Josip Šaban

Gartner is a company that delivers actionable, objective insights
to executives and their teams. I worked on implementing PowerBI dashboards for the Snowflake database, using Airflow and dbt. Additional responsibilities included architecting data consumption from various public data sources (Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) and creating proof-of-concept tests of different tools and methods.

PepsiCo is the global leader in the snacks and sodas industry. I worked there as a senior data transformation engineer and as part of their marketing team, designing transformations that retrieved data from various sources and combining them in the Snowflake model. This position required strong data engineering knowledge, combined with an understanding of data warehouses, data pipelines, and data quality concepts.

For this project, I performed the migration of an Oracle database to SQL Server, using best practices and the latest technology and design patterns. During this seven-month project, in daily communication with clients, the database was redesigned and upgraded with multiple new features, including partitioning, compression, data checks, and extensive logging. It was production-ready at the end of the contract. Besides a much easier and more robust use of the system, processing time was significantly decreased, with an extensive reporting layer that showed, in real-time, the state of each data load in the pipeline, bringing huge operational and data quality benefits to the client.

This project required knowledge of a wide technology stack (Excel/VBA, Access, SQL database, Salesforce, and Qlik) and analysis of the existing business process.

My role, as part of the reporting department, was to get myself up to date with the existing setup, propose improvements, and develop modules that would support new requirements of the marketing and sales departments. The work focused on updating the reporting/database solutions and to remove the use of Excel, as much as possible in daily business operations.

This project required the creation of migration scripts from an existing SQL Server database to the installation of a new one. As users were not very familiar with this technology, the project included very detailed documentation to enable them to do some of the easier modifications on their own without any specialized support. I also created a proof-of-concept on using Azure PowerBI instead of Excel reporting.

On this project, I was the data warehousing expert working on the SQL server. I was ultimately responsible for designing data warehouse tables. I also implemented the ETL processes using SSIS and SQL and optimized the existing data warehouse loading procedures.

I wrote a software development lifecycle guide (SDLC) for a software company that needed to map its development processes in a formal document. It was needed to better define project development standards once the project is approved.

For this project, I worked on migrating an existing web application. My tasks included properly migrating the Oracle database to a new SQL Server to support a newly purchased solution. I did everything from analysis to implementation, testing, and, finally, cutover procedures.

While often overlooked, the data warehouse enables companies to reveal valuable insights concealed within their vast data troves. In this article, as a domain expert, I share foundational principles and applications that are essential knowledge for all modern managers.

Data is a key asset of any company, particularly transactional data, which holds business secrets such as financial or health records. Data is most vulnerable in transit between the server that stores it and the client that requests it.

The standard approach to ensuring security is to encrypt data on the server and use the SSL-enabled HTTPS protocol to secure data in transport. However, what if we could increase the level of security even further by using HTTPS and sending data in an encrypted format over the communication line, only to decrypt data on clients who have valid certificates? That approach would make a traditional man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack much more difficult.

Microsoft's solution to this problem is Always Encrypted, a way to send encrypted data over the pipeline and decrypt it only by users with access to valid certificates. So, even if the attacker gets the data, without a proper certificate stored on the client machine, the data would be useless.
This article describes how to set up and use Always Encrypted, and it's recommended reading for anyone who is sending important data over public communication lines, even if they are secured with SSL.