Community Spotlight: Luan Moreno Medeiros Maciel, The Pythian Group
In honor of the upcoming PASS Business Analytics conference, we wanted to take some time to spotlight the great work happening in the SQL and BI communities across the world. The conference is focused on business analytics, but PASS offers many great community activities for SQL Server and beyond. Learn about the various local and digital opportunities to connect with the PASS community here.
Name: Luan Moreno Medeiros Maciel
Role: SQL Server Database Consultant at The Pythian Group
Location: Brazil
What is an exciting project that you’re working on right now?
I have a few interesting projects going on right now…
Hybrid Cloud on SQL Server: This projects consists in a cloud between Amazon and the local DataCenter of the client. I’m designing this solution utilizing Database Mirroring on SQL Server 2012. After the implementation the client will be able to have a High Available solution between two sites.
In-Memory OLTP a.k.a “Hekaton” Feature Implementation: Implementing tables In-Memory for a medium company. The idea is to provide a big table In-Memory that will absorb all the requests and then, at a specific time of the day, flush the data to disk-based tables.
Partitioning in SQL Server 2012: Partitioning a big table to provide better maintenance and velocity in the data request. The data will be split by month.
Creating DW (Data Warehouse) – Educational Company: Creating the complete Data Warehouse process for a client who needs to analyze data to be used with end visualization tools in Excel (PowerView, PowerMap and PowerPivot).
What are your current analytics and/or database challenges, and how are you solving them?
I have a few challenges I am currently navigating. The first is determining the proper tables to be used in an In-Memory implementation. To help choose the correct tables to put In-Memory, I am using the Data Collector to analyze the client workload and generate insights. The second is creating the right Table Partitioning to improve one of my clients’ weekly maintenance. To do this I am analyzing the client server/database/maintenance to check what options are available and to determine the specific timeframe to apply the changes. I am also consulting some DMV’s and the MSDB database to check the jobs in this instance.
How does data help you do your job better?
Data is the center of my globe; I need to analyze, maintain, sustain, and provide insights and solutions to my clients. All of this can happen because of data.
What types of data-related challenges do you frequently see with customers, and how are you solving them?
Working with customers requires you to understand the customer environment, check what you have available to accomplish the work required, and then provide the best solution possible.
What’s your favorite example of how data has provided an insight, a decision, or a shift in how business gets done?
One of my clients had several problems related to data analysis. Because their data was not organized in the correct manner in their database, the client couldn’t provide solutions to front-end users. To solve the problem my team created a Data Quality Services structure with the client, organizing the data so that the data insights of the OLTP system could be recognized. As a result of these improvements, the client started to provide his own insights with the new, reinvented data.
What or who do you read, watch, or follow to help grow your data skills? (book, blog, Twitter handle, podcast, online course…anything!)
- http://www.brentozar.com/
- https://www.simple-talk.com/sql/
- http://www.mssqltips.com/
- https://www.sqlskills.com/
- https://channel9.msdn.com/
- http://www.pluralsight.com/
What’s your favorite SQL command and/or Excel function and why?
ALTER DATABASE imoltp ADD FILEGROUP imoltp_mod CONTAINS MEMORY_OPTIMIZED_DATA
This command gives me the certainty that I will work with the In-Memory OLTP (a.k.a “Hekaton”).
Thanks for joining us, Luan!
Know someone doing cool work with data? Nominate them for a spotlight in the comments.
