Robert Barnes Consulting
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For the past few years a lot of my time has gone into developing a web site, www.FamNet.net.nz, using Microsoft's latest development environment.  Originally started with Visual Web Developer 2005 Express (ASP.NET 2.0), later I upgraded to Visual Studio 2008 then 2010 with ASP.NET 3.5/4.0.  

My primary motivation for this development was to give me a skills upgrade.  Years earlier, in the mainframe era, I'd been an expert PL/I programmer in the IBM MVS environment.  Since then I'd focused on company building and then IT consulting and Project Management (see my CV for details), and I wondered if I'd lost touch with modern programming.  I felt that if I "got my hands dirty" with a serious development project, not just a few classroom exercises, I'd be a better project manager of similar projects.  I chose to focus on Microsoft technology:  one cannot be expert in every environment, and with Microsoft's market share skills in ASP .NET and Visual Basic are more likely to be useful than another technology. 

The project took on a life of its own, giving me some fascinating technical, business, and "political" challenges.  It is now a very well regarded site for genealogists, with a significant collection of records  (14M individuals in January 2011).  It has been acknowledged as solving many of the problems endemic to Internet genealogy.  Whether it proves successful commercially is still to be determined.

The site includes: -
User Regisration and Authentication.  
Subscriber and Free pages.   
Access control to individual pages/records based on UserID. 
Privacy Management
High-function pages derived from database date
Extensive use of SQL procedures and functions
Background and foreground processing
Email and HTTP communication
Companion Windows program (Visual Basic) for charts, which use web services to get the data that they need

Testing: -

FamNet

http://www.famnet.org.nz/GDB_pages/gdb2.aspx?Linkid=9645a66e-c42b-4c52-bfea-b7040d727f5f                Mary

http://www.famnet.org.nz/GDB_pages/GDB2.aspx?Linkid=6710ca38-dee9-4d05-b8d5-036c0d0d25b9            Dad

http://tinyurl.com/48fbexw  (Dad again)

http://www.famnet.net.nz 

http://tinyurl.com/4kyaobe     Famnet via TinyURL

LocalHost

http://localhost:3641/TestGDB/Default.aspx    Home

http://tinyurl.com/4qy4bpd    Home via TinyURL

http://localhost:3641/TestGDB/GDB_pages/gdb2.aspx?Linkid=cc2156c9-7cc4-4102-b842-b55adb265d35  Dad

http://tinyurl.com/4hmg2xn  Dad again

http://localhost:3641/TestGDB/GDB_pages/GDB2.aspx?Linkid=9F2A0368-AD37-4DFB-A112-05D34DAB7B63 Mary