Innovation & Tech (CTO) Curriculum Electives

Training Courses, Workshops and Seminars

Stars, Flakes, Vaults and the Sins of Denormalisation

2021-07-23T01:03:47+00:00May 13th, 2019|Tags: , , , |

Providing both performance and flexibility are often seen as contradictory goals in designing large scale data implementations. In this talk we will discuss techniques for denormalisation and provide a framework for understanding the performance and flexibility implications of various design options. We will examine a variety of logical and physical design approaches and evaluate the trade offs between them. Specific recommendations are made for guiding the translation from a normalised logical data model to an engineered-for-performance physical data model. The role of dimensional modeling and various physical design approaches are discussed in detail. Best practices in the use of surrogate keys is also discussed. The focus is on understanding the benefit (or not) of various denormalisation approaches commonly taken in analytic database designs.

Best Practices in Enterprise Information Management

2021-07-23T00:58:54+00:00May 17th, 2019|Tags: , , , , , |

The effective management of enterprise information for analytics deployment requires best practices in the areas of people, processes, and technology. In this talk we will share both successful and unsuccessful practices in these areas. The scope of this workshop will involve five key areas of enterprise information management: (1) metadata management, (2) data quality management, (3) data security and privacy, (4) master data management, and (5) data integration.

Overcoming Information Overload with Advanced Practices in Data Visualisation

2021-07-23T01:02:29+00:00May 14th, 2019|Tags: , , , , , , , |

In this workshop, we explore best practices in deriving insight from vast amounts of data using visualisation techniques. Examples from traditional data as well as an in-depth look at the underlying technologies for visualisation in support of geospatial analytics will be undertaken. We will examine visualisation for both strategic and operational BI.

Advanced Deep Learning

2021-07-26T01:19:34+00:00December 5th, 2018|Tags: , |

This course provides a more rigorous, mathematically based view of modern neural networks, their training, applications, strengths and weaknesses, focusing on key architectures such as convolutional nets for image processing and recurrent nets for text and time series. This course will also include use of dedicated hardware such as GPUs and multiple computing nodes on the cloud. There will also be an overview of the most common available platforms for neural computation. Some topics touched in the introduction will be revisited in more thorough detail. Optional advanced topics may include Generative Adversarial Networks, Reinforcement Learning, Transfer Learning and probabilistic neural networks.

Cost-Based Optimisation: Obtaining the Best Execution Plan for Complex Queries

2021-07-23T01:00:08+00:00May 20th, 2019|Tags: , , , |

Optimiser choices in determining the execution plan for complex queries is a dominant factor in the performance delivery for a data foundation environment. The goal of this workshop is to de-mystify the inner workings of cost-based optimisation for complex query workloads. We will discuss the differences between rule-based optimisation and cost-based optimisation with a focus on how a cost-based optimization enumerates and selects among possible execution plans for a complex query. The influences of parallelism and hardware configuration on plan selection will be discussed along with the importance of data demographics. Advanced statistics collection is discussed as the foundational input for decision-making within the cost-based optimiser. Performance characteristics and optimiser selection among different join and indexing opportunities will also be discussed with examples. The inner workings of the query re-write engine will be described along with the performance implications of various re-write strategies.

Social Network Analysis: Practical Use Cases and Implementation

2021-07-23T01:03:21+00:00May 13th, 2019|Tags: , , , |

Social networking via Web 2.0 applications such as LinkedIn and Facebook has created huge interest in understanding the connections between individuals to predict patterns of churn, influencers related to early adoption of new products and services, successful pricing strategies for certain kinds of services, and customer segmentation. We will explain how to use these advanced analytic techniques with mini case studies across a wide range of industries including telecommunications, financial services, health care, retailing, and government agencies. 

Capacity Planning for Enterprise Data Deployment

2021-07-23T00:59:25+00:00December 6th, 2018|Tags: , , , |

This workshop describes a framework for capacity planning in an enterprise data environment. We will propose a model for defining service level agreements (SLAs) and then using these SLAs to drive the capacity planning and configuration for enterprise data solutions. Guidelines will be provided for capacity planning in a mixed workload environment involving both strategic and tactical decision support. Performance implications related to technology trends in multi-core CPU deployment, large memory deployment, and high density disk drives will be described. In addition, the capacity planning implications for different approaches for data acquisition will be considered.

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