Philip Howard, Research Director

Philip started in the computer industry way back in 1973 and has variously worked as a systems analyst, programmer and salesperson, as well as in marketing and product management, for a variety of companies including GEC Marconi, GPT, Philips Data Systems, Raytheon and NCR.

After a quarter of a century of not being his own boss Philip set up what is now P3ST (Wordsmiths) Ltd in 1992 and his first client was Bloor Research (then ButlerBloor), with Philip working for the company as an associate analyst. His relationship with Bloor Research has continued since that time and he is now Research Director. His practice area encompasses anything to do with data and content and he has five further analysts working with him in this area. While maintaining an overview of the whole space Philip himself specialises in databases, data management, data integration, data quality, data federation, master data management, data governance and data warehousing. He also has an interest in event stream/complex event processing.

In addition to the numerous reports Philip has written on behalf of Bloor Research, Philip also contributes regularly to www.IT-Director.com and www.IT-Analysis.com and was previously the editor of both "Application Development News" and "Operating System News" on behalf of Cambridge Market Intelligence (CMI). He has also contributed to various magazines and published a number of reports published by companies such as CMI and The Financial Times.

Presentation: "Why not to choose a relational database"

Track: Architectures you always wondered about

Time: Friday 13:00 - 14:00

Location: St James's Suite

Abstract: There are lots of scenarios in which it makes sense to use a relational database. However, there is often an assumption (not least because of the size of the rdbms vendors) that it always makes sense. In fact, there are a number of alternative approaches (mostly, but not limited to, object databases) that will be more suitable than a relational alternative, given the right situation. This presentation discusses the rationale behind choosing non-relational approaches and the sorts of environments for which you might consider them.

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