Tony Choi

Objective

Software Developer.  Significant experience and knowledge in Java, Javascript, Perl, C++, and COBOL on Windows/Unix/Mainframe platforms.

Education

Ph.D., Computational Mathematics, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, 1999

Bachelor of Science, Applied Mathematics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, 1992

Work Experience

Independent Developer, Westford, MA, April 2002 - Present

Development of a fully featured recipe archiver (general information & details for this application and those below as well as downloads can be found at www.oocities.org/tdchoi88).

Development of a multi-purpose image map manager.  Image Director follows a simple signal receiver pattern that is very versatile and can be applied to a variety of different situations.

Development of a Java Layout Displayer.  This simple yet enlightening piece of software can help demystify the behavior of Java layout managers by showing you explicitly and precisely what the managers are doing to your components.  Quick and dirty way to find out what the best layout combinations to use in your GUI.

Trivial Pursuit Network Game.  Up to 6 player networked game, with built-in chat.  Only caveat is that you need someone to host. I have tested it using an Apache server.  Purely a demonstration type program given the copyright issues, but the board and questions can easily be replaced by your own customized board and questions.

Website/Javascript/HTML development - Check out www.oocities.org/tdchoi88.  I also have experience with Apache on Windows and Unix.  You can read more details on my webpage.

INTELLIGENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS, Raleigh, NC, 1999-April 2002

Software Engineer, Project Architect, Research and Development

IIS is a small ambitious company dedicated to finding innovative solutions to other companies' software problems. They mainly serve companies trying to make the transition from aging technology to newer technologies.

Development and design of a Visual Legacy System Application – prototype of a legacy analysis tool written in Java. The tool visually displays large legacy systems (~3000 programs) showing the inter-relations of sub-programs, copybooks, JCL, and Files.  Developed expertise in GUI design using Swing.
 
Project architect for a large long-term re-engineering project with a mid-sized casualty insurance company. Project Objectives: VSAM to DB2 conversion, introduction of object-oriented I/O layer, restructuring for increased maintainability of existing programs, and straight-thru-processing.  Developed DB2 and stored procedure application expertise, and relational database design experience. Also programmed extensively in CICS transactional system.
 
2+ years in object-oriented Perl designing and developing a suite of analysis tools and program generation tools. Developed expertise in regular expression usage, complex data structures, object classes, standard packages, DBM modules, and Socket modules.
 
Program Generation Tool – parameterized tool for auto generating a large set of COBOL programs (~130) that shield the business applications from the database and implement specific business rules. 
 
Directory Mirroring Tool – tool that mirrors remote directories on a local system automatically. In practice it was used to automatically download several large directories on the IBM OS/390 mainframe to a local Windows NT machine.  Timestamps were utilized to only download those applications that had been changed since the last download.
 
System DB generator – analysis tool that scans a COBOL system (~4000 programs, ~1500 JCL, ~2000 copybooks) and generates a comprehensive set of tables for an ACCESS database describing the major features of the system (Call tree, SQL access, IO access, JCL tree, etc…).
 
COBOL Data miner – The tool stores each COBOL statement as an object (for easy access to the attributes of the statements and the ability to step thru each statement.).  Used in the in-depth analyze of COBOL programs and data dependency analysis.
 
Dependency Analysis Tool – COBOL analysis tool that takes specified variables and/or records and identifies up to 3 levels of dependant variables throughout the program (dependency defined thru “move” statements, redefines in COBOL records, 88 levels in COBOL records).

Acquired in-depth domain knowledge of a large-scale and diverse insurance software system (both online and batch systems).
 
Experience in all aspects of project execution, from writing work orders, to managing small groups of programmers, to software development and Quality Control of other team members’ work.
 
Created and maintained a COBOL I/O Layer (utilizing SQL) for a large DB2 database (~ 130 programs).
 
Analyzed and supervised the conversion of batch and CICS COBOL programs from VSAM to DB2 incorporating the COBOL I/O Layer.

NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY, Raleigh, NC, 1993-1999

Graduate Research Assistant, Mathematics Department

GANN Computational Science Fellow: August 1994-1997
Research in Non-Linear Constrained Noisy Optimization and multi-level preconditioners.  All numerical simulations and tests were developed using MATLAB, FORTRAN, and MINPACK and LAPACK in UNIX (IBM RS6000).  Developed expertise in C++, Perl, and FORTRAN programming languages, as well as optimizing code performance.
 
NSF/Monbusho Summer Research Program: July – August 1996
Research at the Institute of Statistics in Tokyo Japan in numerical integration of autonomous systems with conservative quantities.  Simulations were created in MATLAB.
 
Glaxo Research Assistant in the Research Computing Department: 1994 – 1995
Brought in to fix ailing solvers in SAGE (one of Glaxo’s in-house Numerical Software Packages for their research scientists).  Added new features and solvers.  
Worked extensively in Visual C++, EXCEL macros, GUI interfaces, and SAS.
 
Implemented and integrated multiple numerical optimization algorithms into a complex high performance automotive engine simulator (for race cars developed by a research group in the North Carolina State University Mechanical Engineering Department).  Implemented the simulation and optimization algorithms on multiple Unix workstations running in parallel as well as on the T3D and T3E parallel supercomputers at the North Carolina Super Computing Center.   
 
Significant course work in Numerical Analysis, Linear Algebra, Non-linear Optimization, Numerical Partial Differential Equations, PDEs, ODEs, Finite Differences/Elements.
 
Created and maintained a fully operational NBA Fantasy League website for a gaming group in Raleigh, North Carolina. Written in C++ and Perl. Features included:   

-Automated updates of statistics of all games played every night. 
-Scheduler that displayed each fantasy team’s schedule for every week
-Transaction Handler (for moves, trades, etc…)
-Discussion Forum
-Full complement of team statistics

Publications

Highlights

IBM MQSeries Certified.  Applied knowledge to the design and development of a project prototype.
 
OS/390 Mainframe experience.  Gained working knowledge of the batch/online environment and broad understanding of the capabilities/limitations of the mainframe from an architecture standpoint.

Programming Skills

Java, Javascript, C++, Perl, SQL, SPL, HTML, COBOL, Fortran, Matlab.