Dan Cruikshank has been an IT professional since 1972. He has served in several capacities in the areas of both operations and programming and has been a consultant on a number of project areas since 1988.

From 1989 until April of 1993, Dan was the lead architect for several IBM internal tool projects that involved the use of RPG with embedded SQL. This included the original prototype for Operational Assistant, which became part of the V1R3 release of OS/400.

Since April of 1993, Dan has been focused primarily on resolving System i application, database, and system performance-related issues at several IBM customer accounts. Many of these became the basis for a number of published articles on solving performance mysteries, co-written with Jim Stewart.

Dan became a full-time IBM employee in 1998. Since 1999, Dan's primary focus has been on DB2 and SQL optimization. Besides continued performance analysis, he also teaches the IBM DB2 for i SQL and Query Optimization workshop held in Rochester, Minnesota, and other locations throughout the country. He also provides custom workshops to System i customers worldwide.

In between teaching gigs, Dan is involved in a number of projects, including database design reviews, SQL tuning, and the migration of DDS-generated databases to SQL DDL-created databases.

Dan is considered a "trusted advisor" by many IBM System i customers.