Hi, my name is Andy Hayes.
I feel that I have been lucky. I did not go to university but I was given an opportunity back in 1997 to get into the information technology space as an apprentice. I seized upon this and learnt everything I could. Times were different then, the internet was a privilege to use, rather than something that a lot of us take for granted.
My first encounter with a database was a DBASE IV system with an order entry front end written in Clipper. It ran initially on DOS 6.22 and was subsequently upgraded to run on Windows 3, 95 and later 98. Still inside a DOS shell however 🙂
I took on the management of this system as part of a promotion. I took the time to learn as much as I could about that database and my interest took me into more advanced products such as SQL Server which the business ultimately moved towards for its web hosting database backend.
I later got a position working as a DBA that allowed me the opportunity to learn more about database performance, data management, SQL and stored procedures. Over the years, I have worked with many other products such as MySQL, MariaDB, MongoDB, Solr and Elasticsearch.
The cumulated experiences led to me being involved in some large projects. Of note, the biggest was the consolidation of a number of legacy systems into Netsuite ERP. The project lasted around a year and involved some extensive data migration work for which I employed SSIS ETL methods at the time to extract from the source systems and transform the data into the CSV data files that were required by the Netsuite product.
I’ve managed DBA’s and other engineers along the way. I’ve enjoyed that experience, helping them grow and get better at their careers but I’ve always enjoyed being hands on. For me, getting my hands dirty brings the greatest enjoyment.
In recent times, I have been working as a Data Engineer writing code in Python and working with cloud products such as Azure and Google Cloud where I have been getting experience creating and loading application event data into a data warehouse via ETL methods. As part of this project, I have had to learn more about Google Analytics and Google Tag Manger as these have both played a part as data sources that feed the warehouse.
I decided to start this blog because I wanted to share my knowledge in what is a very exciting field. This also serves as a learning and reference platform for me. I have another blog DBA Diaries but I’ve not updated it for some time.
I’ll write mostly about Python as this is my primary tool of choice and the area that I most want to develop in.
My other interests involve cricket, chess, photography and cycling. When I’m doing none of these things, I am also a husband and father to two teenage boys.