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052: Mobile App - Part 1 - Design and Technology

This initial phase of a small Mobile App project presents motivations and goals for a new application, and  gives directions around tooling selection. The weekly mood As already mentioned some time ago, I sometimes spend my freetime riding a roadbike. And as it belongs to, I feel both the need to have pleasure and to perform. At first I enjoy good weather, beautiful landscapes and spontaneous break-aways with mates. From time to time, I also expect to make or smash the numbers, simply by pushing it to technical and mental limits where applicable. A few months ago I wrote a blog post  about recording rides using a GPS / Running watch, and analysing calculated power data from Strava segment efforts. Now, I feel the need for something to show me how I perform while riding. Since the watch doesn't show more than speed and time like a cheap bike computer, I do need some extra. However, I want to achieve this with parsimony, that is without purchasing a  Cycling power meter ...
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051: Introvert Architect: Bug or feature?

Review of  Susan Cain's  book Quiet, with own additions such as my personal story and level of maturity around introversion and extroversion at work. The weekly mood Unexpectedly, I've been able to catch up with a couple of project tasks left behind during the past few weeks, and even found the time to look a bit outside the box. In his talk  and  articles  called The Architect Elevator , Gregor Hohpe defines the Architect person as a special "Animal", and the Architect role as a "Connector". The latest is not a surprising term from one of the fathers of  Enterprise Integration Patterns  (EIP). However, I find the first one intriging because it conveys that Architects belongs to a minority of people who might not allways be well accepted or understood. I recently read  Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking , a very popular  Essay  by Susan Cain (2012). Although I am not used to making book reviews, I...

050: ELT with DBT

Data Build Tool (DBT) allows you to easily create and manage ELT-pipelines to automatically build and populate a target analytical model. The weekly mood Thanksgiving is over and I wish I could integrate an Advent calendar into my blog, but in this case I should have had the idea before. Therefore, let us put it to next year... perhaps. Talking about ideas, I am still puzzled on how to help my organisation becoming data-driven. Is it ok to struggle with some basic Data Warehouse implementation, or is it a shame? As a matter of fact, we need to do something, and we need to do it now. See also: Building An Analytics-Centric Organisation . Today we'll have a look at a tool that is quite popular for populating dimensional data models: DBT. What is DBT Data Build Tool (DBT) is an Open-Source CLI written in Python that is used to manage, document, test, compile, package and run compute queries on a  Data Warehouse  (DW) or a Data Lake (DL). DBT is developed by a Philadelphia-...

049: Data Lake - Part 2 - Governance

Data Governance is such a wide topic in theory, that most people are confused about which practical approach to choose regarding their Data Lake. The weekly mood I finally have the warm feeling that I well integrated the department which I joined nearly half a year ago. Why such a long time for such a simple goal? Well, if I had to retrospect on this development, I would split it into the following under-estimated phases: Observation Fail-fast  Exploration Deep-dive Immersion Go Mainstream I was definitely not as easy as I expected given my background and motivation. I was glad to have the chance to touch-point on various topics from DevOps to API and Big Data. It was much less pleasant to partly have to wait for months until I got access to the systems and services I needed. Obviously there were some social restrictions related to COVID-19 and time-zones. To finish with, I not only needed to get used to our workflows, but confident with our goals, which also asked for some normal ...

048: Online Conferences

As trend monitoring and networking increasingly happens online, IT professionals need methodology for attending Meetups, Webinars or Conferences. The weekly mood Two weeks ago I spontaneously registered to the  ApacheCon  for free, the yearly rendezvous of the  Apache Software Foundation  (ASF) with Open-Source enthusiasts. ApacheCon is not a conference like others. Indeed, its content is not addressed to potential Software Buyers, therefore owned and influenced by  Marketers . Instead, it is addressed to enthusiastic Contributors and Users of a Developer community, owned and produced by  Members  of a  Project Management Commitee  (PMC). They are not  selling their  product but sharing their concept and vision .  The ASF probably hosts the largest base of software projects , including  httpd  which is the most used web server according to W3Tech . The ASF is also characterized by open-source terms ( Apache ...