Reply to: BI Contracts in London/South East and rates

[Spacecadet]

I would have thought to command the highest rates you need to be a mixture of business analyst / architect / technical implementation / data analyst. Good people with all those skills combined are quite hard to find.

Dunno about being any good though

[MarillionFan]

In my experience, of being an ETL developer, I need all those skills too.
Its very rare that I'm given a spec by a business analyst and can just code from that. Mostly we are expected to understand the business rules, work out how what is required and what is needed, explain to the customer what they need (as opposed to what they want!) Install the software, work out all the connectivity issues and build and load the data ware house/ targets

My current project is very big and I do actually have specs written by an analyst, and I'm struggling to think of the last time I had this! Its going OK, but it could possibly have been faster to write it my self....

The point I'm making is that to be a good ETL consultant you have to know a LOT more than just how to extract transform and load.

I'm working on a very big project at the moment and I actually wrote all of the specs as the analyst??? Where are you based????

[3starmn]

I'm based in the Midlands and currently I'm finding very little work outside of the capital especially for SSIS/SSAS, the majority of the contracts are in the £350-£450 range with the odd few at £500+. There are plenty in the finance/insurance market but most are very difficult to get into unless you have previous financial experience.

[Pogle]

That;s the skillsets I have. It's not great. Actually we pay most for ETL work (even though I do all the leg work)

In my experience, of being an ETL developer, I need all those skills too.
Its very rare that I'm given a spec by a business analyst and can just code from that. Mostly we are expected to understand the business rules, work out how what is required and what is needed, explain to the customer what they need (as opposed to what they want!) Install the software, work out all the connectivity issues and build and load the data ware house/ targets

My current project is very big and I do actually have specs written by an analyst, and I'm struggling to think of the last time I had this! Its going OK, but it could possibly have been faster to write it my self....

The point I'm making is that to be a good ETL consultant you have to know a LOT more than just how to extract transform and load.

[mobi]

I have worked with both Teradata and Kognitio. The later still not a major player as only a handful of companies use them. Their architecture is based on instead of disk, RAM is used to hold the data.

Teradata is good but too expensive compared to Oracle's Exadata.

Many things which are straight forward in Oracle is cumbersome in Teradata due to their less matured SQL/procedural language and other features.

MS SQL still not considered big player in BI/DWH arena.

Some organizations [mostly banks] stick with Sybase IQ.

[MarillionFan]

I would have thought to command the highest rates you need to be a mixture of business analyst / architect / technical implementation / data analyst. Good people with all those skills combined are quite hard to find.

That;s the skillsets I have. It's not great. Actually we pay most for ETL work (even though I do all the leg work)

[Freamon]

Right I need to know what stuff pays 900+/day. Is it Oracle stuff? And is it possible to make the move into it from MS background? As long as it does not involve permie route it might be worth a try....

I would have thought to command the highest rates you need to be a mixture of business analyst / architect / technical implementation / data analyst. Good people with all those skills combined are quite hard to find.

[Freamon]

Teradata

For BI, Teradata have been leading the game for a long time but SQL is not far behind (according to Gartner) and the Parallel Data Warehouse appliance could push Microsoft into the lead, although Teradata's architecture is a bit more resilient and avoids the single point of failure.

Another one to watch (newcomer) in this space is Kognitio - they have a very interesting product.

[nomadd]

potentially, I don't have a problem with MS SQL but never seen it used on high volume transactional systems, I think Terradata could be the one to watch

TBH, the real action is in the "post database era" for high throughput/low-latency systems. NoSQL, Compute Grids, etc. Databases are just too slow and don't scale well enough for many of today's requirements. Now, you might think that statement is rubbish, but then ask yourself why Oracle spent billions buying Coherence from Tangosol? And they've just added a SQL front end to it; no database in sight.

Besides, the new era stuff is far more interesting, and pays twice what a contract Oracle DBA gets paid. I know, I used to be one (and have many friends who still are.)

Just my two cents.

[Spacecadet]

potentially, I don't have a problem with MS SQL but never seen it used on high volume transactional systems, I think Terradata could be the one to watch

Teradata

For BI, Teradata have been leading the game for a long time but SQL is not far behind (according to Gartner) and the Parallel Data Warehouse appliance could push Microsoft into the lead, although Teradata's architecture is a bit more resilient and avoids the single point of failure.

[2BIT]

I am not so sure, I think MS are starting to master DB technology, as with all things they do, they tend to flop a couple of times before producing a top notch version. Maybe 2010 will come much closer to Oracle.

potentially, I don't have a problem with MS SQL but never seen it used on high volume transactional systems, I think Terradata could be the one to watch

[NorthWestPerm2Contr]

i don't know if Lotus Notes was done by IBM when it was rewritten in Eclipse but a horrible app that is!

think the last three can be interchangeble depending on what you are trying to do, Oracle was easy to set up once but when I wanted to put another version on my machine it became a bit of an arse and I ended up removing everything and starting again. for example why I had to setup a listener on my machine when it was hosting the DB i don't know (but I'm no Oracle expert at all), trying to use the universal installer to remove oracle wouldn't work and it told me to use deinstall and nothing seemed to work very well

that said the DB architecture is far sounder than MS SQL

I am not so sure, I think MS are starting to master DB technology, as with all things they do, they tend to flop a couple of times before producing a top notch version. Maybe 2010 will come much closer to Oracle.

[2BIT]

Hence why Cognos/SAP roles pay so much more than MS roles. In order of least pain it must be:

MS
Oracle
SAP
IBM

Or should we switch round the last 2?

i don't know if Lotus Notes was done by IBM when it was rewritten in Eclipse but a horrible app that is!

think the last three can be interchangeble depending on what you are trying to do, Oracle was easy to set up once but when I wanted to put another version on my machine it became a bit of an arse and I ended up removing everything and starting again. for example why I had to setup a listener on my machine when it was hosting the DB i don't know (but I'm no Oracle expert at all), trying to use the universal installer to remove oracle wouldn't work and it told me to use deinstall and nothing seemed to work very well

that said the DB architecture is far sounder than MS SQL

[NorthWestPerm2Contr]

Oracle, headache? Nah. Been working with Oracle db and other Oracle products since 1989 and it's never given me a headache.

Now if it's a headache - along with plenty of heartache - that you want, try SAP, or any of IBMs enterprise products.

Hence why Cognos/SAP roles pay so much more than MS roles. In order of least pain it must be:

MS
Oracle
SAP
IBM

Or should we switch round the last 2?

[nomadd]

True say, I did some Oracle work early in my career and it's a lot more of a headache than MS. I would be happy with a lower rate doing MS i guess. Might consider Oracle in the future.

Oracle, headache? Nah. Been working with Oracle db and other Oracle products since 1989 and it's never given me a headache.

Now if it's a headache - along with plenty of heartache - that you want, try SAP, or any of IBMs enterprise products.