Résumé of Paul M. Parks

Software Developer


October 2009

(Also available in Microsoft Word format.)

Skills Summary

I have twenty years of professional software development experience, over half of which has been as a consultant. The consulting profession has offered many opportunities to change projects, rapidly come up to speed on new environments, and make contributions to the teams with which I've worked. I enjoy learning from the development teams with which I work and sharing my experience with my team members.

My strongest technical skill is C++ development on Windows. I have current professional experience with the .NET platform using both the C# and C++ programming languages. I am experienced in the development of mission-critical, multi-threaded application libraries and services, stand-alone graphical applications, utility applications, server-side applications and services, APIs, business logic, and web applications. I have extensive professional development experience with C++, C#, C, HTML, XML, XSLT, DHTML, and JavaScript.

Employment History

SYSGENS, Inc.

Duluth, Georgia

January 2003 - Present

Programmer/Analyst, contracted to NCR Corporation

  • Developed a COM library to allow NCR's General POS Solution for Restaurants to use the NCR PSX user-interface library as its new UI. The library wraps the flat C-style API of PSX to provide a more typical hierarchical object library to the POS. The library also provided the ability to script the POS via JavaScript or VBScript, and is callable from applications written in .NET.
  • Developed a Windows CE handheld application to allow remote ordering from handheld devices to NCR's General POS Solution. The application communicates wirelessly with the POS and displays a remoted UI using NCR's PSX user-interface library.
  • Designed and developed a new graphical user interface for ACS using NCR's PSX user-interface library. Wrote interface layer in C++ for Windows XP Embedded platform; integrated JavaScript into ACS user interface configuration using Windows Scripting Host; developed COM UI object model callable from JavaScript.
  • Updated and maintained integration of NCR's FastLane Self-Checkout system with ACS point-of-sale system, using C++, Managed C++, and C# on Windows platforms; provided consultation to FastLane developers on ACS technical issues.
  • Specified, designed, and developed integration of Matthias MoneyBoard coupon kiosks with the ACS Consumer Marketing solution. Development included components for .NET 1.1 written with Microsoft's Managed Extensions for C++, as well as native C++ and C components.
  • Designed and developed a kiosk application to allow customers of Smart & Final to obtain reprinted reseller receipts. Developed web UI kiosk application hosted in Internet Explorer 6 on NCR kiosk hardware; back-end application was hosted on IIS 6.0 and written in C# for the .NET 1.1 platform.
  • Developed a graphical tool targeted for retail application integrators to create and maintain screen layouts in ACS, written in Microsoft's Managed Extensions for C++ for the .NET 1.1 platform.
  • Developed a component to connect NCR consumer-marketing system to DB2 database for Sobeys. Developed for Windows 2003 Server in C++.
  • Integrated NCR ACS with IBM's retail self-checkout system for Whole Foods stores.
  • Performed programming support duties for NCR's ACS point-of-sale systems, both platform and application.
  • Ported C-language UNIX socket server application to C++ on Windows Server 2003. Multi-threaded winsock application accepted connections from multiple clients, used named pipes to route requests to other back-end processes, and returned information to clients.
  • Wrote C++ UNIX server application for NCR retail point-of-sale back-office server to process incoming rain check records and add them to POS rain check database. Ported same application to Win32-based ACS back office.

Vorsite Corporation

Seattle, Washington

March 2002 - December 2002

Application Developer

  • Developed a web-based administrative interface for an add-on to Microsoft's SharePoint Portal Services. The administrative application is written in ASP.NET with the C# language. Targets modern browsers including Internet Explorer 6, Mozilla 1.0, Netscape 7, and Opera 6. Connects to back-end data via a web service interface.
  • Developed and maintained an intranet quiz application, webQuest, for Microsoft's InfoWeb2 intranet site. Application tracks unique users by NT domain ID and keeps individual score. Provided secure administrative interface for quiz creation and editing, reporting, and maintenance. Server-side ASP application written in VBScript with SQL Server 2000 database back-end.
  • Developed an offline, CD-based version of the webQuest quiz application targeted for Internet Explorer 5.5 or higher. Quiz data is held in Access database opened from client-side browser code, and user progress is stored with the Internet Explorer UserData default DHTML behavior.
  • Designed and developed a Win32 graphical application in C++ to allow webQuest administrators to extract quiz information from a SQL Server database and place it into an Access database for the offline version of the webQuest quiz application.
  • Developed client-side browser controls, including a sortable table and an expandable folder control, targeting HTML 4 and DOM 2 browsers, for both ASP and ASP.NET applications. Client-side script written in JavaScript, server-side ASP in JavaScript, server-side ASP.NET in C#.
  • Investigated the conversion of web applications developed by Vorsite from ASP to ASP.NET. Served as liaison to Vorsite's client at Microsoft to coordinate conversion of applications.
  • Developed and maintained various ASP pages related to SharePoint Portal Server content used in the production of Microsoft's InfoWeb2 intranet site.
  • Designed and developed C++ Win32 graphical utilities related to various intranet development and maintenance projects.

Contract

  • Developed an NT service in C++ to periodically extract document information from Microsoft's SharePoint Portal Server document management system and populate an SQL Server database used in the production of content for Microsoft's InfoWeb2 intranet site.
  • Built a search engine for an offline, DVD-based version of Microsoft's InfoWeb2 intranet site. Project involved creating a tool in Visual C++ 7.0 (Visual Studio .NET) using ADO to populate an Access database of keywords associated with URLs, and creating DHTML pages with HTML 4 and JavaScript to allow users to search the database. Other responsibilities included writing the DVD's installation and auto-start program (autorun.exe) and several ad-hoc utilities related to creation of DVD content, and assisting with testing and debugging of DHTML content.

Intava, Inc.

Bellevue, Washington

January 2001 - November 2001

Senior Design Engineer

  • Designed, and implemented through alpha version, server products for the wireless Internet industry. Software entailed parsing WML, cHTML, XHTML, and HTML documents for embedded tags and processing instructions and executing code associated (via XML configuration) with the embedded tags/PIs. Examples of such processing include a simple server-side scripting engine using JavaScript connected to server-side Java objects, and database lookup and retrieval mechanisms associated with user sessions. Wrote modules in C and C++ to integrate server software with Apache version 1.3 and Microsoft Internet Information Server version 5.
  • Implemented XML-RPC specification in Java to support integration of Java server code with multiple web servers via an RPC interface.
  • Created implementation of Java Servlet 2.2 specification to support tag/PI parsing engine and XML-RPC server.
  • Created SAX parsers for tag/PI processing, document creation, XML-RPC request and response processing, and configuration file parsing.
  • Cooperated with other developers in the design, implementation, and testing of Intava Gravity 1.0, an environment for editing and publishing of wireless web applications.

Parks Computing Services, Inc.

Duluth, Georgia

January 2000 - December 2000

President

  • Created web host pages for Java applet-based system, Witness Systems' eQuality Release 6. Developed a Java servlet system to separate complex JavaScript validation logic from presentation markup, as well as to ease cross-browser web page development, via server-side processing of XHTML web pages containing custom design tags residing in a separate XML namespace. Browsers targeted were Netscape 4 and Internet Explorer 5.
  • Created Java servlet to generate report data selection forms for browser-based application, using XSL stylesheets to format output of XML data. Output of the report form was sent to Actuate reporting engine.

SYSGENS, Inc.

Duluth, Georgia

February 1994 - December 1999

Programmer/Analyst

  • Participated in analysis and design of an NCR consumer marketing system targeted for Windows NT 4.0/Windows CE.
  • Participated in analysis, design, and development of ActiveStore-compliant retail application components in Microsoft Visual C++ 5.0, using ATL 2.1. Components include ActiveX/COM objects as well as C++ class libraries on Windows NT 4.0.
  • Performed programming support duties for NCR's ACS point-of-sale systems (formerly called Unity), both platform and application.
  • Performed on-site development for a Netherlands-based grocery store chain, Albert Heijn, which uses NCR equipment and NCR's ACS software platform. Upgraded the Albert Heijn point-of-sale application to support NCR's ACS 1.1+ platform.
  • Added a new user interface to NCR's ACS (formerly called Unity) Checkout Application version 2.0 to support a new point-of-sale input device, the 7450 DynaKey. Participated in technical design, development, support, and training for the new interface through versions 2.0 and 2.1.

PC DOCS, Inc.

Tallahassee, Florida

January 1993 - February 1994

Developer I

  • Performed analysis and implementation of software designs for PC DOCS version 4.2 and 4.3. Developed applications with Microsoft C 7.0 using the C-Worthy user interface, Novell Btrieve, Netware C Interface, and the WordPerfect API. Performed maintenance on existing code base. Served as technical liaison to customer-support department and provided on-site technical support when necessary.

Support Specialist

  • Answered customer-support calls, developed utility programs in Microsoft C 7.0 for specific customer requests, solved product compatibility issues, and provided on-site customer support.

Executive Office of the Governor

Tallahassee, Florida

August 1988 - January 1993

Computer Programmer Analyst

  • Performed programming and analysis duties for Legislative Appropriations System/Planning and Budgeting Subsystem (LAS/PBS), wrote applications in MVS/ESA environment in Natural 2.1 with ADABAS database, maintained existing COBOL applications, and wrote and maintained related JCL.

Computer Programmer

  • Worked in the Personal Computer Support unit developing and maintaining PC-to-mainframe data transfer utilities in Microsoft Professional BASIC to create Lotus spreadsheets from mainframe-resident state budget data. Developed a character-based, windowed user interface for use in transfer utilities. Wrote related Windows applications with Microsoft Visual Basic 1.0 and Borland C 3.0. Maintained office PCs, and installed and evaluated PC software. Performed limited administration duties on a 25-node Microsoft LAN Manager network.

Senior Word Processing Systems Operator

  • Performed word processing and other related clerical duties, converted office documents from mainframe text editor format to WordPerfect 5.0/5.1 format, and worked with office spreadsheets in Microsoft Excel. Developed a time tracking system with Excel's macro language.

Other Personal Services

  • Performed word processing duties, answered telephones, and delivered correspondence.

Education

Tallahassee Community College

Tallahassee, Florida

1988-1990

Gadsden Christian Academy

Havana, Florida

1975-1988

Contact Information

paul@parkscomputing.com

http://www.parkscomputing.com/

Paul M. Parks
522 Club View Drive
Lawrenceville, GA 30043