Randolph Picture it: Sandton, 2007. The launch of a 150-day plan to migrate a set of disparate systems into a fully integrated hybrid data warehouse system running Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and associated plugins. Some of us (including me) are a little bewildered by the prospect, especially considering the volume of data and applications that need to migrate in this short period of time.
The fun part is that I’ve been tasked (with necessary assistance of course) to build the business layer, to abstract all access to the data from the users.
So for the past week or so, I’ve been plunging myself into data modelling, data flow, ERDs, UML, UDM, DML, XML, MDX, DMX (I thought he was a singer) and lots of other acronyms I’ve been studiously trying to avoid since I started working in IT in 1997.
The good news is that it looks fascinating. I’m looking at the big picture of our requirements, which gives me a chance to understand large portions of the business as well. I and my colleagues know how big a task this is, and I know I’m looking forward to the challenge.