Using the business name Arjan Saly Consultancy (previously DataInZicht), I act as a contingent worker and/or consultant for various organisations. All roles mentioned on this page are performed from in that capacity.

Umbrella roles

The umbrella roles provide a high-level description of the roles I usually get hired for, usually in a combination these roles.

Database Specialist

As a Database Specialist I support organisations in storing data in and querying data from Relational Databases in an optimal way.

Preferably I act in the border area between developer and Database Administrator (DBA). I usually bridge between both roles to come to a structurally optimal functioning solution.

Business Intelligence Specialist

As a Business Intelligence Specialist I support in the path to a successful Business Intelligence implementation.

During this journey I can serve as a developer, lead-developer, adviser, sparring-partner, mentor or coach

Scrum Master & Coach

Certified as Professional Scrum Master (PSM I, scrum.org) I guide and coach teams to become and stay successful as a scrum team.

Flexibility (agile), efficiency (lean) and fun are core phrases for my way of working. No boring retrospective, but always different with an unexpected twist and aiming for surprising results.

For this I use clear visualisation, sometimes just that tiny but important bit different from what you'd initially expect.

Laboratorium Instrumentation producer - SQL Specialist

An organisation that's large in producing and selling al kinds of laboratory related products, produces several very complex instruments.
As part of normal instrument activities, these instruments perform all kinds of internal measurements to make sure the system itself works well. These measurements are used for various analytics, including usage and wear of components. Based on these analytics, the instruments are improved and maintenance of these instruments is planned more efficiently. Instead of regular maintenance based on time or hours used, maintenance is only done when really needed. Also, specialistic pars that require a long production time, are created just in time before they are needed. This way they are available when really needed, immensely reducing downtime for the instrument. 

What started as a nice trial, soon grew into a successful product. Due to this fast growth, this organisation ran into several blocking performance issues, which all seemed to concentrate around the databases.

This organisation asked me to consult the databases and improve them where possible. Based on my advice, the database setup, datamodel, queries and self made applications are immensely improved. Additionally I re-opened the communication Iines with the large and very capable DBA team that helped out improving the database even further, mainly on regular maintenance, setup and backup level. Here I acted as a liaison between the DBA team and the developers as well as the systems operational support team. By result, all performance issues were solved.

While investigating and improving the databases, I noted that especially the PostgreSQL user management was poor, insecure and not complying to internal security regulations. Once the biggest performance issues were solved, I was asked to work on improving the security in a workable way. This resulted in the installation and setup of a tool called ldap2pg, which synchronises all users within one or more Active Directory group(s) as users into the database and provides them with a fixed set of roles. This way user and password management can be handled safely by Active Directory, consistent with the existing SQL Server setup and in line with security guidelines.

Now that the systems were at a consistently good performing level and database connections were secure, the organisation felt a need to reduce licence costs. I was asked to research the possibilities of migrating the databases to a cheaper Open Source solution, having PostgreSQL, MySQL and Aurora as the most feasible candidates. The results of this study is a recommendation on the most useful solution including a recommendation on the approach for the migration, 

Coming from that same need to reduce costs, I was also asked to research Open Telemetry as an option to collect performance related metrics from the database. Resulting in a fully working, tested and documented setup of Open Telemetry, including a large set of custom built queries and reports to match the existing need.

Core competences

• PostgreSQL Database Tuning, Performance and Maintenance of the database cluster
• PostgreSQL synchronisation of users and roles with Active Directory using ldap2pg
• ldap2pg
• MS SQL Server Database Tuning and Performance
• Docker: Setup, run (continuously) and monitor on a Linux environment (AWS Linux & Ubuntu)
• Active Directory / LDAP Querying (AWS Linux & Windows Server)
• AWS Aurora basic setup and use of the database
• AWS RDS PostgreSQL en MySQL basic setup and use of the database
• Datadog reporting
• Open Telemetry datacollection
• Scrum, Agile and Lean principles

Biotechnological Pharmacist - Business Intelligence adviser

This organisation as a large Business Intelligence environment, but receives quite an amount of complaints on it. I'm asked to gather these complaints, give them a rating and compare them with what's happening in the system. Result should be an advice that the customer can use to improve the system in a way that it better fits the users need.

Shortly after starting this assignment, it slowly gets clear that the organisation is already working hard to create a replacement system. It also appears there's not much room for recommendations, but meanwhile I can confirm that the most important bottlenecks are handled well in this new system. The real result ends up to be a confirmation that the organisation is following the right path. 

Once this was clear, I was asked to research the impact of datamodel changes in the source system Veeva after a planned large upgrade. During this phase I gained a large amount of knowledge about the Veeva applications internal proceses and datastorage.

Core competences

• Business Intelligence
• Scrum, Agile and Lean principles
• Basic knowledge Tableau (Knowledge built on the fly)
• Basic knowledge Veeva Database side (Knowledge built on the fly)
• Basic knowledge Service Now (Knowledge built on the fly)
• SQL Server Internals, T-SQL and datamodelling