About Neil

I have been working in IT since 1988 as a Cobol and Assembler Programmer on IBM Mainframes, and started DBA-ing all releases of Oracle since v6, sometime around 1991/2 both in a Production Support and Development capacity.

I have ran global Database and Development teams for pretty much every type of industry and am currently a consultant Database Architect (and occasionally available for hire)

As well as Oracle, I have have extensive experience using SQL Server 6.5-2018, and experience on MariaDB, MySQL, Couchbase, DL/1, IMS DB/DC and other databases, I have worked on and administered most flavours of Unix; (AIX / Linux (Red Hat, Centos, Oracle Enterprise Linux, SLES, Debian) / Solaris / HP-UX / Tru-64, DG, Dynix PTX, plus other stuff even I can’t remember)

I was honoured to become an Oracle ACE Director in 2017.
I was a board member of the UKOUG until 2023.

You can follow me on Twitter: @chandlerdba

In real life, I have a lovely wife, 2 fantastic kids (now adults) and a passion for Sunderland Association Football Club, which at the time of writing are plying their trade in the English Premier League (update: English Championship after relegation in 2017, update: English League One after another relegation in 2018. We suck.) They have not won a major trophy since I was a kid, although they have won the top division “Premiership” title 6 times (but mostly in the 1890’s). If you’re unlucky, you might catch me playing the guitar. If you’re really unlucky, I might also be singing.