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Erik Gfesser

📍 Greater Chicago Area

Community Post: Part 3 - Delta Lake 3.0 is like an electric car charging standard

* The power of open source * Delta Lake 3.0 is just one example * Parquet-based data lakehouse file format * Similar to electric car charging standard A well-received community post I recently made: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/erikgfesser_snowflake-deltalake-iceberg-activity-7080482215016476672-Xrh0 Just over two months ago in mid-April of this year, I couldn&

New Book Review: "The Ideal Executive"

New book review for The Ideal Executive: Why You Cannot Be One and What To Do About It, by Ichak Kalderon Adizes PhD, Adizes Institute, 2004: Without question, this book is the best on the topic of "management" I've ever read in my entire career. The

Community Comment: Part 30 - With respect to Azure, Databricks Unity Catalog & Microsoft Purview is not an either-or proposition

* Databricks Unity Catalog & Microsoft Purview * Not an either-or proposition for Azure * Likely need to integrate these products * Integration dependant on several factors The comments I provided in reaction to a community discussion thread. Cloud Solutions Architect at Consulting Firm: Read my latest post if you want to know what

Community Comment: Part 29 - Usage of normalized versus denormalized data storage is dependent on usage patterns

* Normalized versus denormalized data * Data storage dependent on usage patterns * Denormalized data makes reads efficient * Normalized data makes writes efficient The comments I provided in reaction to a community discussion thread. CEO at Business Intelligence Product Firm: After 100s of conversations with analytics engineers, I'm convinced the way

Community Comment: Part 28 - Technical debt is actually a subset of organizational debt

* Not all technical debt is the same * Discussion with purported CTOs * Technical debt is subset of organizational debt * Business + technology = "our business" The comments I provided in reaction to a community discussion thread. Fractional CTO and "Engineering Management Expert": "Technical debt? Is that a joke?

Community Comment: Part 27 - Assessment is needed when deciding between transactional and analytical modeling

* Transactional versus analytical modeling * Discussion with purported staff data engineer * Making broad generalizations doesn't help * Quoting $ savings in vacuum not advised The comments I provided in reaction to a community discussion thread. Owner of Data Engineering Training Firm and former Staff Data Engineer at Airbnb: If you model

New Book Review: "Running Toward Life"

New book review for Running Toward Life: Finding Community and Wisdom in the Distances We Run, by John Trent, Broad Book Press, 2023: Copy provided by Amazon. Trent mentions in his introduction that his hope in writing this book is to speak to various phases of one's running

New Book Review: "The Threshold"

New book review for The Threshold: Leading in the Age of AI, by Nick Chatrath, Diversion Books, 2023: Copy provided by Amazon. In the introductory pages of this book, Chatrath states that "this book functions as a first foray into exploring what good leadership looks like in the present

Media Query Source: Part 45 - Reworked (US digital magazine); OpenAI & the Databricks-Microsoft AI alliance

* Reworked (US digital magazine) * OpenAI & the Databricks-Microsoft AI alliance * Databricks available on AWS, Azure & GCP * Microsoft providing AI options makes sense My responses ended up being included in an article at Reworked (September 7, 2023). Extent of verbatim quote highlighted in orange, paraphrased quote highlighted in gray. Above

Media Query Source: Part 44 - InformationWeek (US digital magazine); Top Tips for Weeding Out Bad Data

* InformationWeek (US digital magazine) * Best way to weed out bad data * "Bad data": low quality or inappropriate data * Acquire, cleanse, standardize & model data My responses ended up being included in an article at InformationWeek (June 26, 2023). Extent of verbatim quote highlighted in orange, paraphrased quote highlighted