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Life@Work :: DG Hyp (’97-’00)
Company Summary
According to their web site, the DG HYP (Deutsche Genossenschafts-Hypothekenbank AG) is the main real estate bank within the German cooperative banking sector.
Technology Keywords
Sybase, C++, Windows NT 4.0, Java, Applets, Neuron Data Toolkit (GUI, middleware, workflow).
Web Site, GUI Application, High-Volume Database Application, High-Throughput Printers.
Projects
‘97-’98: Hypowelt / Pfandbriefsparen
This was one of the very early online banking experiences, allowing users to sign up for home loans and buy and sell mortgage-backed bonds online. All this was done from an applet which resembled a globe and featured the individual products as islands.The bonds (”Pfandbrief” in German) island was my project.
What made this project particularly interesting is the technology mix it required to build this web site. The back-end was a C++/Sybase financial management system (also known as KKB), which the web site talked to via the a proprietary middleware package DME (”DISTRIBUTED MESSAGING ELEMENT”) from a company known as Neuron Data. All this was based on Windows NT 4.0. There’s still a web page up, even though they don’t really exist anymore.
My core responsibilities included
- Writing up technical architecture specifications
- Extending the back-end functionality to store the accounts (C++/Sybase)
- Extends the bank statement printing software to create custom account statements
- Front-end coding
‘98-’99: KKB (”Kunden Konto Buchhaltung” — Customer Account Management)
After the little island launched and a second release was not in sight, I ended up joining the back-end team which wrote and maintained the account management system behind all of this. At this point, the system was mostly just handling accounts created online, but one of the next big releases was supposed to take over the entire bank’s account processing (that actually did happen, but years after I left, just to be migrated to SAP about a year after going online).
The focus on this project was much less on the internet, but a full client-server architecture which included a very rich Windows GUI application (based on Neuron Data’s toolkits), Sybase backend processing, and numerous batch jobs.
My initial responsibilities included defining and implementing various screens of the GUI application using the MVC pattern as well as performance tuning (mostly database-related). This was a fairly sophisticated GUI application which not only had to sift through lots of data and work on hundreds of workstations, but also integrated a full workflow engine from a company called Kühn&Weyh (and they’re still around in spite of their strange products).
Soon enough, however, I ended up taking the lead of the team which built the bank statement printing part of the application and got the chance to re-write it from scratch. I ended up creating a nice modular and fully object-oriented application which was to print about 200.000 bank statements in one night. Aside the programming challenge, it was very interesting to deal with the physical side of the project (i.e. the printing) and optimize the order in which statements were printed to minimize postage by combining letters. I think I spent a lot of time in the data center watching the printer back then.
After this, I was fortunate enough to coordinate a massive pre-launch integration testing effort, testing the application in combination with all integrated systems (workflow, printing, a legacy CICS system, etc).
I soon enough realized, however, that I’ve gotten all I can out of this job and that it was time to move on.
