Over three decades of experience in delivering Data driven solutions across multiple industry sectors – Financial Services, Housing Associations, Heavy Engineering and Consultancy across many more.
Very strong Technical, Data Analytics and Consultancy skills - Azure Analysis Services, Azure SQL Database/Data Warehouse, Azure Data Factory, Azure Runbooks, SQL, DAX, F#, C#, Python, R, Power BI, SSRS.
Spent over two decades supporting the SQL Server community, blogging, presenting on many topics around SQL Server, Big Data and Analytics for which I received the Microsoft Most Valued Professional for SQL Server / Data Platform for 19 consecutive years. Founding member of SQL Bits, SQL Relay, UK SQL Server User Group and Developer Developer Developer.
Most recently performing a multi-disciplined role at Clarion Housing Group as a Business Analyst, BI Developer, Team Leader, Trouble-shooter and Data Scientist.
Sessions
Making the leap into Advanced SQL
Bad performance is often systemic of poor queries which are systemic of bad schema design which is systemic of non-relational thinking which is systemic of project time constraints and lack of understanding of Database Design. In this talk/tutorial I'll work my way through Normalisation, we'll look at the Relation Model and how to think in sets - it's very important; throughout I'll be referring to Codd and Date's teachings. Theory aside I'll do all my demonstrations in SQL Server - concurrency, indexing, good T-SQL practices and advice.
The technique of Recency Frequency Intensity/Monetary is a powerful analytical technique for identifying data patterns as well as business performance. An introduction to the technique will be given, however the main focus of the session will be on demonstrating on how RFI/M can be performed using a number of SQL features such as Data Windowing, the OVER clause and PARTITION BY, CROSS APPLY and Common Table Expressions and how you can nest the table expressions. The session should be of benefit to both inexperienced and experienced SQL coders and analysts, each construct will be explained as well as the query plans produced. Demo's will be done on AdventureWorks which we actually discover is going out of business!