Data Smith'ing

Too much data, not enough information? Need to analyse, clean or move your data from one system to another. I have the experience and the tools to tame your data, all you need is Excel, I'll provide the rest.

By combining Excel with powerful free open source tools such as SQLite and PALO, and by using pay-as-you-go 'cloud' servers and data stores (Amazon's EC2 and S3 services) I can provide datasmithing services at a fraction of the cost/complexity compared to traditional in-house proprietary solutions. BI used to mean BB (Big Bucks) but now the tools that were once the preserve of central IT in large companies are now available to anyone with a PC and an internet connection.

For large scale ETL (Extract, Transform and Load) tasks my weapon of choice is Talend's Open Source ETL and Data Integration Studio. But I find that Excel backed by SQLite can handle many micro ETL tasks with the added advantage that the transformation logic, being largely Excel based (with a smidgeon of SQL) is more "end-user" friendly.

The data to be manipulated may reside on your own servers or on my Amazon S3/EC2 instances or a combination of both. The delivered product, a transformed dataset or the procedures and code to enable the transformation.

I have more than 30 years experience in the harnessing and marshalling of data, big and small companies, public and private sector.

What's a datasmith? Well, I could style myself a data analyst/systems integrator/reporting analyst/DBA/programmer/business analyst but I'd end up all /'d out. I hope the term datasmith conveys the craft nature of my work with data, for it is a craft that I'm particularly good at and take great pride in.

I write on various data related subjects on my blog Gobán Saor - A Country Datasmith

I can also be found on Twiiter @gobansaor

I can be contacted via email tom@gleesonIT.com.