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he title “Teradata Certified Master”
denotes a person of achievement and
knowledge—a guru, in some respects. Royal
Bank of Canada (RBC) Financial Group
has such a guru: Ruth Fenwick, Teradata
technical lead. Fenwick knows from experi-
ence that being a Teradata Master opens up
a new level of access to the best Teradata
minds around the world.
A Teradata Master since 2003, Fenwick
is responsible for all of the hardware and
software upgrades as well as performance
capacity management. “I’m the technical
source for everybody else,” she says.
Fenwick began working with Teradata
in 1997 and received her first Teradata cer-
tification in 2000, followed by her second
in 2001. A job change led to her current
position at RBC and gave impetus to her
mandate. “As the recognized data ware-
housing leader in Canada, it was only proper
that RBC have the first Canadian customer
Teradata Master,” she says. “I achieved four
of the certifications in the three months after
I joined the bank.” In fact, she passed the last
three exams in two weeks.
Fenwick has found that Master certifi-
cation gives her credibility as well as holistic
knowledge of Teradata; she has learned how
all the elements of Teradata work and how
they are connected. “I’m never going to do
a physical implementation,” she says, “but
it was interesting to learn how it works.”
In addition to improving her own exper-
tise, Teradata Master certification gives her
an entree into the Master’s Team Discussion
Forum, informally known as the Master’s
Team Mailing List. The forum allows mem-
bers to query one another about Teradata
best practices and “how tos,” providing a
wealth of real-world information. “Member-
ship to the Master’s Team Mailing List gives
me access to the best minds in the industry
and insight into how other customers are
fixing real problems,” says Fenwick.
Recently, Fenwick needed to optimize
the bank’s statistics collection. She turned
to the Master’s Team Discussion Forum to
find out how others had approached the
same challenge. She elaborates, “Rather
than spending three weeks doing a lot of
investigation and analysis, I was able to ask
the Master’s Team Mailing List, ‘Is there
anybody out there doing this? What is
your experience?’ ”
Not only did she receive an answer, but
it also gave her a new way of looking at
the data. “Because I pinged the Master’s
Team Mailing List, I received a view from
someone that guided me to data mine the
statistics so I could do better analysis,”
Fenwick explains.
Getting this type of feedback is an excel-
lent way to gauge whether an idea will be
successful, according to Fenwick. “When
you receive a couple of people replying,
‘This is great; it worked for us,’ then you
go into it with a greater sense of confidence
that this is going to work,” she says. Instil-
ling confidence is what Teradata certifi-
cation and the Master’s Team Mailing List
are all about.
Shirley S. Savage has published articles on
technology, energy and science.
Master minds
TERADATA@ WORK
Photo
grap
hy by M
atthew Plexm
an
Teradata technical lead at RBC achieves Certified Master status and gains access to the best minds and resources in the Teradata community. by Shirley S. Savage
TeradataMagazine.com
T
Ruth Fenwick, Teradata technical lead at Royal Bankof Canada Financial Group, has reaped the benefitsof being a Teradata Certified Master.
PAGE 1 | Teradata Magazine | September 2007 | ©2007 Teradata Corporation | AR-5382