Matthew Jason Benson - Résumé - page Matthew Jason Benson Email: mbenson@apache.org AIM: gudnabrsam Professional Objective My ideal position is quite simply one in which my talents are used to develop, or develop build systems for, useful and/or interesting software. General Skills Strong written communications, Ability to learn quickly and independently, Always willing to help peers. Computer Skills Programming Languages: Java, Javascript, SQL, Unix shell scripts, Windows/DOS command scripts aka batch files, COBOL. Java/Java EE: Apache Ant, Apache Commons (various), Bean Validation, Morph, Spring framework, Spring Web Flow, Hibernate ORM, cglib, AspectJ, JSF 2/Facelets, MyFaces, MyFaces Extensions Validator, PrettyFaces, JUnit 3.x/4.x, Mockito, ANTLR 2.x, Freemarker, JSP, Hamcrest, DWR AJAX library, Drools, iText PDF library, Struts 1.x, Threading/Concurrency, Servlets, JDBC, JMS, Swing. DBMS: Oracle, DB2, Pervasive/Btrieve v6.0-8.5. Data Formats: HP-PCL, XML, XHTML, Commons flatfile DSL. Operating Environments: Microsoft Windows, OS X, Solaris, Linux, Cygwin, MS-DOS, Novell Netware 3.x-4.x. Software: Apache Ant, Apache Ivy, Hudson CI, Sonatype Nexus (user/admin), Subversion (user/admin), Eclipse, Genuitec Pulse (user/admin), Apache Maven, CVS (user/admin), PVCS, PGP/GnuPG, ghostScript, ghostPcl, Image Alchemy, Bugzilla (user/admin), JIRA (user/admin), ViewVC (formerly ViewCVS - user/admin), LifePro, MicroSoft Office, Crystal Reports 6.x. Miscellaneous: RTFM, STFW. Interests • Software Build Systems • Language Parsing / Domain-specific Languages • Aspect-Oriented Programming • Dynamic Object Generation • Integration of Enterprise and Legacy Systems • Imaging • Document Generation Employment History Senior Program Analyst - Internet Permanent General Assurance Corporation October 2005–Present Projects: • (Current) Lead developer for rewrite of customer sales site taking a clean approach to the web layer, utilizing Java Server Faces 2.1, PrettyFaces, core HTML components, and jquery-based javascript libraries, backed by an architecture using a deep integration with Java Bean Validation and custom property metadata facilities. • Developed a Java support library to manage ongoing real-time tracking and management of object graph data and metadata including e.g. the ability to submit a change to an arbitrary point in the graph and receive notice of resulting data and/or metadata updates. This required complex dynamic class generation to (a) track changes to collection elements, and (b) then achieve compatibility with Hibernate collection types, and was integrated as backend support for web projects implemented in multiple frameworks (SWF/JSF2). • Developed a lightweight Java bean configuration package similar to an IOC container, but syntactically a compromise between Java and XML, motivated by the verbosity of the Spring framework's inversion of control (IOC) container. The ANTLR parser generator tool was used to develop the parser for the domain-specific language, whose syntax was focused on brevity. Some features included transparent collection conversion from generic or typed array syntax, best-match method invocation, prototype and parent beans a la Spring IOC, and a system of mapping objects via hierarchical keys to find, given e.g. an ordered set of criteria, the best match in a set of configured objects. • Developed an abstract Java library for working with flat file data structures in a pseudo-OO fashion, including a DSL to define flat file structures in a terse descendant of COBOL copybook syntax (Permanent General has made this library available via software grant to the Apache Commons sandbox, as the flatfile component. Used this library to mediate between Java object graphs and various flat file data. • Development and maintenance of online insurance quote applications using Struts 1, Spring IOC/MVC/Web Flow, Hibernate, AJAX via DWR, Freemarker and JSP technologies, among others. • Led the effort to introduce non-IDE-performed software builds, dependency management and continuous integration in the enterprise using Apache Ant, Apache Ivy, Sonatype Nexus and Hudson. • Coworker mentoring. • Subversion co-administration. • JIRA administration. • CVSNT administration; implemented CVSNT email notification akin to that available for Unix CVS. Senior Application Developer CNA Life/Valley Forge Life October 1998–September 2005 Projects: • Developed a Spring Web MVC viewer for an Oracle database. Hibernate Object-Relational mapping was leveraged to resolve the database structure in terms of programming objects, and was supplemented by considerable amounts of custom SQL due to the complexity of the legacy data structure. Careful study of the Spring framework allowed greater flexibility with a smaller codebase than the company's prior Spring/Hibernate project. • Light administration of CVS and Bugzilla on Fedora Linux. • Primary designer/developer of a fast, flexible COBOL utility for extracting hundreds of thousands of policies' data from a (LifePro) Btrieve database in scant few hours. A particularly interesting component of this project: the COBOL-written expression parser that evaluated boolean expressions (including relational operators and grouping), compiling these from text to procedure pointer calls at runtime. • Implemented an Ant-based build system for Net Express COBOL applications, including awareness of copybooks. • Used MS Word macros to implement a seamless user experience uploading Word documents via servlets to JMS queues. Created a servlet-based JMS queue browser/editor as a development aid. • Developed a Java-based reporting library to write arbitrary SQL resultset data to HTML and PDF formats, backed by the iText library. • Varied reporting (ad-hoc and otherwise) against Oracle and Btrieve databases. • Ongoing enhancements and modifications to a legacy PCL policy generation system. Open Source Projects Apache Ant Project Management Committee Apache Software Foundation August 2004–Present From How the ASF works: A PMC member is a developer or a committer that was elected due to merit for the evolution of the project and demonstration of commitment. They have write access to the code repository, an apache.org mail address, the right to vote for the community-related decisions and the right to propose an active user for committership. The PMC as a whole is the entity that controls the project, nobody else. Apache Ant Committer Apache Software Foundation February 2004–August 2004 From How the ASF works: A committer is a developer that was given write access to the code repository and has a signed Contributor License Agreement (CLA) on file. They have an apache.org mail address. Not needing to depend on other people for the patches, they are actually making short-term decisions for the project. Apache Commons Project Management Committee Apache Software Foundation June 2007–Present Set of independent and reusable Java libraries, formerly Apache Jakarta Commons. Specific expertise in the [lang], [jxpath], [collections], and [proxy] components, as well as the [flatfile] and [functor] sandbox components. Apache Bean Validation podling committer Apache Software Foundation July 2010–Present Apache-hosted implementation of JSR-303 Bean Validation. Made various improvements to the codebase, including improved recognition of generic types down an object graph based on parent property definitions. Located an error in the RI and TCK regarding the structure of property paths. Developed supplementary Bean Validation provider to implement dynamic manipulation of validation constraints at runtime, potentially keyed to specific points in the object graph. Complemented this extension with a Myfaces Extensions Validator extension to handle the additional complexity imposed by graph-position-sensitive property validation (as a result I am likely the member of the software community with the third most knowledge of the workings of Myfaces Extensions Validator). Foundation Member Apache Software Foundation December 2007–Present From How the ASF works: An ASF member is a person who was nominated by current members and elected due to merit for the evolution and progress of the foundation. Travel Assistance Committee Member Apache Software Foundation September 2008–Present From ASF Travel Assistance: The Travel Assistance Committee exists to help those that would like to attend ApacheCon events, but are unable to do so for financial reasons. Developer/Release Manager Morph object mapping framework January 2007–Present Bug fixes and functionality enhancements. Project Administrator Jext Java Text Editor 2000–2003 Bug fixes and enhancements to the Swing user interface, core architecture and shipped plugins. Contributor iText Java-PDF library iText is perhaps the most widely-used Java library for creating documents in Adobe's Portable Document Format. Certifications • Sun Certified Developer for the Java 2 Platform, April 2001 • Sun Certified Programmer for the Java 2 Platform, October 2000 Education Associate of Applied Science in Business Technology, December 1998. Graduated with honors Nashville State Technical Institute Overall GPA: 3.575 High School, June 1992. Graduated with honors Hume-Fogg Academic High School Overall GPA: 3.2 Miscellany I have an agile mind and an insatiable desire to know how and why systems work. I tend to be the first person to encounter limitations with a technology, but as a result have had to become skilled at finding solutions to such problems. I never shrink from an intellectual challenge, and take particular pleasure in making a system surpass its own supposed limitations. I am an avid user of open-source software. I always assume that I am not the first person to need a tool to accomplish a particular task, and that a reliable open-source solution probably exists. I monitor the user lists of the projects I am most interested in, which yields the benefit of my having read many questions--and answers. It is my belief that many developers, when trying a piece of OSS that gets them 95% to their goal, then encountering some relatively minor issue, give up on the software. I try to take such "bumps in the road" in stride, report the issue, find and contribute the fix if possible, and take satisfaction in the improved product. Through my continuing interest in open source, I was elected first as a committer and later to the Project Management Committee of the Apache Software Foundation's Ant project. Membership in an Apache project is attained only as a result of positive impressions made on other project members; the ASF calls this principle Meritocracy. In 2007 I was elected as a committer to Apache Jakarta, and when Apache Commons left the Jakarta umbrella to become a top-level project of the foundation, I became a member of its founding PMC. In late 2007, my sustained contribution to the ASF was recognized by granting me foundation membership. I continue to participate in open-source projects wherever they coincide with the needs of my paid work, and/or my intellectual interests. My references are available on request. Last modified July 2011.