Steven E Ashcraft

Professional

Profile: Software Solutions Architect / Database Architect / Software Development

Over 30 years of developing custom software solutions using relational database engines as the data stores. Most projects have included being involved in the design of the database, the migration and validation of existing data when necessary, and the design and development of the software for both the front end user interfaces as well as the back end interfaces to RDBMS and real time data acquisition systems. Over the 25 years the state of the art for relational database has evolved and our solutions have continued to use the latest RDBMS.

Computer Systems:

Assorted platforms from single board computers to PCs to Unix servers including: Motorola 6800s, Atmel AVR, the first IBM PC/XT/AT and compatibles to today’s most powerful laptops and multi-processor servers; Pyramid, VAX 750,780,Alpha, AT&T 3B20, HP 1000, K and V class machines, and various Sun servers ;

Related: DBMS: ORACLE 7.x-10.x, SQL Server 6.0 thru 2008, SYBASE, ACCESS, HP Image, MySQL, INFORMIX, APPROACH, UNITY, DBASE II, FOXPROW

OSS: HP-UX through 11.0, AIX, Linux, MS DOS/Windows, Windows 95,98, 2000, ME, XP, NT (4.x,5.0 beta), Vista, UNIX (Sys 5, Berkley 4.3, AT&T 5.2) ,SOLARIS, HP-RTE

Languages: JAVA, C#, C++, C, XML, XSL, SMIL, VXML, ASP(vbscript, javascript), ksh, VISUAL BASIC 6.0, VB.NET, HTML, PL/SQL, SQL Plus, Perl, awk, sed, yacc/lex, PL/I, FORTRAN, PASCAL, JSP(LiveWire)

Development

Environments:Visual Studio.NET, Visual Studio 6.0, Visual Interdev,

Forte, Visual SourceSafe, nmake

Visual Studio Enterprise Architect, Rational Rose

Web servers: Microsoft IIS, Netscape iPlanet, Apache

Tools: CRYSTAL REPORTS 6.0 thru 8.0, Microsoft Web Analysis Stress Tool, Win Runner,

Astra Load Test, Freshwater’s web monitoring tools, Sitescope, and Siteseer .

Browsers: Netscape Navigator, MS Internet Explorer, Firefox

CeRtifications: SUN Certified Java Developer

Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP)

Experience: Over 30 years experience in the information technology industry.

Assignments have included:

2006-2009 Ashcraft & Associates, LLC. Developing new products for a small software house that specialized in secure data transport between almost any platforms and file formats. Work has included redesigning their Oracle and SQL Server databases to improve performance and support new features. Supporting work by other consultants working with large pharmaceutical companies specializing in analyzing clinical trials data.

2003-2004 Adjunct Professor at DeVry College of Technology teaching Object Oriented Analysis and Design.

1993-2002 For a $40 million computer services company, designed, implemented, tested and deployed web services used by their web based inventory/order entry system to access their SQL Server database. The web services were developed using Visual Studio.NET and C#.

For a major investment house, worked as part a team to rapidly re-architect their existing web site. The goal of the re-architecture and re-write was to provide more scalability, robustness, and a better user experience. The site was developed in ASP using Visual InterDev using an Oracle 9i database. Part of the re-architecture was optimizing their database organization and access. http://www.jennison.com/

The system included a graphical user interface to access the database
 system used to manage the results of event. In addition, the database
system was linked via a serial connection to a standalone DOS based
system that interfaced to custom timing hardware. Designed and built
the custom timing system. The system was developed in Windows 98,
DOS, C, Java, AWT, JDBC. The realtime data was sorted in Oracle 7.

Managed the process of converting an existing custom web application into www.signup-now.com ,a web-based service that allows meeting planners to customize the signup process for the events that they present. Responsible for gathering new requirements for the system, designing solutions, and managing the development and deployment of new versions of the system. Development was done using Netscape’s LiveWire (Java). Database was converted from Oracle to SQL Server.

For a major computer supplies retailer, implemented a web monitoring system for their Internet based catalog sales using Freshwater Solutions’ suite of monitoring tools.

Designed and helped develop a web based application used by Hewlett-Packard Company to manage their customer relations with the top 9000 company executives in the U.S. Database was developed in Oracle 8i.

Worked with Hewlett-Packard to define a sales force automation system, and then designed and managed the implementation of the lead tracking system used by HP to distribute marketing leads to their sales force and to then follow each sales opportunity throughout its life cycle. The system was initially developed to use email as the lead distribution mechanism with a FoxPro database on the backend. The system has evolved to using the Internet as the lead presentation and distribution mechanism with Microsoft’s SQL Server serving as the database on the backend.

For a major supplier of fuel management systems to local and state governments, developed a Windows 3.1 based system to manage fuel depots. The first deployment was for the

County of Los Angeles. The system interfaced via dial-up modems with remote systems that controlled the dispensing of fuel. The system was developed as a Windows 3.1 application using C++ for the GUI and FoxPro as the database.

1983-1993 Member of team of developers that designed and implemented a system to gather performance data about fiber optic transmission systems for AT&T. This system provided the ability to gather data from remote sites, store the data in a custom database system, and generate reports. In addition, the system provided the ability to perform fault location in real time. This was an enhancement to the AT&T operations support system, TASC. This was written in C and HP Assembler for the HP1000 running RTE-4.

Member of development team responsible for designing and implementing the AT&T operation support system ACORN that performs alarm surveillance and control for small to medium size transmission networks. My portion of the project was the development of the command scheduler, which implemented the command language for ACORN. In addition, I developed the user commands used to perform telemetry diagnostics. I also developed the interface routines that allowed the users to use ksh as a programming language for developing user-implemented features. I was also responsible for developing aids to automate ACORN system testing. ACORN was written in C and developed on an AT&T 3b20 computer running ATT's UNIX System 5.2. ACORN runs on an AT&T 3b20 Model 400.

Lead developer in porting ACORN from AT&T's 3b2 to AT&T's 3b15. This included porting the database and migrating the existing data.

Member of the team that designed the hardware and software architecture for TMAS. TMAS is the AT&T operation support system that monitors AT&T's long distance transmission network. TMAS uses both DATAKIT and TCP/IP for communication between the four TMAS systems that monitor the whole U.S. TMAS was designed to up 24 hours a day 7 days a week and uses both hardware and software fault tolerant concepts. The system was developed in primarily C++ with INFORMIX as the database engine on Hewlett-Packard's HP9000 Series 850.

Developed a general-purpose simulator of clients and servers to support the simulation and system testing of TMAS features.

Developed a report generation language for TMAS. This language was developed using AT&T's application generator, generator META. META is language for building application generators and is based on lex and yacc.

Co-developer of the central daemon process in TMAS. This UNIX daemon is an example of an object-oriented design that makes extensive use of inheritance and virtual functions. This daemon was written in C++.

Added enhancements to the g2 data language to support new data types. These enhancements included data integrity checks and memory based g2 operations. g2 is the data language used for inter-process communication in a number of AT&T operation support systems.

Added enhancements to the application generator which was used to generate the C++ code for many of the features in TMAS. This generator was written in META.

Designed and developed TMAS commands to do performance monitoring and fault location for the AT&T long distance transmission network. They were written in C++.

Designed and developed an application specific language, PROVGEN, to allow AT&T personnel to automate the TMAS database provisioning process. The tool written in this language allows the end-user to populate the TMAS database with a minimum number of keystrokes. This language was developed in META and C++ to run on a SUN SparcStation or the HP 9000 Model 870.

Designed and developed a TMAS daemon that provides a mechanism for gathering the performance data on the operation of TMAS. This daemon was developed in C++.

Chief integration tester for a major release of TMAS. This job entailed designing and performing integration tests for the entire release. In addition, a set of requirements was developed and enforced with respect for accepting software into the integration-testing phase.

Member of the team responsible for consolidating 7 TMAS systems in seven geographic locations down to 1 TMAS system in two locations. This work included analyzing CPU and network resource usage to demonstrate project feasibility.

1978-1983 Designed and implemented an environment control system for maintaining temperature, humidity, light intensity, and gas concentrations for experiments designed by researchers at the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research at Cornell University. The system provided a graphical language for designing experiments as well as a custom programming language designed with research biologists in mind. The system was implemented in Fortran on Hewlett-Packard's HP1000 computer system running HP's RTE operating system. Later, enhanced this system to control a test chamber for doing climate simulation during automobile testing for Ford Motor Company; this version ran under HP's RTE XL.

Designed and implemented an integrated circuit test system for Power-Mate, Inc. The system was programmable to allow the customer to customize the test set. The platform for this system was the HP Model 35 Computer System and was written in HPL.

Designed and implemented a programmable power supply test system for Power-Mate, Inc. that controlled current the load to power supplies, measured voltage variation, and determined if the power supply under test conformed to the specification specified in the English-like programming language that was provided as part of the system. THE system was developed in C on Hewlett-Packard's HP1000 computer system running HP's RTE operating system. Control of the instrumentation was done using HP's HPIB interface.

Developed the software to manage a custom control interface box that mapped IEEE 488 commands into analog signals to control a constant current load box that was used in a power supply test system. The control software was written in Motorola 6809 Assembler Language and ran on a single board computer.

Designed and implemented a controller for an earth station remote used by AT&T to control communication satellites. The system provided a means for a central computer to download instructions to the remote which then monitored and controlled the equipment that managed the equipment that interfaced with the satellite. The system was implemented in PL-1 on an INTEL 8085 based single board computer.

Designed and managed the implementation of an integrated circuit wafer tracking system for ITT. The system provided a custom language that allowed the process manager to describe the manufacturing steps that were to be performed on each wafer, the tests that were to be performed at each step, the data to be gathered at each step, and alternate processing in the event of quality defects. In addition, the system maintained a database that allowed either the process manager or the technicians to generate custom reports about the current state of the wafers that were being processed or to generate historical reports about wafers that had been produced in the past. The system was developed in C on dual Hewlett-Packard's HP1000s running HP's Multiprocessor RTE. The underlying database was implemented using HP's IMAGE 1000 Database System.

Member of a quality team that was trained in root cause and force field analysis techniques used to identify quality assurance issues in order to improve the software quality of AT&T operation support systems.

1976-1978 Developed a report generation package that produced graphical results for an insulin needle test system. This system ran on an HP Model 35 and was written in HPL.

Designed and developed device drivers for Hewlett-Packard's HP1000 RTE Operating system. A custom driver was developed to allow the use of a touch screen graphics terminal from the HP1000. A ram disk driver was developed to allow the extended memory of an HP1000 to be treated as a fast disk drive. A dumb terminal driver was developed in C to demonstrate the feasibility of doing operating system development work in C on the HP1000 RTE operating system.

For a major telecommunications company design and implemented an RPG interpreter. This interpreter was used by end-users to create custom reports on the data collected by their telephone transmission operation support system. This interpreter was written in ALGOL for the HP1000 running RTE.

1972-1976

Teaching assistant (physics lab) 1971University of Idaho

High school instructor - physics, chemistry, calculus, and general math for two years

Teaching assistant (computer languages) 1974-1976 Washington State University

Favorite Books: Extreme Programming,
Mastering the Requirements Process,

Systems Analysis and Design Using UML

Education:

Masters (Computer Science) - WashingtonStatueUniversity - GPA 3.92/4.00

Bachelor (Physics/Mathematics) - University of Idaho - GPA 3.4/4.0

Employment History:

2006-2009 Ashcraft and Associates, LLC.

2003-2004 Devry University of Technology

1992-2002 Melillo Consulting, Inc.

(Software Architect / Development Team Manager)

1978-1992 Corporate Computer Systems, Inc.

( Software Architect/ Project Manager)

1976-1978 Bell Laboratories (Member of Technical Staff)

1974-1976 Washington State University (Teaching Assistant )

1972-1974 Ritzville Consolidated Schools

(High School Instructor - Physics, Chemistry, Calculus)
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