Steven W. Orr, Software Engineer

SysLang, Inc.

41 Wayside Inn Road

Framingham, Massachusetts 01701-3021

(508) 788-0232 (508) 788-0230

steveo@syslang.net

Summary

Engineer with many years of experience with depth and expertise in a variety of areas, including: systems software, language components, tools development, client/server, telecommunications, database analysis, software configuration and build management, packaging, process architecture, Scalability, software porting and interprocess communication, Unix and Linux systems interfaces and architecting large systems.

Because of my background in compiler work, I have an ability to see how problems can be solved in a manner that others may not see.

Strong ability with all things *nix. Industrial strength scripting in bash, ksh, sh, python, perl, tcl, etc. Facile with RPM, deb, and pkg.

Proficient with Linux/Unix administration, ClearCase, Perforce, sendmail and all forms of subsystem configuration.

I currently hold SECRET clearance.

Education

2008 Graduate level course in cryptography, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

2000 Admin Training in ClearCase from Rational University

M.S. C.S. 1988 Boston University

B.S./math 1979, Northeastern University

The jobs that I have help in the past that relate to compilers and language components are listed below:

TREBIA NETWORKS, ACTON, MA JULY '02 - MARCH '03

Consultant

• Designed and implemented the basic branching strategy under CVS.
• Implemented high quality hooks into CVS to do things like branch locking, subdirectory locking within a branch, tag logging, and various other commit-time checks including commit logging.
• Set up the nightly build process for their project.
• Tasked to solve various structural implementation problems in their code. e.g., varargs vs stdargs, external data initialization at compile-time, signal issues, etc...
• Responsible for all merges.
• Implemented release support mechanism which defined what files were and were not part of the released package.
• Subverted the compiler to trap classes of warning messages and to email them to their appropriate owners as part of an integrated warning processing strategy.
• Fixed proper dependency generation system wide. General Makefile work.
• Acted as the de facto Unix/Linux system guru.

OPENROUTE SYSTEMS/NETRIX/NXNETWORKS, WESTBORO, MA OCTOBER 98 - FEBRUARY '00

Consultant

OpenRoute is a company that made smaller routers that were developed under SunOS.

• Initial task was to convert their development system to Solaris. This included replacing their system of compilers for embedded development with custom designed GNU components.
• Their entire system of Makefiles was rewritten.
• All code that used varargs was restructured to use ANSII stdargs.
• Acted as general tool-smith and Unix guru.
• Wrote a secure ftp server to allow customers access to patches and upgrades.
• Lots of interaction as a ClearCase administrator.
• Rewrote bad Cshell scripts into perl so they would work in a mixed Unix/NT environment.

UNIPRISE SYSTEMS, INC., NORTH CHELMSFORD, MA. MARCH 97 - MARCH 98

MEDIAONE, INC., LOWELL, MA. JUNE 96 - MARCH 97

Consultant

• MEDIAONE had a database that needed to be transmitted from a Tandem over to a Unix/Oracle database. I wrote a server to receive the data from a client process. The server would set up the associated Oracle tables using SqlPlus, and then start a SqlLoader process. The resulting process was speeded up by five orders of magnitude. Prior to my parser based solution, their PayPerView SQL was taking 23 hours to execute. If their execution time crossed the 24 hour threshold, then they would have lost their PPV business.

• After the data was loaded, additional transactions needed to be transferred to Oracle. These would manifest in the form of SQL statements and would frequently be upward of 500Meg per day. The solution was to write a program which executed these SQL statements using OCI calls. YACC was used to parse SQL statements to see if they were a statement type that was already seen. If it was a new statement type, it would be parsed by Oracle and then executed. If it was an already known statement type, the statement would simply be executed and the Oracle parse would be bypassed. This allowed a speed increase of approximately sixteen times over simple execution of the SQL statements. Software targeted Pyramid Niles, AIX and Solaris platforms.
• Acted as systems person at large. I was specified as the point man for anyone who had programming or Unix questions.

UNIPRISE SYSTEMS, INC., BURLINGTON, MA. MARCH 94 - JUNE 96

Uniprise Systems targeted the downsizing marketplace and started by acquiring ownership of the DIGITAL VMS PL/I compiler. In addition, Uniprise Systems produced a PL/I compiler for the Alpha platform running Unix. This allowed users to migrate to inexpensive workstations from mainframes and VAXen.

• Assembled the Engineering Department.
• Responsible for the compiler symbol table design, and the PL/I specific high level debugger. The debugger was noteworthy in that it incorporates architectural designs which guarantee its integrity in a way that no other debugger can claim. The debugger was written using yacc/lex, but my style is to push as much as possible out of yacc and into the lex framework where DFA has the highest value.
• Responsible for local tools definition and development, and configuration management.

DATA ACQUISITION SYSTEMS, BOSTON, MA. MARCH 90 - OCTOBER 90.

Consultant

• Given task of porting $\approx$ 20K modules from Xenix to ISC Unix. Nature of the software was to perform process control used by the pharmaceutical and other industries.
• Implemented a two phase translator using yacc and lex to reorganize all include statements in source code to conform to desired standards.
• Designed a source code control structure which allowed engineers to create a local development environment which would not interfere with other engineers. Revision control was done in RCS.

AGFA COMPUGRAPHICS, FEBRUARY 1989 - AUGUST 89.

Consultant

Implemented custom software to enhance Compugrapic Automated Publishing System (CAPS) under SunOs. Included: A forward and reverse translator to convert between WordPerfect 5.0 and CAPS. A graphics converter to go from Interpress to Sun Unix raster format. A translator to convert from WANG WITA format to CAPS. A fixture rotator which performed surgery on PostScript files to cause header and footer fixtures of landscape mode pages to be rotated into position of portrait mode pages. Implementation of a ten phase translator used to produce a brake parts catalog of thousands of pages in length. Back then, the tools available required very complex pipelining of regular expressions. Today, the same code would be handled in a much more straightforward manner using python or perl.

TRANSLATION SYSTEMS, JUNE 1985 - JUNE 1986

Senior Software Engineer

Responsible for functional specification, design, and implementation of a multi-language, high-level debugger using lex and yacc, running under Unix(4.2) to support a suite of compilers (based on ROBERT FREIBURGHAUS technology) all using a common code generator. Target platform was the Computer Consoles Power 6 (Tahoe) machine. Also assisted in other components of the project including the PL/I subset S front end, the machine independent optimizer, and the runtime libraries for C and PL/I.

ANALOG DEVICES, 1984-1985

Software Project Engineer

Responsible for functional specification, design, and implementation of a cross development environment running under VAX/VMS to target 80X86 architecture running DOS and CCP/M. Components of environment included a code control management system, C compiler, assembler, linker, debugger, and common editors. The whole system networked a VMS system with multiple PCs. Also acted as system administrator for a VAX 750 system.

RAYTHEON EQUIPMENT DIVISION, 1982-1984

Software engineer responsible for projects including: B5 Military functional specification for a diagnostic test package to execute on an in-house processor architecture as part of an embedded system. A debugger/monitor to run on a Motorola 68000 based single board computer. A UNIX assembler for the for the Military Family of 32 bit computers (MCF). This involved development of grammar and use of LALR(1) parser generator, plus object file translator to go from MCF Nebula format to UNIX a.out format.

DATA GENERAL CORPORATION, 1979-1982

Software engineer responsible for overall design and development of a hierarchical DBMS runtime interface environment for AOS/VS PL/I. Previously responsible for design and development of PGU (Parameter Generator Utility), a Meta-Information Language Processor. PGU took input from new-to-be-designed language and produced table driven output for PL/I and assembler. Later output was to be in C and Ada. Project called for extensive use of parser generators. previously worked on USERLIB (OS runtime interface), callable from PL/I and intended to be compiler independent. Previously, sole programmer on SWAT, DG's multi-language high-level debugger. Responsible for enhancements, design specifications, bug fixing, and ongoing maintenance. Installed C, PASCAL, COBOL, PL/I, and FORTRAN 77 into the debugger.