A few considerations before building that extremely wide table. Every once in a while, an idea comes along to build a table with a wide array of columns at a particular granularity. This is usually associated with “self-serve analytics” and/or an attempt to define a “source of truth” table. Wide tables, self-serve analytics, and source of truth tables aren’t inherently good or bad… but there are some considerations to this type of table that I’m going to rant about.

An overview of what’s to come: I was originally writing this as a high-level introduction to send people when they encounter things like 6/4 returning 1 instead of 1.5 in some Database Management Systems (DBMS)… overtime its sprawled far beyond that. The points below serve as a TLDR, with a sprawling discussion expanding afterward. Operations like division in SQL can be confusing for novices or anyone without a programming background

The database management system (DBMS) I’ll reference today is Redshift (AWS Cloud Datawarehouse offering) which is based on Postgres. I’ll dive into some of the anti-patterns around Temporary Tables I’ve seen abused during my work experience, why they don’t make sense, and how to fix them. Lets get it out of the way… Temporary Tables are not “better” than Common Table Expressions (CTEs) and CTEs are not “better” than temporary tables.

Two months as a BIE Promoted to BIE on the same team I have been on since September. Worked hard during my first four months on the team, put together a doc with my boss and got approved starting about two months ago. Since Septmeber I’ve done a lot of stuff: A little Background - Redshift Cluster Maintenance and Query optimization of our longest running jobs - Working toward establishing code reviews and a central code repository - Created new production tables for partner teams - Made adjustments/additions to some of our most critical tables that buoy all reports How to improve Looking back, I am very happy with my effort, but I want to do two things better.

Four Months as an Analyst at Amazon My perspective switching to the Supply Chain BI team. A little Background The first four months have been interesting. Last week, Amazon laid off 18,000 people. Fortunately, nobody on my team or, I think, my whole org got the axe. This really hit home the fact that jobs come and go, and that I should be prioritizing employment that allows me to work on what I’m interested in and gain meaningful skills.