Well, as I now have an account it seems that this is an appropriate time to introduce myself to you all.
I am a California native, born and raised just outside of Los Angeles. When I started college I was Physics major, but when I took my first class in computers I was hooked. I received a Bachelor of Science in Physics and Computer Science from California State University Northridge in 1977. A few years later I went back to school and earned an MBA.
While I was in college I got a job working for Litton Industries in their computer center operating IBM mainframes. After my graduation I was promoted to be a CICS systems programmer (hopefully, more than a few of you know what CICS is). A few years later, in 1984, I left to join Candle Corp. (recently purchased by IBM).
Candle’s bread and butter product was called Omegamon, which monitored the performance of the Operating Systems that ran on IBM's mainframes. Later the product line was expanded to monitor distributed systems. The piece of the puzzle I worked on was the central server that performed all the data gathering. Clients would query it using SQL. The engine would convert the queries into requests for real-time data and would either collect it or communicate with remote agents to do so. This was all written in C and C++ and ran on MVS (a.k.a. OS/390 and z/OS), Windows NT, OS/400, AIX, HP/UX, Solaris and eventually Linux. One of my primary tasks was writing and supporting the portability layer that made it possible for this code to run on all these disparate platforms. In addition, I became heavily involved in internationalizing the product and wrote and maintained the code that did that.
In 2001, after 17 years at Candle, I was laid off along with a lot of other talented people. In short order I landed a job with Digital Insight in their architecture group. Digital Insight is an ASP that provides internet home banking services for over 1600 financial institutions. I specifically took the job because it allowed me to transition from C/C++ to Java. I had taken a single class in it while at Candle and loved the language.
Working for an ASP has provided a different perspective on building applications. Our primary concern is always around making the product as easily customizable as possible, in addition to the “normal” concerns about performance, ease of maintenance, etc. In our investigations we looked at various alternatives but kept coming back to Cocoon. As time has gone by I have come to appreciate the extraordinary work you all have done. It is truly amazing.
Lately, I have gotten involved with the Cocoon Portal. We are using it in ways that were probably never thought of by its authors, but its architecture makes it an ideal framework for many things we want to do.
As for what I do when I am not sitting in front of a computer, I spend most of my free time with my wife. We like to watch the home improvement shows on TV and always seem to have some project going on in our house. We are also traveling more these days. My daughter is currently attending school in Utah, my stepdaughter is in college in Seattle, Washington, and our grandchildren live with their mother in Idaho. Their father, my stepson, is currently in the military and is stationed in Germany. So far we haven’t made it out to see him – it is a little far for a weekend trip.
Once again I’ll mention that I am located in California, which seems to be quite a few time zones away from most of you.
I am truly looking forward to working with all of you. Hopefully my many years of product development will be of benefit to the community.
Thank you, very interesting reading!
BTW, could you tell about how you use the Cocoon Portal? ("... in ways that were probably never thought of by its authors ..." makes me curious ;-)
-- Reinhard
