My role as the main programmer is to guide our team in the development of the applications requested by management; apply and teach them programming concepts; and take responsibility in the deployment and maintenance of terminals worldwide.
With a limited number of verbs and options, the language is intended to create programs fast, with a minimum knowledge of programming.
My role as the main programmer is to guide our team in the development of the applications requested by management; apply and teach them programming concepts; and take responsibility in the deployment and maintenance of terminals worldwide.
So far we have two complete applications; one in alpha development; and another in the concept stage. The first complete application is running in about 50 in-house terminals and 50 overseas PCs to interface our AS400 main computer with our telephone hotel reservationists. This application updates and access a local MSAccess Database using SQL statements, to minimize the hits to our host.
Maintaining overseas terminals in good running conditions (with no technically oriented personnel) has been accomplished with the activation of small BATCH programs -also called .BAT routines- targeted to all, or by terminal ID; accessing remote files for troubleshooting or to improve performance is my key to success.
Short Visual Basic programs were made to obtain database or application updates.
The second complete application is running in five automated terminals that update four external databases with the updates that our main database receives. Those databases contains the current rates needed by travel agencies to book accommodations.
Since the original code was processing at almost 2 minutes per record; and the code I wrote for the fourth system was taking less than 20 seconds per record; I had to rewrite most of the original code to improve their speed and reliability.
The application we are currently developing will automatically update the description of the 600+ hotels we represent worldwide. while we write more code and reach an agreement with the heads of other departments; in our alpha stage we are using live data with operator input in manual mode; later, this application will also be automated.
The application in the concept stage keeps me testing alternate products to work with the Internet; along with our network administrator. At the same time, I am creating an additional code layer, so our first application can work with Windows 95.
Other functions that take a few moments every day are:
* Troubleshooting upgrades of our connectivity products;
* Testing required software to reject or recommend;
* Reporting bugs or requesting enhancements to our QIK language provider;
* Idendifying problems found in terminals in-house or overseas;
* Reporting daily work done into a share drive file.