What I do for a living:

I have worked as a software developer, DBA, and trainer for almost ten years. From 1998 to 2001, I worked for Technology Point International in Jacksonville, FL. This position involved extensive travel, and shifted frequently from training classes at client sites (mostly Visual Basic, Interdev, ASP, SQL Server, etc.) to consulting services. The consulting assignments ranged from brief in-house projects building web and client-server applications for customers to extended engagements with clients extending workflow (Staffware) and imaging/document management (Docupact, Altris) systems.

I started with the Colorado School of Mines shortly after moving back to Denver and TPI shutting down. The initial assignment was to complete an online leave recording application that was to supplement the existing web-based employee system. Another challenge was to expand the campus-wide directory services- this involved modifying and maintaining a database where directory data is aggregated from multiple legacy systems using SQL Server DTS packages. This directory data is exposed via a set of web applications, and a Sun One/iPlanet/Sun Java System LDAP server.

In early 2005, we started a major project to replace several core (SCT Plus) legacy systems with an SCT (now Sungard Higher Education) (now Ellucian) Banner system. Despite a number of challenges, we went live with our first module within six months and have brought all other major modules up a year later. Given the typical death marches that system implementations of this scope tend to turn in to (and given the recent record of other state agencies on large scale IT projects), we are pleased with how well this has turned out. In addition to my roles as a developer and SQL server DBA, I am also now an Oracle DBA for many of our Banner databases.

Many of the data feeds from the legacy systems have now been retooled to use DTS/SSIS with Oracle OLEDB providers. Campus-wide authentication has also been a challenge- I have created new XML web services using existing LDAP and RADIUS facilities to reduce the number of different credentials users have to use. Many of our existing web applications now use these web services from either the native .net web service client or the Microsoft SOAP objects. I am gradually migrating many of the existing VB6 and asp code to C# and ASP.Net.

I have some Microsoft and IBM certifications.