Résumé

I was employed for an initial 6 week contract as Delphi expert to update child-management software from Delphi 7 to Delphi 2009, and do debugging as the need arose. Much of the initial work involved installing the required component suites or finding equivalents. Since then I have been retained on a part-time casual basis working mainly from home to carry out enhancements and debugging. The database the system uses is MySQL.

This job was a 3½ month contract to update the Care Continuum Suite, used by Queensland Health, from using Paradox to work in an SQL server environment. I working in a small team converting and refactoring the software to work in the new database environment, and developing other apps required for the changeover.

I wrote from scratch a server application for downloading and reformatting trading data, and modified an end-user application to send emails and SMSes.
This work was done from home using Subversion to save the code, MSN Messenger and mIRC for communication, and VPN and VNC for other networking. I was using my own machine and Delphi installation.

Maintenance of the existing applications used at Head Office and in the stores. Most of my work was revamping the windows service and application used to transfer data between head office and the stores.

I have started development of some utilities and applications that I sell on the web.

I worked on Wiley's suite of in-house programs that keep track of documents. The purpose of their software is to ensure construction projects are coordinated and up-to-date with modifications from both internal designers and external consultants. My role involved getting a body of software that had been developed piecemeal into a consistent and reliable shape.

I was asked to work with Comcraft on a program for a firm of professional photographers to help them organize and sell digital photographs at an event. This involved a program for the photographer to select and group his pictures, and a program for the customer to select and order pictures on a touch screen.

My work at Multinail was primarily in the development of two new systems, Factory Management System (FMS) and FrameSource. I also served as a Delphi resource / guru.

In FMS my main work was in the reporting system. I developed a framework in QuickReports to allow reporting to be easy for the development team to add user parameters to, and to remember user preferences. It involved running some long running queries so I made the reporting use separate threads so that the user could start a number of reports without locking up the application. The project was originally written for Paradox/BDE. We rewrote it to use Access using ADO components. Then it was modified to use Interbase/Firebird using IBX components. The second change was fairly quick thanks to an abstraction layer I wrote that allowed us to plug in different suites of database components.

FrameSource is a wall detailing program. I wrote a few modules of it, including a reporting module based on the FMS reporting. The work involved also some knowledge of the building industry and calculations using trigonometry. Much of the work has involved sorting out quickly written incomplete and bug-riddled code, and moving the code base toward a better engineered, object oriented state.

Development of a program for submitting standardized files of childcare records to CentreLink.
Maintenance of accounting system.
Conversion of dBASE system to also work in multi-user mode, with Interbase.

The project was to enhance an existing personnel database program to include details relating to employees' qualifications and experience. The team consisted of just myself and the project manager. My role was to produce a software requirement and design document to be agreed by the users, then to implement both the changes to the database and the coding in a test environment, and finally to update the production database with the changes.

I took advantage of Delphi 5 frames to standardise the behaviour of much of the final product. They were used for editing lookup tables and relationship tables, and also for allowing the user to set filters on the main personnel table used to scroll through the data.

ReTech Global produces a comprehensive suite of POS software for the independent retailers and hospitality industry. While upgrading for GST they also reviewed the functionality of their software. My role was development and maintenance from specifications, and writing specifications. The modules I worked on were for data entry, data transfer, regular modification, and reporting. Distinctive of work for ReTech is the thoroughgoing use and sub-classing of in-house classes, to standardize the look and feel of the UI, and standardize processing.

1. (3 months) Developed in Delphi 3, dBASE and Paradox, a program to allow the user to make spreadsheets of chemical calculation involved in pricing types of coal

2. (7 months) In Java (JBuilder 3) developed a two-pass interpreter for a report-printing language, and a suite of packages to enable us to read dBASE tables. Experimented with RMI and PSE Object-oriented database. Wrote utilities.

3. (4 months) Carried out mods and wrote utilities, mainly to allow the conversion of the dBASE/Delphi 1 system to be upgraded to Delphi 5, and to use MS Access and Interbase. Developed a job tracking application using a tree-view to allow jobs to be grouped. Manipulation of MS Word documents in ActiveX.

City Beach is a clothing retailer. I worked on the back office system and developed a method providing reports via DLLs, which automatically populates a tree view for the user to select a report to run. Developed a standardized set of reports with QuickRep, with inherited classes to simplify development.

Energy Tactics is a consultant to the coal industry. Completed a program in Delphi 3, using paradox tables, that reads two different formats of coal sensor binary data, displays it on a graph, and allows selections to be output as text.

Completed and enhanced a self-installing program sent on a CD to display and report on telephone bills for government departments, and to record disputes.

Energex is an electricity supplier. Over 1 week, finished off enhancements started by another programmer, needed to keep forms and database records in harmony.

ABB Forstar is a software subsidiary of the multinational giant ABB, specializing in electricity markets. They developed the system for NEMMCO to use in the new contestable pool following deregulation of the Australian electricity market. The machines were running Windows NT 4, and the development was in Delphi 2.0 and SQL accessing an Oracle database.

Over 5 months, spent some time on developing and maintaining interactive modules for navigating through libraries of data produced at regular intervals, and editing database. Developed a batch system for automatically processing textfiles submitted remotely via dial-up network by market participants as required. The text files give data such as the arrangement of generators, the bidding information and meter readings. Added the option of running multiple threads to utilize client waiting time while database command were being executed on the server, which required running multiple database sessions. The approach taken involved the Delphi TThread class. as well as text file and string handling utilities. Some of the work was started before the standard interface was developed, so a number of units written by other people had to be integrated. Every file processed had to be acknowledged to indicate whether the run was good, and showing any errors in an acknowledgment file. To standardize the processing, developed a unit with a class to handle all the text I/O, and frequently performed database chores, and string processing utilities.

Comcraft is a software firm, specialising in accounting applications. My work involved the development system in Delphi 1, the databases used are Paradox and dBASE IV and CodeBase to counter some limitations of Delphi 1. For reporting, Nevrona ReportPrinter Pro was used. Developed utilities to produce reports based on simple column reports, and also an interpreter for a simple dBASE-like programming language which produces reports based on text files.

WorldCare is an established travel assistance company, using an IBM AS-400 to hold customer details and to log phone calls and other transactions. WorldCare are moving toward a distributed system to improve response times and data security. Tested user reaction to different aspects of a proposed Delphi 2.0 front end.

The work involved the development from scratch of an interactive database system in Delphi on Windows 3.11 testing on Windows 95, using Paradox database. Business Transformations are working on a suite of programs for the vertical blinds industry. Developed a unit to simplify and standardise the handling of controls that map to database fields in data-entry programs, and used this unit in the development of five major programs of the Business Transformations. This module provides incremental and full list searching, automatic sizing of controls, and allows easy programming in cases where details for look-up files and other secondary files are to be displayed and updated. Developed the unit used in all their applications to ensure software security, which involves encrypted files.