Bank of America: Senior Topologist
I joined the WebSphere support group to provide Java expertise, especially in optimization and design.  One of my roles is to develop best practices for the Bank of America Java Center for Excellence. I am focused on developing tools and techniques for enterprise developers deploying java applications to WebSphere on all platforms, including OS/390, AIX, OS/400, Windows, and Solaris.  This includes developing web services capabilities on the platform.  I've used both the Apache SOAP project and the IBM Web Services Toolkit to build web services, web services clients using WSDL and registering the services in the IBM UDDI Preview edition.  I've also used the new WSAD features to create and publish web services.

In support of my nationwide team I have developed a chat system using the Lotus Sametime Java libraries, constructed a best practices web site, and developed technical exercises for team members.  I have written a JMS implementation for MQ on OS/390 to cover a short term gap in IBM’s product offerings, and participated in an evaluation of the impact of WLM on WebSphere. 

I'm a member of the web services security working group and am leading a bank-wide web services roundtable.  I'm also leading a small interdepartmental team responsible for opening up interoperability technologies here at the bank.  We're primarily investigating the use of web services to leverage existing assets and enable new cross-application relationships.  We're also tasked with developing a component reuse model and a hosting model for web services.

I have responsibility for defining the gold standard for WebSphere deployment corporate-wide.  I am the technical lead for the organization’s WebSphere 5 beta program.  We have been testing WebSphere 5 including network deployment and WSAD 5.  I prepared an evaluation for IBM and am in the process of expanding the write-up for submission to a trade publication. 

I make topology recommendations in the areas of clustering, failover, and scalability.  When necessary, I provide trouble-shooting and performance tuning.  I've headed up a "swat team" to resolve production problems with highly-visible applications such as CRM.  Recent tools I’ve used include Introscope, JProbe, and IBM thread analyzer.  A recent success includes a highly available configuration of DB2 across AIX and OS/390.

Bank of America: Senior Software Engineer / Technical Lead
I drove the transition from C++ to Java development for our global bank directory and payment router products.  I developed the first two iterations of the billing analysis system for the Bank of America Direct product and participated in the development of the second generation java bank directory maintenance product and payment message engine.  I led a small team whose development is now entirely in Java against JDBC (to Oracle), CORBA and JMS (to MQ).  We made continual improvements in our development processes and were able to produce UML analysis and design documentation with Together, perform testing with jTest and build JUnit tests in an attempt to formalize our ongoing  refactoring efforts.

I also investigated software and determined what tools were appropriate for our development environment. I developed relationships with software vendors and made recommendations for enhancements to their products. On occasion I wrote a software tool when none was available, for example, a bridge between jTest and Visual J++.

I established a cross-platform development environment on a small NT network using Visual C++, SQL-server and IIS to model the production environment. Code was developed and tested on NT before deployment on UNIX. I installed Visual SourceSafe for revision control and trained the other developers on this product.

Our small token ring subnet was connected to a token ring network and to an Ethernet segment. I managed the DHCP, WINS, web proxy and DNS requirements, then mentored another team member to take over the group's networking requirements.

In Boston I worked with Fidelity’s WebCore team to develop a secure platform to enable brokerage houses to use the Internet to access trading and account information at Fidelity. My first project was to build a Netscape web server extension DLL using the NSAPI specification. This extension was developed on NT but targeted for installation on Unix servers. The code acted as a secure relay from the Internet through the firewall to the server on the Fidelity trusted network. My second project was to build multi-threaded logging capabilities into the back-end server to improve performance. I also built test scripts to verify system capacity and uncover bugs.

During the course of my work at Fidelity I used Visual C++ on NT and GNU C++ on Solaris Unix. I wrote scripts in PERL for NT and built programs in C++ and PERL to implement HTTP communications with servers and clients. I worked with Netscape’s 128 bit security release and Verisign. And I worked with Front Page and raw HTML to produce web pages as part of configuration and testing.

At home I’ve set up several Linux systems supporting a home network and the siwko.org Internet domain.  I use zone edit to manage my DNS and web forwarding allows me to host www.siwko.org without exposing my network directly to common Internet attacks.  In the course of my tinkering I’ve set up a local caching DNS, Apache 1 & 2, Tomcat 4, WebSphere 4 and 5, Eclipse, WSWB, vncservers, sshd, sendmail (with SpamCop and ORDB), SquirrelMail, and several cron based java jobs to monitor the temperature in my house and at a local weather station.  I keep the results in a MySQL database and publish them to JPG images on my Internet web site using Java.  I’m also working on a JSP-driven task management database for our web site, and I’m investigating Java tools for Palm development in a wireless device.

I have over 1,200 photographs digitized in an archive organized by a Java program using the Java Advanced Imaging API.  My hope is to implement a secure image archive for family access to photos over the internet and on home produced CD-ROMs.

I’m coaching a youth soccer league and participate in the Richmond Catholic Committee on Scouting.

Java API's:
JDBC, Servlet, JAI, KVM (on Palm-OS), javacomm, doclet (javadoc), JMS

Failover Technology::
BigIP, Edge Server, VIPA, WLM