Beacon Information AB - Kent Åsberg

A Presentation

This is a brief presentation of Beacon Information AB - a minor but fairly experienced enterprise in the field of Information Technology. It is also intended to be an account for the various types of services offered by the enterprise, its main activities since 1990 - the year it was established - and for the knowledge and experience that the enterprise has access to in the actual field - albeit the staff so far is constituted by a single person - the author.

The Enterprise

Experience from the 60's and 70's
- The computers
- My own activities

Experience from the 80's
- The computers
- My own activities

The Enterprise

Types of services offered

Beacon can offer services from a broad spectrum within the IT knowledge field:

Design and/or implementation of small to medium range applications - preferrably in PC/Windows/NT but also on other platforms.
- Two, three (or more) tier models are often used - especially when databases are involved whereas the database access component may be run on a server though acting like a true database server but using practically any database manager.
- In the design phase of database oriented applications, Beacon uses its own information modelling methodology which has evolved during a long range of years, starting in the late seventies - see 'IT Knowledge and Experience' below.
Programming in virtually any programming language from existing applications or application parts designs :
- Subroutines (eg code and/or object modules in C).
- Components to be used with MS Visual Basic (or C++) application development.

Beacon Activities

Below is a chronologically ordered summary of activities at Beacon since september 1990:

September 1990 - April 1991: Inhouse project management and design of a car sales and distribution system for a major car sales and distribution company. The system was to be implemented in an ORACLE 6 environment on a mini computer network. The Beacon information modelling methods (see 'IT Knowledge and Experience' below) were successfully exploited in the design phase. April 1991 - May 1994 (periodically): Design and implementation of an inventory system to keep track on computer components in an atomic power plant. The system was implemented in an ORACLE 6 environment on a SUN system. As in the car sales and distribution system case the Beacon information modelling methods (see 'IT Knowledge and Experience' below) were successfully exploited in the design phase.
1992 - 1993: Building libraries for advanced MASM 6.0 AND MS C 6.0 functions and subroutines to be used in implementing MS DOS applications using semigraphic (and later also true graphic) end user interfaces. These tools worked quite well but the applications (some were fully implemented) did not reach the market - see next paragraph. The applications were to be developed according to requirements presented by old collegues of mine wanting to offer Windows applications to their customers in the real estate evaluation market.
1993: Learning C++ (using Charles Petzold's famous book) and started using it to implement one of the above mentioned applications. C++ worked quite well but seemed to be too much power to use for the actual application - started using MS VB3PE instead.
1993 - : A number of applications for the above mentioned market were designed and implemented during these years. They are running in Win3.x, Win9x and NT environments and have been implemented using VB3PE, VB4PE and VB5EE. They all used MS ACCESS databases (various versions) for fetching and storing data.

A small number of other applications (for other customers than my collegues) were also implemented for the same platforms using the same development tools during these years.

IT Knowledge and Experience

Experience from the 60's and 70's

The computers

My own activities

During the three last years of the sixties, the points that follow show in short the experience gained working with a high technology team developing hardware and software for a series of process control computers (UAC1600, word length 8 bits and UAC1610, word length 16 bits):

Learning how to program using the UNIVAC PLAN assembler language, the FORTRAN language and the UAC1600 series assembler language (starting with boot level programming using on/off switches on the computer's front):
Programming parts of the UAC1600 series operating system from specifications.
Participating in a two man team programming the UAC1600 Assembler.
We used the target language and wrote the instructions on punched cards. These were input on an RCA Spectra 70 main frame at a nearby company to a COBOL program the output of which was a punched paper tape containing the resulting UAC1600 machine code.
Making the program specification and implementing the UAC1610 Assembler.
In this project I was working alone - except for the COBOL part.
Specifying a real time program language with a syntax very much like FORTRAN. This was to be used with the UAC1610 computer.
Specifying and implementing a random number generator for the UAC1600 series computers.
Input media: Punched paper tape and manual (using the switches on the front).
Output media:Punched paper tape.
Input/Output media: Typewriter and an interrupt system (8 and 16 levels respectively).
Additional Input/Output media UAC1610: Drum Memory.

1970-1980: Employed as a software designer and programmer with a major shipyard company, I spent these years participating in a huge project designing and implementing a new administrative system using various main frames - from SAAB D21/D22 to IBM 4340 and Amdahl V6. The programming languages used were mainly an extended ALGOL language and IBM's PLI. The points below show the most significant kinds of experience gained during these, sometimes tedious, years: . . .