Paige Sullivan - "Professional Web & Software Developer, 12yr exp., ex-IBMer, RTP NC USA - Freelance Programmer / Developer, United States"

Since 1996 and at various times throughout, I have provided companies with services and products, either as a contract employee or under my own incorporation (Boolean Systems, Inc., Concert Telecommunications, Inc., and RTP Electronics, Inc.). During periods of full-time employment, I have either asked for my employer’s permission to perform outside work or not done so at all.

Over the last twelve years, I have provided a wide array of IT related products and services. I initially started by offering website design and development services. Responding to customer demand, I have also provided software and hardware installation (including custom-built workstations, rack-mount servers, Linux clusters, and high-performance eight-way workstations for digital imaging); software and hardware procurement (resale and licensing); network physical plant services; and most recently, voice-over-IP solutions including hardware, software, and access service (including domestic, toll-free, and international telephone numbers, calling plans, and custom VOIP-based PBX systems).

I have also offered my software development skills to my customers. Some of these custom applications have included the construction or extension of MRP/MRP-II, BI, financial management, and manufacturing simulation software packages. My clients have spanned a range of industries, including manufacturing, retail, financial services, entertainment and travel, telecommunications, and educational institutions.

In addition to personally servicing my clients, I have also been responsible for the operations and marketing aspects of my company. Large contracts have required me to use subcontractors, which required me to handle project management and accounting responsibilities.  I have also initiated and maintained relationships with a number of hardware manufacturers, software publishers, and wholesale distributors to meet my client’s needs as they arise.

Technologies include, but not limited to: .NET, C/C++, SQL, Windows server, Linux server, Apache HTTP, WFC, COM/DCOM, AJAX, PHP, ASP, Flash, and many others.

I joined IBM in September 2004 as a contract web developer for the BladeCenter Advanced Management Module and became the web UI architect in March 2008. The Advanced Management Module (AMM) is a systems management device that is based on the PowerPC processor and has limited resources. Every BladeCenter IBM sells is equipped with at least one AMM, giving my work high visibility. 

My first challenge was to determine how to rework the firmware on the device and move from a proprietary web server, based on the Nucleus OS, to the industry standard Apache HTTP server and PHP scripting language running on a scaled-down version of Linux, built by another group within IBM. Part of this design included the development of a proprietary extension to PHP that communicates over a UNIX socket to the firmware, to affect the AMM’s settings and the hardware installed in the chassis. (I only know of two books on writing PHP extensions, both being incomplete, so this was a huge challenge that I solved.) 

Because the web interface is one of the most used interfaces (aside to SNMP and CLI), I wrote a small startup script that would not only monitor the Apache process (a software watchdog) but also perform on-the-fly configuration of SSL and non-SSL listening ports (this included pulling the SSL certificate out of NVRAM, converting it to the format Apache needs, and reading the hostname from the certificate to eliminate startup errors – all due to the nature of the AMM firmware). 

Once the challenges of the runtime environment were solved, I moved to porting the existing web server and pages to the new Apache/PHP model. This required significant effort on the part of me and six other developers to complete, where I was the point contact for any major design or technical issues. Some of the challenges of implementing the frontend code was implementing a custom session handler, to allow users of the AMM to remain logged in “forever”, yet allowing on a set number of logins on the entire system. This was achieved with a careful balance of AJAX-based browser heartbeats, session tracking, last page access tracking, and a custom script running in the background to detect and release abandoned sessions. I was also the original developer and designer of a web-based wizard interface for basic configuration of a new AMM and BladeCenter chassis, targeted primarily towards the SMB market.

My final project as architect was to design and start to prototype a new web interface, to level the playing field with HP, Intel, Sun, and Dell. Part of this included breaking up web functionality into independent portlets that are self-contained and can be easily moved from one page to another, including dynamic placement on the page. One major fundamental of the portlet concept was abstracting the frontend markup from the portlet developers. A series of classes, representing UI elements in HTML was constructed. With an additional two lines of code, these classes could be written to generate any other markup language – our plans included support of XHTML mobile profile, WAP, SOAP, and generic XML – all without having to recode the portlet code. Frequently used functionality, such as form postbacks, table generation, and the use of the Dojo toolkit were either abstracted or handled automatically by the portlet implementation.   At the time of my departure, the portlet objects and structure was fully tested and documented. 

Additionally, during my tenure, I worked with teams across IBM on projects affecting the web user interface, including an OEM toolkit for customizing the web interface and the ability to manage multiple AMMs and BladeCenter chassis from a single AMM. From 2006-2007, I was a customer advocate for and assisted with technical issues in BladeCenter deployment for the William and Ida Friday Institute for Educational Innovation at North Carolina State University.

Technologies and languages utilized include (but not limited to): C, PHP, CSS, JavaScript, XHTML, Dojo, Apache HTTP Server, Embedded Linux, gdb, gcc and cross-compiling.

Tools used during development include Eclipse, Macromedia Dreamweaver, Visual SlickEdit, and Zend Studio for Eclipse..