About Me

Hi, my name is Vincent Rainardi. I am passionate about data warehousing and BI. I work as a consultant (contractor) in data warehousing and business intelligence in London. I do a lot of work with Microsoft BI, Oracle, Informatica, BO. I also work with other DW/BI platforms including Teradata, Netezza and QlikView. I started working with data warehousing and BI in 1996 where I used Comshare Commander PRISM OLAP engine in a project for Toyota (on Oracle). I have built data warehouses and BI for RBS, IMS, Catlin, Lastminute.com, Veolia, Avery Dennison, Legal & General and Accenture. My background is physics engineering, and I was trained in investment banking, electronics, finance, SQL Server, Oracle, Teradata, .NET and of course data warehousing.

I wrote a book about data warehousing on SQL Server platform, published by Apress in December 2007, titled “Building a Data Warehouse, with examples on SQL Server“. The book explains how to design and build a data warehouse on SQL Server, covering business requirements, methodology, architecture, infrastructure, data modelling, ETL, data quality, metadata, reporting and OLAP. In the past I wrote data warehousing & BI articles on SQLServerCentral.com but now I write on this blog instead. With this blog I intend to share my passion about data warehousing and business intelligence. I will be writing about Microsoft BI, i.e. SQL Server, SSAS, SSIS, SSRS, and also about data warehousing in general such as dimensional modelling and ETL architecture, as well as other platforms such as Oracle.

After my book was published some people said that it would be good if I can rewrite it for Oracle platform end-to-end. It doesn’t have to be the same case study (many prefer financial case than retail) but the idea is to use ODI for the ETL, Oracle 11g on Unix for the DB and OBIEE for BI. If you are supportive of this idea let me know. I’m willing to do it but if it only benefits a few people then it’s not worth the effort. It took me 1 full year, every night and week end to write my book.

I have MCTS and MCITP on SQL Server 2008 BI and I have 2 MCPs on Database Design and Database Administration. In Nov 2009 I presented at sqlbits in Wales. It’s about creating cubes directly from operational/transaction systems (slides here). In March 2008 I presented Data Warehousing Data Modelling session at SQLBits4 in Manchester (slides here). March 2010: SQL Server 2008 Data Warehousing Features at SSUG in London (slides here). April 2011: Advanced Dimensional Modelling in SQLBits8 in Brighton (slides here)

Apart from doing data warehousing and BI (they are not only my job, they are also my hobby, so I also do it at night, week end, on the train to work), I enjoy spending time with my family, playing chess, photography, ice skating and investing. See my blog on chess here. You can contact me at vrainardi@gmail.com.

Vincent Rainardi, 27th Nov 2009 (last updated 10th May 2012)