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What's Been Happening The Last Few Years?
There was time when I posted info about every little project I've been involved
with but after 15+ years of consulting I decided to just go with adding of
the occasional highlight. Suffice it to say that my life has been pretty much
heavy C/C++, databases, search technology, and linux.
Search Engine Technology - After developing and licensing a high performance
ppc metasearch backend for a number of years, I began to look at building a full-text web crawler.
The end result of all this was 2 years of very late hours, about 50,000 lines of 'C',
and a dedicated inhouse 100Mb fiber pipe connected to my own
rack across the hall from my office.
This project was heavy C, Linux, BerkeleyDB, inverted indexes, parsing, IPC message
queues, lexicon building, and all that falls under the full-text web crawler umbrella.
This technology platform was later sold to one of my old metasearch clients.
Metasearch Technology - To make a very long story short, around 2001 I had
started an internal retail web project and had the idea to create a quick metasearch
engine to drive traffic to our upcoming retail site. It started out as a simple weekend
perl/oracle project but unexpectedly grew into a complex backend with hundreds of
forked and multi-threaded processes with tons of shared memory IPC message queues. In the
end, we tossed the retail project and spent the next few years licensing this industrial strength metasearch
technology to high volume pay-per-click sites.
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| Where Has The Time Gone? |
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| 2000-2001 |
The Weather Channel / Weather.com (Consultant)
Developed an Oracle powered web based application designed for internal use which facilitated the
management of various satellite maps and broadband products used throughout the public portion
of the web site.
The tools and environment for this project consisted of Sun Sparc, Apache, Oracle8i, Heavy PL/SQL, Oracle/OCI, Perl, Unix.
Online Reference
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Feb' 97 -
Aug' 99 |
End2End,LLC - Senior Oracle Consultant
This project began with me assisting End2End in the Oracle database and webserver
development of an innovative product known as the Interactive Cybercasting Network (ICN).
ICN was a digital broadband intranet business solution designed for hotels, resorts,
casinos, cruise lines and sectors of the hospitiality industry.
During early development, Oracle and the Oracle WebServer played a critical role
for each of these features as the user front-end consisted solely of Netscape running in
kiosk mode with Oracle controlling access and content for most all of the user presentation.
In addition to user presented content, guest usage (click-thru's and purchases)
were also tracked by Oracle and then later analyzed to show various demographic trends.
These trends were then used by Oracle in determining advertising content.
Secondary Project
In addition to the ICN project End2End later also asked for assistance on one of
its non-ICN gaming applications. As with ICN this project required extensive Webserver development
but with the added twist of linking not hotels but casinos. For this application Oracle and the Oracle WebServer
were not only used to handle the transactional flow of gaming revenues but also for the control
and presentation of casino animation, video switching devices, gaming equipment interfacing,
Point of Sale Control, etc. This app is scheduled to go into production September '97 and will be
handling player jackpots expected to reach over $5 Million. The network of linked casinos will be spread
across various parts of the U.S. and Canada. Every facet of the operation is controlled by Oracle and the Oracle Webserver.
Final Phase Of the Project
For most of 1998 through the fall of 1999 I began a complete re-write of the gaming application
using Oracle Developer/2000 with the new client being a southern California company called
Planet Bingo. Here the original web based gaming application was taken to the next level with
many more "bell's & whistles". In addition, an internet based version was developed using Java applets
allowing players from around the world to make online wagers via their browser. Again, with all
interaction and processing handled by Oracle. Presently, the internet site is offline but
the casino versions of the software is running in various casinos throughout the country.
As End2End/PlanetBingo were without any database expertise primary responsiblities for
all of these projects involved long hours of extensive Oracle Database Design and WebServer
development. The primary development platform was Microsoft NT on Intel using a wide variety of development tools and
products. (C, Visual Basic, Designer/2000, Developer/2000, SQL*NET,ODBC, Oracle
WebServer, DBAnywhere, Java, JavaScript, etc.)
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Misc
1996
Projects |
Instructor/Introduction To SQL - City of Greenville, SC
Instructor for a 5 day class on introduction to Oracle and SQL. The city of Greenville
had recently switched to Oracle but very few of the employees were familiar with
the basics of SQL. The class consisted of basic database concepts during the
first day followed by several days of intense lecture and practice via sql*plus
with the final day touching briefly on PL/SQL along with a short review of Oracle
Forms and Reports.
Atlantis New Media, Inc. - Senior Oracle Consultant (Consultant)
Primarily involved as the lead Oracle consultant for an ongoing project involving
the use of a front-end NCSA WebServer with Oracle as the backend database engine.
Fundamental use of my talents here revolved around the development of numerous
CGI scripts written using Oracle Pro*C and general performance advice regarding
the use of Oracle by a fairly large userbase of 3000+. The development
platform consists of a Sun Sparc/20 and Sun 1000, both running Oracle 7.2.
MCI / Systems Performance Group - Senior Oracle Consultant (Consultant)
Assisted in the performance evaluation of a 20 Gigabyte HP/9000 Oracle Database running
HP/UX.
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Nov '95 -
Jan '96 |
Bangor Hydro Electric - Senior Oracle Consultant (Consultant)
Member of the implementation and conversion team where the primary
objective was to move from an IBM DOS/VSE mainframe type environment
towards a more versatile Linux based client/server architecture. With a solid
commitment from management Bangor Hydro Electric first instituted
a data warehousing plan under Oracle for Windows followed by the
purchase of an HP9000 and two DEC Alpha 2100's, all of which were
running Oracle 7.2 under HP/UX and OSF/1 respectively.
Responsibilities on this project centered mostly around the
C/Unix/Oracle development necessary for the conversion and mapping of
legacy data into Oracle using Pro*C and SQL*Loader. Other, more minor,
issues that I addressed were in the configuration of Sql*Net among the
HP, DEC, and Novell systems along with miscellaneous Unix and DBA support.
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Sep'95 -
Nov'95 |
Aeronomics, Inc. - Software Engineer (Consultant)
Functioned primarily as a general development resource for various
projects within the company where deadlines were close at hand and
there was a need for an experienced developer who could hit the ground
running. The two main projects I assisted in were a Sybase to Oracle
conversion for Delta Airlines and an Informix backend module for a Walt
Disney World hotel management system.
Other responsibilities included assistance in the evaluation and
recommendation of multi-platform GUI prototyping and RDBMS development
type tools.
The client environment revolved mostly around 'C', Unix, Motif, Sun
Sparc/Solaris 2.4, HP9000/HP-UX, Oracle7, and Informix 7.1.
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Jun'94 -
Apr'95 |
ETS, Inc., - Manager Warehouse Automation Project (Consultant)
Technical Project Manager for the selection and implementation of a
Warehouse Management System based upon barcode technology, remote
radio-frequency terminals, and automated real-time conveyor control.
This system was implemented with the Oracle RDBMS and tools (SQL*Forms
3.0, SQL*Menu 5.0, Pro*C) on a Sequent mid-range system with NeXT Unix
workstations using an X-Windows GUI interface, along with Symbol
Technologies RF terminals and barcode scanners. Key responsibilities
included the following items:
- Vendor selection and initial contract negotiations
- Implementation Scheduling
- Planning for integration with Oracle Financials
- Coordination of MIS programming resources
- Development and writing of technical troubleshooting documentation
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Oct'93 -
Feb'94 |
ETS, Inc., - Oracle Developer (Consultant)
Developed customized Oracle based UPS shipping system which allowed ETS to
ship and track all of its out bound UPS shipments with a more seamless
fit to Oracle Financials than was currently available with existing
commercial tools. Since there was an obvious need for linkage to Oracle
Financials and the ETS Order Entry System the end result was a package
that provided increased feedback with respects to the status of an order
and daily shipping volume.
Main development tools consisted of the Oracle RDBMS, Oracle Pro*C,
and 'C'. It is also worth mentioning that this project dealt heavily
with client/server technology and involved a great deal of TCP/IP socket
type work as the end product was a server process accessed via TCP/IP
from the workstation application.
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Mar '92 -
June '93 |
Rosenthal & Associates - Programmer/Analyst
This company's main product line consisted of UPS/RPS shipping software
written using the Ingres RDBMS and tools. The main theme here was to
re-write the existing product using 'C' for both DOS and Unix
environments. After re-writing the package from scratch and adding
communications and an ad-hoc SQL-like report generation tool I also
worked with Arthur Anderson Consulting to port the product to an IBM
RS6000 running AIX with Informix for Wrangler Jeans.
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Sep '91 -
Feb '92 |
Medtronix, Ltd., - Programmer / Analyst (Consultant)
Lead software developer for the development of an infrared image
capture and image thermography project. The main challenges here were to
integrate an assortment of sensors and motors used to control not only
the infrared camera but also the supporting robotics. In brief, the
device consisted of an infrared camera mounted at the end of
a robotic arm which was controlled either through pre-programmed
movement macros or manually via the keyboard with some multi-media
development done to merge the live video from the camera with the
monitor display. The majority of the work was done in 'C' with some
assembler on an 80386 running MS-DOS.
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Dec'89 -
May '91 |
HCI Services, Inc., - Oracle Developer (Consultant)
Long term project consisting of heavy Oracle development using both
Oracle Pro*C and PL/SQL. The core business of this company consisted of
the processing of Medicaid/Medicare claim forms. Along with developing
the various backend modules for the daily processing of such data I was
also a key member of the data model design team. Other minor
applications written consisted of a customized in-house email package
and various communications utilities.
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Miscellaneous Projects From The Dark Ages...
Alphanumeric Paging Package, Cherokee Data Systems, Unix/C 1994
Billing/Commissions/Inventory Tracking, Optical Eyeware Chain,'C'/DBASE, 1989
Accounting System Maintenance Programming Work, TI DS-990, BASIC, 1989
Mortgage Loan Credit Processing, 'C'/Xenix/FoxBASE, Equifax, 1986
Corporate/Branch Office Communications, Bisync 3780, VAX 11/750,Equifax, 1985
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