[hand with pencil]
2004 Summer Tour
About
Blog
Class Stuff
Email Me
Events
Gallery
Home
Info Ark
Products
In The Press
Newsletter
Services
Smalltalk
Veggie Van Gogh

Credits
© 2002,
Bytesmiths

[this is simply a banner and menu bar]

Please patronize sponsors of this page!

Bytesmiths no longer is involved in software consulting. Maintenance of this web site is currently subsidised by unrelated business activities. Please pass the word to other interested folks, so I can continue to host this page!
  • Bytesmiths Editions -- large, archival, fine-art photography on unusual materials
  • Bytesmiths Press -- artists' services: web design/hosting, jury slides, giclee reproductions, opening announcements, brochures, etc.
  • Champagne Beadworks -- handcrafted jewelry and beadwork
  • Crafted By Carol -- handcrafted jewelry and beadwork
  • EcoReality, an organization devoted to establishing a sustainable ecovillage
  • Ecovillage Newsletter -- Diana Leafe Christian's news of her travels.
  • Gemini Gypsy -- Carole Good-Hanson's fused glass frames
  • Green Chipper -- light forestry and environmental services.
  • Salt Spring Island Society for Community Education -- community education on our island of 10,000.
  • Veggie Van Gogh -- two artists' mobile warehouse and living quarters, petroleum-free!
  • Veggiemog -- life and times of Kelly O'Toole's Unimog, running on biodiesel
    Your site could be listed here, for as little as $12 per month! Go to Bytesmiths Press for details.

    This site has been selected by PC Webopaedia as one of the best on this topic!
    This site has been awarded a Links2Go Key Resource Award in the Smalltalk category!

    Bytesmiths and Telecommunications

    The Bytesmiths principal, Jan Steinman, is intensively involved in the rapidly growing field of object-oriented telecommunications monitoring, control and provisioning software. His hardware background, modelling and communications work, and large-system Smalltalk experience combine well to meet the rigorous demands of this field.


    Network Management Systems

    In 1992, Bytesmiths began a large telecom project for a 20,000 employee Swiss company and their large Swedish and American business partners. This project used nine Smalltalk developers (most of whom had a few months or less Smalltalk experience), to build a graphical public switching network management system for Signalling System 7 configuration management, planning, fault analysis, and performance monitoring at the MTP level. Signalling points, link sets, and routes are depicted graphically, their status updated in real time. Correlated views condense tens of megabytes of information into easily identifiable fault patterns for simplified diagnosis and speedy repair. Logging and auditing functions enable replay of "event storms" for later detailed analysis. Off-line models provide the tools needed for network planners to simulate expected performance.

    Jan served as joint technical lead on this project, providing mentoring and classroom training, overall system architecture, design and methodology support, establishing procedures and conventions, and serving on the corporate re-use board. He also produced most of the critical re-use quality code in the system, which enabled other, less experienced developers to rapidly produce a variety of user interfaces.

    Bytesmiths built the planning system, which enables national PTT planners to simulate future network configurations before actual implementation, and also served as primary system integrator, and also architected a complete re-write of the graphical user interface. Jan designed and implemented the domain model, which provides the core functionality of the entire system.

    This project makes heavy use of distributed processing, RPC and OSI communications, and RDBMS, OODBMS, and proprietary database techniques. It is implemented in VisualWorks ® 1.0 under ENVY ®.; Toolsets and frameworks used include HotDraw, Sybase ®, and Bytesmiths ' own fast, XDR-compliant object serializer/deserializer. This system has been deployed for field trials for at least three national telephone systems.


    Element Management Systems

    Bytesmiths recently performed similar tasks for a Canadian networking company, this time at the element management level. Important features of the 45020 Node Manager® are HP OpenView ® integration, rapid support of new equipment types, and the ability to install new or updated equipment types in a running system.

    All this was accomplished via a Bytesmiths -trained team of six (none of whom had more than a month of Smalltalk experience), implementing a Bytesmiths -designed architecture featuring a dynamic schema, transparent object distribution, a fully automatic GUI generator, and schema modelling aids. (The system being phased out required re-compilation of the entire 1,000,000 line system in order to add new equipment types.) This project was begun in September 1994, and successfully entered field trials in July 1995.

    This element manager is built in VisualWorks 2.0 under ENVY , using SNMP , TCP/IP , HP OpenView , Informix ®, and Bytesmiths ' object serializer/deserializer under Solaris and Motif .


:::: 2152 Fulford-Ganges Road, Salt Spring Island, British Columbia, V8K 1Z7, Canada (map), +1 250.653.2024 ::::