Area 101 Work Values

Daily Duties at Area 101:

Area 101 serves over 400 Fortune 500 Companies and a variety of universities and governmental organizations with web-based software for the management of catering and food service operations. Their products include Food Venue, a 500+ page order entry and management application written in ASP.NET / C#, SQL Server, Commercial, Food Venue functionality using several pages and AJAX in lieu of page-to-page navigation of Food Venue, and Adrenaline, a development framework based on highly abstract representations of business processes (the Business Process Engine, or BPE), data stores (the Data Access Service Layer, or DASL), User Interfaces (the UI Engine), and code (relying heavily on reflection). Implemented key DASL capability of retrieving hierarchical data based on dataset/data table definitions and dynamic filters in Adrenaline. Assumed sole control of Adrenaline after the Director of Product Development left. Implemented conditional branching, spawning of, and return from sub-processes in the BPE. Achieved the following with respect to Commercial: Updated an entire order (in up to 10 database tables) using a single SQL Server call/transaction with information received from the client in a single AJAX/web method call. Developed server-side (C#) and client-side (JavaScript) infrastructure facilitating addition of new elements to the UI and dramatically reducing overall volume of JavaScript and business logic therein. Used this infrastructure to define, display, and validate inputs for 57 different reports, 21 different searches, and other UI elements. Eliminated 179 web pages for displaying report results, and facilitated the addition of new reports and searches. Enabled user’s ability to: execute reports and continue working with immediate feedback on progress, cancel long-running reports, view past reports, schedule report execution for off-peak hours, and share report inputs and outputs with other users. Rapidly returned specific pages of search results via new stored procedures whose Food Venue equivalents would time out with large data sets and the same parameters. Developed infrastructure for generically displaying search results, navigating among the pages, and saving users’ grid preferences (e.g. visibility and ordering of columns, and search/inputs used to populate it on application startup). Developed a generic JavaScript object for gathering and exporting information on JavaScript and C# call stack and performance, used to identify specific performance issues and bugs.

What they like about Area 101:

Working in an organization that is technologically advanced, creative, and innovative is critical in your assessment of hiring companies. Less important to you are stability of the organization, the length of time an organization has been in business, and the business' plans for the future. You prefer a fast-moving company that will take risks to achieve its goals and objectives. The length of time the company has been in business is irrelevant. Maintaining status quo is unnecessary. You thrive on change, uncertainty and the upside of potential business risks, especially those associated with innovation. Stability for the long haul is not nearly as important as is working in an atmosphere that is charged with a sense of urgency and constant change.

Tags

SQL, T-SQL, SQL Server, .NET, ASP, ASP .NET, JavaScript, Microsoft, Windows, Analysis, Design, Architecture, n tier, n-tier, distributed, web, Build, Documentation, Support, Excel, Word, Visio, OO, Object Oriented, Visual Basic, VB, Integration, user controls, mentoring, Visual Studio, Visual Source Safe, HTML, DHTML, ADO, ActiveX, COM, DCOM, Access, IIS, web services, web methods, VB Script, VBA, CSS, DOM, SQL-DOM, Clipper, Ajax, JSON, MTS, MS Project, XML, XSL, XPATH, SOAP, Telerik Controls, Sarbanes-Oxley, SOX, Workflow modeling, on-line applications, Accounting, Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, Cash Receipts, Human Resources, Back office, customer facing, insurance, brokerage firm, transportation, shipping, customer service, abstraction, infrastructure, user interface, UI, Reflection, DOS, C-Sharp, C Sharp

Skills

Software Implementation, Requirements gathering, Logical and physical design

These are some of the questions we asked our climbers about their experiences with Area 101: