D'Arcy J.M. Cain

Projects

Designed and implemented a national IP network including DNS, billing, firewalling, internal network design and management.

Set up a major gift certificate system for Givex Corporation. This involved selecting and setting up systems to manage the service, writing or directing the writing of all of the programs and maintaining and enhancing the system. This system is used by major retail organizations such as Ikea Canada, Kelseys Canada, Kelseys US, Cadillac Fairview and many others.

Set up a stock trading system. This involved setting up a system to capture stock market quotes from a satelite feed, store selected items and make them available to programs for further evaluation. To do this I wrote a number of tools which are designed to be used in shell scripts in various combinations. This includes tools to convert data from other sources (Tick Data, Technical Tools, etc.) for historical use, data printing programs, programs to generate data bars of various sizes and subroutines for reading input data in a standard way. I Also wrote a stock analysis program based on a client's specifications which uses the data collected in the above mentioned system. The results of the analysis program were forwarded to the client in Britain each night.

An accounting package in Progress RDBMS. This included A/R, A/P, G/L and a custom order entry and invoicing module to meet a clients very specific requirements. At the same time I built tools which allow me to quickly deliver a semi-custom accounting application by setting up a few details in a script file. The application allows the client to print bar coded tickets designed to their client's specifications by modifying simple shell scripts. The client has made special note of the user interface of the system which is user friendly while not being overly restrictive.

A number of programs to generate tickets on special bar code printers including one for Grand & Toy which is used in their stores to access their data base and generate price tickets and shelf labels.

Design of a task router for a VAX system allowing job flow to be routed over a DECnet link. Each job is composed of various tasks and the tasks are handled by different machines. A single job could use the resources of VAX machines, MS-DOS computers, MacIntoshes and any other system that can be connected to the DECnet link. I designed the specifications for the router which was implemented by a VAX knowledgeable programmer. I also wrote a number of task handlers to work with this system as well as an assembler interface to Ryan-MacFarland COBOL to communicate with the task router over the DECnet link. Recently I re-implemented the task router on a Unix system but have not installed or extensively tested it yet.

Design and implementation of a communications system for MS-DOS systems. This project involved three basic parts. The first was a TSR which intercepted all screen and keyboard access at the BIOS level and mirrored it to the serial port. This included translating all screen calls to ANSI escape sequences and checking for loss of carrier. This was an interrupt driven system in 8086 assembler. The second part was a control program which answered the phone and logged users in. The third part consisted of various programs to interface with the system although ordinary programs could also be used.

Wrote a Windows DLL to control a Sony Betacam recorder. This included writing a small macro language which allowed scripts to be used to control the device.

A Halo based drawing package. This was used for making large posters. Included were font drawing and font editing functions.

Other projects include converting graphics files from one format to another, menu systems, a mouse interface, a character based window system, special printer controllers and a Canadian mortgage program.