When a defense contractor in Tucson needed to enhance the skill set of their star net administrator so that he could take responsibility for all of their SQL Servers they called Mutually Beneficial.

David assessed the network administrator’s skills, audited their SQL Server, designed a custom curriculum based on the needed skills and their environment, as well as shadowing the network administrator as he performed some projects that improved the reliability and recoverability of the servers.

As issues arose that required the network administrator’s attention, breaks were taken, advices and help was offered, and sometimes the training was adjusted to show other ways to prevent those very issues.

Workhorse of IT department gets new SQL Server skill set without missing critical issues

Case Studies

Cutover to new servers a five minute breeze

When a Fortune 500 Bank needed help to improve their HRIS Reporting Systems, David Lundell was brought in. The principal problem was that the process of extracting the data from PeopleSoft, transforming it according to their business rules (assigning terms of employment to different managers) and then pre-generating the reports took 4 days every month, was unreliable and often resulted in errors.

 

In collaboration with the client, David redesigned the database schema, and rewrote the stored procedures (greatly optimizing them — doing away with the cursors and switching to set based logic). Then David designed and created DTS packages, and documented their business rules in a format that is easily understood by both business and technical people.  Additionally, David trained their staff on advanced T-SQL, and DTS concepts. This resulted in a process that took less than 1 hr — over 100 times faster — and was very reliable.

ETL process for HRIS Reporting system goes from a 4 day error filled process to a 1 hr error free breeze

With several clients David has helped them make use of DNS aliases to make cutting over to a new server a breeze. By setting up an alias and directing all of the clients to use the DNS alias, you can easily cutover without having to visit every client or field a lot of helpdesk calls.

 

The night before the cutover lower the TTL to 5 min (or some other small value). When it is time to cutover, change the alias to point to the new host and then within 5 minutes all of the client computers are using the new host.

For the past several years, David Lundell has proven himself to be the leading SQL Server expert in Southern Arizona by providing me and organizations I've supported with cutting edge SQL training and systems support.  David has a keen aptitude at looking beyond the database to the application and end user requirements, and his approach has met our needs every time.

If you want to find the best solution to your SQL Server support, development, or architecture needs, I'd give David a call.

—Peter Santaniello, Director of Logistics and IT, Ionatron, Tucson, AZ

Leading SQL Server Expert in Southern Arizona

Identity Management Crisis

When a large Telecom had an Identity Management Crisis — they were spinning off a division and all employees from that division were going to be marked as Terminated in the HR database, but their Active Directory accounts needed to remain active for several months until they had a chance to set up their AD infrastructure.

 

They were using Microsoft Identity Integration Server to automatically disable accounts when their HR status becomes terminated. But in this case that was the wrong thing to do.

 

So David helped them ensure that all affected accounts were in particular OU’s and then excluded those OU’s from being managed by MIIS.