Tod means Fox

Supporting decisions through sound data management

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New Role as Data Architect

Aug 5

Posted by Tod McKenna in Personal

stereographic polytope 8cell 150x150 New Role as Data ArchitectI have recently taken the position of Data Architect.

As I wrote on LinkedIn: “As data architect, I am responsible for creating a strategic and international data architecture and vision. This includes implementing data architecture standards and guidelines across the value chain; serving as the lead data architect for all data warehouse, reporting, and analytic (BI/DSS) projects; and playing a lead role in establishing data ownership/stewardship within the organization. ”

This is quite loaded.

As I settle in, I’ll be looking to prioritize our most pressing needs while consuming all that I can about our existing data landscape. This is bigger than the data warehouse, data marts, and BI applications I’ve been involved with over the past year. This is also bigger than the integration project I undertook (with the same company) over the course of two+ years while working on the quantitative investment team. I need to get my head around all aspects of our data, from our CRM system through to our ODS, from our master data management capabilities to our transaction processing. In addition, these systems all talk to each other through a network of messaging, transferring, and batch processing. Our integration and service architecture is maturing quite quickly, and we are constantly improving our alignment across borders, which means more data, higher quality, faster delivery. In many ways, our environment is robust and mature; in other areas, we can do better.

I intend to continue writing about data warehouse topics. But I also expect to write more about my experiences in this new role. I hope you don’t mind!

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Moving Day

Oct 15

Posted by Tod McKenna in Personal

Quick TmF update: Over the past 6 weeks, I’ve been in the process of moving to Holland. While it can be bad blog-form to make excuses for not posting in a while, I thought emigrating from Belgium to The Netherlands would be a good enough excuse. After another week or two, I expect to be fully settled and back on track.

In the 3 years that TmF has been online, I’ve never gone this long without posting. Feels weird.

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New VFP User Group in Iraq

Jun 18

Posted by Tod McKenna in In The News

The FoxPro community has always been diverse and vibrant, with user groups spread out all over the world. Although VFP9 is the last installment we’ll get from Microsoft, I’m happy to see and re-report that a new group has been created: Iraqi Visual FoxPro Programmers Group (Iraqi.vfppg)

You can read the original announcement here on Foxite.

Founder Ammar Hadi writes:

It was my dream to build this group since about more than 4 years ago, and at that time I send an e-mail to one of the Iraqi Foxers who is a member in foxite too (we never met) and told him that I will work on creating a foxpro group in Iraq. He show his readiness to help me on that. But at that time, I was totally engaged in my Medical study to get the certificate of Neurosurgical Profession. Now it is about a year and a half since I finished my study and training and got the certificate to work as a professional neurosurgeon (with very good marks ;-D ….. ). Now I can say that I got some more time to make my dream come true.

I wish Ammar the very best!

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More Reviews on the Way

Mar 20

Posted by Tod McKenna in Reviews

Anyone have some good reading suggestions?

I read a lot, and now that I have a long train commute each day into and out of Brussels, I’ll be reading much more. Some books on my radar include “Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking” by Malcolm Gladwell, “SOA Approach to Integration” by Ramesh Loganathan, et. al., and a re-read of the “Data Modeler’s Workbench: Tools and Techniques for Analysis and Design” by Steve Hoberman.

I really enjoyed Gladwell’s “Tipping Point”, and have had Blink on my shelf for several months. As soon as my US taxes are finished (*sigh*), I’ll start on it.

On the tech front, I’m pretty excited about reading “SOA Approach to Integration”. The book focuses on WS-BPEL (see WS-BPEL 2.0) as well as Enterprise Service Bus.

I read the Data Modeler’s Workbench a few years ago. Since I’ve matured as a data modeler and have entered a few new industries (clinical, financial), I think it is time for a re-read. But I’ve got to buy it (again) first! Steve gets my money twice :-s

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Site Update: Resource Page Additions

Mar 14

Posted by Tod McKenna in Personal

This quick post is to alert you to some additions to my resource page. Some of the new additions include links to DM Review, TDAN, SQL Server Magazine, and FoxRockX Magazine.

I’ve been rummaging through my bookmarks and favorites and should have more pretty soon. If you know of a good (or even better: excellent) resource in either Visual FoxPro, Business Intelligence, or Database categories please contact me.

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Introducing the New Whitepaper Section

Aug 19

Posted by Tod McKenna in Personal

I wanted to take a moment to introduce a new section on Tod means Fox: Whitepapers.

This page lists articles, whitepapers, memos, and other documents that address a business need, offer advice, breakdown a process, or otherwise present some technical overview. I was tempted to add these items to my Resources page, but in the end determined that separating articles from resources was a good idea. I generally define a resource (such as the FoxPro Wiki) as a conglomerate of information.

Currently, the items on this page were pulled from my Firefox bookmarks and are subject to change.

My hope is that you will have some good suggestions on what should be linked here. Contact me (privately via email at tod at grengama dot com), or by commenting to this post with your suggestions. The only rule is that when a reader clicks on a link, there is no registration or sign-up process: just the article. It would be even better, if you are a copyright holder, to let me host the article or whitepaper on my server — repackaged and refreshed.

I hope you all find this new page useful.

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Welcome to the new Tod means Fox

Jul 2

Posted by Tod McKenna in Personal

I’ve left Blogger and Windows Live Spaces for my own domain, more control, and greater flexibility. I hope you all like the new digs. My intention now is to grow this site by including some downloads, more resources, and additional FoxPro and Business Intelligence information.

So please, take a moment to update your RSS feeds to my new one: http://blog.todmeansfox.com/feed and your Bookmarks (use one of the Social Bookmarking links on the right-hand-side if you want).

And, feel free to contact me (todatgrengamadotcom) if you have any comments or questions!

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