Don't forget your keys

Data cleansing is the process of taking the data contained in a data base and correcting the errors in it. It is probably one of the most hated jobs in the industry as it tends to be both tedious and exacting. The final two nails in its coffin is that it is almost never finished and almost never completely correct. All in all a miserable and mostly unsatisfying experience.

One of the secrets to success in data cleansing is in selecting keys i.e. the fields that allow the identification of the record to be updated. Read More...

Management by Inflight Magazine

The press rang with claims that Marissa Mayer had ban from working at home a month ago (Feb 2013) citing her review of VPN logs as the basis for her decision. My issue here is not whether this is the right or wrong thing for Yahoo! but should others follow her lead and whether using the found data (i.e. data collected for other purposes) to support their decisions will lead to a good outcome. Read More...