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Azure Data Architect | DBA

A Narrative Cover Letter

Greetings,
Demonstrating 20 years of experience in web development can sound a bit like reading from a bowl of alphabet soup. Instead of ladling soup out for you, I submit this narrative cover letter.

I have worked with HTML since before the toddler markup language pulled itself up on tables. I have helped Javascript work through its differences with various browsers since the initial “compatibility” issues between Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator. DOM is a friend of mine although he is easily manipulated by CSS and Javascript. Bootstrap and jQuery can definitely convince DOM to do just about anything. JSON is also a friend. Lately, we have spent a lot of time together relaxing on CouchDB. At first, I was skeptical of JSON as a database. After decades of relationships with databases like Oracle and SQL Server, it took some time for me to warm up to loosely coupled key-value pairs. Not that any relationship with Oracle or SQL Server is always key. SQL Server has matured over the years while Oracle brought MySQL home to meet the parents. Soon enough the open-source community adopted MariaDB to replace MySQL and PostgreSQL was still trying to be Oracle. Of course, where would web technologies be without languages like PHP? Sure, it had those awkward teen years when it wasn’t sure if it should be an object-oriented language, but it has pulled through to light the way for LAMP. My first love, however, was ColdFusion. Fulfilling promises of rapid application development, it was the heart throb of developers, powering MySpace and hundreds of government web sites. Sadly, it was fated to be shuffled around from Allaire to Macromedia to Adobe and never really loved again while masses flocked to Microsoft.

All in all, web technologies are a great group who can work together to build anything. I know because I have built scores of web sites and web applications including IMAP clients, neonatal nutrition calculators and systems for content management, human resources management, technical support call tracking, document management and enterprise search using Google Mini. I have built tools with $1M ROIs. I craft each tool to meet the needs of the audience with features that provide an accessible and consistent user experience. I also have extensive experience solving problems such as condensing a weeks long process of converting Oracle DDL to SQL Server into a single script that runs in less than 10 minutes.

For more information about my experience and interests, please visit my WordPress site at https://mark.the-fennells.org. I look forward to hearing from you soon. Thank you.

Kind regards,

Mark Fennell

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