Get to know some of our talented authors featured in our author spotlights. Here you can see interviews, detailed biographies, and book summaries of some of the best in the industry.
WILKINS: I am an Oracle Master DBA with more than twenty years IT experience in a variety of technologies.
I started in hardware as a bench technician doing chip-level troubleshooting, but quickly moved into a parallel path of application and database design and programming.
My roles include, Database Designer/modeler, Programmer-Analyst, Database Administrator, UNIX Systems and Network Administrator, Network Designer/Analyst, and others. I performed more than three hundred technical interviews in the last five years.
WILKINS: Writing the test provided a chance to combine my writing and technical skills in a concentrated way. It ended up that I did much more research than originally anticipated and learned more than I wanted.
WILKINS: Of course, I learned more about the language and technology. I also learned much about the standardization process, the organizations, directions and implementation by various vendors. Writing questions to a standard implemented to various degrees by several vendors was very challenging and rewarding.
The challenge was to write the test in a way that would not alienate knowledge gained from experience with a particular major database vendor. The SQL92 standard has three levels of conformance. The major database vendors' entries, Oracle, Informix, IBM DB2, Sybase, MS-SQLServer meet only the lowest or entry-level conformance. However, each of the vendors has individual features that adhere to higher levels of conformance.
It is a bit confusing, so let's try an automobile analogy. Suppose there are three levels of safety conformance for cars.
Entry-level conformance involves having bumpers, brakes and seat belts. Intermediate-level conformance involves everything in Entry-level plus airbags, fire extinguisher and anti-lock braking.
Full conformance involves all the above plus GPS, reactive body armor, night vision and autopilot.
While all cars would be entry-level compliant, some implement anti-lock braking but none of the other features to make it intermediate-level compliant. Analogies are such fun!
WILKINS: Early in my career, I accepted a position of 'Product Manager' for a telecommunication company. The position involved pre-sales and post-sales support of telecommunication hardware and software. Part of this support was in the form of operation manuals and training, custom-written to simplify our clients' experience. My boss was very experienced in technical documentation. I thought I had good English and language skills, since I was an English buff and knew two other languages. However, I soon painfully learned that technical writing for simplicity and clarity was quite another subject. My first few attempts had so many red marks and editing notes that I was humiliated, but I learned from the experience.
Nearly every new client and project I encountered since has lacked good technical documentation. It's still rare to see good technical writing in the workplace.
WILKINS: Twenty years of experience has really broadened my interests and expertise in IT. It is increasingly challenging to keep abreast of the latest developments in Operating Systems, Network technologies, Storage technologies, Database Technologies and others. Lately I have been concentrating on Security techniques dealing with all of these.
I consume a bewildering array of information. I read many books and magazines, of course. On my desk there is a backlog of five or more books and twenty or more magazines (10 or more new magazines come in every month). There are subscriptions and attendance to email lists, WebCasts, User Groups (St. Louis Oracle User Group or SLOUG), training classes, CBTs and the list goes on. I also have technical conversations with friends working in the IT industry.
As a consultant, I have opportunity to be exposed one to various technologies and applications.
WILKINS: The SQL test covers the implementation of SQL (Structured Query Language). The challenge was to write the test in a way that would not alienate knowledge gained from experience with a major database vendor. The SQL92 standard has three levels of conformance. The major database vendors’ entries, Oracle, Informix, IBM DB2, Sybase, MS-SQL*Server meet only the lowest or entry-level conformance. However, this is conformance across all commands and features. Each of the vendors has individual features that adhere to higher levels of conformance.
WILKINS: When dinosaurs roamed the earth. Well, actually, when a 40-megabyte (not GB) disk drive looked like a washing machine. Now a 40-gigabyte disk drive, 1,000X more storage, fits in the palm of your hand.
I graduated from a technical high school in 1980, deciding to go into Digital Electronics two years earlier. I took IS and programming courses in community college and lots of industry training since.
I was immediately hooked on programming when, in my senior year of Tech School, we programmed the Motorola 6800 processor in the HeathKit trainer using machine code.
Shortly thereafter, I bought a Radio Shack TRS-80 (yeah, trash-80), containing the Zilog Z80 processor, 4K of RAM, BASIC in PROM, and a cassette-tape drive. I bought a Assembly Language programming package on cassette tape from a little startup company called Microsoft.
The first database I encountered was called DataStar, from the folks who produced WordStar. It was a non-relational database, but soon I discovered a relational PC database and development environment called R:Base from Microrim. I created many custom applications using R:Base, some of which are still in use today (scary). R:Base used SQL and was SQL-89 compliant. About Ten years ago, I began to use Informix, now owned by IBM which ran well on the UNIX OS.
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