About / Availability

Work-wise I get my kicks from Oracle performance and Oracle development:

• I get a real buzz out of identifying and resolving performance issues, whether reacting to live production crises or proactive improvement.
• I tend to work on an application team (as opposed to a DBA team), getting to know the application and looking at performance both from the application in and from the database out, and getting other developers to get the most out of the database.
• I’m equally at home with greenfield database design and development as with dealing with older applications and refactoring/rewriting/tuning existing code.
• I love Oracle SQL and PLSQL, I even won the Quarterly PLSQL Challenge Playoff once (Q4 2010)
• I seem to spend a lot of time tuning SQL and PLSQL (because it’s required not just because I’ve a compulsion), delivering significant gains.
• I’m at ease working as an Oracle subject matter expert within a team or an organisation.
• I’m not a production DBA. If there’s one area where a production DBA has to be bang on the money, it’s Backup and Recovery (two areas?). I’m not. But I could get there.
• Oracle is where my passion is but I have development experience and understanding of other technologies and am always keen to learn and branch out.

Recent(ish) highlights:

• Spent fifteen years in investment banks or asset managers, being the Oracle SME on application teams, dealing with performance issues, tuning code, and shepherding application performance through upgrades and migrations.
• Prior to that, highlights include doing all of the database design and development on the rearchitecture of the database platform for a New Media company.

For more information, please see my linkedin profile or just ask me for a copy of my CV.