Resume: Ralph Kar

Summary:

Computer Skills:

Programming languages:	Java, Perl, C++
Development tools:	IDEA, Optimizeit, Eclipse, Together
Operating systems:	Linux, Microsoft Windows

Experience:

Software Developer (2/2000-current) at RTS Realtime Systems AG, Frankfurt, Germany

Acted as technical development lead during the development of the software trading platform eRTD. As such I designed and implemented major parts of the eRTD from release versions 9 through 11. Along the release cycles I also provided development support for all software related issues.
Designed and developed a corporate Look&Feel using the Java Foundation Classes.
Executed major source code refactorings that support the life cycle of the software.
Executed major performance analysis and enhancements using Java profiling tools and custom methods.
Designed and implemented a user configuration facility for the eRTD. This configuration was modeled in XML and needed to be stored on the server. The eRTD used this configuration through the Java API for XML Binding (JAXB) and XSLT.
Assisted and reviewed other development projects. Among those were:
1. An administration tool for the eRTD.
2. A HTTP tunneling software that allows to tunnel the eRTD data stream through a firewall via HTTP.
3. A charting facility for the eRTD which was implemented as a plug-in module.
Developed a detailed specification for a task tracking system which is to be used internally at RTS to track development tasks.

Technical Project Manager (12/1999-1/2000) at Artificial-Life Deutschland AG, Frankfurt, Germany

Prepared a development project plan for the development of a new e-commerce platform.
Reviewed the source code base of the Net-Tissimo project.

Software Engineer (12/1998-11/1999) at SAP AG, Walldorf, Germany

Developed the user interface, beans and engine abstraction layer APIs of the SCE (Sales Configuration Engine) product using Java/Swing.
Developed a pluggable Look&Feel for Java applications. This implementation followed SAP's corporate Look&Feel specification and was also used by Java-based products other than the SCE (also: see this article about that particular project).
Developed a Java servlet prototype which would allow to use the SCE in an internet scenario.
Developed some custom Java code which was to be used in specific customer projects as plug-in module.
Acted as liaison engineer for Java related issues for the Java developer community of SAP.

Software Engineer (5/1997-11/1998) at Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Java Software Division), Cupertino, CA, USA

Developed on the Java Foundation Classes as a member of the JFC/Swing team. As that I had the ownership of the JSplitPane, Timer, TimerQueue, ProgressMonitor and the ProgressMonitorInputStream components for which I had to investigate bugs and develop fixes.
Acted as JFC/Swing liaison for SAP Labs. As such I also assisted SAP with their SCE product, by solving their immediate problems wherever possible and otherwise created bug reports and test cases and discussed their problems with the responsible engineering team.
Evaluated JFC/Swing bugs for different components by providing test cases and investigated and implemented source fixes.
Processed external bug reports for JFC/Swing. Since everyone can submit a Swing-related bug report, these bug reports need to be reviewed, completed, filtered and assigned.
Wrote an article about text orientation features in Swing.
Handled and solved customer escalations and integrated these into follow-up releases of the JDK as well as into separate patch releases.
Fixed bugs for the 1.1.x and 1.2 releases of the Java development kit and assisted other engineers in fixing bugs by providing appropriate test cases.
Provided technical support for the Java Web Server product during its evaluation period.

Software engineer (8/1995-5/1997) at Neuron Data, Inc., Mountain View, CA, USA

Developed and enhanced the GUI of the Open Interface product (Neuron Data's cross-platform GUI builder) using C/C++ and Neuron Data's resource management.
Fixed bugs (API level) for patch releases of Neuron Data's Elements Environment 2.0 and for the 2.1 release.
Defined and implemented a product packaging process for Win32, Win16, OS/2 and Unix.
Implemented a Microsoft Windows installer for Neuron Data's Elements Environment 2.0 using InstallShield 3.
Designed and implemented a cross-platform product build process for daily builds.

Software Developer (7/1991-1/1995) at Softwerkstatt Purtz GmbH, Glauburg, Germany

Designed and implemented the GUI of the Merlin product, which was a Microsoft Windows client for the BasisPlus database system, using XVT.
Designed and implemented a financial statistics system using Microsoft Access, Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Visual Basic.
Coded several routines for database conversions using C and Microsoft Visual Basic.
Programmed in SQL and embedded SQL/C using Ingres and Ingres 4GL.
Internationalized Ingres database masks.

Education:

Diplom-Informatiker (FH), University of Applied Sciences (Fachhochschule) Giessen, Germany, 7/1995
Thesis: "ART Neural Networks and Artificial Intelligence"
"Advanced Java Programming", Neuron Data, Inc., 2/1997
"Workshop - Programming Java", Sun Microsystems, Inc., 6/1997
"Java - Application Programming with the JFC", Sun Microsystems, Inc., 4/1998
"Introduction to JavaBeans", DigitalThink, Inc., 9/1998

Certifications:

References:

Java article:	Bidirectional Text
Java article:	Creating a custom Look and Feel
Personal references:	Available upon request