Box Office Results Database (BOA)  Variety   (October, 1999 – present (product support and occasional upgrades))

Industry: Entertainment              Skills Required: Systems Analysis, Design, Development and Programming; Project Management

Approaching the year 2000, the company was using a non Y2K compliant Foxpro database to perform bi-weekly reporting of Box Office results. Additional limitations of the legacy system included the inability to utilize historical results, an error-prone interface to the publishing system, and no carry-forward of prior data or box office lists.

Ground up analysis, design and implementation of an application to track and publish bi-weekly Box Office results published in Variety and Variety.com. The database utilizes Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 for the data store, with Microsoft Access 8.0 as the front-end.

Technical features of the BOA system include:

·          The use of Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 as the back-end data store.

o         Developed the entire database schema & architecture.

o         Utilized DTS to migrate legacy data into SQL Server.

o         Wrote stored procedures, triggers, constraints, etc. to enforce certain business rules at the data level.

o         Utilized SQL Server cursors, temporary tables and ADO techniques to utilize data.

o         Defined replication procedures and timetables.

·          The use of Microsoft Access as a front-end tool.

o         Developed pass-through queries in Access that allowed the power of SQL Server stored procedures to process the data sets returned to the Access front-end.

o         Utilized VBA to define parameters passed to SQL Server stored procedures via pass-through queries.

o         Developed accurate and flexible reports to portray box-office data.

o         Implemented the ability to export Box Office reports to Quark Express for publication.

Conducted end-user interviews on system requirements, business rules, processes and logic. Based on user requirements, developed detailed functional specifications documents and a detailed data-model of the proposed database structure. Using Microsoft SQL Server as the back-end, built the database structure and logic based on the business rules outlined in the functional specifications. Implemented business rules through stored procedures on the back-end, and Visual Basic routines in the front-end. Developed data normalization routines and rules that migrated legacy data from Visual Foxpro to SQL Server. System is currently in place and heavily utilized, and is supported by dobbs enterprise solutions, inc.