"flat, the world is"---Thomas Friedman

Module 4

            For this week’s entry I interviewed my friend Matt Roberts (Hi Matt.) Matt works for a company called Marketstar and is what’s called a SQL Database Report writer. I guess to better understand what my friend Matt does is to break down what Marketstar as a company is, and what SQL is.

            Marketstar is a part of the Diversified Agency Services (DAS) division of Omnicom Group Inc. (NYSE: OMC). Omnicom is a global advertising, marketing and corporate communications company. Omnicom’s branded networks and specialty firms provide advertising, strategic media planning and buying, interactive, direct and promotional marketing, public relations and other specialty communications services to more than 5,000 clients in more than 100 countries and of course Marketstar has offices here in Utah, most notably in Ogden right off of 25^th and Washington. This company holds contracts with the likes of Google, HP, LG, and Ricoh, to name a few. For example Google or these other companies outsources sales, or other marketing and data jobs to companies like Marketstar to handle most of their sales calls and organization among other things.

            SQL (pronounced sequel) short for Structured Query Language, of course I had to do my research to fully understand this computer jargon so from Wikipedia, is a special-purpose programming language designed for managing data held in a relational database management system (RDBMS). SQL is a type of computer language or sequencing to organize different types of data and has been around for some time. Initially developed by Donald D. Chamberlin and Raymond F. Boyce of IBM in the early 1970’s was designed to manipulate and retrieve data stored in IBM's original quasi-relational database management system.

            With all of the computer lingo aside, I am going to quit boring you and move on to what my friend Matt actually does other than make sure his desk chair does not float away. That being said I will try to make this as interesting as I possibly can, God help us.

 Down in the depths of 25^th and Washington my friend Matt, and his other pimple popping comrades use this computer language to support a Market Analyst (MA.) Basically this hot shot MA comes to these dweebs requesting that they organize data received from clients to be better understood themselves or the rest of us. I had asked Matt, who I have since confirmed by shocking surprise is married, what SQL looked like and what his final result would look like. I did get a chance to see this but could not share his work so I have looked for myself to show you all an example.

To best put it with the work I do, seems that is the best way I understood it, I am a merchandiser and at the end of my reset or refresh of a bay or end cap of product in retail I send pictures and other finished data to corporate. All of this data is then stockpiled and organized by people like my friend Matt so those that do not understand that information can see in their native language. That being said I also get feedback in return asking about bay width, height and depth so the people at corporate offices can then organize another reset to be done and so far and so forth. In short Matt is the middle man that organizes that data for others to understand and use properly.

In a networking sense Matt does not deal with much other than making sure the main computer system does not get bogged down with too much data being sent and received, so others do not experience a lag in the computer network. To use the term flattening and explain how this job fits in that mix, being an outsourced, but necessary step, this career helps streamline the marketing and sales business and make it easier for google and the other companies above to understand and process that data.