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 What have you guys been working on?

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Transact Charlie
Master Smack Fu Yak Hacker

3451 Posts

Posted - 2011-08-26 : 12:42:43
I'm always interested to find out what kind of stuff people have been working on. I have some vague idea that Peso does mysterious data warehouse type stuff for IKEA (but that could just be blatant racism on my part - I'm sure that not *all* Sweeds work for IKEA). But I don't really have a clue what other people here work on and what kind of data you guys deal with on a day to day basis.

I work for Skyscanner - we are a flight meta search engine and our data could be described as 'not small' and 'very volatile' (we process 4 billion raw quotes a week which is over 6000 a second on average) After that initial processing the problem is generally one of aggregation / data modelling / warehousing.

The last project we got out the door was our automated facebook wall that takes natural language queries (in English) and returns flight results.

http://www.facebook.com/SkyscannerFlightSearch

What do you work on (if that's not some trade secret?)

Charlie
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The ROLLBACK TRANSACTION request has no corresponding BEGIN TRANSACTION

Kristen
Test

22859 Posts

Posted - 2011-08-26 : 12:59:40
eCommerce. I write the engine for an eCommerce package. Its intended to be flexible - so the customisation of the front end is "unlimited", one site may look nothing like another, but all clients use the same core engine.

We support "Click and Collect" from shops, have delivered-to-store-for-collection as well as the more typical mail order. If the Customer can fathom how to make the choices they can choose which items will be grouped together for back-order deliveries, and how many of each product will go in which box for split-deliveries for drop-shipments. Good luck with that one! I thought that's what call centres were there to sort out for the Customer.

Operates with mind-bending carriage business-rules for worldwide delivery, and the asinine petty rules for additional charge for going a couple of miles further North (or South, East or West, and God forbid that you live on an island ...)

Supports multiple store fronts - we have clients with half a dozen, including both Wholesale and Retail, and also with compete-against-self type models - supposedly the customer won't realise, but they frequently cross bulk-mail so its a bit obvious IME.

Multi-currency, multi-lingual, storefronts for Agents, Whitelabel ... integrated to back-end Order Fulfilment systems ...

... yeah, it seems to fill my day

Customers typically taking up to 5,000 orders per day.

I have a few other hobby database web apps. School's diary systems, to inform parents of when and where to go so as not to miss whatever Little Johnnie is doing. And a few others of not much repute ...
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Michael Valentine Jones
Yak DBA Kernel (pronounced Colonel)

7020 Posts

Posted - 2011-08-26 : 15:41:51
It’s pretty standard stuff, really.

I work on keeping thousands of applications developed by the worst collection of developers and/or vendors in the universe from turning into dead rotting corpses while management continues to push the envelope on just how inexperienced and incompetent database developers can be.

In short, it’s a dream job full of daily excitement and challenges.







CODO ERGO SUM
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tkizer
Almighty SQL Goddess

38200 Posts

Posted - 2011-08-26 : 16:03:18
MVJ, I assume your userid here is not your real name?

Tara Kizer
Microsoft MVP for Windows Server System - SQL Server
http://weblogs.sqlteam.com/tarad/

Subscribe to my blog
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Transact Charlie
Master Smack Fu Yak Hacker

3451 Posts

Posted - 2011-08-26 : 16:10:45
or the database developers he works with are so inexperienced / useless that they wouldn't be able to find this site if they were given the uri.

Charlie
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Michael Valentine Jones
Yak DBA Kernel (pronounced Colonel)

7020 Posts

Posted - 2011-08-26 : 16:22:05
quote:
Originally posted by tkizer

MVJ, I assume your userid here is not your real name?

Tara Kizer
Microsoft MVP for Windows Server System - SQL Server
http://weblogs.sqlteam.com/tarad/

Subscribe to my blog




That is true, and I won't shame the company I work for by revealing their name.

However, I've never been shy about revealing my opinions of the developers/vendors we work with, so it’s old news anyway.

I have managed to hurt a few feelings along the way, and rarely to my advantage.





CODO ERGO SUM
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tkizer
Almighty SQL Goddess

38200 Posts

Posted - 2011-08-26 : 16:43:06
Using my real identity here has come back to haunt me before, so now I am very careful what I post. But it does also help to use your real identity (even if only in your profile) as it gets your name out there for MVP/future opportunities.

Tara Kizer
Microsoft MVP for Windows Server System - SQL Server
http://weblogs.sqlteam.com/tarad/

Subscribe to my blog
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Michael Valentine Jones
Yak DBA Kernel (pronounced Colonel)

7020 Posts

Posted - 2011-08-26 : 17:25:28
quote:
Originally posted by tkizer

Using my real identity here has come back to haunt me before, so now I am very careful what I post. But it does also help to use your real identity (even if only in your profile) as it gets your name out there for MVP/future opportunities.

Tara Kizer
Microsoft MVP for Windows Server System - SQL Server
http://weblogs.sqlteam.com/tarad/

Subscribe to my blog



Speaking of MVP stuff, I was in a meeting a few days ago where a consultant was showing a PPT presentation.

I started noticing Outlook email message announcements from Gail Shaw and Peter Larsson popping up and then I realized they were coming from the MVP mail distribution. MVP Spam!

The presenter actually seemed to know what he was talking about, so he doesn't meet our incompetence standards for a suitable vendor.





CODO ERGO SUM
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Kristen
Test

22859 Posts

Posted - 2011-08-27 : 05:46:17
quote:
Originally posted by Michael Valentine Jones

It’s pretty standard stuff, really.



Good job you don't feel strongly about it MVJ !!
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jezemine
Master Smack Fu Yak Hacker

2886 Posts

Posted - 2011-08-28 : 22:52:14
I work for a (vehicle) traffic data company called inrix. I'm the one responsible for the code that is calculating all the speeds on the road. The data that I work with is big (to me anyway), maybe not big on the google or walmart scale though. The biggest systems I work with have something like 10^10 rows. I really like my job. don't have to deal with any vendors - that may be part of it!

I don't post much here anymore but I do come to read what's in the corral on occasion. :)

forgot to mention - if you have a smartphone you can see our traffic data on your phone, in pretty much any major metro area, also in europe: http://www.inrixtraffic.com



elsasoft.org
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visakh16
Very Important crosS Applying yaK Herder

52326 Posts

Posted - 2011-08-29 : 00:18:08
I work for a IT services based giant and My field of play is SQL Server with Microsoft BI stack. Not too much into coding these days though apart from doing POCs,designing etc.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SQL Server MVP
http://visakhm.blogspot.com/

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SwePeso
Patron Saint of Lost Yaks

30421 Posts

Posted - 2011-08-29 : 04:10:14
Nowadays I seem to be the guy other MVP ask for help with performance related queries.
Doing a lot of those lately.



N 56°04'39.26"
E 12°55'05.63"
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jackv
Master Smack Fu Yak Hacker

2179 Posts

Posted - 2011-08-29 : 05:45:19
Currently working for a large financial organisation.Interesting environment with Oracle,DB2 and SQL server. Mixture of OLTP,Datawarehous and Modelling environments. Mainly Performance Tuning and Architecture

Jack Vamvas
--------------------
http://www.sqlserver-dba.com
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AndrewMurphy
Master Smack Fu Yak Hacker

2916 Posts

Posted - 2011-08-29 : 05:59:38
Responsible for ensuring 15mEUR of bought-in crap doesn't embarrass the executive buyer. The phrases "too late" and "why bother" come to mind. But it pays the bills.
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DonAtWork
Master Smack Fu Yak Hacker

2167 Posts

Posted - 2011-08-29 : 09:06:50
quote:
Originally posted by Michael Valentine Jones

It’s pretty standard stuff, really.

I work on keeping thousands of applications developed by the worst collection of developers and/or vendors in the universe from turning into dead rotting corpses while management continues to push the envelope on just how inexperienced and incompetent database developers can be.

In short, it’s a dream job full of daily excitement and challenges.

CODO ERGO SUM



Hey, you work for the gov't too?

http://weblogs.sqlteam.com/jeffs/archive/2008/05/13/question-needed-not-answer.aspx
How to ask: http://weblogs.sqlteam.com/brettk/archive/2005/05/25/5276.aspx

For ultra basic questions, follow these links.
http://www.sql-tutorial.net/
http://www.firstsql.com/tutor.htm
http://www.w3schools.com/sql/default.asp
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blindman
Master Smack Fu Yak Hacker

2365 Posts

Posted - 2011-08-29 : 10:38:52
Worked in consulting for nine years until this past Spring.
Now working for a large company that handles Workers Compensation Claims for the State.
We are migrating an outsourced legacy DB2 atrocity to an internally supported SQL Server database.

________________________________________________
If it is not practically useful, then it is practically useless.
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