Conversion of NIMBUS weather forecasting system into a component based system with a Document Object Model (OLE Automation) to allow it to be automated from within other applications such as Word, Excel and Powerpoint. (Delphi 5. Also investigated the moving of the project to Delphi 6 in order to easily add SOAP server functions).
Implementation of OLE Documents and OLE Drag/Drop functionality to allow objects from the NIMBUS system to be linked or embedded as OLE documents in other systems.
Investigation into the possibility of using Kylix to produce a Linux version of the NIMBUS weather forecasting system. Involved extensive use of Kylix to identify the problem areas in porting the system.
Design and development of a web based weather forecasting system using Java (JBuilder 3, JDBC and Oracle 8.1.5 (8i) & JDK 1.1) to create interactive pages that display weather information on user zoomable maps that can be displayed cross platform and cross browser. The web server side is written in Delphi with the client side being written in Java.
Development of software to allow production of dynamic web pages from the outstation system to allow secure remote sites to download current weather information.
Design and development of Seamet ship system - allows ships to track weather information. Weather info is downloaded to the system via a satellite link and ingested into the system and displayed on global maps. User is able to fully interact with maps, zooming, overlaying his route etc. MTS objects were written for the extraction of the data and routing components were written to allow calculation of speed, track and position.
Designed and developed the next generation of Weather forecasting systems for the use of 'outstation' Met Office & NATO observers and forecasters. This system (NIMBUS) allows staff remote from the Met Office in offices all over the world to view the various forecasts and observations and use them to produce local forecasts for their site. The core of this software is also used in a variety of other systems within the Met Office. The software is written using Delphi 5.1 and C++ Builder 5 together with SQL and Oracle (8i) and will run on anything from a single PC to a multi machine Windows NT/2000 network. I was the chief architect of this system and implemented the bulk of it including the user interface, all the Delphi components necessary for displaying the weather information (including GIS mapping components) and the DCOM/MTS objects to talk to the server side database.
Development of ActiveX controls to allow the interactive use of weather information, allowing the user to zoom in/out on maps etc.
Design and development of the Mist software. This is a system that allows a user to select and download weather information and then to view it on screen. This involves extensive use of graphics as most of the weather is designed to sit over maps. In addition to this we designed and wrote software to handle scheduling and communications with a remote server.
For the last year of this contract we were designing and developing the software to run under Windows 95 / Windows NT using Delphi as the development language. The aim was to make this a 'Designed for Windows 95' logo program. This included adding Ole server features. The program was written to the Windows 32 style guide.
Prior to this we redesigned and developed most of the dos version of the software including a map display system to allow data to be displayed on maps more easily. We also totally redesigned the user interface so that the software had a 'windows' look and feel.
This software was written for the dos platform using an extender and Modula 2 with extensive use being made of objects. We also designed and wrote a plug in replacement for the Borland BGI graphics libraries that could be used with the Modula 2 extender.