Stephen Christie started off in the IT environment as a technician back in 1998. He moved up through development, to become a Database Administrator—Team Lead, which is his current position.
Stephen was hired by one of South Africa's biggest FMGC companies to start off their BI environment. When he started at the company, they were still working on SQL Server 7; he upgraded all the servers to SQL Server 2000 and started working on Analysis services, this challenged him daily as technology was still very ne. When the first cube was signed off, he got involved with ProClarity 5 so that the BA's could use the information in the Cubes. This is where Stephen became interested in the DBA aspect of SQL 2000 and performance tuning. After working for this company for 5 years all the information the company required was put into cubes and Stephen moved on.
Stephen has now been working as a Team lead for a team of database administrators in Cape Town South Africa for an online company. He has specialized in performance tuning and system maintenance.
Deepak Puri is a Business Intelligence Consultant, and has been working with SQL Server Analysis Services since 2000. Deepak is currently a Microsoft SQL Server MVP with a focus on OLAP. His interest in OLAP technology arose from working with large volumes of call center telecom data at a large insurance company. In addition, Deepak has also worked with performance data and Key Performance Indicators (KPI's) for new business processes. Recent project work includes SSAS cube design, and dashboard and reporting front-end design for OLAP cube data, using Reporting Services and third-party OLAP-aware SharePoint Web Parts.
Deepak has helped review the following books in the past:
MDX Solutions (2nd Edition) 978-0-471-74808-3.
Applied Microsoft Analysis Services 2005, Prologika Press, 0976635305.