Happy New Year 2016

  • Comments posted to this topic are about the item Happy New Year 2016

  • My personal favourite is learning some new BI without the cumbersome of SSRS. Been learning Qliksense the last couple of months and I can finally do a decent presentation layer 🙂 Other than that gonna be taking less of a tech roll this year I think and getting stuck into our new business

    happy new year to all!

  • Happy New Year's Everyone!

    There are two languages I would like to learn this year. First, I'd like to learn R. My Bachelor's is in Mathematics. I've always enjoyed data analysis, I'd like to use that and believe that R will help me get there.

    Secondly, as a programmer I'd like to learn more functional programming. I'd like to learn F# this year.

    Rod

  • I'm phasing into compliance and risk analysis this year.

  • Power BI and Enterprise Gateway to on-prem

    Power BI Desktop

    M language

    SSAS Tabular

    SSIS/BIML

    SQL 2016 SSRS/SSAS/AG'S

    Azure SQL Database

    Azure SQL VM's

  • I think this will be the year of network& security learning. Useful for every IT technician.

  • This year I want to replace the owner accounts database for the comunidad propietario that I live in with something a bit more modern (it's currently using dBase III) and the tools the cdad's adminstrador uses to deal with owner accounts (heaven knows what thosewere written in, but whoever wrote them had some strange ideas about GUIs), and maybe also replace the comunidad's website (which is rather non-functional at present, and rather ancient, and no-one knows how it works, and appears to be hosted in Germany on a machine with lousey connectivity to Spain, UK, scandinavia, and Ireland). I reckon on using SQL Server (express edition) for the accounts stuff but may need Sql Agent which appears not to be available in newest releases of express. I haven't written any GUIs in the last 10 years, so probably have some new stuff to learn there, and the last website I worked on used good old-fashioned ASP on IIS with all scripting in JavaScript and extensive use of Active-X and COM for the apps the website gave acess to, and I suspect that too means I'm going to have to learn new stuff.

    Actually it looks like the sort of thing I would have knocked off rapidly using the ancient stuff (MSDE and ASP and so on) less than 10 years ago, but maybe now I'm biting off more than I can chew as I'm used to having people to talk to about design and to do code reviews (when I had time to do design and coding - other tasks kind of restricted my technical time) and I'll have no-one to do that now.

    Tom

  • Currently our main application runs in a standalone environment with single or a very limited number of users. The aim in 2016 is to go to the cloud and for this I need to get much more knowledgeable on security and multi user environments. I think I will be on a steep learning curve.

    I also do a reasonable amount of programming and realised last year that the person who taught me OO did not really understand it and I therefore need to take a step back so that I write proper OO code!

  • There's some gaps that have developed in my knowledge of T-SQL that I need to fill in. I'd like to work on that and also on re-learning VB as the last serious development that I did in VB would have been back in 1995 or so: it was GUI, but still just a tad bit outdated. My current project is reaching internal testing phase, so I expect some time to loosen up (hopeless optimist).

    I bought a bunch of Arduino stuff when Radioshack closed their doors, that's something I want to spend some time on as I have some ideas for some art projects that I want to do, that'll also involve re-learning some basic electronics, which'd be cool.

    I would really like to spend some time with Swift and work on some iOS development, but that's a long-range goal that I don't know when I'll get around to that. And with the rapid change in development for portable devices, it'll be completely changed by the time that I get around to it. I'm tempted to dig in to Python and PostgreSQL to see if I could get involved in IT at the observatory that my wife works at, but it's not much of a temptation. It'd be cool, but I really don't have the science background.

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    [font="Arial"]Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves or we know where we can find information upon it. --Samuel Johnson[/font]

  • I'd like to learn more of the "language of business", so I can find better ways to communicate IT needs to our management. Far too often we don't seem to properly express the underlying business value of what I'll call "infrastructure" needs - things like better hardware, up-to-date software (like newer version of SQL Server) and general system upgrades.

    My theory is that better and more specific communication would help.


    Here there be dragons...,

    Steph Brown

  • Wayne West (1/4/2016)


    There's some gaps that have developed in my knowledge of T-SQL that I need to fill in. I'd like to work on that and also on re-learning VB as the last serious development that I did in VB would have been back in 1995 or so: it was GUI, but still just a tad bit outdated. My current project is reaching internal testing phase, so I expect some time to loosen up (hopeless optimist).

    I bought a bunch of Arduino stuff when Radioshack closed their doors, that's something I want to spend some time on as I have some ideas for some art projects that I want to do, that'll also involve re-learning some basic electronics, which'd be cool.

    I would really like to spend some time with Swift and work on some iOS development, but that's a long-range goal that I don't know when I'll get around to that. And with the rapid change in development for portable devices, it'll be completely changed by the time that I get around to it. I'm tempted to dig in to Python and PostgreSQL to see if I could get involved in IT at the observatory that my wife works at, but it's not much of a temptation. It'd be cool, but I really don't have the science background.

    I will need to start learning PostgreSQL if I want to stay with my current employer since that is the direction they are going with the newest version of our product.

  • Stephanie J Brown (1/4/2016)


    ...

    My theory is that better and more specific communication would help.

    That's probably what more of us need. Not just language, but skills in how to do this better, from all sides.

  • Stephanie J Brown (1/4/2016)


    I'd like to learn more of the "language of business", so I can find better ways to communicate IT needs to our management. Far too often we don't seem to properly express the underlying business value of what I'll call "infrastructure" needs - things like better hardware, up-to-date software (like newer version of SQL Server) and general system upgrades.

    My theory is that better and more specific communication would help.

    I find it can be extremely difficult as you may be talking to people who either do not listen or do not want to understand. About a decade ago I specified a server only to find it was downgraded in all areas. This slowed the overall performance down but the worse problem was someone changed the Linux from a paid for/supported version to a freeware one. Some issues had not been resolved when I left over five years later and remained on the forum! None were show stoppers but they did create extra work!

  • mjh 45389 (1/5/2016)


    Stephanie J Brown (1/4/2016)


    I'd like to learn more of the "language of business", so I can find better ways to communicate IT needs to our management. Far too often we don't seem to properly express the underlying business value of what I'll call "infrastructure" needs - things like better hardware, up-to-date software (like newer version of SQL Server) and general system upgrades.

    My theory is that better and more specific communication would help.

    I find it can be extremely difficult as you may be talking to people who either do not listen or do not want to understand. About a decade ago I specified a server only to find it was downgraded in all areas. This slowed the overall performance down but the worse problem was someone changed the Linux from a paid for/supported version to a freeware one. Some issues had not been resolved when I left over five years later and remained on the forum! None were show stoppers but they did create extra work!

    It does seem that management doesn't understand the ramifications of some decisions - especially those that cause technical debt, re-work and ongoing manual interventions. It's a challenge to figure out how to express these concepts without causing their eyes to glaze over. I understand that there are budget constraints in all companies; we need to make sure the long-term costs of short-term budget decisions are clear. Too many times we hear "we'll do it this way for now, and fix it later". Of course, "later" never comes as by then many more new priorities have appeared, and thus the waste becomes entrenched over time.

    The question (in my mind) then becomes "how do we make clear to management the consequences of their decisions?" There may still be reasons for making less-than-perfect choices, and I'm okay with that as long those decisions are made with full information and an understanding of the consequences.


    Here there be dragons...,

    Steph Brown

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