Rodney Roberts - Information Technology Professional Home Page

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Rodney Roberts - Information Technology Professional
E-mail: r.roberts@computer.org

Information Technology professional with 25 years of experience in systems and software analysis and development. Expertise in Electronic Data Interchange, Manufacturing, and Order Processing systems, presently branching into other areas. IEEE Computer Society and Education Society member, as well as a recent Stevens Institute of Technology M.S. graduate, currently :

Teaching
Developing Win32 mailing list manipulation software (see COBOL Tutorials links below) which interfaces with US Postal Service products/services.
Designing/Maintaining web pages (see LeeTown Models, Great Northern Commercial Services for examples).
Researching and publishing on :
- Offshoring, its causes, patterns, and potential effects
- Game Theory (Prisoner's Dilemma and Evolution of Cooperation)

Résumé : Technical, professional, and educational accomplishments.

Academic / Professional Journals : For budding technical writers - a list of IT, Management, and other journals to submit your articles to. If you have a journal to add to this list, please email it to me.

Privacy : Some thoughts on privacy during the computer age. Not only do you have to be careful about what you say in an e-mail or blog (it may cause problems with your current or potential future employer), but now you need to consider the implications from the on-line record of your purchases and phone calls.

COBOL Tutorials

Using Fujitsu COBOL 3.0 to call the USPS Address Matching System API (USPS AMS API) : Describes how to call C++ functions from a COBOL main program on the Win32 platform. Uses the Fujitsu COBOL 3.0 compiler and the USPS AMS API as an example. Shows how to define the AMS API ZIP4_PARM C++ struct as a COBOL record (can be downloaded below). Includes compiling and linking options.

Combining Fujitsu COBOL 3.0, PowerCOBOL 3.0, and the USPS Address Matching System API : Describes one solution to interfacing a Fujitsu PowerCOBOL 3.0 GUI application with a C++ library on the Win32 platform. This is a practical application of the Using Fujitsu COBOL 3.0 to call the USPS Address Matching System API (USPS AMS API) tutorial above. Includes compiling and linking options.

Downloads

USPS AMS API C struct ZIP4_PARM translated to COBOL Record layout : As described in the Using Fujitsu COBOL 3.0 to call the USPS Address Matching System API tutorial above. Conforms to the Address Matching System API User Guide July 2003. This is a 01 Level record. After unzipping, can be used as an include file in the DATA DIVISION WORKING-STORAGE SECTION or LINKAGE SECTION with the statement INCLUDE "AMSZ4PRM.COB". Contains line sequence numbers, which can be removed using the COBOL Line Numbering Utility (download link below).

COBOL Line Numbering Utility : An extremely simple COBOL source file line number manipulation utility that can be downloaded and modified (includes source code, written in Visual Basic 2.0). Runs on both Win16 and Win32 platforms (if anyone upgrades this to a later version of VB, please email to me).

Computer Gaming, Classic Star Trek, and ASCII graphics : Early Classic Star Trek game written in Dartmouth Basic. An example of pre-GUI and pre-PC Computer Gaming.

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