Mark Whitehorn is very much the public face of PenguinSoft but, in
fact, the company consists of Mark Whitehorn and Mary Whitehorn.
With only a single character of difference between them, one of them
keeps a low profile in order to prevent confusion.
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Professor MARK WHITEHORN
Professor
Mark Whitehorn is a well-recognised commentator on the computer world,
publishing articles, white papers and books. He has been writing about
computers since 1987 and his column in Personal Computer World was
one of the longest-running database columns in the world. He specialises
in database technology, data warehousing and OLAP and has written
eleven books – several co-authored
with Bill Marklyn, the designer of Microsoft’s Access. Their
first book, Inside Relational Databases, is a best seller (for a database
book at least) and is now into its third edition. Fast Track to MDX, was written in collaboration with Robert
Zare and Mosha Pasumanski: Mosha
is one of the originators of the MDX language.
Mark is also much sought after as a speaker at conferences; his
skills as a communicator and data practitioner have led to a rather
schizophrenic career.
On the academic side he is Professor of Analytics at the University of
Dundee where he teaches a Masters degree in Business Intelligence.
This MSc teaches the fundamentals of data handling for transactional
processing (relational structures) and for analysis
(multi-dimensional structures). The approach is avowedly
vendor neutral in the sense that it does not actively support one
vendor’s approach over any other. Instead it presents the main
approaches that are currently taken to BI and explains their pros
and cons. Since its inception in 2010 the course has proved
extremely popular. Many of our students are already working in
the field of BI in the business and commercial
world and also attract ambitious graduates seeking to do well in
those areas or in research.
More
about the MSc course.
Mark is also a
research associate at the University of Cambridge where he works on
the application of BI to scientific data. His
enthusiasm for education applies to gaining as well as disseminating
information and, over the years, he has managed to acquire three
degrees each in a different discipline – biochemistry, cytogenetics
and computer science.
On the more practical side he runs a consultancy company which
specialises in database design and data warehousing. He also
designed and teaches courses for QA, the
UK-based training company: topics include database
design, data warehousing, dimensional modelling and MDX.
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