Steve Williams
Consultant

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Welcome

DigiBiz Ltd specialises in ORACLE database technologies and the modelling, specification, design and implementation of bespoke Oracle applications.

Steve Williams of DigiBiz Ltd is an IT professional with over 20 years technical and business experience in the software development arena.

Services

DigiBiz Ltd is able to provide you with the following services:

• Database and applications - design and development.

• Analysis, data modelling and software specification.

• Data warehouse and data mart applications - design and build.

• Data migration - data extraction, transformation and loading.

• User and system documentation.

Expertise

Whilst the current focus of DigiBiz Ltd is on business systems and current Oracle technologies, the DigiBiz consultant Steve Williams has diverse experience of developing software for the purposes of mathematical modelling, industrial control systems, CAD systems and content management for internet retail.

Steve's former working life in large real-time control systems, using Object Oriented methodologies, lends DigiBiz Ltd a wider perspective on information systems built around databases. Although Steve's primary activity is in design and development he is also an Oracle Database 10g Administrator Certified Professional.

DigiBiz Ltd has experience in the following areas:

Skills

• Analysis
  Modelling
  Design
  Implementation
  Mentoring
  Team working

Operating Systems

• Unix and Linux

  • Shell commands
  • Shell scripting

  Windows

  • Administration (desktop systems)

Languages and scripting

• Oracle

  • PL/SQL
  • SQL
  • PL/SQL Server Pages (PSP)
  • XMLQuery

  General

  • HTML
  • Javascript
  • CSS
  • Java Server Pages (JSP)
  • Korn Shell scripting

Tools, Technologies, Applications and Utilities

• Oracle

  • TOAD
  • PL/SQL Developer
  • Oracle Designer
  • PL/SQL Web Toolkit
  • XML Developer's Kit (XDK)

  General

  • Graphical editors
  • OpenOffice Suite
  • Microsoft Office Suite
  • Microsoft Access

Clients

Recent and former clients of DigiBiz Ltd...

Sapient Government Services recruited DigiBiz Ltd to provide Oracle expertise in the refurbishment of a large data collection and warehousing system for the .

DigiBiz Ltd has assisted BT with a number of projects, ranging from terabyte scale data warehouses to business customer modelling.

For The Arts Council of England DigiBiz Ltd assisted with a complex data-migration project.

DigiBiz Ltd provided the tools for migrating secure data, in XML format from a third party, into an Oracle relational schema.

To short timescales DigiBiz Ltd designed, built and documented a small data warehouse for specialist holiday bookings.

DigiBiz Ltd provided the design and development lead in a small team designing and building an MIS system on an Oracle database platform.

In this project DigiBiz Ltd led the server-side development of an on-line share dealing system for Interactive TV on a BroadVision platform.

History

The Department of Health, Leeds. October 2007 to July 2010.

Data warehouse refactoring, data migration, reports data mart design and build.

As part of a multi-disciplinary team of Sapient staff and civil servants, the first brief for DigiBiz was to design and build a data mart of report-friendly reference costings for all health trusts and hospitals in the NHS. This was a challenging project delivered successfully, contrary to prior expectations.

DigiBiz was retained for a follow on project. This was the refurbishment (performance enhancement and usability improvement) of Unify2, a data collection and warehousing system. Unify2 collects data from the NHS and was the largest system in the Department of Health at handover, holding nearly 2 billion complex data items. The data held by Unify2 is configurable and varied. It includes such information as incidents of swine flu, hospital waiting times, costs and numbers of treatments. The latter information fed the reference costings project.

A significant role in both projects for DigiBiz was was that of mentor, facilitating a transfer of skills to civil servants working on the project.

The database functionality for these projects was implemented in PL/SQL on Oracle 10g clusters, running on Unix servers. The data collection front end was .NET user interface on Microsoft Windows servers. The reporting tool was Oracle Discoverer.

• The migration and testing of legacy and current data.
• The design and implementation of a data mart for report-specific cost summaries.
• Extensive refactoring of a datawarehouse.
• Extensive performance tuning at the SQL level.
• Design and implementation of PL/SQL interfaces for a .NET reporting layer.

Technologies: Oracle 10g, PL/SQL, SQL, Oracle Scheduler, Oracle materialized views.

BT, Swindon. November 2006 to August 2007.

Design and implementation of a business model.

The project objective was to model the value of a customer to the BT business over the potential lifetime of that customer. DigiBiz Ltd provided Oracle design and development expertise within a small and focused interdisciplinary project team brought together for the duration of the project, co-designing and implementing the model. The model was implemented in PL/SQL and took the traditional form of staging area, warehouse and mart in an Oracle 10g database.

Technologies: Oracle 10g, PL/SQL, SQL, SQL*Loader, Oracle Scheduler, Microsoft Excel, Oracle Business Intelligence.

The Arts Council, London. April 2006 to October 2006.

Data migration.

This was a complex data migration project, moving current and past grant information from disparate regional grant maintenance systems into a new central application, comprising of an on-line system and a data warehouse, based on Oracle 9i and 10g technology. Sub-projects completed by DigiBiz Ltd were

• The migration of legacy data.
• The design and implementation of a data mart holding current financial information.
• The design and development of a browser based search and reporting facility using PL/SQL Server Pages (PSP).

Technologies: Oracle 9i & 10g, PL/SQL, SQL, PL/SQL Server Pages (PSP), HTML, CSS, Javascript, Oracle Application Express.

QinetiQ plc, Malvern. February 2006 to April 2006.

Migration of secure XML data.

DigiBiz Ltd provided a suite of SQL scripts and PL/SQL processes, tested and documented, to migrate the content of a legacy database supporting the Police national incident reporting website. The data was supplied in XML format and required transformation and loading into a new Oracle 10g relational schema. This project required data analysis, the use of Oracle XML utilities, XQuery and PL/SQL.

Basic Security Check obtained.

Technologies: Oracle 10g, PL/SQL, SQL, Oracle XML DB, XQuery,

First Choice Holidays plc, Crawley. September 2005 to Nov 2005.

Holiday bookings data warehouse, design and build.

To very short time-scales DigiBiz Ltd designed (with some requirements capture), built and documented a small data warehouse for specialist holiday bookings. The ETL process took data from a SQL Server operational database, using Microsoft DTS tools, transformed it using algorithms implemented in Oracle PL/SQL and loaded the output in an Oracle database. The main objective was to provide a complete historical record of costs and receipts from which Business Objects reports could be prepared.

Technologies: Oracle 9i, PL/SQL, SQL, SQL Developer, Microsoft Data Transformation Services.

British Telecommunications plc, Swindon. October 2002 to July 2005.

Data warehousing with a mart reporting layer.

Each of the BT project teams with which DigiBiz Ltd worked was international, dispersed over multiple sites in the UK, India and Europe. This form of project organisation required clarity of everyday communication and a consistently team oriented approach, which DigiBiz Ltd was able to provide.

BT Global Services - Customer installation warehouse (holding customers, sites, contacts, faults and orders).

Two projects completed for BT GLobal Services were both intensively PL/SQL oriented:

• The development of PL/SQL presentation layer between the warehouse and an Actuate reporting tool.
• The design and development of a process that maintained an up-to-date copy of the operational database in the data warehouse. This was written using Oracle streams, materialised views and PL/SQL.

BT Retail - Information and knowledge management for BT Retail call centre services.

The overall aim of the project was to coalesce the many different BT Retail MIS systems into a single one-stop-shop for Call Centre data and information. Very large volumes of data had to be handled, typically tens of gigabytes and millions of records were accumulated daily.

Latterly the role of DigiBiz Ltd was primarily that of database designer, design authority for PL/SQL and mentor of other team members: supplying example code, formally reviewing designs and code and tuning the final reporting code using Explain Plans, Oracle trace and statspack output.

For the same project DigiBiz Ltd was also responsible for the interface specifications of feeder systems. There were 50+ such systems and their specifications also included data mapping and transformation specifications (between source and receiving systems).

Other sub-projects completed by DigiBiz Ltd include

• A Korn shell control application written to timestamp, collect and restore data, control files and dependency information which it then used to re-run an application subsystem with updated data.
• The development of management reports using the Oracle Web Developers Toolkit (PL/SQL, HTML and Javascript)
• ETL using SQL Loader and PL/SQL.
• General PL/SQL programming and data warehouse application design and development.
• The enhancement of web test scripts written in Perl.

Technologies: Oracle 8 & 9i, PL/SQL, SQL, SQL*Loader, Streams, Materialised Views, Unix Shell, Oracle Web Developer's Toolkit, HTML, Javascript, CSS.

Ajilon Services Ltd, Bristol. May 2001 to October 2002.

Outsourced Management Information System.

The project was managed by an outsourcing company at Bristol (acquired by Ajilon during the project). DigiBiz Ltd provided the design and development lead in a small team building an MIS system. The system was comissioned by BT to allow reporting on orders and faults for its Local Loop Unbundling service.

DigiBiz Ltd was involved with the project from its inception through design, development, testing and deployment. To these ends we supplied:

• Graphical interface design and development (PL/SQL, HTML, CSS).
• Data warehouse application design and development.
• Data modelling and database design.
• Data extraction, transformation and loading.
• PL/SQL programming for interactive reports and ETL processes.
• SQL tuning.

Technologies: Oracle 8, PL/SQL, SQL, SQL*Loader, HTML, Javascript, CSS.

IS Solutions plc, Sunbury-On-Thames. April 2000 to May 2001.

On-line share dealing via Interactive TV

The project was the development of on-line share dealing via Interactive TV and Web for TD Waterhouse Plc. The software environment was BroadVision portal on Sun Unix and Web servers with Liberty Interactive TV clients.

The purpose of this project was to replicate for TD Waterhouse their PC based browser service for digital TV. The project structure was tripartite, with the customer, IS Solutions responsible for the BroadVision server (and data supplied to it) and a third company responsible for designing and implementing TV web pages. DigiBiz Ltd aided the project's success with the implementation of some simple co-operative team working practises.

All data was passed as encrypted XML between server and set-top box, where it was processed and displayed. DigiBiz Ltd designed and implemented the server side XML specification, taking account of event sequences and data partitioning between pages.

• BroadVision one-to-one.
• Server side development of Javascript and Java.
• Web page development with JSP and HTML.
• XML development.
• Integration with back-end systems, Java API.

Technologies: BroadVision. Javascript, XML, HTML, Java, Set-top TV.

Contact

DigiBiz Ltd. Swindon, Wiltshire, United Kingdom.

Email

Steve Williams: steve@digibiz.ltd.uk

Telephone

07905 006033   (+44 7905 006033)

Registered Address

DigiBiz Ltd
11 Greatfield
Swindon
Witshire
SN4 8EQ
United Kingdom

Web Reference

http://www.digibiz.ltd.uk/