Over the past few weeks I have become increasingly frustrated with the media visualisations of the spread of COVID-19, and especially the comparisons between countries. Linear graphs and logarithmic graphs are equally confusing – both requiring the eye to judge whether a line is flat or curved or changing. So I decided to build my own – in Excel. Objective My objective here is simply to visualise the available data, and provide some interpretation. I am not producing a predictive model, nor am I comparing the approaches across different countries – I’ll leave that to the epidemiologists. However, I do … Continue reading A visualisation of flattening the curve

Some history It is no exaggeration to say that the relative prosperity of the world today is fundamentally based on the division of labour. The division of labour enabled us to move from an agrarian society to build towns and … Continue reading Microservices and Devops ? What would Adam Smith think …

Four Model In a previous article I looked at why object-relational impedance was still a thing, and why we need both ways of holding data – object model to facilitate the easy interactions needed for user-facing applications, and relational for … Continue reading Removing the Object Relational Impedance

Introduction The enmity between developers and DBAs is both legendary and persistent. Developers get frustrated when DBAs take so long to do the simplest of tasks, and DBAs are disparaging of developers who want the database to do nothing more … Continue reading Why developers and DBAs just don’t get on

Overview The introduction of a discrete environment dedicated to data discovery and model building (e.g. a Datalab) can substantially deal with the lack of agility of more traditional data warehouses where agility has been deliberately locked out to deliver the … Continue reading Bridging the Gap between Data Discovery and Execution

There has never been a time that data hasn’t been recognised to be as important as it is today. It seems that the world has woken up to the potential value that an organisation’s data can offer – not only … Continue reading Operational Reporting and Enterprise BI

It’s obvious to everyone that we are currently going through a huge shift in the way that IT is used within our lives. The term “paradigm-shift” is much overused, but in this case it’s probably warranted. We all carry around … Continue reading Building a Data Driven Organisation