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Affinity Communications Pte Ltd ... Command Control Communication Computer Systems Organization ...

Year            : 11 July 2000 to 23 June 2002
Company     : Affinity Communications Pte Ltd (a Keppel T&T company)
Business     : Provide informational communications multimedia solutions
Designation  : Software Engineer

I was in Solutions Business Unit (Operations), a division that provides technology consultancy, project management, application development, technology refresh and professional services. My job scope included application development and provides customer care and services to their Integrated Voice Response (IVR) systems, mainly, Avaya's Intuity Conversant and Periphonics' Voice Processing Series (VPS). The scope was extended to include development of the company website for a period of 3 months.

A typical setup of IVR is as shown in the diagram below:

Figure: Typical setup of IVR

Knowledge on both hardware and software aspects of the products, database queries, host communications, socket programming (connection-oriented) and inter-process communications to interface between host software and application software, are utilized during the course of work. Software development are carried out in C programming language on SCO UNIX for Conversant systems and Solaris for VPS systems.

Hardware aspects of the products include installation of components, upgrading of systems, as well as troubleshooting for faulty components. Software aspects include using propriety tools like Periproducer, Peristudio, Script Builder, and UNIX administration.

During development of the company website, tools such as Photoshop, Flash, and Dreamweaver were used to create graphics, animation, and author the web respectively. I was involved in the design and development phase.

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Year            : 11 January 1999 to 26 June 1999
Company     : Command Control Communication Computer System Organization (CSO)
Business     : Defence acquisitions
Designation : Not Applicable
Remarks     : This is a 24-week attachment programme as partial fulfillment for B.A.Sc degree.

Industrial attachment is a 24-week programme aims to extend the knowledge gained throughout the academic course, and to develop skills needed to work in an industrial environment. It is part of the course curriculum and is compulsory for all computer engineering undergraduates.

I carried out my attachment in Command Control Communication and Computer Systems Organization, a procurement agency part of Defence Science Technology Agency (former Defence Technology Group). The project undertaken was in four uncorrelated phases:

Phase 1:
Deciphering of message files which are represented in binary format. Each message file can contains a certain number of messages up to the maximum file size allowed. This phase includes converting the binary information in the non-standard message file to the required data type, and present the human-readable output in the respective field on a text-based standard output. The programming language used for development is C on UNIX platform.

Phase 2:
Time-stamping of incoming message files. Message files may arrived at a non-sequential order. Timestamp message files allow the information to be stored in chronological order. From there, behavior of the message files can be observed. System time is used instead of pseudo-time because of its higher resolution than the latter method.

Phase 3:
In most working environment, test data is not always readily available for use. Sample messages have to be created for the program to work on and only then can the result of modification be verified. The purpose of this phase is to develop a simulator that is able to generate test data to test the programs of the previous two phases.

Phase 4:
This phase is independent of the previous phases. It is carried out through collecting of information from books and the Internet on the test tools available in the market and installation of the test tool. The test tool of interest is Linux operating system.