Marc Delisle is a system administrator at Cegep de Sherbrooke, Québec, Canada. He started to contribute to the open source project phpMyAdmin in December 1998, when he developed the multi-language version.
Marc authored the first ever Packt Publishing book—Mastering phpMyAdmin for Effective MySQL Management, and its revised editions. He also wrote Creating your MySQL Database: Practical Design Tips and Techniques, again with Packt Publishing.
Shashank Pawar, a SQL Server Technology Specialist at Microsoft Australia, is a database professional with over 10 years experience in the support, design, development, and usage of SQL Server database technology. His experience covers both OLTP and OLAP applications, with a specialty in high availability, troubleshooting, and performance improvement. With the release of SQL Server 2008 R2 he has been also working on self service BI implementations with PowerPivot and helping enterprises resolve Master Data Management issues with Master Data Services (MDS). He has been involved in MDS projects at government departments such as Health, Education, and also private financial services organizations.
Ever since Valentino Vranken graduated in 1998, he has been developing software. Development experience ranges from thick clients in VB6 to server applications in Java to web applications in .NET.
Almost right from the start of his career, besides developing software, he has been working with databases. Thanks to an always-present interest in databases—mainly SQL Server—he has been focusing more and more on designing and developing databases. Lately he has shifted his focus to Business Intelligence creating integration and data warehousing solutions.
Valentino works for Ordina—a consultancy company working for large corporations in Belgium and abroad—as a Senior SQL Server BI Consultant, where he's active in two Competence Centers (Data Intelligence and Business Data Optimization).
On certification level, he's holder of one MCITP and three MCTS certificates on SQL Server 2008.
In his free time, he's active as Core Member of the Belgian SQL Server User Group (http://www.sqlug.be) and blogs at http://blog.hoegaerden.be where he shares his knowledge with the world. Some of his articles are also posted on well-known specialist sites such as SQLServerPedia, Experts Exchange, and SSAS-Info. One of his articles has been elected as the winner in the first-ever SQLServerPedia Awards, in the Business Intelligence category.
You may encounter him on local SQLUG, VISUG, and Microsoft evenings and events where he likes to hear about other people's experiences.
Occasionally he gives a SQL Server-related presentation for his Ordina colleagues and customers.