Centrelink, Staff Assisted Claims
August, 2009 - Current
The Staff Assisted Claims application is used by Centrelink staff to create approximately 70,000 new claims for customers every month.
A large component of this application is running on seven Windows machines each providing CORBA accessible functions. I am required to re-platform this component onto the SOE midrange environment running on Solaris. A previous attempt resulted in CPU and IO bottlenecks on the production systems starving all applications of processing power. Therefore I am required to analyse the cause and implement a solution to allow the component to run efficiently on the SOE platform.
Responsibilities:

• Analyse the cause of poor performance
• Design and implement a solution
• Test with simulated real load
• Deploy the solution
• Decommission the old platform

Technical skills employed:

• Java/J2EE/EJB3
• CORBA
• JUnit
• IBM ClearCase
• IBM Websphere Application Server
• DB2/Hibernate
• Python

Centrelink, Local Activities Database
February, 2009 - June, 2009
The Local Activities Database lists organisations and their activities that Centrelink customers may participate in to meet their requirements to receive a payment.
I was required to re-write the application from a ColdFusion web application into a J2EE web application as ColdFusion was no longer supported. No documentation was available so I relied on the ColdFusion code as the specifications. In an effort to consolidate two similar applications, I was required to integrate the application with another previously developed application (ServiceFinder). I was therefore required to migrate the current data into the ServiceFinder schema. I also produced a technical specification for the application.
Responsibilities:

• Reverse engineer the ColdFusion code and produce a technical specification
• Implement the solution and integrate it into the ServiceFinder application
• Migrate the Local Activities Data into the ServiceFinder schema

Technical skills employed:

• Java/J2EE/EJB3
• JSF
• Spring Framework
• ColdFusion
• JUnit
• IBM ClearCase
• IBM Websphere Portal Server
• DB2/Hibernate
• Python

Department of Environment, Renewable Remote Power Generation Program
October, 2008 - February, 2009
The Renewable Remote Power Generation Program provides rebates for replacing diesel or mini-grid power sources with renewable power sources in remote areas.
I managed this project to develop a J2EE web application running on Oracle Containers for J2EE (OC4J) with an Oracle 10g back end. The application allowed all state departments to enter paper application forms into a central system in a consistent form for processing and reporting. I performed the business analysis, documented the requirements, designed the solution and managed five developers to implement the solution.
The project finished on budget and on time, with only small maintenance tasks needed since.
Responsibilities:

• Manage the project
• Analyse the business needs and define the system requirements
• Design the solution
• Implement the solution, developing and managing technical staff
• Migrate old data from ad hoc Excel spreadsheets and MS Access databases
• Deployment

Technical skills employed:

• Java/J2EE/EJB3
• JSF
• JAAS
• JUnit
• Subversion/TortoiseSVN
• OC4J
• JPQL/SQL
• Oracle 10g/Toplink
• Python
• MS Access and Excel

Department of Environment, National Solar Schools Program
May, 2008 - October, 2008 and July, 2009
The National Solar Schools Program provides grants for installing energy efficiency equipment in schools.
Under tight time pressure, I developed the requested MS Access application to track and approve grant applications and to manage the projects. The partially completed application went live in the first week of July soon after the start of the program on the 1st of July, 2008. From July through to October I continued to develop the application to handle the later parts of the program. I then returned in July, 2009 to convert the back end database from MS Access to Oracle, perform some maintenance tasks and add newly required functionality. A very satisfied client.
Responsibilities:

• Manage the project
• Gather and define system requirements
• Design the solution
• Implement the solution
• Integrate with the Grants Register website (Oracle 10g)
• Import and update GreenVouchers data (Excel spreadsheet), PvRP data (MS Access) and DEEWR data (Excel spreadsheet)
• Import claim form (Adobe SmartForms/xml/csv) and interim claim form (Excel spreadsheet)
• Work with other stakeholders for system integration: SRA IT, GV team, PvRP team, Environment & Business Information Strategies Section
• Facilitate integration into Clarity for when it comes online
• Convert the MS Access back end to Oracle 10g

Technical skills employed:

• MS Access Forms, Reports and SQL
• VBA
• Excel
• Oracle 10g
• Python

Department of Health and Aged Care, Project Management Information Systems
September, 2007 - December, 2007
The Program Management and Information System (PMIS) will track, manage and report on all of the Department's Funding Processes.
I designed and implemented web service and database persistence layers based on the provided systems requirements. I also developed JUnit test cases for all code written.
Responsibilities:

• Implement business logic for web services
• Implement JDBC code to retrieve, manage and persist collections and structures of beans
• Implement transaction management code for database retrieval and persistence operations
• Develop JUnit test cases for all code
• Design and document design for web service and persistence layers

Technical skills employed:

• Java/J2EE/EJB2.1
• Spring(WS)
• SOAP/XML-RPC
• JUnit
• Oracle 10g/JDBC
• IBM Rational Application Developer (RAD) v6.0 and v7.0
• IBM Websphere Application Server v6.0
• Subversion/TortoiseSVN

Department of Environment, National Pollutant Inventory
February, 2007 - August, 2007 and January, 2008 - April, 2008
The National Pollutant Inventory collects, reviews, analyses and publishes emissions data from industrial facilities around Australia.
The objective of the project was to re-write the previous system comprised of ad-hoc spreadsheets and distributed MS Access databases, which were manually converted into a common format and imported into an Oracle database. I played a key design and development role in this multi-million dollar project that is now live and tracking emissions from thousands of industrial facilities.
Responsibilities:

• Liaise with the client to gather requirements
• Design and development of database and business layers
• Manage the design and development of the web service layer
• Develop Test-NG test cases
• Perform user testing for the UI
• Deployment

Technical skills employed:

• Java/J2EE/EJB3
• JAX-WS/SOAP
• JAAS
• JUnit/Test-NG
• Python
• Subversion/TortoiseSVN
• JBoss4
• JPQL/SQL
• Oracle 10g/Hibernate
• JSF

Telstra
January, 2005 - February, 2007
In my two years at Telstra I took on a wide range of roles from developing J2EE intranet websites to system administration, database administration, hardware maintenance and Perl and Python scripting.
J2EE Application Development:

• Liaise with the client at all stages of the projects
• Discover requirements and design: Exchlist, Telways, Cabcount, AND, T3Extract, Data Quality Framework
• Develop the previously listed applications as well as: IDT Indials, Equipment Manager, Location Manager
• Provide support for the previously listed applications as well as: PSP, HiBIS, NCFA, NodeManager, Gfeapp, Sensismaps, DQDatamart, End Date Calculator, Power Line Overlay
• Provide technical support to NodeManager developers on NpaCommons and LDAP account-01 use
• Framework development of NpaCommons - database efficiency, single sign on and various other improvements
• Java/J2EE/EJB2.1
• Jakarta Struts/JSP
• HTML/CSS/Javascript
• Oracle 9i and 10g
• LDAP
• JUnit
• CVS

AND Extracts - Perl database application:

• Discover requirements, design and implement
• Perl/SQL/Oracle 10g

System Administration:

• Administer Dev, Test and two load balanced Prod Solaris 8 machines physically located in Sydney
• Support Sun One Application Server 7 on Dev, Test and Prod machines
• Administer various other machines running Solaris 9 and 10, Red Hat Linux 7.3, Fedora Core 4 and HPUX
• Install, configure and support Sun One Application Server 7, Sun Java System Application Server 8 EE, Oracle 9i and 10g and MQ Series on Dev and Sandbox machines
• Write scripts using pexpect to automate remote changing of expiring passwords for application robot accounts
• Physically installed two production machines for the MultiMan application into the data centre and installed Solaris 10 on them
• Install and configure OpenLDAP server and SolarisLDAP client to support redundant replicated telnet authentication for the MultiMan application
• Configure and monitor Amanda backups
• Configure NFS mounts
• Manage LDAP application robot accounts
• Configure DNS aliases for applications
• Design and configure parts of the Dev, Test and load-balanced Prod cluster network.
• Generate and install HTTPS certificates for applications
• Provide CVS support to developers
• Install, configure and support SVN for new projects

Hardware Maintenance:

• Upgrade hard drives and memory in old Red Hat Linux 7.3 machines

Database Administration:

• Install, configure and support Oracle 9i and 10g on Dev and Sandbox machines
• Configure tablespaces
• Create accounts
• Setup schemas and populate by replicating data from the QA environment

I run a very part-time business providing IT services to various clients.
Responsibilities:

• Find and engage clients
• Software engineering process, including:
  • Understanding the problem
  • Creation of requirements
  • Design
  • Development
  • Testing
  • Deployment/release
  • Maintenance and Support
• Research of required software/programming language knowledge
• Research of web hosting solutions
• Decision making
• Use effective communication skills
• Time management
• Management of the business side (eg. billing and tax)

'OnGuard' ACEPro - OnGuard Safety Training Pty Ltd
'OnGuard' ACEPro is currently purchased by and used in over 800 secondary schools around Australia to provide Occupational Health and Safety Training and Testing for students and teachers in Design and Technology classes.
In 2003, I began working with Bruce Lewis of OnGuard Safety Training to develop the current 'OnGuard' ACEPro product. It is an ASP website written in VBScript running on IIS5 and 6 under MS Windows 2000, XP and 2003. The backend database is an MS Access database. This configuration was distributed and deployed locally at all schools.
Over the last five years we have evolved the product through four major versions and tens of minor updates, often integrating new features as suggested by clients. The latest major version incorporated many new changes along with a change to the architecture. The 'OnGuard' ACEPro product is now hosted by OnGuard Safety Training on a dedicated Windows 2008 server accessible by all of the schools. I now perform system administration on this server for ITE Services as well as the standard development and support roles.
The range of OnGuard products have been so successful that OnGuard Safety Training are currently looking to expand into other OH&S markets and also overseas with considerable interest from the Chinese market.

www.buickcarclubaustralia.com - Buick Car Club of Australia (QLD)
In 2006, I developed and configured a Seagull Framework based website to allow content management of the website by members of the car club.
I also researched and organised a PHP and MySQL hosting solution that served the needs of the framework and the club.

Face2Face Zimbra - Peter Schwenke
In 2006, I developed a KickStart Linux CD to install a custom extension of Zimbra onto a blank PC. This involved first automating the installation of Fedora Core 4, then adding the custom Zimbra installation and finally configuring it as part of the KickStart installation.

As part of Google's two month long Summer Of Code program, I developed the Universal File System Interface (UFSI). UFSI is an open source python package to allow path and file like operations to be performed on various file systems or file system like objects through a standard interface.
At the close of the program I had implemented and tested a sizeable set of operations for native (Unix and Windows) file systems, HTTP and FTP protocols and Tar archives. The framework is fully extensible, providing a standard interface for further implementations, and automatically detecting and handling known file system types.

Casually employed when needed, often only one or two days at a time.

Responsibilities:

• Build new computer systems
• Upgrade computer systems
• Problem diagnosis and repair of computer systems, both hardware and software
• On-site installation of computer hardware and software
• Work as part of a team

Peer Assisted Study Scheme Leader for Software Development 2, a content heavy unit on Java ADTs and formal method specification.

Responsibilities:

• Prepare worksheet questions
• Facilitate classes and group participation of students (up to 40 students per class)
• Motivate students
• Answer questions by email
• Communicate effectively with students and other staff

Part time labourer for Rob Cook, renovating a house.

Responsibilities:

• Run learning activities and answer questions on university life
• Provide a guided tour of the university

Typing, formatting, scanning photos and arranging a book on the history of Trevan Ford from a handwritten draft.

I developed a GUI application in Java to allow the creation of a round robin draw for netball carnivals as well as installing a CD Rom drive.

Taught a class of 15 - 20 students from years 9-12 basic C++ skills after school.

Spent the last week of the school year doing various computer maintenance tasks, including diagnosing problems fixing known software bugs and upgrading certain software packages.

Tutoring students from the community in general computer skills, web usage, 3d modelling, web authoring and simple object oriented languages as part of a project organised by Chris Goh.