Open Systems Consulting

Assistance in deploying open systems technology in business environments. Making sense of POSIX, X/Open, COSE (Spec 1170), DCE, CORBA. Advice on security, enterprise architecture and interoperability. Solid skills in implementing UNIX-based applications or in maintaining/upgrading existing software products.

Porting applications between UNIX, Win/NT and/or MacOS. Special skill in finding and fixing defects in large complex software products. Significant experience developing compilers, run-time environments, debuggers and language tools in a UNIX environment.

Working knowledge of Java technology, including JVM, JIT, and vendor strategies.

Open systems education and course development. Course development and delivery for programming languages, software development practices, client-server computing, and operating-system internals.

Training, architectural advice and conversion assistance to meet the needs of European and Asian software markets. Experienced in requirements, implementation techniques, and standards (XPG4, POSIX 1003.2. Experience delivering applications supporting single byte, SJIS, and 4-byte EUC.

Technology appraisal and evaluation for due-diligence investor research.

Technologies

  • UNIX [User-space, POSIX 1003.1, 1003.2, XPG4, Spec1170]
  • Compilers, Runtime Libraries
  • Distributed Computing

    • Systems:

    Alpha OSF/1 HP/UX Domain/OS (Apollo)
    IBM AIX SunOS 4.x Solaris 5.x
    VAX/VMS MacOS System 8 Windows/NT

    Languages:

    C Perl Ada FORTRAN Modula-2
    C++ shell (ksh,bash,csh) LISP APL Basic
    PL/1 Assembler Bliss  Pascal Spitbol
     AppleScript HTML  Java    

    Tools:

     ClearCase / ClearGuide OSF ODE (distributed rcs) lex/yacc
    FSF GNU technologies Metrowerks C/C++ Microsoft Visual C
     Purify  CVS  

    Hardware:

     Intel x86 Power PC MIPS R3000
     ADI 2106x DSP Motorola 68k National 32k
     SPARC DEC Alpha VAX11
     PDP-11 PDP-10 PDP-8

    Typical Assignments/Experience

    Real-Time OS Vendor

    Evaluate Java technology and create a strategy aligned with vendor's strengths. Write recommendation white paper and outline steps to deploy appropriate Java server product, including required work to leverage operating system features.

    Digital Video Tools - Consultant

    Deliver enhancements to text/graphics support for digital video editor on Macintosh. Improved user-interface, runtime behavior, added new features, fixed support for right-to-left languages like Hebrew. Some architectural cleanups to large (>>1M LOC) C++ application. Implemented work-arounds for Mac limitations on pixmaps to allow rendering complex video titles (rolls and crawls) with shading and shadows.
     
    Port application to NT 4.0 using combination of Altura (Mac emulation) and native NT code. Debugged event-loop problems, font differences, keyboard mapping and internationalization support.Detect and correct byte-order issues to allow sharing data files between PowerPC (big-endian) and Intel (little-endian) hosted applications.

    Software Consulting / Training Company -Consultant/Trainer

    Teach Mach Microkernel Programmer's Workshop (5 day lecture/lab). Course includes architecture, API's, design goals.

    Compiler Vendor, Burlington, MA. - Consultant

    Porting compiler from MIPS Ultrix to OSF/1 Alpha. Evaluate language extensions from other vendors and implement select features in compiler and in runtime support. Coding in C, PL/I and PERL.

    Open Software Foundation, Cambridge MA - Consultant

    Implement POSIX 1003.2 extensions to UNIX commands. Fix defects in awk, find, grep. Added XPG4.2 sockets libraries, upgraded UNIX daemons, et al. Coding in C, ksh, lex and yacc.

    Open Environment Corp., Cambridge, MA - Vice-President of Technology

    Managed delivery of middleware product on OS/2, Windows, MAC, and 6 UNIX platforms. Products used Berkeley socket() or WinSock API to implement lightweight DCE-like RPC and naming services, connecting clients in C, Powerbuilder, Smalltalk, Hypercard, Visual Basic and servers in C, COBOL, Perl, et al. Lectured on product evolution to customer training classes

    Open Software Foundation, Cambridge, MA

    Director - Cross Technology Integration - Coordinate OSF technologies to ensure consistency, quality, and common technical strategy. Balance engineering efforts in internationalization, performance, security, system and application management.
    Consulting Engineer - OSF/1 User Space Architect - Developed extensible object-oriented Internationalization for OSF/1. Design supports both single- and multibyte code-sets and over 20 national locales. Performance tuned implementation. Significant activities in turning standards into implementations; especially POSIX 1003.2 and XPG/4. Analyze requirements and develop plans for future releases of OSF technology.

    Manager - Utilities and Languages     - Hands-on manager for project planning, tracking, developing strategy, design and implementation of user-space software, including UNIX commands, libraries, system administration and compilers. Engineered portable code for mathematical library routines. Co-developer of one-day seminar ["OSF/1 Road Show"]. Presented to large audiences in US and Europe. Material incorporated into OSF/1 Internals and Porting To OSF/1 courses.

    Digital Equipment Corp., Nashua, NH - Principal Engineer

    Computer Special Systems - Device drivers for RSX-11M, TOPS-10 and RTS-8; high-speed shared-memory multiprocessor ; designed and implemented high performance ISAM file system on PDP-11.

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