Christo Olivier

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What's up with __init__.py and __main__.py ?

I have noticed that a lot of articles that show how to create a python application uses __init__.py in the root folder of the application. Some also use __main__.py in addition

  • Christo Olivier
    Christo Olivier
3 min read
Power BI

Power BI plugin for Apache Airflow

Apache Airflow has been a core part of a few projects I have been involved in. One of the great things about it is how extensible it is. If there is a specific

  • Christo Olivier
    Christo Olivier
1 min read
Remote Work

Practical remote working: part 3 - business processes and culture

In the last two posts we tackled what I have always found the easy parts in being an effective remote worker. In this post I am going to look at the difficult problems

  • Christo Olivier
    Christo Olivier
7 min read
Remote Work

Practical remote working: part 2 - software

There are so many options for software when dealing with remote working that it can truly make your head spin. In this section I want to look at the following categories of software:

  • Christo Olivier
    Christo Olivier
10 min read
Remote Work

Practical remote working: part 1 - hardware and environment

In this first post in this series we will look at the hardware you will need and also the physical environment that you should aim to create. Where applicable I will distinguish between

  • Christo Olivier
    Christo Olivier
7 min read
Remote Work

A practical guide to effective remote working

Over the last few months I have seen a couple of remote working guides appear in my inbox sharing tips and best practice from across the industry to get the best out of

  • Christo Olivier
    Christo Olivier
1 min read
SSIS

SSIS frameworks and unnecessary complexity

The notification email arrives in my inbox carrying the unwelcome message that the SSIS job failed. I instantly get a sinking feeling in my stomach, this is going to be an unpleasant morning.

  • Christo Olivier
    Christo Olivier
5 min read
Tableau

Creating a horizontal comparison bar chart using Tableau

I have put together a screencast with some step by step instructions on how to create a horizontal comparison bar chart in Tableau. This can be problematic when done incorrectly leading to lots

  • Christo Olivier
    Christo Olivier
1 min read
Business Intelligence

Why Source to Target Mapping documents matter

We as developers really do not like writing documentation. I am quite sure that if given a choice some developers would rather walk over broken glass than sit down and create documentation for

  • Christo Olivier
    Christo Olivier
3 min read
BigQuery

Quick and dirty test of Google BigQuery's ability to scale

As a quick weekend experiment I thought it might be a good idea to look at how BigQuery scales. In order to test this out I made use of the dataset that I

  • Christo Olivier
    Christo Olivier
3 min read
Big Data

HDInsight + Hive vs BigQuery - A Detailed Comparison

A big thank you goes to Daniel Haviv for his suggestion to use ORC with Snappy compression over Tez (with Vectorised reads) as well as the advice he provided to easily set this

  • Christo Olivier
    Christo Olivier
22 min read
BI

Unit testing in Business Intelligence

In my previous post I wrote about the importance of unit testing in business intelligence projects, specifically the need for it when you are following an agile approach. We also looked at the

  • Christo Olivier
    Christo Olivier
6 min read
Agile

Agile BI, without unit testing you are using the "Max Power Way"

“Homer: From now on, there are three ways to do things: the right way, the wrong way, and the Max Power way. Bart: Isn't that just the wrong way? Homer: Yeah, but faster!

  • Christo Olivier
    Christo Olivier
6 min read
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