Jim Williams: Software Engineer
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Welcome to my site. I have used this site for some experimentation with Dynamic HTML.
A little twist on the traditional resume. Take a look.
I've been extremely lucky to have been able to travel all over the world for my job. Here are some pictures of what I have seen.
I've been working with PHP, MySQL, DHTML and AJAX lately. Here are some thoughts on those technologies as well as some others.
Welcome to my world. Here is some info from the home/family front.
Here are twelve of the albums required for any serious collection. The entire list of course contains hundreds of artists. And let's not take this too seriously.
Here are some Web applications that I have created over the last couple of years.
This is me with my wife Sue. We live outside Raleigh, North Carolina. We moved to Raleigh in 2001 from Chicago where we both grew up.
Since moving to the South we have had a chance to see some of the cities on the Southeast coast. Here we are in Charleston.
Two things that we miss from Chicago are Italian Beef sandwiches and the flowers we had in our garden. We had these lilies all over the back yard.
           
Jimi Hendrix. No question the most influential guitarist of all time. The burning guitars and playing behind his back was nonsense. It's the music.
Carlos Santana. Yes another guitar god, but he also influenced millions of other types of musicians. A true original - smart enough to make it out of the Sixties unscathed.
John Coltrane. A true legend in the Jazz world. Some of the frantic solos make some people -Sue- crazy. But there is nothing sweeter than his rendition of My Favorite Things.
Elvis Costello. Another true original. I remember asking a DJ at a wedding to play some Elvis. Guess what he put on - Blue Suede Shoes!
Grateful Dead. Like the Allman Brothers they covered a lot of ground musically. And the jams lasted forever. I don't think that non musicians and non Deadheads appreciate that.
Bob Marley. I listened to nothing but reggae for three years. Bob Marley is why. I'll never forget his concert at the Aragon ballroom in Chicago. It was just pure magic.
Allman Brothers. My personal all time favorite. It's bands like this that cross musical lines - blues, country, jazz, rock, that are my favorites. Steely Dan, Jethro Tull, Dead.
Smashing Pumpkins. A hometown -Chicago- favorite. They put together some brilliant albums. This was one of them.
Howlin Wolf. A lot of critics dismiss the London Sessions because of all the arguing during recording. I think it speaks volumes about the relationships between the old and the new guys.
Neil Young. For me this is one of those albums where you remember exactly where you were when you first heard it. I could not believe what a good thing sound was.
Led Zepplin. Greatest rock band of all time. Whole lotta love - greatest rock song of all time. Inspired millions. Unfortunately inspired a lot of really bad bands.
Miles Davis. The Jimi Hendrix of the Jazz world. Some might not see that as a compliment but it is. Highly influential and innovative. Also, very mysterious, and well, just cool.
                                                                 
Resume
I'm currently a Senior Software Engineer with the IBM Software Group. I have twenty-seven years experience in the IT industry, twenty of which have been with IBM. I've worked in IBM's service's unit, their Software Group consulting organization as well as the Software Group Strategy team.

I've architected and implemented software solutions on all of the major plarforms (z/OS, AIX, Solaris, Windows, and Linux). Prior to coming to IBM, I worked as a z/OS systems programmer for a large consulting firm.

My latest focus has been on Web 2.0 technologies (REST, JSON, AJAX, HTML5, CSS3), agile development techniques such as Scrum and distributed processing (Big Data, Hadoop, MapReduce, WebSphere eXtreme Scale).

My wife and I and our two daughters are living the dream in beautiful Holly Springs, North Carolina
Professional Experience Education
Soft Skills Software Engineering
Enterprise Development Web 2.0 Application Development Platforms
Email Telephone
Current Work
Timeline
Skills 1
Skills 2
Contact
   Is that all?
No, I have also worked with the following technologies: Programming (C, C++, CICS, Perl, Korn Shell, sed, awk, REXX, Assembler, Sockets, CGI, COBOL, SAS, Clists, REXX, DYL280)
Mainframe (VSAM, TSO, ISPF, JCL, FDR, Top Secret, RACF, Omegamon, Endevor, CL-Conference, JobScan, ChangeMan, HCD)
Mainframe Systems Programming (SMP/E, I/O, MVSCP, VTAM, NCP, ESCON gens,IPCS, MVS installation, CA-7)
Tools (VI, make, ant, Visio)
And probably several I have forgotten about.
I created this site with both WebSphere Studio Application Developer and BEA's WebLogic Workshop. The IBM version is done with JavaServer Faces and the BEA version with Java Page Flows and Java Controls. Here we are viewing it with BEA's built-in browser. Both versions use a DB/2 back-end database.
This site was done with Rational Software Architect, again using JSF - JavaServer Faces. I also wrote an identical looking application in the WebSphere sMash environment using Groovy. That code uses the MQ HTTP bridge for REST access to MQ queues and topics. It also uses the WSRR REST API to query and update WSRR metadata.
Here is the form for the loan application. The code writes the loan application data to a queue that is then picked up by a process running in WebSphere Process Server.
This was my first application where I used AJAX. I used it for the tracking function. I also used a lot of Dymanic HTML. I wrote the server components in PHP using PHPEclipse on top of RAD. It runs in Apache web server which is part of the XAMPP distribution that I used. It has a MySQL back-end database.
Here is the drop down menu made possible by Dynamic HTML.
This is the Web application that you are looking at. It has a tremendous amount of DHTML. Once the application loads I never go back to the server. Everything is hidden until it is needed.
This is the Service Oriented Finance web site used for the 2007 Rational/Tivoli competitive show. I used RSA V7.0 for this application
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These are the Andes mountains just outside Santiago. We took an all day trip up the side of the mountain in a small van. The temperature and vegetation changed along the way. At the top of the mountain was a ski resort.
This is the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. In the foreground is the Berlin Bear welcoming people. It was a beautiful September day when I was there.
This is the west coast of the north island of New Zealand, just north of Wellington. We took the train up to the Kapati area to do some ATV riding. This picture was taken from one of the paths where we took a break.
OK, here is my list. The three greatest cities in the world are Paris, Sydney, and Rome. The Coliseum is one of the reasons that Rome makes the list. There are many, many other reasons.
The architecture in St. Petersburg is incredible, as seen here in the Palace Square. What struck me was how the buildings are painted with very vivid colors. This is one city where I would love to go back and spend some more time.
Not only have I been fortunate to be able to go to all these places, but I have had some really great weather in a lot of the places where I have gone. The day Sue and I went to Versailles Palace was just a spectacular day, as shown in this picture of the garden looking out from the palace.
This is the Meganebashi Bridge leading into the Imperial Palace. The amazing thing is that it is right downtown Tokyo. If you look in one direction you will see a beautiful and serine garden and palace and forget where you are. But, if you turn around you realize that you are still in one of the world's largest and busiest cities.
Sydney is one of my top three cities in the world. This picture shows why. The city is unbelievable. It reminds me of a giant amusement park. Here we are taking a boat ride across the harbor to the zoo.
One of my favorite trips was to countries of what once made up Yugoslavia. We started out in Ljubljana, Slovenia and drove across the border to Croatia. This is the Ban J. Jelacic square in the middle of Zagreb. Jelacic is a national hero. The statue was taken down by the communists and later put back when Croatia regained its independence in the 90's.
Thailand is one of my favorite places to go. The people are very friendly and laid back. One of the great things to see is the Royal Grand Palace in Bangkok. The guys guarding the door remind me of the flying monkeys from The Wizard of Oz. Those monkeys used to scare the heck out of me when I was a kid.
The process starts when a user selects an object on a page such as a button. The button click event kicks off what I call here the Initiation routine. This routine is responsible for creating the XMLHTTPRequest object, registering the asynchronous response handler and sending the request to the server. The server program handles the request and sends back a response. The asynchronous response handler then processes the response (XML, HTML, etc.) and updates the DOM with the response. In this example we show a text box on the page that could be updated with the response.
AJAX

Asynchronous
JavaScript and XML
Try It
Details
    What About Mashups?
Track Your Shipments . . .

  
  
  
  
This page demonstrates AJAX in action. I took this function from my shipping application. It simulates searching on a tracking number. A valid number is 876543. Anything else is invalid. Try them. Notice when you do, the page is not refreshed, just the white box with the results of the search. This is why AJAX is so appealing - no more refreshing the entire page just to change some of the content on the page. Hover over Details to the right to see how it works internally.
Skippy looks harmless, but looks are deceiving. That's why she is known as Skipper the nipper.
The Swiss chard is looking pretty good this year.
We have a lot of praying mantises in the garden.
Time to buy another guitar.
One of our friends down by our pond.
Sue started a bee hive this year. They spend a lot of time lining up for a drink in the water garden.
Timmy getting a little drink.
A spider making a home in the Hibiscus.
The end of another beautiful day in North Carolina.
Every man, woman, and child needs a motorcycle.