Better Mobile, Social and Cloud Computing Skills = More Money

Dec 28, 2010 // by Karen Lopez // Blog, Database, Professional Development, Social Networking // 5 Comments

One of my resolutions for this past year was to work on my non-traditional database skills such as NoSQL and cloud computing/databases. I am still at the research and discovery phase, but after reading this article, Paying top dollar for tech talent pays off, I think I need to continue to commit time in these areas.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt explained why every one of his 16,000-plus employees just got a 10 percent raise. It was a salvo in the " war for talent," said one of the world’s most successful CEOs. And Google is still hiring hundreds of employees every week.

and

"Consumer-facing companies like Procter and Gamble, Ford and Coca-Cola have started hiring as well," noted Cournoyer, co-founder of venture capital firms Montreal Start Up and Real Ventures. He pointed out that just as these mega-enterprises need warehouse, sales and customer-service pros, they also need Web engineering talent to thrive in today’s market. That rings true in any industry these days.

I’m still waiting for my $3.5 million stock option to not leave a company.

I’ve spent some time with Microsoft Azure and MongoDB, but I want to learn more about Hadoop and some other non-relational data stores. Learning about these also means brushing up on my web development skills. I’m hoping that my use of social networking and the addition of social features to our online presences will bring a better understanding to business problems that involve these solutions.

What I do understand is that if you are data architect working in the relational world you’ll still have a role to play for a very long time, no matter what recent articles are saying. However, if you want to be at the top of your game, a most relevant team member, a true enterprise data architect you won’t be able to rest on what you know about SQL Server, DB2, and Oracle alone.

The biggest issue I’ve had lately working with these emerging technologies have been that traditional data modeling tools aren’t yet supporting many newer data technologies. In fact, most don’t even support XML that well even though it has been around for a long time. I want to tie conceptual and logical models to physical models of non-relational solutions without having to worry about importing or exporting meta data from tool to tool.

Do you think that the existing data modeling market will start supporting non-relational technologies? O r will we have to look for new tools for these?

5 Comments

Buck Woody 28 December 2010 at 4:22 PM

We definitely need new modeling tools, processes and documentation. Keys here are effective de-normalization, sharding (inherent or coded) and partitioning strategies, as well as read/write ratio decisions.

Wanna write a book with me?

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- Karen Lopez 28 December 2010 at 4:26 PM
  
  I think we need new tools or to get existing tools to support non-relational data “stuff”, including other data formats. If we start from a blank page, it will be 5 years before the tools will be enterprise class and actually support modeling (not just drawing).
  
  Reply
  - Buck Woody 28 December 2010 at 5:31 PM
    
    True, but I’m not talking about software tools – just thought-and-picture tools. For instance, in Azure Table Storage you can actually store the column names and data together in what amounts to a “cell”, and the next “row” can have a completely different set of “columns”. So many cool things you can do with that idea.
    
    Reply
    - Karen Lopez 29 December 2010 at 10:09 AM
      
      Ah, yes, now I’m following you. Definitely different tools/additions to existing tools for using data with a greater flexibility that traditional transaction systems where structure is actually a requirement.
      
      Reply
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