Branching strategies 101 for data professionals

23/10/2024

Abstract

Branching strategies are essential for any data professional – whether you’re a DBA, DEV or BI professional.

Even as a data professionals you can create and manage different versions of your code, data, and models without affecting the main branch/definition of your code, data, and models.

Branching also enables easy collaboration, experimentation, and testing in a safe and organized way.

In this session, we will introduce the basic concepts of branching, such as branch creation, merging, and deletion.

We will also discuss some common branching strategies, such as feature branches, release branches, and hotfix branches.

Finally, we will put this into practice using Git as well as try and provide you with some best practices and tips for using branching effectively in your data projects.

Speakers

Karim Ourtani

Developer @ Flemish Government

Karim Ourtani works as a developer for the Flemish Government (specifically for the deoartment of care) and is a member of the board at dataMinds, the Belgian Data Platform User group, and Track own for Data, Bi and AI at Techorama (Belgium).

He has been working with SQL Server Since 1998 (version 6.5).
After working in the Banking Sector in London he moved onto various web projects where SQL Server was at the core of all his undertakings.

Upon his return to Belgium he initially focused on the BI capabilities of SQL Server as well as Database Programming, but since joining the Flemish Government in 2012 he has been focused on web and application development with C#.