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Web Department

Instrumental in moving a monolith web application, based on Web Client Software Factory (WCSF) from Microsoft, to a more modern ReactJS front end and a RESTful backend. The RESTful back end is based on ASP.NET MVC.During the refactoring of the WCSF monolith we introduced Ninject IoC to eventually get rid of the object builder dependencies. This is a long term project of rebuilding the front end completely using ReactJS and eventually having a complete RESTful API.

Web Department

Early 2013 the web department took on a project working on the Onlinebank. Like with most project of this size it started as a more visual changes giving the product a new life with new colors. Quickly it escalated to a few changes in page flow here and there but eventually ended up as a rewrite, revamp or, if you will, reinvention of the Onlinebank.This project required all hands on deck and put a stop to the decoupling API project. However, the Onlinebank really needed the work and in the end it looked better than ever.

Web Department

After Integration & Innovation was terminated in the current form I had some time to think about where I was and what I wanted to do. I decided my best move would be getting back to being a developer, something I love, and something my previous positions had prevented me from doing full time.I relocated to the web department and spent some time getting into the zone again after a few years as a manager/developer. At approximately the same time the Onlinebank team was moved from the Software department to the Web department. When that move was made I immediately started working on a way to decouple the Onlinebank from the backend systems in order to make the product more flexible to the rapid changes requested by the Web department.As part of the architecture, from my time at Integration & innovation, we would have layered an API between the Onlinebank and the backend systems and at some time we would be able to make that API available to our customers making innovation in banking more open to external software developers.

Leading a division called Integration & Innovation at Landsbanki makes my main responsibilities architecting links between different computing systems and software applications functionally. Making it easy to replace systems that can be bought instead of developed and then integrated into the enterprise. I believe that we can make this happen by using message based architecture style.When innovating one must find what processes are running and, through innovation, find ways to eliminate waste from those processes. At the same time make the processes more automatic and streamlined. My responsibility in Innovating in the Bank also means finding new ways to expose banking functionality to external users. I believe this can be done by exposing the banks functionality as SaaS. However, exposing the Bank’s functionality using SaaS sets a huge demand on security. This is where my previous work at Landsbanki, incorporating claim based security and the STS, become a pillar in the future of Landsbanki innovation.

As a software architect one should mostly be making high-level design choices much more often than low-level choices. However, as the leader of the framework group I still have the luxury of getting my fingers dirty with development.

Iceland

Being a manager at a company like Landsbankinn takes up most of your free time. After my relocation to the web department I started working on different projects in my free time in order to get my fingers dirty with more tools in the web development world. I worked on a few projects in Ruby on Rails hosting them on DigitalOcean. I did some small projects like allowing you to search and download music from Youtube where the client side was written in AngularJS. I also worked on a project that required you to log-in using an Icelandic Electronic id. In order to do that I ended up writing and publishing a Ruby gem, called omniauth-islykill, based on a well-known generalized Rack framework for multiple-provider authentication called omniauth. During the gem development process I also forked a project called signed_xml and have a pending pull request since 2012. However, these projects where short-lived since they didn’t really have a set purpose outside my learning experience. I along with other development enthusiasts have most of the code hosted in private repositories on bitbucket.org but omniauth-islykill and signed_xml can be found on Github under the organization Algrim.

Took the lead in a new Framework group at Landsbankinn. This group was responsible for all frameworks developed and used in the bank. The group was also responsible for educating developers in the use of those frameworks.Client Framework based on the Smart Client Software Factory from Microsoft. This framework is used to unify the clients making components for different business scenarios live in a single runtime environment. Web Framework based on the Web Client Software Factory from Microsoft. This is framework that I started in 2007 and has been developed further in a direction that makes it possible to actually seperate the framework from the business modules and release the framework as a single product.All of the frameworks integrates logging/autiting, authentication and authorization and other perpendicular functionality needed in a rich client.

Was chosen to be a part of a group initiating Landsbankis SOA environment. I had the role of lead software developer/designer in a framework used to stream line and simplify the service development.I designed and developed PCS (Proxy Configuration Service) making the client config free. Also developed the hosting environment making services mostly config free as well.Incorporated an STS (Secuity Token Service), moving the bank towards its next authentication/authorization model of Claim based security. Took part in the design of a logging framework used to chain together actions and activities on the client side with a service operation process.

Worked on getting the Corporate side of Landsbanki Online bank from a C++ IIS extension to a more modern Web 2.0 web application. Mostly ASP.NET control and page development with Ajax in the browser for increased user experiance.In May 2007 my development group started similar work on the Private Online bank. This time around the Web Client Software Factory from Microsoft was used for increased decoupling and a more modular web development.On this foundation an initiative was started in combining the corporate and private online bank into a single web application with different modules.

When Dimon sold its products to Teamware Group an experienced SyncML developer was needed at the company and several of Dimon’s developers decided to carry on their work at Teamware Group.The work included a total rewrite of the SyncML service since that part of the software belonged to Nokia. The product was to be on display at CeBIT in March 2004; in order to make this happen we based the new Sync server on a 3rd party implementation of SyncML and our backend connectors. For testing purposes I developed a message recorder/player that was used for regression testing. This ended up becoming a framework where one could set up multiple users with multiple Sync sessions making performance and scalability testing possible.I also participated in a project called Mobile Express that enabled companies to transform their website to a mobile website using a screen scraping technology. Mobile Express was a combination of a runtime environment and an Eclipse IDE web tools plug-in written in Java using XHTML and XSLT for transformations.

I was part of a team that designed and developed a Synchronization server for mobile phones based on SyncML for Nokia. This included development of backend PIM connectors to Teamware office and Microsoft Exchange Server making the solution independent of its backend system.Teamware was also part of the team and integration with their user management system was part of the work as well.In October 2004 this project was stopped by Nokia and Dimon Software made a strategic decision to close the company and sell its products. As a result some of the products, including the backend PIM connectors was sold to Dimon’s project partner Teamware that intended to carry with the SyncML project.

I worked on various projects with the company both in the Giza Platform as well as the Giza Studio IDDE. The Giza Platform was an SDK for building client applications in Java while the Giza Studio was the IDDE used to build applications based on the Giza Platform.I developed Chained class-loaders (local and remote) allowing applications to load classes from a remote location in runtime. This was part of Lux Inflecta’s patent pending "Skinny Client" (patent: GB2372119A). The “Skinny Client” allowed developers to split any Java application into multiple jars stored in a remote location. When the application is executed the classes are loaded gradually as the user navigates through the applications functionality.Developed a XML parser for small devices; this was not a fully functional parser but a simple one done in Personal Java in order to support part of the “Skinny Client” functionality.I took part in the effort of extending the Giza Platforms ORM (object relational mapping) to a WRM (web to relational mapping).

My first summer job as a programmer