About Old Gang Consulting

The Old Gang consultancy, based in Harrogate in North Yorkshire, is managed by John Bates. John has an academic background in mathematics and statistics from Leeds University and has many years of experience of bespoke software development and design.

At Old Gang we have demonstrable expertise in the following areas:

  • Database-driven systems.

  • API Servers using typed end-to-end message-based systems.

  • Reactive (data-driven) client applications.

  • Business Intelligence focussed reporting using relational databases and Power BI.

  • Data manipulation and presentation.

  • Relational Databases - especially Microsoft SQL Server and PostgreSQL.

  • Microsoft Windows .NET, Linux (and other Unix operating systems) and macOS.

  • Languages: C#, Go, R, TypeScript/JavaScript, and F#.

Recent projects have involved:

  • A multi-platform data-cascade application in which relational data in remote nodes is aggregated to a central hub using Google’s open source gRPC framework for communication between the nodes and the hub. (Go, gRPC)

  • A number of statistical data science tasks involving the R language and open source envrionment. (R)

  • A quantity and financial position reporting system which presents an interactive, hierarchical view of large quantities of position data. More than 4,000 million rows of data have been processed with some tables containing more than 200 million rows. (C#, .NET, TypeScript).

  • A commodity trading portal, presenting continuously updated oil prices and foreign exchange rates with a charting and content editing and rendering component. (C#, .NET, TypeScript, React, API Server)

  • A re-write of a housing association PFI performance monitoring system in React, and with a clean API Server component (C#, .NET, TypeScript, React, API Server).

  • We designed and wrote a toolchain, consisting of an API Server and Power BI connector, that allowed data to be extracted from a housing association operational database and pulled directly into Power BI Desktop or the Power BI cloud service for analysis.

  • Creation of the architecture required to remove dependency on office hardware and operating systems. This moved source code from local Git repositories into Azure DevOps repositories allowing coders to develop, share and deploy code from anywhere.

  • Prototyped, architected, and documented, the processes required to convert existing web sites to run as Azure Web Apps with deployment directly from Azure DevOps. This removed a dependency on cloud-based virtual machines and their associated setup and security overhead.

About the Old Gang Name

The Old Gang Mining Company operated a number of lead mines in Swaledale until the end of the 19th century.

The image shows the Old Gang Smelting Mill which was built in 1790 and was in almost continuous use until 1898.

The ingenuity with which miners could map and survey their way through the three-dimensional geology of this rugged landscape using the technology of the time is an inspiration.

Copyright Mick Garratt and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence