Past Projects
Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield - Intranet portal, Dec 2003 - Mar 2004.
Wellmark is currently refactoring it's intranet pages. They are taking this opportunity to implement the pages in .Net technogies. I am working on several of the portal application that administers the server controls. I participated in the development of the Business and Data Access layers that support the portal. I also developed a server control that displays upcoming corporate events.
I am currently developing an interface between the .Net portal's dynamic menuing system and Wellmark's Teamsite content management system.
Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield - Major Account Consulting, Jan 2003 - Dec 2003.
Wellmark has a comprehensive data warehouse called Blue Diamond. They also have a large number of Business Objects servers that execute Business Objects reports in batch mode. I created an ASP web application that allows report selection and report parameter entry. A complete report request can then be submitted to a the Business Objects servers via a Business Objects WEBI server. I enabled this submission by interacting with the Business Objects COM components asyncronously from the ASP pages with Microsoft's xmlhttp object. Report execution monitoring is enabled by displaying status information from the Business Objects Repository's Sybase ASE database. There is no
The application is backed by a COM object written in Visual Basic. That COM object does all of the interaction with the databases via ADO calls to stored procedures. All of the result sets are passed back to the display layer as XML documents. Those XML documents are then transformed and displayed with XSLT stylesheets. Client side sorting was enabled by XPath Queries that find and replace the order-by value for the stylesheet.
2002 and Beyond
These bullets are summaries of my projects over the last few years. I would be happy to provide you a more in-depth explaination of any of these projects, email me.
Web Application Development
Created a secure, encrypted training web portal to support the US Army's Army Battle Command Systems (ABCS) on-line training. The logon page authenticates users via the Army's Army Knowledge On-line LDAP directory. All courseware links are created dynamically. All courseware information is read via a SOAP web service named Catalog which was also developed as part of this project. The web service accepts authenticated requests, reads a MS-SQL database and returns the results. Search capabilities via Google's Search SOAP API and dynamic news headlines via an XML RSS news feed are also part of the application.
Implemented Inktomi's Media Publisher to support training demonstrations with video delivery. The software runs on four Sun Solaris boxes. It is implemented with an ATG/Dynamo application server, Netscape web server, an NFS file server and an Oracle database. We modified the underlying ATG/Dynamo application to incorporate our own look and feel.
Created a Mobile device aware web site and media server to deliver wireless, streaming video to Compaq iPaq handheld Windows CE computers. Utilized 802.11b networking to deliver the video streams. The site queries the requesting device to decide how to properly build the pages.
Implemented Docent's Learning Management System. This software provides a framework for describing courseware and serves as the data source for all courseware web sites. The software runs on IIS with its own proprietary ISAPI filters. We modified the Java/Docent server forms to provide a custom look, feel and behavior.
Content Delivery Networking
Designed and implemented a multi-state Inktomi Content Delivery Network (CDN). The CDN supports the distribution and caching of large multimedia files at the edges of a network. The design includes four edge servers, a network controller and a distribution server. The implementation supports both live and on-demand streaming. Live broadcasts are enabled by stream sharing, or multiplexing a single WAN transported stream into many local streams.
Created an internet connectable suit case demo server on a laptop. This Content Delivery Network edge server connected to our CDN via any available internet connection. It enabled rich media demonstrations at sometimes poorly connected sites by caching streams from the media servers and providing local proxied, multiplexed connections to those streams.
Streaming Media Production
Created a capture system for the Air Force's Warrior Net satellite television system. We connected the output from the satellite feed to an Optibase MPEG-2 video encoder. We used the Optibase software to schedule capture of large, high quality MPEG-2 video streams. We then used transcoding software from Discreet to transcode the MPEG-2 files into multiple files with different bitrates and formats. The results are then housed and served from streaming servers that can be connected to the Content Delivery Network as needed.
Implemented Windows Media streaming servers in support of HAZMAT training for the Iowa National Guard. The web site contains links to the required four hours of video. Captured and encoded the training videos from VHS tape. Encoded the video with variable bit rate encoding to support multiple connection speeds.
Created DVD's of NASA educational videos for the National Guard. Transcoded Beta Professional tapes onto digital video, then from digital video, via an Optibase MPEG-2 encoder, to MPEG-2. With DVD Studio Pro on a Mac, created hybrid DVD's with the MPEG video and a lower bitrate Windows media format file.
Installed and configured a Microsoft Server 2003 media server. This server technology provides instant on streams and content caching.
Network Engineering
Installed Groove Networks Relay and Management Servers. Groove is a peer to peer collaboration tool that utilizes server relays to support off-line collaboration. We purchased our own private relay server and the management server to that supports it. The Relay server utilizes a directly connected Microsoft SQL Server to house all of its relay data. Utilized Windows 2000 IPSec access lists and port filtering features to secure the public machines.
Designed, specified, and built HP rack mounted servers systems to support the Iowa Technology Center's training web applications. Installed four IIS web servers and a Microsoft SQL Server. Installed all software, configured the operating system, and performed the "lock down". All of these servers are publicly accessible and targeted by nature of their content. This infrastructure is used to deliver secure Army Battle Command Systems on-line training.