A Day in the Life of a Multi-Disciplined Healthcare IT Contractor

Wow, I am actually back! Oh yeah..this is about data conversion!

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 12:19:36 GMT

Data conversion and ETL is never easy. (At least for me, and if you have found some magic potion that makes it easy, PLEASE share!) Generally, the nature of the work is what constitutes the difficulty. Someone has decided to either 1) purchase a new system 2) combine with another system or 3) fix schema issues that are finally starting to rear their ugly head. All of these options mean that you are dealing with different formats, business rules, standard values etc. So where do you start?

When to use a full blown PMP project management plan or NOT

Thu, 06 May 2010 22:53:33 GMT

As you learn the principles of the PMP methodology, you soon realize that it can be a long process. Just starting with the first steps of planning how you are going to do your plan! So when do you need the full blown package or just pieces of it....

Replicating Microsoft Access Databases

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 12:53:46 GMT

For those of you who are still using Pre Access 2007 databases, many are utilizing the replication features. For those of you who have run into some issues, I am writing this quick blog to give you some pointers.

Going Back to Being a Techie-Are You Ever Too Old?

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 14:50:12 GMT

According to many literary and business commentaries, the career path for most IT folks should end at Management once they hit the age of 40 or it's time to get out of the profession. Or at least that's what I was told. The older I get, the more I question that logic.....

Is there something wrong with this situation? Please help!!

Fri, 30 May 2008 15:21:54 GMT

The current It department for the organization I work for seems to have a lot of problems, and is struggling to keep from being outsourced. It seems that we plan process improvement projects, and they just don't either seem to get finished or are not effective. I would appreciate some help analyzing these problems, and maybe some suggestions on how to fix them.

Is Oracle just harder to maintain, or do we just need a new DBA group?

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 19:23:47 GMT

We have development efforts going on that involve .Net (C#), PL/SQL and batch files. We use Oracle Data Access Drivers with a combination of ODBC connections. Is this a nightmare just waiting to happen?

Oracle and SAN'S - Good combination?

Wed, 05 Dec 2007 17:43:46 GMT

The company I work for chose to be an Oracle and Facets shop. (for all of you who don't know, Facets is a Trizetto product that does all types of claims management). We run our Facets product utilizing an Oracle back end on a SAN. From all my investigations on Oracle inner workings, it likes to distribute the different types of files across a range of storage areas. So, when you are using a SAN, it could easily start putting large control files, undo and redo space on many different logical (and potentially physical) disk subsystems. This turned into a nightmare one lovely afternoon....

Back to the Project Management vs IT Project + certification

Mon, 30 Jul 2007 16:17:36 GMT

Hello everyone, Sorry it has been so long since I have posted. Things have been so busy here at my lovely place of work, that I have not had time to breathe. I have given up just about all of my pastimes in the pursuit of developing encounter management systems. I thought I would return to this topic, because I finally think I know the answer to my question, should you be PMP or IT Project + certified. The answer was based on the most fundamental truths in life, the pursuit of the dollar bill

Business Integrator - Powerful Tool

Thu, 09 Nov 2006 12:56:20 GMT

I have had the pleasure of learning the Business Integrator tool from Pervasive. This product has a large amount of features and goes way behind the impression that I was given that it was a mapping tool. In my mind it's more like SQL DTS on sterioids. The mapping process is fairly straightforward especially for simply flat file to table mapping and extracting. The ability to define a process that occurs when a record is rejected, define how to reject records is just a wonderful addition to any

The Project Management Matrix approach

Thu, 31 Aug 2006 19:11:11 GMT

Hello everyone I have finally made a transition to a new position. I am now the manager of an IT department. Ok, let's be truthful, I am a manager in name only. What I have really become is a glorified vacation tracker. Can you say "Highly paid administrative assistant?" I moved into an organization with what they call a "Project Management matrix". I am the manager of a functional development area. But, the projects are managed by an IS Project Manager who works for another department. She is

Data Warehouse Requirements Gathering (Don't forget the user data model)

Thu, 13 Jul 2006 16:26:26 GMT

Requirements gathering is the same across all platforms correct? Well, I thought so too, until I started trying to work on the logical design and ETL for my current project. Let me start by saying that I spent quite a bit of time doing requirements gathering. I focused on business processes, and data usage. I could map out how every department used information in the current systems and any required data scrubbing to form heterogeneous data solutions even the processes and people involved in th

How do you make a Techie start acting like a manager...

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 14:29:29 GMT

Just again to apologize to everyone, I have been busy trying to do two jobs for the last two months in addition to working on a third project in a state 2000 miles away from me. So my blogs have been few and far between. I hope you have not all forgotten me. :-( Well, I am right now hopefully back to the Data Warehouse Project that I originally started with last year. And fighting the battle of trying to get the Data Architect to stop playing with his new toy and focus on the client's business

Keeping up with things - Can Technical people benefit from Leadership training?

Tue, 23 May 2006 16:17:17 GMT

I hope you have not all forgotten about me. I have been SUPER busy with a new warehouse project, and another one in my back pocket. In the mdst of all of this, I am attending a Leadership training class. Initially, I didn't see where this would have a direct impact on my daily work, but I have found that this has helped me tremendously. The principles of team building, conflict resolution and leadership are also useful in project management. In fact one of the shortcomings of the average technic

Development methods, RUP, CMMI, Waterfall - Why do we keep adding new methods?

Wed, 29 Mar 2006 17:42:42 GMT

I remember many moons ago (which I won't tell how long ago that was because it gives away my age), there was the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). You developed applications according to fixed requirements, and anytime there was a change you figured out how to achieve the new goal with the least amount of pain. Then someone decided that there had to be a way to stop the pain, so they decided that we should develop applications iteratively. We develop a model, show it to the user, ask for t

Data Integrator by Business Objects

Tue, 21 Feb 2006 15:26:26 GMT

I just had the wonderful experience of working with Business Objects (Crystal Reports) Data Integrator tool. Perhaps I am biased by my limited exposure to real ETL tools, but I just wanted to do a happy dance. For anyone out there who has to extract and load data from multiple sources, this is the tool. You basically just point and click to the different sources. You can use ODBC or native drivers to access the data, and you can browse data right from the application. The really nice thing is

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