James works at Microsoft as a big data and data warehousing solution architect where he has been for most of the last ten years. Before that he was an independent consultant working as a Data Warehouse/Business Intelligence architect and developer. He is a prior SQL Server MVP with over 35 years of IT experience. Check out his book Deciphering Data Architectures: Choosing Between a Modern Data Warehouse, Data Fabric, Data Lakehouse, and Data Mesh.
The Big 5 IT consulting companies (Accenture, Deloitte Consulting, PwC (formerly PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP), KPMG, Ernst & Young) have various titles given to consultants along a career path. Wikipedia had good descriptions of the titles, and using that and a few other descriptions I … Continue reading →
I will be presenting the session “Building an Effective Data Warehouse Architecture” this Thursday, June 13th at 11:00am EST for Pragmatic Works. Below is the abstract. It will be a remote presentation that you can join online. Details are here. I hope you can make … Continue reading →
Do you ever wonder how your business intelligence (BI) and data warehousing (DW) environment compares to other companies and what steps you should be taking to progress your analytics platform? One of the first steps in any BI project is … Continue reading →
I asked a recruiter to check out my blogs about consulting, and his response is below. He had some good points on billling rates and what recruiters do behind the scenes: I really enjoyed reading over your blog you have … Continue reading →
Just when you thought you got a handle on SQL Server 2012, here comes the next version! SQL Server 2014 was announced yesterday during the TechEd North America 2013 Day 1 Keynote. It is due to be released in early 2014, shortly … Continue reading →
As a followup to my blog Power View for Multidimensional Models – Preview Available, the final version is now available via SQL Server 2012 Service Pack 1 Cumulative Update 4. So you can now create Power View reports against multidimensional models … Continue reading →
If you are involved in Business Intelligence, then the books by Ralph Kimball are required reading: The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit: Practical Techniques for Building Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence Systems, Second Edition, 2008, 636 pages (Amazon). Subject: Implementation guide. Primary … Continue reading →
There are three fundamental steps in building a data warehouse for a BI solution (see Why you need Business Intelligence): Identify the data the users interact with, or would like to interact with, via interviews. Make sure to determine the … Continue reading →
I am fortunate enough to have been selected to give a presentation at the PASS Summit 2013 in Charlotte, NC on October 14-18. It’s amazing to think that, although I have been in IT for 25 years, I first started to build … Continue reading →
One of my pet peeves is seeing a top-notch BI architect/developer working as a salaried/perm employee of a consulting company where they are making a good salary but are being billed out to the client at a rate that is … Continue reading →
This is something I just heard about recently, but then experienced it for myself. This story was told to me: A client is looking for a contractor and contacts a staffing firm to find candidates. The staffing firms sends a … Continue reading →
To expand on what I talked about in Should a placement firm tell you what they are billing the client?: If you are a consultant working through a placement firm, should the markup percentage (client bill rate divided by consultant … Continue reading →
Data cleansing can be done via SSIS as well as Data Quality Services (DQS) and Master Data Services (MDS). The lines are a bit blurred when talking about data cleansing using SSIS, DQS and MDS. In what product should data … Continue reading →
Here is another response to my blog “Should a placement firm tell you what they are billing the client?” (the first response was Billing rates – other side of the fence). My purpose of these blogs is to give more understanding … Continue reading →
I greatly enjoy doing presentations on a variety of topics, such as Business Intelligence, SQL Server, and personal development. If you would like me to do a presentation, just ask! For descriptions of presentations I have done before, along with other … Continue reading →
When I started my blog two years ago, I never would have thought how much it would help my career. I can’t stress enough the importance of blogging to enhance your career. I went from Blogging, to SEO, to paid … Continue reading →
As an independent consultant who has a higher bill rate than average, I would hope it is obvious to clients that the extra money spent would be well worth it. But that is not always the case, and sometimes who have to … Continue reading →
I don’t know if I would consider myself an industry expert, but hey, it says it on the Internet, so it just be true (because you can’t put anything on the Internet that’s not true). An interview I did to … Continue reading →
I went to the PASS Business Analytics Conference last week, and had an absolute blast. I presented two sessions, and attended many more, and was also part of the live blogging panel at both keynotes. I learned a lot, but … Continue reading →
Last week at the PASS Business Analytics Conference in Chicago, Microsoft disclosed a public preview of GeoFlow for Excel (download). GeoFlow is a 3D visualization tool for mapping, exploring and interacting with both geographic and chronological data, providing users with a new … Continue reading →