High Performance Database Consulting

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Hi! I’m Charlie Rubin. I run a boutique consulting firm specializing in complex database problems. I design databases, build databases, fix databases, and create elegant tools to help you figure out what all the data means.

Services

Database Architecture

Elegant designs with optimized performance for any kind of reporting

PERFORMANCE TUNING

We can repair legacy systems to provide super-fast queries

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

Data warehouses and complex transformations

DATABASE-INTENSIVE WEBSITES

Fast flexible data grids optimized for large datasets

Find Out How Catskill Data Can Take Your Database To The Next Level

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TOOLS
  • Started MIT at 16; Degree in MIS
  • Over 30 years' experience
  • Consultant & Entrepreneur
  • SQL Server Expert
  • Build cloud data warehouses
  • Create ad-hoc teams as needed
  • Full resume on request

About Me

 

I was born and raised in the Hudson Valley in upstate New York, near the beautiful Catskill Mountains. I wrote my first computer program when I was 13, and was soon taking local college classes and tutoring college students in software. I was pretty nerdy and managed to finish high school and get into MIT when I was 16. My degree focused on Management Information Systems.

After college I built a commercial voice-response product in C/Unix with its own high-level programming language and sold it to clients around the country. It was my first entrepreneurial venture.

I then worked at Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street firms for many years doing various kinds of database consulting, usually with Microsoft SQL Server. Among many projects during this time, I supported the bond trading desk at Bank of America, optimizing their database code by orders of magnitude.

For six years I worked as the Senior Database Architect for White Mountains Re, a $7 billion international reinsurance firm. I developed catastrophe modeling and portfolio optimization tools that were critical for running their business.

I then attempted a social welfare project of my own design – I started building ShareTell.net, a meta-IVR system to act as an alternative to the Internet for people in the third world. It was a good idea, but smartphones proliferated faster than expected.

My next big entrepreneurial project was TaxTrim.com, a database-intensive website that helps homeowners find out if they are over-assessed and build optimized tax grievances to reduce their property taxes. It currently has data on over 2 million homes.

In the last few years, I have continued my consulting work, building cloud data warehouses for both the ACLU and the National Suicide Hotline, among other projects.

About Me
  • Started MIT at 16; Degree in MIS
  • Over 30 years' experience
  • Consultant & Entrepreneur
  • SQL Server Expert
  • Build cloud data warehouses
  • Create ad-hoc teams as needed
  • Full resume on request

I was born and raised in the Hudson Valley in upstate New York, near the beautiful Catskill Mountains. I wrote my first computer program when I was 13, and was soon taking local college classes and tutoring college students in software. I was pretty nerdy, and managed to finish high school and get into MIT when I was 16. My degree focused on Management Information Systems.

After college I built a commercial voice-response product in C/Unix with its own high-level programming language and sold it to clients around the country. It was my first entrepreneurial venture.

I then worked at Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street firms for many years doing various kinds of database consulting, usually with Microsoft SQL Server. Among many projects during this time, I supported the bond trading desk at Bank of America, optimizing their database code by orders of magnitude.

For six years I worked as the Senior Database Architect for White Mountains Re, a $7 billion international reinsurance firm. I developed catastrophe modeling and portfolio optimization tools that were critical for running their business.

I then attempted a social welfare project of my own design – I started building ShareTell.net, a meta-IVR system to act as an alternative to the Internet for people in the third world. It was a good idea, but smartphones proliferated faster than expected.

My next big entrepreneurial project was TaxTrim.com, a database-intensive website that helps homeowners find out if they are over-assessed and build optimized tax grievances to reduce their property taxes. It currently has data on over 2 million homes.

In the last few years, I have continued my consulting work, building cloud data warehouses for both the ACLU and the National Suicide Hotline, among other projects.

Clients

Industries

Investment Banking

Reinsurance

Mortgage Servicing

Non-Profits

BioTech

Manufacturing

Healthcare Analytics

Real Estate

Marketing Analytics

Software Consulting

Ecommerce

State Government

Telephony

Internet Backbone

Renewable Energy

Academia

Human Resources

Music

Event Planning

Investment Banking

Reinsurance

Mortgage Servicing

Non-Profits

BioTech

Manufacturing

Telephony

Academia

Music

Event Planning

Healthcare Analytics

Real Estate

Marketing Analytics

Software Consulting

Ecommerce

State Government

Internet Backbone

Renewable Energy

Human Resources

How I Work

I do projects large and small. Some clients need a quick repair, others have massive projects that may go on for years. When I take on a project, I am fully committed, however long it takes.

Depending on requirements, it may be just me, or I may bring on additional specialists to help out. In those cases, I do the design and architecture, the core database work, and I oversee and review everyone else’s work.

I do all work remotely.

Client Testimonials

“Our firm was very pleased with Charlie’s ability to understand our problem and deliver a solution on an extremely tight schedule in high-stakes litigation. I look forward to working with him again, and would recommend him without reservation to any of my colleagues!”

AGATHA M. COLE
Associate

Chaitman LLP New York, NY May 2019
“Charlie worked as a part-time consultant for us for two years. He is a highly skilled data analyst with decades of experience, and he particularly excels at the most difficult and messy tasks. In particular, he built a system to extract data from a vendor’s internal database and create an entire reporting system that the vendor was unable to provide. This system is now an integral part of our workflow. I highly recommend Charlie for any level of work.”

DANIEL KOROVIKOV, PSY.D.
Director of Analytics

Astor Services for Children & Families Bronx, NY May 2019
“Charlie developed real-time data pipelines for us that enhance the quality and timeliness of our analytics and reporting. Charlie used a combination of Lambda, Python and SQL to convert several messy monthly data sources into the real-time incoming data stream we need.”

DAVID KOOSIS
CIO

Vibrant Emotional Health (runs the National Suicide Prevention Hotline) New York, NY June 2019

“As a food historian, I hired Charlie to implement my system for organizing food history data into a user-friendly and comprehensive tool freely available on the internet.

Working with myself and my two children (Catherine Saines and Joe Wheaton), Charlie has incorporated my data and method into a Wikipedia-like website (https://thesifter.org). The site is complicated in that it includes a wide variety of ways to search across languages and time. This includes browsing, sorting, filtering, exporting, advanced search capabilities, detailed auditing, security and recovery, and multiple language support, all based on metadata tables that allow easy structural changes.

He has been extremely agreeable and determined when issues have presented themselves. This past 12 months Charlie has stayed with the project, worked steadily and communicated with us effectively.

Our website went live at the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery in July 2020 and has now received positive attention from media sources around the world. We are very pleased with the job Charlie has done and would enthusiastically recommend him to anyone who has a challenging project.”

Barbara Ketcham Wheaton

The Sifter, Lexington MA October 2020

Projects

The Sifter

Barbara Ketcham Wheaton was one of the first food historians in America and is renowned in her field. Now 89, she has been dreaming for decades of building a free public database with every historical cookbook from medieval times to the present.

Starting with 100,000 recipes she has collected in her private database over many years’ effort, we are now building out this website, called The Sifter, to be a Wikipedia-like research tool that anyone can use or contribute to. It has a highly detailed search function, plus filtering, exporting, auditing, multi-language support, and many other features.

It’s been an honor to work on this site, which was officially released in July 2020 at the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery, and has since been featured in news articles around the globe, including the Wall Street Journal.

TaxTrim

After moving into a new home, my neighbors told me that I was over-assessed. I didn’t believe it initially but decided to simply analyze my home against every other home in our town and see what the numbers said. It turned out that I was two standard deviations above the average for homes similar to mine. Armed with detailed spreadsheets, I was able to get a 25% property tax reduction.

That was the impetus for developing TaxTrim, a site that lets New York homeowners compare their assessment against all of their neighbors, comparing both recent sales and other assessments. It provides detailed statistical comparisons and has point-and-click tools to build an optimized property tax grievance.

To date, we have helped hundreds of people grieve their taxes, and savings in the 10-30% range are quite common. We currently have data on over 2 million homes. Ultimately, I hope to expand this tool to a nationwide audience.