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Me, myself and I

Hi there and welcome to my secret hideout1 :wave:

I am Thomas and currently occupied as an (Azure) data engineer at Capgemini Austria.

Hot Topics & Interests

Not very surprisingly, my main focus is on all things data. More specifically, that currently means:

  • Databricks, Spark & Delta
  • Delta Live Tables & Spark Structured Streaming
  • Data Explorer/Kusto
  • Fabric
  • Azure Data Factory
  • Cloud Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Bicep)

And not so currently, meaning in the recent past, i saw a lot of:

  • Synapse (Serverless & Dedicated2)
  • SQL-Server Warehouse(s)
  • Restful APIs & GraphQL

After 18 years of classical data warehousing, i finally got to dive into the data lake (-house), which i won’t leave anytime soon it seems.

Besides signing the DataOps Manifesto, i am also a supporter of the “treat data as a product” movement.

Side-Shows

Since one of my main treats is laziness (when it comes to repetitive tasks), i developed a natural interest in DevOps & automation. And due to constant lack of sleep, I usually don’t touch any code, unless it’s version controlled. That includes but is not limited to: cloud infrastructure (as code), database schemas, pipeline definitions, all kinds of scripts, notebooks and the grocery list for my next shopping tour.

As a result of the above, i somehow stumbled into the beautiful world of DevOps (although that name was not a thing back then). My personal project lifecycle these days often goes looks like this: Getting hired as an architect/data enginner at first, but then silently turning into the dedicated DevOps and Git guy. Although it was never my intention, i think i got the DevOps bingo card full now:

  • Azure DevOps (Repos, Boards, Pipelines, etc.)
  • The Atlassian(s): Bitbucket, Jira, Confluence (and even Bamboo…).
  • Github (my teenage love)
  • Gitlab
  • And if artefact registries also belong on this list: Cloudsmith

However, there can be only one god. And for me that is and always will be: Git3. After using it for almost a decade, i still feel like i don’t know half of it and am constantly amazed how limitless the possibilities of this genius piece of software really are.

Scripting

Since DevOps and automation usually require some sort of scripting, i found myself dealing with the usual (scripting) suspects: Powershell, Bash, Python (and for fun and good looks also: Fish).

Regarding data manipulation & transformation i am most experienced in T-SQL, due to spending many years implementing SQL warehouses. Switching to Python felt a bit odd at first, but today there is no doubt it in my mind: The added value one gets (for free) from the whole Python software engineering eco-system (formatting, linting, automated testing, packaging, …) cannot be missed out on. Implementing data projects in Python almost starts to feel like ‘real’ software development these days.

Also, a life without (Jupyter) notebooks might be possible, but makes absolutely no sense to me anymore :smirk:.

Professional Past

Way back in time, i also worked a lot with (or in):

  • SQL-Server (on-Premise): Relational-DBs, SSIS, SSAS, SSRS.
  • SAP: BW (Datamodeling, Processchains, Bex Queries, etc.), Business Objects (Analysis for Office, Lumira Designer, BI/BO Platform), ERP/R3 (mainly FI/CO/HCM/COPA), SEM-BCS (management consolidation).
  • IBM Planning Analytics (aka TM1), Palo/Jedox and other real OLAP engines & databases including all sorts of Excel integrations that usually come along with those.
  • Corporate Performance Management (CPM): Main focus was building financial, sales, project and product planning (& forecasting) solutions.
  • Financial Reporting: Implemented a lot of financial reports in various tools and different kind of backends, including notation concepts (IBCS-like).
  • As an inhouse consultant, i also spent quite some time in improving the collaboration toolset in a centralized Controlling department (40 people spread over various locations, countries and languages). Which basically means that i played around a lot with Microsoft Teams, Sharepoint (on-premise and online), Planner/ToDo, OneDrive, O365, etc.).
  • At the same time i also made some operational use of my educational/business background by conducting the monthly business consolidation (as well as providing financial reports) for over 100 legal entities in a media group.

Education & Certifications

My educational background is a master’s degree in “Management and International Business”4 (yikes) and 35+ years of being a self-taught computer nerd. If you care about certifications (personally, i don’t), you can check my Credly or MS-Learn pages and might find out that (besides the obvious data engineering certs) i am also not a complete stranger to agile methods.

However, my opinion towards certifications is best explained by this picture (borrowed from the great Martin Fowler5):

certification matrix

Creed

Since i couldn’t put my work ethics/beliefs to better words, i am borrowing Automattic’s creed here:

THE AUTOMATTIC CREED

  • I will never stop learning.
  • I won’t just work on things that are assigned to me.6
  • I know there’s no such thing as a status quo.
  • I will build our business sustainably through passionate and loyal customers.
  • I will never pass up an opportunity to help out a colleague, and I’ll remember the days before I knew everything.
  • I am more motivated by impact than money, and I know that Open Source is one of the most powerful ideas of our generation.7
  • I will communicate as much as possible, because it’s the oxygen of a distributed company.
  • I am in a marathon, not a sprint, and no matter how far away the goal is, the only way to get there is by putting one foot in front of another every day.
  • Given time, there is no problem that’s insurmountable.

And a personal addition:

  • If i can’t fix it, it was probably never broken in the first place :grin:

Get In Contact

Besides this blog, which i update maybe once a year, you can also find, stalk or contact me here:

  1. Powered by Github Pages and Chirpy ↩

  2. RIP Azure SQL DW aka Synapse Dedicated Pool. You will not be missed, haha. ↩

  3. All praise to the lord (aka Linus Torvalds). Watch this if you want to learn something about presenting software (and insulting your audience with style in the process). ↩

  4. Let’s keep this a secret, please? ↩

  5. If you don’t (yet) know Martin Fowler, then you should really change that asap: https://martinfowler.com. You can thank me later :grin: ↩

  6. Greetings go out at to all my former POs, project leads and bosses :wave: ↩

  7. Ok this one sounds a bit corny considering i am mainly working with Microsoft products and services. But it’s the idea that counts! ↩

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