Beamfix Clients and Projects

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Top of Page 1995 Designer-Builder in Oracle Forms 4 and Reports 2 with Software House APT (later known as NSB) in Derby, developing a package for large retailers. Project was of the order of 20 man years in terms of the package alone, without the bespoke work for individual clients. Full use was made of Oracle Case tools, both as a repository and to generate initial versions of Forms. Participated in development and implementation of a set of Programming Standards, in respect of both GUI presentation and coding techniques. PL/SQL libraries were used as well as Stored Procedures and Database Triggers. Package functionality covered all matters related to Merchandising, Warehousing and Stocktaking.

1989 Analyst-Programmer with Brann Direct Marketing in Cirencester, using COBOL under VMS on a VAX. Task related to reconciling data from various sources in preparation for a large mail-out.

1989 Analyst-Programmer with Computer Action Ltd , using MicroFocus COBOL under XENIX on an Altos platform. Application was an administration package for publishers of periodicals.

1996 Analyst/Designer with consultancy Business Science & Logic in developing and prototyping debtors and creditors ledgers for BScL's own use and as part of the Remote Back Office (RBO) project. Oracle tools used were Forms 4.5 and Reports 2.5 with extensive use of PL/SQL in the calculation of the various aged balances and residual invoice amounts after part payments.

1998 City & Guilds. Various enhancements to COBOL-Oracle system running on Open-VMS, including Millenium compliance. Analysis, design, programming, and implementation of an MIS system using Oracle's Developer/2000.

1997 Analyst/Programmer with Computer Management Group, in Banking Division. Coding and testing of applications in Oracle Forms 4.5, mostly validation of transaction data from other platforms.

1996-1997 Analyst/Programmer with Computer Management Group. Project set out to convert The Insurance Application (TIA) from its Forms-3 character mode to a Graphical User Interface (GUI) package, the most likely candidate being Oracle forms 4.5. Host environment was Sequent's Dynix/PTX and the client used Windows 95. Documentation was via MS-Office, including Word and Excel. Initial work involved the replacement of obsolete User Exit code with PL/SQL triggers and procedures. Subsequent work involved the design, construction, and use of tools in SQL*Plus and PL/SQL to detect, and in some cases modify, code which was not Year-2000 compliant. A combination of automated and manual procedures were used to bring the various forms into compliance with Year-2000 requirements. Project cancelled when negotiations over Intellectual Property Rights to the original package proved unsatisfactory.

1995-1996 Analyst/Programmer with Software House CSC (of Farnborough, but working on site in Bicester) using Oracle Developer/2000 (mostly SQL*Forms 4.5, but also some Reports 2.5) in a Rapid Application Development (RAD) project with extensive use of prototyping.

1994 Analyst-Programmer (with some input to System Design) in Oracle Reports 2.0 in an Oracle 7 client/server environment for EASAMS Ltd . on a project for the Scottish Prisons Service.

1990-91 Analyst-Programmer with Harrods, working on Sequent machines using Oracle V6.0 under the "Dynix" (Unix) Operating System. Used Application tools SQL*Plus, Forms V2.3, Menu V4.0.

1990 System Manager in Fashions Department at Harrods, responsible for IBM 6150 running Oracle V5.0 under the AIX V2.2 Operating System. Duties included maintenance of programs in SQL*Forms V2.3, SQL*Plus, and RPT, as well as liaising with the users in the management of data, and with DBAs from the central IT facility in the internal management of the various Oracle objects.

1999 Through IBM as the outsourced Facility Manager, worked at Cable & Wireless as part of a team deriving management information from the client's daily transactions. Data manipulation was on a cluster of multi-CPU IBM machines using PL/SQL and shell scripts on Oracle 7.3 and AIX (Unix).

1994 Designer-Builder in Oracle SQL*Forms V3.0 with Mercury Communications Ltd . in a VMS environment. Initially used Oracle RDBMS V6; later moved to V7.0. Assignment terminated when it was decided after some 50 man-years of investment that the project's Logical Design was unsound. The project was restructured and 25 people were laid off, mostly designer-builders.

1999 At Friskies Petfoods now part of Nestlé formerly Spillers Petfoods, upgaded the Oracle Developer suite of programs and associated database procedures to operate in the new environment (formerly Win 3.11 now Win NT) and rigorously tested (modifying where applicable) for year-2000 compliance.

1996 Analyst/Programmer with Nynex Cable Comms. Used PL/SQL in a HPUX environment to transform data from an AS/400 system for use in an Oracle system. Two distinct modes of operation were required - initial load, and continuous update as changes from the AS/400 system were journalled through the Data Mirror facility. Large volumes and joins across several tables required sophisticated techniques to achieve the initial load within an acceptable time frame. For the continuous update, database triggers were used to create journal rows which were then processed by PL/SQL procedures which were scheduled to run periodically.

1996 Analyst/Programmer with Oracle in Switzerland adding custom Reports to the Oracle Applications HR (Human Resources) package. This required a degree of familiarisation with the package (some 600 tables and views) in order to extract the relevant data. Oracle Applications interface standards were observed so that the new Reports would integrate seamlessly with the standard HR package. PL/SQL was used extensively in the extraction of the required data.

1992-93 Consulting services to Society of Chemical Industry , to replace the existing computer system for managing Membership records. Tasks included a comprehensive Business Analysis of functions carried out by the Member Services department, selection of appropriate hardware and software platforms, Systems Analysis of various subsystems, Analysis and Design of the Data Model, Programming all phases and subsystems, Implementation, and Transition to the production system.
The system was implemented on a single Intel 80486 machine using MS-DOS and Oracle V6.0 to replace the former system running on an Intel 8086 using a little known PC database. The required system was discovered by discussions with the Member Services department, with Senior Management, and the Accounts department, as well as by examination of the existing computer system. A specification was prepared using Entity-Relationship modelling, supplemented by Process and Function descriptions where appropriate. Data entry programs were written in SQL*Forms V3.0 with various business rules encoded into PL/SQL triggers to ensure data integrity. Pop-Up pages and calls to Enquiry forms were used where appropriate. Simple reports were written in SQL*Plus while the more complex ones were written in SQL*ReportWriter, with post-processing by "C" programs where necessary to achieve the exact output required. All programs were accessible through a menu, implemented in SQL*Menu V5.0. The application's most visible output is the fortnightly mailing labels for the society's journal, Chemistry & Industry. About 80% of these are produced in UK MailSort format, while the rest are spread among the rest of the world, via four distribution channels.

1997 Society of Chemical Industry. Using Oracle Web Server 2.1 wrote prototype to demonstrate how data from Membership Applications could be received over the web and stored in a holding area for later consideration. Also wrote dynamic web page to enable queries of membership data, including drill down from committee structures through to members' address details.

1998 Society of Chemical Industry. Conversion of Oracle Forms 3 to Forms 4.5, using default Oracle tool and then manually adding GUI features.

1993-2001 Society of Chemical Industry. Ongoing maintenance of Membership System, e.g., conversion of phone numbers for Phone Day 2000.

1997 Spillers Petfoods. Largely Developer 2000, but also using Designer 2000 to create database objects. Throughout this period also performed DBA role (Version 7.2) on local system while regular DBA was engaged in setting up regional systems throughout Europe.

1999-2001 Consultancy to start-up Health Web Site, Project WisDoc . Various services ranging through analysis of information structures and dataflow considerations for rapid update of cutting-edge research information into the proposed multi-tiered data structures. Development of heuristic prototypes for the input, storage and retrieval of the data, using Oracle 8i (8.1.7) and Apache 1.3.12 to serve the data, Developer 2000 for input and control and Linux 2.2.15 to provide sendmail and firewall services.
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