Currently available for contracts

Curriculum Vitae

Education to date:

2003 MCP - Designing & Implementing Windows Applications in Visual C#

2000 MCP - Designing & Implementing Desktop Applications in Visual C++

1999 IBM Certified Specialist in MQSeries Configuration and Installation

1998 MCP - Microsoft Windows Architecture I, covering COM, database access, operating systems awareness, choice of development tools, development methodologies, the Internet and Intranet

1996 MCP - Microsoft Windows Operating Systems and Services Architecture I, covering interface design, Windows 95 / NT architectures, Win32 API and OLE

1992-93 GCE ‘A’ level Art and Design grade ‘C’ - concentrating on Graphic Design and DTP.

1990-91 Industrial Trainee at the IBM Havant Site, Havant, Hampshire. On site training included; AVC, C programming, Multi-media production, OS/2 PM programming, Personal/Business skills, REXX programming

1988-92 Portsmouth University, Portsmouth, Hampshire BSc (Hons) in Computer Science (2:1)Some of the subjects covered include; Artificial Intelligence, Architecture & Networking, Computer Graphics, Human Computer Interaction, Software Engineering. Systems Analysis.The final year project was an Archimedes based multi-media database of the Portsmouth road system to assist local charities in assigning collection areas. This process was automated via the use of image processing software that would identify suitably sized regions

1986-88 Peter Symonds College, Winchester, Hampshire. GCE ‘A’ level results; Computer Science (A), History ©

1981-86 Kings’ School, Winchester, Hampshire. GCE ‘O’ level results; History (A), Physics (A), Maths (B), English (C), Geography (C), Art (C), Computer Science (C), Chemistry (C), English Lit (CSE Grade 1)

Experience:

Full, clean driving licence.

Working in diverse industry sectors has provided an understanding of the various business drivers behind modern IT systems and required the ability to adapt quickly to different environments. A history of working both alone and as part of a team, coupled with extensive design and implementation experience and a proven ability to impart systems knowledge, has resulted in a 100% project success rate to date.

History:

Nokia UK, Farnborough (January 2005 to Date)

Skills Visual Studio .Net 2005, C# 2.0, CodeDom, WinForms, Remoting, ADO.NET, ASP.NET, XML, XSL, SQL Server 2005, Windows XP, UML, Source Safe, NUnit, SandCastle, DRM, FXCop

Part of small team designing, developing and supporting .NET based framework enabling test engineers to develop libraries which exercise mobile phones attached over a variety of media. Work areas included:

• Prototyping Windows Workflow Foundation based environment for specifying tests

• Development of executables to host test libraries. Unattended testing was via a service controlling a bank of PCs that would flash mobile phones with the latest software and then execute a series of tests configured via a WebService or Click-Once application. Tests could be run locally using a WinForm.

• Use of CodeDom to produce source files from an XML specification. The generated partial classes represent messages that can be sent to / from a mobile phone and provide byte stream serialisation.

• Develop class framework to simplify common tasks, e.g. Audio capture and FFT analysis, OCR and image comparison / validation, error handling, analyse phone memory leaks, generate and disseminate reports from XML, transfer OMA and WM DRM protected content, control of CMU200, etc.

• Maintenance of multi-threaded C++ communications layer that passes byte streams between test and phone over appropriate media (USB, Bluetooth, IR, FBUS) using relevant protocols.

• Transferring class framework to central group for adoption as company wide testing mechanism

• Production of PC based SyncML DM User Agent for testing phone SyncML implementation.

BigHand, London (December 2002 to December 2004)

Skills Visual Studio.Net, Extreme Programming, Visual C++, C#, ATL, STL, ASP.NET, ADO.NET, XML, LDAP, XSL, COM+, SQL Server 2000, Windows 2000 and XP, UML, DHTML, CVS, Source Safe.

Part of team implementing the successor to LOTIES 2002, 2003, 2004 and SCL 2003 award winning digital dictation workflow software. Implemented using an n-tiered architecture where both windows and web based clients’ record and play back dictations, storing the audio files on centralised clustered servers. Inter application communications took place via XML documents passed over TCP sockets, intra application was based around COM. Work areas included:

• Design and develop in Visual C++, ATL and STL the server responsible for processing dictation workflows and disseminating results to clients.

• Implement authentication process based around directory servers (typically Active Directory), or where unavailable NTLM. Synchronise the list of registered users with directory servers via LDAP.

• Design and development in C# of streaming audio server and ASP.NET based web client using ADO.NET to access a locally held database

• Work on unified real-time access to dictations on various digital recording devices via disparate SDKs.

• Advising on .NET and database issues

• Design, develop and tune server-side SQL Server schema and stored procedures. Initial ports to MySQL and Oracle.

• Custom report generation using XSL to render output in the appropriate formats

• Tuning and bug fixing within all system components, such as the MFC based client, bespoke client side transactional relational database and streaming recorder supporting Windows, WTS and Citrix

BBC Technology, Winnersh (September 2001 to July 2002)

Skills Visual C++, COM+, Digital Rights Management, ,UML, XML, XSL, STL, Windows 2000 and XP, Windows Media, Real, SQL Server 2000, ASP, DHTML, Select OMT, Source Safe.

Part of team designing, documenting and developing a web based-system implemented using C++ as a series of COM+ components called from an ISAPI extension DLL. Its purpose was to sell licences for and stream copyrighted media items to the public on behalf of various clients. The system hosted one of the most successful DRM implementations to date, accounting for £60,000+ of sales. Access to the streams was controlled via the Windows Media and Real DRM mechanisms. For resilience the system was hosted within a load balanced web-farm with session data stored in a common database. Work areas included:

• Payment collection via WorldPay

• Session state management via SQL Server 2000

• Database schema design

• Digital Rights Management of copyrighted media items

The Post Office, Farnborough and Chesterfield (May 2000 to July 2001)

Skills MQSeries, MSMQ, Visual C++, C, COM+, COM/DCOM, XML, ATL, MFC, Win32, STL, Windows 2000, SQL Server 2000, Host Integration Server, Rational Rose, Visual Basic, ClearCase, CVS.

Provision of COM and middleware consultancy. Tasks included:

• Design and development in VC++ and VB of n-tiered COM+ based web front-end to a Mainframe application. Transaction proxies called by ASP pages used COMTI to populate CICS COMMAREAs. Operation within stateless web farms required the production of a state storage mechanism based around SQL Server 2000. Programmatic access provided through MSMQ, converted by the MSMQ Bridge into MQSeries messages to be processed by the mainframe application.

• Designed, developed in C++ and documented cross platform (HP-UX, Windows 2000) MQ isolation layer insulating both organisation and COOL:Gen application developers from the underlying technology. A COM wrapper catered for VB and ASP developers. Inclusion of hooks for distributed transactions (Encina and MTS).

• Support of Encina COM objects and associated broker.

• Write and review middleware strategy documents on MQ, MQSI and ConstellaHub.

IBM UK Laboratories Ltd, Hursley Park, Winchester (September 1995 to April 2000)

Skills MQ, Visual C++, Win32, COM/DCOM, ATL, MFC, C, UML, Windows NT / 2000, STL, XML, Active Directory, ADSI, ActiveX, LDAP, SecureWay, HTML, Java, TCP, NetBIOS, CMVC, DB2, SAP.

Development and support of MQSeries for Windows NT / 2000 from inception to version 5.2.

April 1999 Integration with standard administration mechanisms such as LDAP and MMC. Research, design and development of the following areas:

• LDAP schema for use in Active Directory and Secure Way directory servers. Extensive prototyping in both C and Visual C++ was required to validate suitability of various schema designs.

• Development in Visual C++ of both COM and LDAP update and query mechanisms enabling internal and external administration tools to control MQ installations.

• XML based interfaces using Xerces-C and STL under Visual C++. Permitted administration of MQ to be undertaken using XML as opposed to the previous proprietary mechanisms.

• Support of the Microsoft Clustering Services (MSCS) development

February 1998 Designed and developed components allowing MQ to exploit Windows 2000 facilities.

• Advised on the technicalities of and implemented the code to extend the MQ COM interfaces.

• Investigated code changes required to support the Active Directory based security model.

• Supported Microsoft’s Active Directory Service Interfaces with the introduction of a new namespace. Involved considerable use of DCOM to provide a virtual directory - information held on individual queue managers being remotely accessed through ATL based COM objects.

April 1997 Development of MQSeries version 5.0. Besides advising new team members on MQ and others about using NT for development, the following activities were carried out:

• Produced Internet based administration tools that utilise Java Applets.

• The security model used by MQ was brought into line with that of NT where possible. Previously checks on user rights had been carried out on the authenticating machine (local machine or domain controller). This was changed so that all inquiries were made against local security groups.

• The creation of an installation and service mechanism through InstallShield. To meet complex requirements considerable use of its API was made.

• Generation and appraisal of technical documentation.

March 1996 Acted as interface between development and third line support to ensure speedy problem resolution. This entailed liaising with both customers and support staff across the globe to gather necessary information to provide solutions, be it a fix to MQ or recommended changes to NT configurations. Areas of activity included:

• Assistance in the presentation of the MQSeries for Windows NT porting effort to other members of IBM staff in a number of educational sessions, both on and off site.

• Support of MQAI (MQSeries ActiveX Interfaces).

• The use and configuration of MQ in a variety of roles, identifying and documenting weaknesses found.

• Network problem analysis and resolution - mainly TCP and NetBIOS but some exposure to SNA.

September 1995 Porting the MQ code base from UNIX to NT. The assignment involved extensive work with the Win32 API, using Microsoft Visual C++. Development took place within a team consisting of those knowledgeable in NT or MQ. Members were encouraged to transfer knowledge to others, providing a strong base for future developments. Work included:

• Provision of NT service to act as interface between the Service Control Manager and MQ components. This had to respond to start and stop requests, activating the appropriate MQ programs.

• Design and development of installation mechanism using the set-up API provided with the Microsoft SDK. Besides the normal “user intensive” method, there was a requirement for unattended installation to be available, where necessary onto remote systems. This program had to be capable of handling product fixes, applying only the patches appropriate to the installed product components.

• Port exception handling from the original UNIX based model to one that could exploit the structured exception handling (SEH) mechanism provided by NT. Besides capturing and logging errors to both the event log and disk file hooks to error recovery code had to be provided.

• Provision of internationalised messaging services. Text to be displayed was stored within a catalogue with access based on message and language identifiers. Besides producing code to retrieve these messages, an automated catalogue generation system was developed.

• Addition of COM interfaces to provide access to MQ.

• Generation and appraisal of technical documentation.

ICL (May 1998) Produced and delivered NT part of seminar on VME, UNIX & NT internals.

Eastleigh College (Sept 1998 - July 1999) Prepared and presented City and Guilds evening classes on C++.

MBA Systems Limited, Winchester (January 1993 to August 1995)

Skills Visual C++, MFC, Win32, Windows NT, C, DOS, Data Feeds (CRS, Sequence, TOPIC, etc.), Rational Rose, Booch.

Design, produce and support data dissemination and presentation systems for the financial markets, operating under Windows NT, Windows 3.1 and DOS. Assignments included:

• Object orientated design and implementation in Visual C++ of customer based servers, running under NT. These used real-time data feeds (TOPIC3) from satellite or leased lines to construct databases from which information requests received from existing TOPICplus workstations could be satisfied. The databases were split into two areas (viewdata and instrument prices + volumes) maintained by separate servers. Each had to be self reliant, performing appropriate activities at pre-set times. To allow performance monitoring statistical information was logged to both screen and file. Besides coding, there was responsibility for producing large amounts of the servers design and acting as a reference point on data feed handling, due to previous experience in these areas. Supervision of contracted employees was required, together with the production of help files - both manually and via packages such as RoboHelp.

• Object orientated design and implementation in Visual C++ of NT based data feed converter that transformed Sequence (a new X.25 based service from the London Stock Exchange) into CRS (a previous format) for use with existing systems. ODBC was used to manipulate a database of instrument information. The converter was composed of a number of separate applications communicating via IPC mechanisms, each logging statistical information to allow performance tracking to take place. Control was provided via dialog interfaces to each application. Although originally intended for use with all Sequence releases the TOPIC3 converter superseded this product. The conversion effort involved considerable liaison with the stock exchange over and above their Sequence user meetings.

• Design and implement various servers that construct databases from numerous interactive and broadcast data feeds. The information from these was broadcast to user sites using the TOPICplus protocol via ISDN and satellite links. Support provided to the company operating the system.

• Modification of both workstation and server components of DOS based bond dealing system. This was intended to further system functionality and improve security by DES encrypting the server - workstation link. Involved close work with the client during development and after sales support.

Alphaprint, Alton (June 1992 to December 1992)

Apple Macintosh application development in C++. Assignments included:

• Designed and developed program allowing any address in the UK to be found via its postcode.

• Enhancement of package to produce and control web-offset printing of labels for surgical envelopes. The program had to calculate the most efficient layout of irregularly shaped labels to minimise wastage.

IBM Havant (July 1990 to September 1991)

Produced multi-media applications under various languages (including AVC and C) for both internal and external use. Appraisal of various multi-media packages, particularly in respect to their operation over LANs. Trained others in use of AVC a multi-media authoring package. Assignments included:

• Mouse operated front end, written under AVC, for accounting package using both the PC and AS/400.

• Package to enable AVC to interpret word-processed documents with embedded commands. This allowed multi-media presentations to be quickly and easily generated from existing documentation.

• ID-badge generator using C to control image capture card and SQL to access employee details database.

Others...

• Vacation work as a project assistant for the Archaeology department of Winchester Museums Services. Apart from digging this also involved recording finds and supervision of volunteers.

• Weekend work as a direct sales agent for Kleeneze.

Interests:

An ‘A’ level history tutor kindled interest in Archaeology appealing to a lifelong curiosity in past cultures and their buildings.

For relaxation, going out with friends, reading, watching cult films, listening to music, attending concerts and keeping abreast of technological developments.

In an effort to stay trim occasional visits to a local gym together with walks.

A fascination with computers, sparked at primary school, has led to interest in general technological advancements.