Big News:On July 19, 1999, I started work at Galileo International, Inc. ®.

So, I am now working as a Technical Analyst at Galileo International, Inc. ®.  Galileo is a computer reservation system (CRS) company. Its major competitor is Sabre, creator of Travelocity.  While I started at Galileo just over a month ago as of this writing, I've already learned a lot and have a number of interesting projects on my plate. Some of these include:

An online software defect and enhancement tracking system, similar to Rational's ClearDDTS.  I'm basing it loosely on Rational's ClearDDTS simply because it's the only defect / change / enhancement tracking system that I've used so far and because I believe its principles are sound, but some improvements could be made. In addition, Galileo will need some specific abilities that are not part of ClearDDTS.  For example, the system needs to integrate with their current bug tracking system, Orbit, which is an outdated mainframe based system.  Since our consumer products are based on a set of base components, which vary from product to product, this system will also enable tracking of defects on a per-component basis.  With this functionality, we will be able to track which defects or enhancements affect what products, based upon what component and version the bug or enhancement is a part of.  I'll be using MS SQL Server 7, Microsoft IIS (Internet Information Server), Microsoft MTS (Microsoft Transaction Server), ASP (Active Server Pages), COM components and VB Script for this project.

I will also be working building, from the ground up, a web site for online cruise reservations, similar to the many current online airline reservations systems. Details of this project are just beginning to be defined, so I'll tell you more about it later.

There are several other projects, internal to the company, that I'll be working on, including management of the intranet site for my department.

Older News:On April 22, 1999, VISION* Solutions was acquired by Autodesk ® for $26 million. This acquisition occurred in the early morning, just before MCI Systemhouse was formally acquired by EDS.

From February 1998 to July 1999, I was working as a Programmer / Analyst for implementation services at VISION* Solutions Group, a GIS  (Geographic Information Systems) company that is now a part of Autodesk. VISION* was formerly an MCI Systemhouse company.  VISION* Solutions develops GIS products, all based on the core VISION* product. Based upon the core product, VISION* also has VISION*Electric for electric utilities, VISION*Water for water utilities, VISION*Gas for gas utilities and MAP for municipalities.

VISION* is a multi-tier client/server system. It uses Oracle exclusively for storing both spatial and non-spatial data. VISION* for the PC is a set of DLLs and ActiveX/COM components used to develop and customize client applications.

I was doing Visual Basic programming using Visual Basic 5, SQL, Oracle 8, VISION* 5 Objects (Active-X/COM), ADO (ActiveX Data Objects), and GML (Geographical Macro Language, a fourth generation language).

In February, 1999, I completed a project for MCI WorldCom and the United States Postal Service designed to help them get an overview of the network equipment being installed at all USPS sites and the service orders and proposals used to maintain the network. I brought this product from a prototype to the finished product (full life cycle development). I was essentially the only Visual Basic programmer on this project. It was a relatively small project for our group with only myself, a technical architect, a project manager and a part-time DBA.

The application, known as SMART (Service Management and Asset Reporting Tool) is a client/server GIS program.  All spatial and non-spatial data is stored in an Oracle 8 database on a DEC Alpha box.  Using VB 5, VISION* PC components for the spatial manipulations and ADO for attribute data, I developed the entire client portion of the application from prototype to delivery.

I also developed the SMART client installation program using InstallShield Pro 5.5 and participated in the development and building of the SMART help file (standard Windows Help File) using Microsoft Help Compiler Workshop.  In addition, I developed the SMART user training guides and workshop using Adobe FrameMaker, MS PowerPoint and Adobe Acrobat Exchange.  I then delivered the training to MCI WorldCom employees in early February.

Click here for a full-size screen capture of the SMART application.

I then moved on to a project for New England Electric System.  This is a very large GIS project that includes integration with existing warehouse and inventory programs, and outage management systems.  I was working on ObjectRules, a VISION* extension to Rational Rose.  We used Rational Rose to design the database schema and classes and to control the drafting and attributes of both geographic features and non-spatial data. In adition to the work with Rational Rose, a large (several thousand lines of code) Visual Basic Class module was developed to to handle custom business rules required for this project.  I took over maintenance and enhancement of this module.