My core competency is creating and implementing custom business software solutions with Microsoft Visual Basic and SQL Server. I am capable in the complete range of the development process from the very start of the planning phase, to coding, to troubleshooting, testing and deploying the solution.

It is important not to underestimate the importance of proper planning. While it can be tempting to jump right in and start coding and creating data structures, improper planning frequently means redoing work one or more times and discarding the previous work. I feel strongly that in an ideal software development project, forty to sixty percent of the work is best expended on sensible and effective planning of the solution. Doing things correctly the first time as much as is reasonably possible normally translates into a better return on investment for the project. Below is a list of some sample tasks I am capable of with regard to planning software solutions.

• Create the physical design for the solution. Create specifications for auditing and logging, error handling, physical integration, globalization, data storage, state management, and security.
  
  
• Create the logical design for the solution. Develop the user interface, services and components, state management, synchronous and asynchronous architectures. Include constraints in the logical design to support business rules.
  
  
• Identify business requirements, internal and external dependencies, operational constraints, business processes, organizational structures, personnel and training needs, and business scope with regard to the creation of the software solution.
  
  
• Analyze and refine the scope of the solution project and identify key project risks.
  
  
• Analyze the business and technical feasibility of potential solutions while considering available organizational skills and resources.
  
  
• Establish standards to apply to development documentation, coding, code review, user interface, and testing. Establish quality and performance metrics to evaluate project control, organizational performance, and return on investment.
  
  
• Design parameters for data validation constraints and processes with regard to business rules.
  
  
• Create a support plan, test plan, and user education plan.
  
  
• Create an operations strategy for data archiving, data purging, data privacy, and upgrades.
  
  
• Create a deployment, security, data migration strategy.
  
  
• Gather and analyze considerations for current and projected hardware, software, network infrastructure to create integration requirements and understand the impact of potential solutions on the IT environment.
  
  
• Transform requirements into functional specifications. Considerations include performance, maintainability, extensibility, scalability, availability, deployability, security and accessibility.
  
  

Below is a list of some sample tasks I am capable of with regard to creating, testing, maintaining and deploying software solutions.

• Build Windows-based applications and components
  
  
• Build web-based applications and services.
  
  
• Design and build the presentation layer, including the user interface, navigation options, accessibility features, and online user assistance. Implement globalization, culture-specific formatting, and localizability for the UI as necessary.
  
  
• Design and implement methods to validate user input.
  
  
• Design and create error handling strategies.
  
  
• Design and configure security in applications and components.
  
  
• Access and manipulate data from a Microsoft SQL Server database and other data stores.
  
  
• Trace data flow and application events.
  
  
• Code review and analysis. Diagnose, debug, rework and resolve issues in components and applications.
  
  
• Design and implement test plans and strategies.
  
  
• Optimize the performance of components and applications.
  
  
• Create setup programs for manual installation and create packages for automated installation by group policy objects.
  
  

Contact me with the details of your specific situation and goals.

I am proficient in a wide range of responsibilities with Microsoft SQL Server from designing, building, loading, testing, optimizing and troubleshooting databases and data warehouses. Installation considerations ought to go beyond just whether to perform a clean install, upgrade or migrate. Other consideration such as clustering and other resource requirements, default collation, file locations, growth strategy, and service accounts must be taken into account. Resolving database issues also requires detailed attention. Below is a list of some sample tasks I am capable of with regard to SQL.

• Design and build multiple database systems for specific functions such as Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) and Online Transaction Processing (OLTP).
  
  
• Design and create the logical data model.
  
  
• Design and define entities. Considerations include entity composition, normalization and constraints.
  
  
• Design and build parameters for data validation constraints and processes with regard to business rules.
  
  
• Design and enforce attribute domain integrity.
  
  
• Implement, troubleshoot and optimize database transactions to ensure data consistency and recoverability.
  
  
• Manage appropriate locking strategies to ensure data integrity.
  
  
• Design and implement indexing strategies.
  
  
• Design and build XML schema structures.
  
  
• Retrieve, filter, group, summarize and modify data by using Transact-SQL.
  
  
• Manage data manipulation by using stored procedures, transactions, triggers, user-defined functions and views.
  
  
• Troubleshoot and optimize programming objects.
  
  
• Optimize overall database performance.
  
  
• Design, implement and enforce security.
  
  
• Administrative tasks like backup and restore strategies and system monitoring.
  
  
• Extracting and transforming data
  
  
• Develop and manage DTS packages.
  
  
• Configure, maintain, and troubleshoot replication services.
  
  
• Create, manage, and troubleshoot SQL Server Agent jobs.
  
  
• Monitor and report on hardware resource usage.
  
  
• Resolve system bottlenecks.
  
  
• Design and build data warehouses.
  
  
• Program and enforce business logic by managing data manipulation, controlling data access, and implement error handling.
  
  

Contact me with the details of your specific situation and goals.

Organizations need to transform and move their data for a multitude of reasons including; consolidation, archiving, testing, upgrading, business partner data exchange and specific function analysis. Many organizations maintain substantial amounts of data but are unable to utilize the data in ways they would like as a result of its current format, location or other concerns. For example, sometimes organizations would like to utilize historical data to generate special reports or forecasting, but are unable to impose the intense load of the queries on the database in the production environment. Sometimes data is scattered throughout an organization and there is a need to merge the multiple data sources. A variety of options exist for organizations to maximize the benefit of their data and technology investments. My skill with Visual Basic and SQL allow me the opportunity to provide solutions where transforming and moving data is required.

Contact me with the details of your specific situation and goals. Please let me know what kind of shape the data is in now (if known), what you want to do with it and why you want to do it.

Security is often an afterthought in the development process or it is regarded as an administrative task and not a developmental task. Many times, security is not a priority in custom software development. Frequently custom development focuses on functionality and ignores security or, security issues are discovered long after the project was completed. Changes in the operating system environment can cause flaws to surface that went previously unnoticed. Sometimes security testing has never been preformed on custom applications so organizations have no way of knowing if an application is secure or adheres to specifications of a security policy. In other cases, information security audits cast light onto flaws or addresses issues relating to the impact that business processes can have on security. While there are currently a number of options that administrators can implement to achieve security goals, many times these options fall short of what is required or desired by an organization. In response to these concerns I am capable of designing and configuring security in many applications and components. In addition, I am capable of designing, implementing and troubleshooting security in Microsoft SQL Server.

Contact me with the details of your specific situation and goals.

I am capable of providing live testing options and documentation for software and database development projects. Many times, a fresh perspective and distance from the project can be an advantage when testing or creating documentation. Familiarity with the software and the creation process sometimes leads to oversights in testing and documentation. As an individual with a strong background in programming, I can provide assistance with functional and compatibility testing as well as documentation.

Functional testing is used to verify that software meets the functional specification or requirements set out in the planning phase. Functionality testing is also used to reveal issues concerning the software’s functionality and conformance to intended and/or documented behavior.

Compatibility testing is available on Intel Pentium 2/3/4 based computers utilizing: Windows XP Pro / Home, Windows 2000 Professional, Windows 2000 Server, Windows NT 4 Server / Workstation, Windows 98 and Windows 95.

I am also capable of software documentation assistance including user manuals, help file systems, educational materials, and other end user documentation.

Contact me with the details of your specific situation and goals.