James Kelly

Buzzy Planet, Inc. needed to be able to quickly create commercial web sites that were easy to update and maintain. The goals to be accomplished were as follows:

• Easy to implement
• Easy to update
• Be XHTML standards compliant
• Compatible with modern browsers
• Allow different systems to be added for different needs
  • Shopping Cart
  • Search
  • Feed Management
  • Search Optimization Features
  • Visitor Tracking
• Easy to grow and expand as needs arose
• Secure

In order to meet all these needs, I looked to the open source community for a base on which to expand. WordPress, a blogging platform, seemed to be the best pick.

WordPress is a full-featured content management system built with PHP and is easily extended in any way imaginable through an extremely flexible plug in and theme system.

One new goal became very apparent once it was decided to go with this approach, any expandability had to occur with absolutely no core code changes. This way all existing sites could be upgraded by simply copying over the new code base with no, or minimal, impact to the sites.

The development for the ongoing needs of this system is fairly easy and straightforward. Whenever new functionality is needed a new plug in or widget (another Word Press system) is created, and most of the time it’s as simple as activating the plug in and configuring some options to get the desired result.

One of the more complex systems was a shopping cart with shipping systems, coupon management, related content, related products, affiliate program and other typical modern commerce concerns. It also needed to be integrated with MS SQL server, which added a bit of challenge since WordPress only uses MYSQL.

Rather than break the cardinal rule of no core code modifications, I chose to operate both MYSQL and MS SQL. This meant that I needed to make certain that a few elements synchronized back and forth between the two databases. I succeeded and I didn’t modify any core code, nor did I modify the structure of the MYSQL database in any way. A future system will likely be created so that everything is MYSQL based.

The way the system goes together, only a few main components of the shopping cart need to be enabled on any site, and then different capabilities can be added by activating plug-ins that depend on the core plug-ins.

The last goal to be met was non-critical customer data needed to remain online to allow customers to view historical information and other proprietary needs I can’t discuss here. Finally, all critical customer data had to be migrated off the Internet so that there was no possibility of a breach due to any kind of security hole.

I can tell you that those goals too were met, but I am bound to not reveal the specifics or the methods used.

Musicians Registry is an amateur musician registration web site where musicians, small labels, and others in the music industry can post information about bands and events.

This site was originally developed using Cold Fusion and Access as the back end database. However, it was redeveloped using PHP and MS SQL Server.

From what I understand the current owners are working to bring the site up to date and make it standards compliant, which unfortunately it is currently not. I was responsible only for building the back end so that data could be entered and retrieved.

Regardless, this is yet another successful project which is still alive and doing well today. Feel free to visit Musicians Registry and take a look around.

Energy Northwest was responsible for decommissioning a nuclear facility in Western Washington with a skeleton crew of seven people. There was no way that these seven people were going to be able to create the necessary bid package, adhere to all the legal specifications, manage contractor bids, distribute the bidding packages to the bidders, quickly respond to changes in the package, and notify all the bidders of the change orders.

This is where MEIER Enterprises was probably one of the only companies around that could have handled this request completely in-house. As an engineering company we were able to create all the drawings and specifications needed. Next we developed an online bidding application where registration was required. We also handled phone requests for those companies without Internet access as the legal regulations required.

As a result, not only was Energy Northwest able to achieve its goals, they did so (with our help) and met all legal obligations. The online system took bids, distributed drawings and documents, and handled all the day-to-day needs of the contractors in a secure and easy to use system.

This system used Internet Explorer with the free DWF format viewer to view AutoCAD drawings, adobe PDF to accurately display documents/drawings for those who were unable or unwilling to install the IE plug in, compatible HTML/JavaScript, Cold Fusion, and MS SQL Server.

Kid Compass is a web-based system used by teachers to manage students, their grades, personnel, and many other aspects of student management by teachers and teacher management by administrators.

This system was created by a local business and, prior to our involvement, was an MS Access application. This system was, and is, used by many teachers in many schools mostly across Washington State.

The goal of this project was to port the existing Access application to the web so that data, maintenance, and support could be centralized.

The system was successfully ported to the web and to my knowledge is still being used today.

The technology used to create this system was kept fairly simple for maximum compatibility. The only technology used was HTML, JavaScript, Cold Fusion, with MS SQL Server as the DBMS.

Learning to Write is a web based instructional system allowing students to learn the finer points of writing skills either at their own pace or in a structured learning environment.

Learning to Write is also a teacher management system allowing instructors to guide students toward strategic goals with a built in WYSIWYG essay writer with customizable markups so that teachers can electronically grade essays within the system.

LTW also allows for teacher student collaboration with a built in messaging system. This is a truly robust and useable system that has been in production since around 2002.

I oversaw the development of this project as well as contributing my expertise to its construction. It is very much still in use today and a proud talking piece of my former employer, MEIER Enterprises, Inc.

Learningtowrite.net is the application portion of the system, while learningtowrite.com is the marketing and sign up portion of the system.

The systems have been used with a great deal of success with students ranging from middle school level through college level. Home-schooled students have also used and benefited from this system.

A forward thinking businessman from the East coast commissioned Talk of the Trade. His vision was of a web site where people could come and see professional stock traders exercising the past time of day trading in real time.

There was to be a twist; a panel of four “professionals” would be executing trades during daily broadcasts, and a trained chimpanzee would also be making trades with a special control panel.

The goal was to see if the strategies used by the real people would be able to beat a trained chimp.

At the time, audio and video streaming was in its infancy. Couple that with much smaller bandwidth and lots of browser compatibility considerations and you ended up with a real challenge.

My team and I were able to overcome all these challenges as elegantly as could be expected considering the technology available at the time. The project was a success but ironically, the funding agent ran dry due to a decline in the stock market. In short, this was when the “bubble burst”.

In 1997 I was the lead developer of a system originally created for the Department of Energy regarding the best basis inventory of nuclear waste contained in large tanks buried in the ground.

The tanks ranged in size between several hundred thousand gallons to 1 million gallons. Many of the tanks contained large quantities of radioactive waste that had to be constantly monitored due to chemical reactions causing heat in excess of 300 degrees Fahrenheit.

This constant heating and cooling ultimately caused the welds in some of the tanks to fail, resulting in ground, and potentially ground water, contaminations.

Several challenges were brought up for us to work out, the system had to be:

• Easy to use - Scientists weren’t the end users, the end users would consist of management and political leaders.
• Easy to understand
• Low cost
• Be viewable over the Internet

This presented a variety of technology challenges. How do you create an application that is low cost (to the end user), presented over the Internet, that can be compatibly and reliably viewed and operated by virtually anyone?

We chose to use VRML (Virtual Reality Markup Language) for the interface, which was somewhat difficult to say the least. Everything needed to be as accurately depicted as possible in a true coordinate system.  This meant that electronic and hard copy drawing cooridinates using several coordinate systems had to be aggregated and converted to a common format, stored in a database, and then scaled to suitable navigable dimensions losing as little accuracy as possible along the way.

This user interface was set on top of a Cold Fusion backend that tapped into MS SQL Server for the data.

This system proved to be a huge success and was as low cost as you could get to the end user…free. The only caveat was that the end user had to download and install one particular type of free VRML Internet Explorer plug-in to view the 3-D aspects.

This system not only displayed the tanks in three dimensional space, it also showed all the underground and above ground elements like drilled wells, buildings, contamination points from leaks (which were linked to scientific analysis produced by scientists, not us), and even ground strata. The system also allowed users to move through the tank farm in real time resulting in completely flexible views from any perspective. Couple this with the ability to turn on and off all elements, and insert proposed structures (again in real time) and you have an extremely powerful application.

Unfortunately, as is likely to happen with government contracts, budget cuts stopped development of this project and security concerns took it off the Internet. I am currently trying to locate and request clearance to display some static images of the system.

I am happy to report that the concept continued and has evolved to use a modern gaming engine to produce “like-type” systems. The system is no longer useable over the Internet in real time however.

The technology included, and married together in this system included:

1. Internet Explorer (HTML, JavaScript, Flash)
2. Cosmo Player (VRML Plug in for IE)
3. Java (certain client applications, and applets)
4. Cold Fusion (Server Side)
5. MS SQL Server (Data Storage)

This really dates me. The Executive Pages was the first web site I ever created. At the time, MS Internet Explorer was in its 2.X stage (that was such a sad attempt), dynamic web pages were few and far between, Cold Fusion had just gone to 2.0, and my development environment was MS Notepad.

The Executive Pages backend consisted of Allaire (now owned by Adobe) Cold Fusion and a MS Access database. I was one of the first 100,000 Cold Fusion developers worldwide.

The Executive Pages was a database driven, dynamic business web site that was owned by Dyancom Systems, Inc (also a part of history). The gist was that people would come, sign up, and build a one-page web site without knowing any programming. The visionaries at Dynacom decided they would try to capitalize on the growing interest regarding the Internet using this tool.

They decided that they would give away a free account and then have three different versions that of course cost money. The system worked brilliantly and many people did pay for their listings. Unfortunately, not enough did. Why?

Most likely because massive migration of the general public (critical mass) hadn’t yet occurred, the owners of Dyancom wanted to retain too much control, and any number of other reasons. Suffice it to say that I believe its failure was due to a lack of planning, lack of growth, and lack of interest when it didn’t “take off” over-night.