Intern Project Paper

By Heidi Jorgensen

For Spring Semester 2002, I was an intern at Advanced Fibre Communications in Petaluma, CA. My supervisor was DiAnne Hansen and my mentor was Le Nyugen. Le was a great mentor. He helped me to learn many helpful programming and database techniques. DiAnne was patient with the many questions I asked. I started out working 10 hours per week. Several weeks later my work time was increased to 24 hours per week. The greatest amount of my time was spent on the Project Request system. (This system is used for internal company requests to the IT department.) It consists of ASP/HTML pages and SQL databases. One database holds the project request information and another the results of a customer survey. The ASP pages are used for input forms, displaying and changing the status information of projects, emailing updates when the project status is changed, collecting customer feedback after the project is complete and displaying various statistics on the survey responses. The database is updated as the project request moves through the stages of development. My job was to correct bugs, upgrade existing files and make major changes to several files. In the beginning, I spent a significant amount of time becoming familiar with the complex schema of the ASP/HTML pages and their interactions with the database. There are many files and tables involved. Le taught me about database stored procedures and how to do complex query string calls in ASP. I used the SQL Query Analyzer to test and debug database queries. From there I created stored procedures which were executed in the ASP files. One significant contribution I made was an upgrade to a project request viewer that allows three different levels of sorts on the data. I replaced a hierachy that was comprised of 15 files with a single file capable of 100 different combinations of sorts. I also made substantial changes to the survey results (statistics) viewer. Other tasks included: 1) aiding a co-worker, Marie, with JavaScript programming, layers and teaching her ASP programming techniques; 2) working on Stock Option input forms where I used HTML and ASP to dynamically generate a second level input form based on the selections from the first page form; and, 3) modifications to existing input forms for the extranet. I really enjoyed working at AFC. The atmosphere is casual and friendly. I was able to use my knowledge of ASP and JavaScript in real world applications. I learned some new programming techniques from Le. Marie was also helpful to me. Although I knew the basics of SQL, my highest learning curve was in the SQL/database queries area. Even though there were times of frustration, I found my internship to be a very valuable experience. I have gained knowledge and learned techniques that will help me in future jobs. 4/28/02 HAJ