Skills
The following information in a excerpt of my recently used skills and experiences. Although I have much more to offer, I limit myself to those used within the last three years.
C/C++ CMMI DWH/OLAP High Availability Maintainability Metrics IBM MQ India ITIL Java KPI OLTP Oracle AQ Oracle DB OSS Performance Perl Processes Security SQL Stability
C/C++
I currently maintain some open source projects written in C (e.g. hatools) and C++ (ResourcePool). Most of my recent experiences comes from these projects.
In my early days (1995 - 2000) I have done excessive systems programming in C and collected quite a lot of practical experience which I can use every now and then. Lately I was able to fix a problem with the integration of a 3rd party C library into a tomcat based web service. The problem was related to the way the library used IPC (Inter Process Communication).
CMMI
I have had the Introduction to Capability Maturity Model Integration (Staged and Continuous0, V1.2) in 2007. Since then I was involved in process alignment activities to reach the CMMI certification for the Division I worked with.
DWH/OLAP
I was involved in a DWH offer based on mondrian and kettle. I have implemented an example cube and the required ETL scripts to demonstrate these products. The cube was a simplified version of the actual need filled with anonymous production data.
Almost everything I did in the last years was intended for deployment in a HA environment. I have tested and debugged proprietary high availability solutions as well as some Open Source products (Tomcat, JBoss). I have checked Java software to properly work with an Oracle Parallel Server (OPS) and later Real Application Cluster (RAC) for maximum availability. Back in 2000 I was even certified for as Sun Cluster 2.2 admin. Today I still maintain the hatools project which provides a open source re-implementation of the halockrun and hatimerun tools available in the Sun Cluster. The efforts to meet new requirements, cope with a changed environment or correct defects are some maintainability aspects. I have experience how to make software easy to debug so that more bugs can be solved with less effort. I have defined and implemented a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) based operational reporting for a client of the Company I worked for. The KPI's covered the response time for a web application, the response time and error rates of various proprietary interfaces as well as some support process metrics. I believe in the benefits of KPI based quality management but I am well aware of the dangers. KPI's can be read without detailed knowledge of its definition so that there is a high risk of misinterpretation. I have developed Java software to exchange messages with IBM Websphere MQ (previously MQ Series). My main focus was to ensure a reliable connectivity without the overhead of two-phase-commit (XA). I have travel several times to India for the projects I worked on. My last trip was in September 2009 to conduct acceptance tests (see references). I have experience to work with Indian outsourcing partners since 2001. I have passed the ITIL V3 Foundation Exam in 2008. Since then I was involved in the alignment of existing support processes (mostly to raise awareness for the difference between incidents and problems). I have worked as Java software developer from 2003 till 2007. Since then my focus moved on quality management but I was still able to join the development team occasionally if needed. I have more experience with "plan old java" then with EJB and related technologies and have debug many thread and memory related problems Back in 2003 I wrote a paper to compare the C++ and Java resource management facilities. Most of my work was on OLTP (OnLine Transaction Processing) systems. There is some difference in working with OLTP and OLAP/DWH systems. I have also experience with mass reporting and also a little Data warehouse but my strength is to get fast responses form a database as mostly needed in online systems. I have great experience with Oracle Advanced Queues. I have integrated Oracle Advanced Queues (on basis of Oracle 8i) into a Java framework. The very easy integration into conventional database transactions makes AQ to a perfect extension of the oracle database. Since 1999 I have continuously used the oracle database. I have great experience with performance tuning and high availability considerations. I maintain a few Open Source Software packages and also enjoy using OSS. Since Open Source does not mean unsupported I also suggest commercially supported OSS for commercial usage occassionally. Performance is one of the most important non-functional software quality aspects. A well tuned system does not only make users happy but can also save on operational cost for hardware and licensing. I use the perl programming language for many daily tasks. Almost every day I process some log-files with some perl scripts. I maintain a few Perl Modules. I have worked 7 years for banking related development companies. I am used to follow processes, have basic CMMI and ITIL
certificates and also worked a little bit on a SAS70 project. Security is the most important aspect of software quality in the banking industry. I have worked in this industry for 7 year, and attended some security audits during that period. I have very strong SQL skills, especially for the Oracle Database. Although my experience is more on the OLTP side I have also very good experience with analytic functions. Software stability is one of my main strength. Stable systems continue service during "rush hours" and over a very long time span. I have experience many issues which can lead to stability problems like deadlocks and memory leaks. Most of my experience for Test automation comes from unit tests. I have used OSS products like CruiseControl and Cobertura for continuous KPI based quality assurance. My first UNIX contact was in 1994 and I use it since then private and professionally. I have worked as UNIX system administrator a few years on Solaris, IBM, Linux, FreeBSD and a very little bit HP. I have administrated a Solaris Cluster in 2000 and a HACMP cluster in 2001. I don't offer system administration professionally but feel very safe and comfortable on UNIX systems. High Availability
Maintainability
Metrics (KPI's)
IBM Websphere MQ
India
ITIL
Java
OLTP
Oracle Advanced Queues (AQ)
Oracle Database
Open Source Software (OSS)
Performance
Perl
Processes
Security
SQL
Stability
Test automation
UNIX
