KETL Limited
DataWarehouse Consultancy
Ian Cray's CV
Education| Technical| Analysis| Employment| Referees
Education:
| 1976 - 1981 | The King's School, Canterbury, Kent. 8 "O" Levels 3 "A" Levels |
| 1982 - 1985 | The New University of Ulster, Coleraine Studying for BSc(Hons) in Psychology |
Education| Technical| Analysis| Employment| Referees
Technical Skills
| Informatica Products | Approx 5 yrs | |
| ER/Win | > 5 Years | |
| MS SQL Server (All aspects) | > 5 Years | |
| Oracle 8i | Approx 3 yrs | |
| Brio reporting tools | > 2 Years | |
| RedBrick | > 2 Years | |
| Cognos reporting tools | > 2 Years |
Education| Technical| Analysis| Employment| Referees
Analysis Skills
| Requirements gathering and documenting | > 5 Years |
| Requirements scoping | > 5 Years |
| Logical data modelling | > 5 Years |
| Database design | Approx 10 Yrs |
| Code specifications | > 5 Years |
| OLAP analysis and design | > 2 Years |
| Data Mapping | > 5 Years |
Education| Technical| Analysis| Employment| Referees
Employment History
| Oct 2004 to current | Data Warehouse Consultancy |
| Position: | Principal Consultant |
I have had three main clients since October 2004. These are Monsoon Accessorize Ltd, BSkyB and RAC Motoring Services. Rather than do long contracts I have sold a specific number of days to each client whenever they have needed help. On two occasions I have brought other specialists to help. The work is often concurrent and is aimed at solving specific problems. These include but are not limited to :
- Knowledge transfer to offshoring teams
- Develop new data marts
- Add new source systems to existing warehouses
- Rebuilding specific warehouse tables
- Upgrading Informatica (to v7.1.3 and 8.1)
- Advise on restartibilty, support requirements and security
- Advise on hardware upgrade and migration to new hardware
- Interview candidates on behalf of the client
- Data archiving
| Jan 2002 to Sep 2004 | RAC Motoring Services |
| Position: | Consultant |
The RAC brought me in as a consultant in order to ensure that the best use was made of the Informatica toolset. To this end I :
- developed coding standards for PowerCenter development
- set up a PowerCenter Administrator role
- supervised the infrastructure setup
- continually reviewed the star schema database design for the CDW
- designed the security setup across all environments
- upgraded from versions 4 to 5 and then to 6 (currently assessing 7.1).
- developed an 'API' using PowerCenter which allowed for significant reuse of code
- set up design workshops to ensure the in house team acquired as much information from myself and other experienced PowerCenter developers.
- was continually involved in performance tuning both PowerCenter and SQL to ensure jobs ran within the prescribed timescales.
All the roles and functions I setup have been subsequently taken up by RAC staff to ensure the knowledge is kept in house.
The project involved designing extracts from a new Siebel front end system which was being implemented and then loaded into the CDW. As well as Siebel there are at least 10 other sources for the CDW most of which now use the API to ensure minimal recoding as well ensuring consistent data quality. This was done in two major releases eighteen months apart in line with the changes to Siebel functionality. Both releases also involved large data migrations from the legacy systems which was achieved using PowerCenter.
Since the final implementation I have been helping with the support of the CDW loads. This has involved bug fixing , performance tuning, enhancements and reviewing new sources. The architecture consisted of source systems on a mixture of DB2, Flat File, Oracle, Sql Server (via ODBC) with the PowerCenter servers mainly running on AIX target the CDW on Oracle 8i/9i.
| Sep 2000 to Jan 2002 | Informatica Software Ltd |
| Position : | Senior Consultant |
My main responsibility was for two major clients. One was a large utilities company where I was responsible for high level strategies such as load management, error handling, data quality and cleaning. I also instigated many design workshops to walk through complex mappings which has resulted in significantly reduced development time.
I was also responsible for creating the role of Technical Architect/Administrator which established a set of standards for the client to work within, define the architecture they should use when all four projects are in production, create a link to the business via a Business Analyst to minimise impact of new requirements, facilitate their impending upgrade to Data Integration Hub.
My other major client was a leading fashion retailer. On this project my involvement has been at a technical level dealing mainly with issues of performance with large data volumes. Excellent performance has been achieved through aggregation, design changes and session/mapping optimisation.
Other clients at which I have spent time include a major mobile phone company , a UK bank and a multinational oil company where the work has usually been at a high level. The experiences I have gained here include installation of eProcurement at one client to source data from SAP and Ariba Buyer, document existing systems, prepare project proposals, ratify existing project plans, preparing upgrade plan and upgrading software.
At a technical level I have used PowerCenter to source from DB2 on a mainframe, SQL Server and Oracle on both NT and UNIX . I have installed and configured PowerCenter on UNIX and NT Servers and spent considerable time performance tuning sessions. The mappings I have created have made use of all the major transforms such as connected/unconnected lookups, incremental aggregations, stored procedures and mapplets. I have also created numerous mappings which do previous/next row processing. I have performed upgrades from 4.6.x through to 6.2.1
| Jan 1998 to May 2000 | Hewlett Packard - SSE Bristol |
| Position : | Business Analyst - Contractor |
Business Analyst on international Data Warehousing project. The project involved the migration and merging of data from Legacy HP3000 based Support systems as well as from a new SAP Support System. The source systems resided in the Far East, Europe and the Americas.
I joined at the beginning of the project and my initial responsibility was to prepare worldwide requirements for the Data Warehouse by liasing with business representatives from HP in at least 10 countries. From these requirements I identified all the data elements needed and their sourcing/ mapping information as well as preparing a logical model for the Data Warehouse. I produced coding specifications, requirement fulfilment information and comprehensive metadata.
On completion of the logical modelling I worked in conjunction with Redbrick specialists to design the final database as a star schema. Modelling was done using Platinum ER/win. Once data migration began I was required to reconcile data from all source systems to the new system as well as to financial systems. I built numerous reports in BRIO to facilitate this as well as prototype reports for early user testing.
I developed and ran training programs for representatives of each country to be able to subsequently train their staff themselves. I was also involved in a protect using PowerCenter to extract information from the Data Warehouse to an information subscription service
| Oct 1995 to Dec 1997 | National Westminster Insurance Services - Bristol |
| Position : | Analyst/Programmer - Contractor |
Although initially involved in support I soon moved onto the Management Information System project to help with the design and implementation of a Data Warehouse and MI reporting system. Due to the nature of the project and my previous experience of the Company's EIS I became involved in most aspects of the project.
Data Analysis - Our initial task was to translate approximately 300 paper report designs into a data dictionary identifying all the elements required for the Data Warehouse and their source systems. Once identified, the source system needed to be analysed to ascertain the availability of the data and to document any transformation issues.
Database Design - I was involved in overall design of the Warehouse process and also the verification of the main Warehouse database design.
Data Migration - Once the database design was completed my main responsibility was the transfer of data from the Household Insurance system to the Data Warehouse. I used SAS Data Warehouse Administrator software to help extract, cleanse and write the data.
Data Summarisation - Having defined the summarisation levels I designed the tables and wrote all the routines required using Transact-SQL.
Data Presentation - The front end for the MI System was built using COGNOS tools. I designed and built the initial Catalog in Impromptu as well as Multi-Dimensional Databases using Transformer/PowerPlay.
| May 1994 - Sept 1994 Jan 1995 - Jul 1995 | OzEase Pty (Database Consultants) - Sydney |
| Position : | Consultant |
During my two spells with this company I had 8 or 9 clients ranging from small manufacturing firms to large nationalised services. The work ranged from supporting existing applications designed by the Consultancy firm, designing and building new applications (Client Server) and analysis of existing database systems with a view to replacing them.
In the largest project I ran I developed an Investment Review System which enabled this financial advisory service organisation to store client information, review the current financial situation of clients and engage in "what if" scenarios to calculate projected income, fees incurred etc.
For another large client I was responsible for design and building the Accounts functions for an Insurance Underwriting System. This was a client Server application using MS SQL Server and DataEase
| Mar 1991 - Oct1993 | NatWest Insurance Services | Assistant Manager - EIS Development |
| Oct 1990 - Mar 1991 | Lloyds Bank | Analyst/Programmer |
| Oct 1989 - Sept 1990 | Noranda Forest Sales (UK) Ltd. | Analyst/Programmer |
| May 1989 - Sept 1989 | Citicorp Scrimgeour Vickers | Contractor |
| May 1987 - Apr 1989 | Deloitte Haskins & Sells | Financial Assistant |
Education| Technical| Analysis| Employment| Referees
Referees :