Blogging about Data & Analytics

This blog is aimed at practitioners working with data and analytics, as well as anyone curious about modern data platforms. We use freely available technology where possible to build demos, run experiments, and create practical content, with a primary focus on Teradata.

Expect a mix of hands-on walkthroughs, short explainers, and ideas you can immediately try out. Most of all, this is a space to learn how people, tools, and new approaches can turn raw data into something meaningful.

Author

I’ve been working in the data and analytics world for over 25 years, which means I’ve had a front-row seat to just about every major shift the industry has gone through. I started my career in a time when “data platform” meant RDBMS. I started out working with technologies like Teradata and Oracle, building systems where getting the data model right, tuning queries, and extracting every bit of performance from the platform really mattered.

The principles of data warehousing I learnt in the early years of my career still shape how I think about data today.  I still work extensively with organisation’s that have traditional data warehouses, specifically Teradata warehouses but they’re no longer the whole story. The data landscape has expanded dramatically. What used to be a single, centralised warehouse has become a mix of cloud services, open table formats, streaming platforms, and distributed compute engines.

Over the years I’ve worked through the rise of big data, the shift to cloud, Lakehouse and hybrid architectures and now of course AI. The tools have changed, but many of the hard problems haven’t: data quality, governance, performance, and cost still matter just as much as they ever did.  Sharing my thoughts and experience on this is of course a key driver for the blog.