Ray Rankins is currently owner and president of Gotham Consulting Services, Inc. (www.gothamconsulting.com) near Saratoga Springs, New York. Ray has been working with Sybase and Microsoft SQL Server for more than 15 years as a database administrator, database designer, project manager, application developer, consultant, courseware developer, and instructor. He has worked in a variety of industries including financial, manufacturing, health care, retail, insurance, communications, public utilities, and government. His expertise is in database performance and tuning, query analysis, advanced SQL programming and stored procedure development, and database application design and development. Ray's presentations on these topics at user group conferences have been very well received. Ray is coauthor of Sybase SQL Server 11 Unleashed, Sybase SQL Server 11 DBA Survival Guide, Second Edition, and Microsoft SQL Server 6.5 Unleashed (all editions), all published by Sams Publishing, and he has written articles for publication in database-related periodicals. As an instructor, Ray regularly teaches classes on SQL, advanced SQL programming and optimization, database design, database administration, and database performance and tuning. Ray's ability to bring his real-world experience into the classroom consistently brings very high marks from students in his classes for both his instructional skills and courseware. He can be reached at rrankins@gothamconsulting.com.
Paul Bertucci is a senior director with Collaborative Consulting, LLC of Boston, Massachusetts (www.collaborative.ws). He leads the San Francisco, California database and performance engineering practices. He was formerly the founder of Database Architechs (www.dbarchitechs.com) and he has more than 20 years of experience doing database design, data architecture, data replication, performance and tuning, distributed data systems, data integration, and systems integration for numerous Fortune 500 companies including Intel, 3COM, Apple, Toshiba, Lockheed, Wells Fargo, Safeway, Texaco, Charles Schwab, Cisco Systems, Sybase, Webgain, Breg, Channell, and i2 Technologies. He has authored numerous articles, standards, and courses such as Sybase's "Performance and Tuning" course and "Physical Database Design" course. Paul is a frequent conference speaker and regularly teaches database design, performance and tuning, data modeling, OLAP, Supply Chain Management, and SQL courses. He has worked heavily with MS SQL Server, Sybase, DB2, and Oracle, and has architected several commercially available tools in the database, data modeling, performance and tuning, and data integration arena. Paul serves part-time as chief technical advisor for a data integration server software company as well as an advisory board member of a software services company in Silicon Valley. Paul received his formal education in computer science from UC Berkeley. He lives in northern California with his wife, Vilay, and five children, Donny, Juliana, Paul Jr., Marissa, and Nina. Paul can still be reached at pbertucci@dbarchitechs.com or also at pbertucci@collaborative.ws.
Paul Jensen is an MCDBA, MCT, MCSE, and OCP (Oracle Certified Professional) who has been involved with database and system administration for almost 15 years. His experience has made him a popular trainer, and the past few years have seen him bouncing around North America and Europe in his role as an MCT, bringing new SQL Server converts into the fold. Paul lives in Ottawa, Canada, and can be contacted through his Web site at www.infojen.com.