Database Design and Project Management Experience

Donald K. Burleson

As an Adjunct Professor of Information Systems, Don Burleson has taught numerous graduate-level Systems Analysis and Design courses for several major universities. Don is thoroughly familiar with all of the major database and systems design methodologies including Codd & Date, Gane & Sarson and IBM JAD. Don also familiar with object-oriented design, specifically the methods of Booch and Rumbaugh. As a designer and project leader, Don has been successful in implementing numerous major information systems and has a proven track record for designing reliable and robust systems.

Note: The following list includes several efforts that required non-disclosure agreements. Hence, the names of the clients and the details have been withheld. This list does not include many dozens of small database design projects.

Oracle Designer/DBA - Point-of-Sale Data warehouse

– (1998-1999) – This system collected point-of-sale information from dozens of major retail chains and loaded the sales information into a data warehouse for analysis. I was responsible for the design and creation of the data enrichment and loading of the information into the data warehouse. I created an external metadata repository that captured external demographic, including data from the 1990 US census and Nielsen Data Research. I was also beneficial in creation demand forecasting algorithms for the sales of products, categorized by all dimensions and categories of products. This system was developed on an IBM S70 (Blackbird), running AIX 4.3 with Oracle 8.0.4. I also assisted with the initial configuration on an EMC disk array and developed an I/O monitoring database for detecting and resolving I/O bottlenecks.

Oracle Designer - Sales & Marketing Data Warehouse

– (1998–1999) – I facilitated the creation of data aggregation and summarization mechanisms for an Oracle database that captured the sales of manufactured products to retail warehouses. I created a framework for aggregation of data and assisted in the creation and tuning of SQL that would summarize sales of products along numerous categories. This was developed on an IBM RS600 running AIX 4.1 with Oracle 7.3.2.

Database Designer – Oracle Metadata Collection System

- (1997-1998) – This system required the collection of information from Oracle databases and loaded the data into an online repository for later analysis by the DBA staff. As designer, I created the layout and wrote the routines that populated the metadata repository.

Project Manager/designer - Legal Sales Data Warehouse

– (1989-1993) – This project involved the analysis, design and implementation of a data warehouse that collected information about the purchases on an online legal product. I was the project leader for this effort, and I was solely responsible for the analysis of the database, the extraction, verification, and loading of the data, creation of the data warehouse, the creation of aggregate and summary information, and the creation of the end-user interface. This system was originally created on an IBM 3090 mainframe using the IDMS, database, and was ported to the DB2 database when relational databases became available. The aggregate and summary data was also ported to PC’s and designed and implemented a CD-ROM version of the data warehouse using the FoxPro database.

Design DBA - Product Sales Tracking System

– (1998) - This system involved the physical design and implementation of a worldwide data warehouse to track shipments of manufactured goods from the warehouses to the stores. I was responsible for the creation of the operational data warehouse and the creation of data population, cleansing and loading mechanisms. I was also responsible for the data aggregation and summarization techniques. This database was in a Sun Solaris environment, using Oracle 7.1.6 database technology.

Consulting Analyst - Genealogical Data Warehouse

– (1998) - This project involved the creation of database maintenance mechanisms for an Internet-based data warehouse that employed bots and spiders to collect genealogical information from the Internet, and load this data into an Oracle data warehouse. I was responsible for advising on the mechanisms for improving response times from this database, and creating reorganization and cleansing mechanisms. This system was running on IBM RS6000 servers, using AIX with Oracle 7.3.

Consulting Design Architect - HMO Data Warehouse

– (1996) – This project involved advising on the creation of the logical data model for an HMO tracking system to track information on patients, medical procedures, physicians assigned to procedures, cost associated with procedures and an analysis of capitation requirements. I developed a complete logical data model for this data warehouse.

Project Manager & Designer - "Latest Case" Decision Support System

– (1989-1993) – This system collected new case law from the state and Supreme Courts and loaded a database that allowed attorneys to get the latest status of their case law. I was the project leader on this system, and I was solely responsible for the successful design and implementation of this critical system. This system is still being used today by a major legal publisher.

Project Manager - Strategic Market Forecasting Executive Information System

– (1988-1992) – This EIS was designed to collect sales information for legal publications and cross-reference the publication with the scope of the jurisdiction of the legal publication. Information was collected from internal and external sources, and a EIS framework was developed to allow senior management to identify un-serviced market niches and develop legal publications to serve the market. I was the project manager for this effort, and I directed programmers, DBAs and end-users to successfully implement a EIS that was used by the world’s largest legal publisher to develop their strategic plan.

Database Designer – Legal Citator Database – (1986-1987)

– Created and implemented a logical enhancement to a legal citator database that allowed it to manage recursive data relationships between legal cases. The design was so successful that it is still being used in 2000.

Database Designer & Programmer - Academic scheduling Decision Support System

– (1983-1984) – This system was created at a major university to manage the assignment of professors to courses, and courses to classrooms. I was responsible for the analysis, design and implementation of this system. This system applied heuristics to the scheduling, allowing for pre-defined decision rules (i.e. senior professors get their rooms closest to their offices), and provided a simple framework for academic scheduling. The DSS was initially developed on an IBM 3090 mainframe using VSAM files, and was later ported to an IBM PC network.