Rob Stanton

Senior Analyst/Programmer

Technical Services

Telephone: (0114) 22 21118

Responsibilities

Develop and maintain the Student Systems which comprise Programme Structures, Admissions, Student Records, Assessments and Conferments.
This involves understanding these systems and adapting them to incorporate new user requirements. It also involves designing and creating completely new systems which may use new database technologies such as Oracle Application Development Framework for the deployment of internet applications
I have developed a number of internet forms to allow Students to update the database from their own computers
These systems are used by around 1000 people and quite a lot of them contact me when they have a problem to be resolved, either because their knowledge of a particular aspect of the system is slightly lacking or because the system has not quite functioned as expected
I also allocate system enhancement requests to some other team members and help them with any problems that may arise.

Biography

I started working for the University as a Cobol programmer on student systems in 1990. Quite early in my career the production of the postgraduate prospectus, upon which the intake of postgraduate students depended, had somehow been overlooked, but fortuitously I had already taught myself Microsoft Access and was able to write a system which enabled the data to be entered in record time, and printed out in the format required. These early years also coincided with the introduction of personal computers and networks and I spent some of my time as a Novell network administrator until the amalgamation of the data processing unit with computer services rendered my continued involvement with these technologies unnecessary.

Around 1995 I became an Analyst/programmer on Oracle systems. One of my first jobs was to write the on-line registration programme which has been used to register thousand of students every year since and is soon due to be replaced by my latest internet based registration programme (around Sept 2007). I then became involved with the accommodation allocation project and designed and wrote most of the new system using a new windows version of Oracle forms in conjunction with the windows version of an Oracle computer aided design package called Designer. Essentially, after setting many parameters, this enabled semi-working systems to be generated by clicking a button which could then be perfected by hand. During the following years I have written, among other things, probably the first university in-house postgraduate application form which downloaded data directly into an admissions system; a replacement assessments system; a comprehensive system for the Institute of Life Long Learning to replace their six Access databases; a replacement on-line course regulations facility; a student record archiving system and coming up to date, a pilot CRM system using Java based technologies.