Aku Sopanen: Untangling Spaghetti SQL

Rob here... This session is the one that we were going to have back in 2020, but cancelled because of all the stuff that happened this year. So now we have Aku back! This will be an in-person meeting, but if you want a Teams link because you really can't turn up, I can get you one. Now let's hand over to Aku:
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Don’t you hate trying to untangle SQL code that’s nested with view after view after function after view. Me too! So much so that I created a tool to develop quality data transformations with SQL faster.

In this talk I’ll share my data journey from the early days of SQL Server 7 and web development during dot-com era, to working in business intelligence and machine learning. A significant milestone came with Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS), and subsequent contract roles highlighted the necessity of business ownership in data products to truly capture requirements and ensure project success. This foundational phase, marked by great mentors, built my expertise in agile development, data modeling, and performance tuning - insights that proved pivotal in shaping a data-centric career.

With a demo of SQLiSER, my approach to streamline data transformations using SQL, the journey comes full circle. By leveraging SQL Server's intrinsic capabilities like stores procedures, metadata, and comparison functions, SQLiSER sidesteps the limitations of SSIS and the fragmented modern data landscape, all without introducing new software dependencies.