous related thread: We need new data books, so we started one: Cloud Data Management - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21411893 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21411893 - Oct 2019 (47 comments)
flakiness 5y ago
Would love to read it! Please consider selling epub and/or pdf. Happy to pay for the non-DRM premium.
- nofinator 5y ago
  Ditto. A non-Amazon option would also be great.
- fronofro 5y ago
  Wiley has an e-book version here: https://www.wiley.com/en-us/The+Informed+Company%3A+How+to+Build+Modern+Agile+Data+Stacks+that+Drive+Winning+Insights-p-9781119748014 https://www.wiley.com/en-us/The+Informed+Company%3A+How+to+B...
  - tusslewake 5y ago
    According to the Wiley website: "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.
    - fronofro 5y ago
      Gotcha, will ask Wiley if they have other options
mfi 5y ago
Just bought a copy! As a DS wanting to shift more towards Data Engineering, I’m looking forward to read it :)
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
iamspoilt 5y ago
Just ordered!
annoyingnoob 5y ago
I saw 'data books' and thought of studying EE many years ago. Data books were things you got from semiconductor manufacturers detailing their electronic components. Those old data books were like gold then, but I pitched them all at some point years ago as I don't do that work and most of the part are now obsolete.
fletchrichman 5y ago
heck yea dave!! can't wait to read it
DangerousMike 5y ago
Just recommended it to a friend who's missing a ton of opportunities with their data. They said this book is exactly what they need right now and bought a copy!
Cyckes 5y ago
For students is there a system to get physical books on software engineering at a discount? I don't mind a $15 book, but they're typically $30-$50 a pop. I and other students I work with would love to delve further into industry materials, and it's really nice to own an actual book that can be referenced back to and nest with.
- bergerjac 5y ago
  Could you ask your engineering school to purchase some copies for a 'software engineering' library? 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)
  - Cyckes 5y ago
    This might benefit me personally, but not many others. The library here is pretty much unused, existing books are very out of date and we don't have the shelf space for more without removing the older ones. Even if we do that, nobody uses it, so it becomes cyclical. 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.
- psyklic 5y ago
  Springer offers $24.95 print books for any title that your university library already owns (likely includes some computer book publishers such as Apress too, though with promo codes Apress books are often cheaper than this). That said, the best option might be a $19 ACM student membership. That will get you free online access to all O'Reilly titles.
- foxbarrington 5y ago
  I know you said physical, but as an author if a student emailed me and asked for a discount on a digital edition, I'd give them a big discount code without a second thought. It's costless and easy for me to provide. Physical is not costless and is more complicated. Also, digital has a lot of advantages for books that are likely to get updates.
markus_zhang 5y ago
I have read the free version and it is well written. However I do think that we need another book that extensively speak about modern tech stack data modelling, something similar to Kimball but targeting modern industries such as mobile gaming, large-scale e-commerce, video streaming and etc. 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.
- thingsilearned 5y ago
  We've definitely gone much deeper in this version with data modelling. 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.
  - teej 5y ago
    What resources would you point to for those who want to learn modern product/event based analytics?
    - markus_zhang 5y ago
      From my experience I think tools such as HDFS, Columnar database, Flink/Spark, Kafka etc are widely used. Some companies still use tools of the previous generation such as Mapreduce which could still be useful.
  - markus_zhang 5y ago
    Thanks. Yeah I understand it's kinda difficult to write a book about the topic I pointed out because the whole industries are kinda young.
LorisM 5y ago
This is brilliant! I just ordered my copy. 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 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!
- thingsilearned 5y ago
  would love to participate!
matthewhelm 5y ago
Congrats on the launch! I work as a data engineer at Shopify designing data models and building data pipelines for our merchant-facing analytic products. I’ve learned a lot about model design from Kimball, but (as you mention) found it vague in some critical areas. I’ve ordered a copy and am excited to give it a read.
jacobsenscott 5y ago
I'm interested in reading this, but I hope people also read the classic books on the Kimball model. Yes, it is "old", but it is "old" in the way sql and relational database are "old" - the are something people got pretty much right early on. I'm not saying a simple star schema in one db is always the answer, but it is still very often the answer. 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.
jasmas 5y ago
Ordered. Thank-you!

mpfundstein 5y ago

Cant buy it on amazon.de nor amazon.nl :(

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

cpard 5y ago

Amazing work Dave. I’m super happy to see the book finally being published.

thingsilearned 5y ago
Thanks! It was definitely a long time in the works!

dang 5y ago

The previous related thread: We need new data books, so we started one: Cloud Data Management - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21411893 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21411893 - Oct 2019 (47 comments)

flakiness 5y ago

Would love to read it! Please consider selling epub and/or pdf. Happy to pay for the non-DRM premium.

nofinator 5y ago
Ditto. A non-Amazon option would also be great.
fronofro 5y ago
Wiley has an e-book version here: https://www.wiley.com/en-us/The+Informed+Company%3A+How+to+Build+Modern+Agile+Data+Stacks+that+Drive+Winning+Insights-p-9781119748014 https://www.wiley.com/en-us/The+Informed+Company%3A+How+to+B...
- tusslewake 5y ago
  According to the Wiley website: "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.
  - fronofro 5y ago
    Gotcha, will ask Wiley if they have other options

mfi 5y ago

Just bought a copy! As a DS wanting to shift more towards Data Engineering, I’m looking forward to read it :)

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

iamspoilt 5y ago

Just ordered!

annoyingnoob 5y ago

I saw 'data books' and thought of studying EE many years ago. Data books were things you got from semiconductor manufacturers detailing their electronic components. Those old data books were like gold then, but I pitched them all at some point years ago as I don't do that work and most of the part are now obsolete.

fletchrichman 5y ago

heck yea dave!! can't wait to read it

DangerousMike 5y ago

Just recommended it to a friend who's missing a ton of opportunities with their data. They said this book is exactly what they need right now and bought a copy!

Cyckes 5y ago

For students is there a system to get physical books on software engineering at a discount? I don't mind a $15 book, but they're typically $30-$50 a pop. I and other students I work with would love to delve further into industry materials, and it's really nice to own an actual book that can be referenced back to and nest with.

bergerjac 5y ago
Could you ask your engineering school to purchase some copies for a 'software engineering' library? 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)
- Cyckes 5y ago
  This might benefit me personally, but not many others. The library here is pretty much unused, existing books are very out of date and we don't have the shelf space for more without removing the older ones. Even if we do that, nobody uses it, so it becomes cyclical. 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.
psyklic 5y ago
Springer offers $24.95 print books for any title that your university library already owns (likely includes some computer book publishers such as Apress too, though with promo codes Apress books are often cheaper than this). That said, the best option might be a $19 ACM student membership. That will get you free online access to all O'Reilly titles.
foxbarrington 5y ago
I know you said physical, but as an author if a student emailed me and asked for a discount on a digital edition, I'd give them a big discount code without a second thought. It's costless and easy for me to provide. Physical is not costless and is more complicated. Also, digital has a lot of advantages for books that are likely to get updates.

markus_zhang 5y ago

I have read the free version and it is well written. However I do think that we need another book that extensively speak about modern tech stack data modelling, something similar to Kimball but targeting modern industries such as mobile gaming, large-scale e-commerce, video streaming and etc. 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.

thingsilearned 5y ago
We've definitely gone much deeper in this version with data modelling. 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.
- teej 5y ago
  What resources would you point to for those who want to learn modern product/event based analytics?
  - markus_zhang 5y ago
    From my experience I think tools such as HDFS, Columnar database, Flink/Spark, Kafka etc are widely used. Some companies still use tools of the previous generation such as Mapreduce which could still be useful.
- markus_zhang 5y ago
  Thanks. Yeah I understand it's kinda difficult to write a book about the topic I pointed out because the whole industries are kinda young.

LorisM 5y ago

This is brilliant! I just ordered my copy. 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 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!

thingsilearned 5y ago
would love to participate!

matthewhelm 5y ago

Congrats on the launch! I work as a data engineer at Shopify designing data models and building data pipelines for our merchant-facing analytic products. I’ve learned a lot about model design from Kimball, but (as you mention) found it vague in some critical areas. I’ve ordered a copy and am excited to give it a read.

jacobsenscott 5y ago

I'm interested in reading this, but I hope people also read the classic books on the Kimball model. Yes, it is "old", but it is "old" in the way sql and relational database are "old" - the are something people got pretty much right early on. I'm not saying a simple star schema in one db is always the answer, but it is still very often the answer. 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.

jasmas 5y ago

Ordered. Thank-you!