Databases

It seems that I have been working with data for most of my career. In games development I had to design a file format that was flexible, quick and robust. Vast amounts of complex, interrelated data was stored in these files. Later, in the Canon project at OCC, I wrote my own (read only) drivers for the DBase 3 files that the legacy software used. This allowed for very fast, optimized searchs of the data stored.

SQL Server

I have used SQL Server in several projects and have been impressed with its speed, reliability and robustness. Some of the SQL statements we were using in the Holocaust project at OCC got very long and the SQL server optimiser proved very useful in getting the response times to be more than acceptable. Stored procedures have also been useful in getting more speed out of the software.

Microsoft Access

We did use an Access database while working on Freerunner at Rebellion. There I learnt much of what I know now for using forms and modules etc. I have used Access as a tool for transporting and translating data in the past. My Access skills were put to the test again at BHP Billiton in Melbourne where I made changes to one of their databases. A strong grounding in Visual Basic programming, coupled with an excellent understanding of relational database techniques with my memory of the software proved invaluable in completing the task to the customers satisfaction well within the time limits.

My SQL

While helping out in Dharamshala with the Tibetans they said they'd like to be able to use a SQL database. SQL Server not being available, we downloaded My SQL. While it doesn't quite have SQL Server's powerful range of tools and accessories, it seemed a very useful little SQL server package. We had it up and running very quickly (this was including ODBC drivers as well) and downloaded some very useful tools from the internet.

ORACLE

My main commercial experience with ORACLE was while at AEA, we had to use a piece of software that downloaded the data from an ORACLE database to our local database.

Superbase

We used Superbase at AEA to process the data downloaded from the main ORACLE database. While it was a long time ago that I used it, I'm sure it's just like riding a bike!