When the FTP situation of my former project (at the Laurentian Bank / Banque Laurentienne in Montreal) stabilized, I transferred to the Bank's GdP / Production Management group (mainframe section).We control the implementation of (mainframe-based) job and programme components into the Bank's pre-Production and Production environments. We also control the running of user-requested jobs (not already scheduled) in these two environments.

I joined the CGI contingent working at the Laurentian Bank / Banque Laurentienne in Montréal. For almost a year, I was the FTP coordinator for a development project, acting as the documenter of the project's file transfer requirements, communicating that information to the (remote from me) FTP group and coordinating the testing of the FTP scripts with a representative of the FTP group.

I joined the Special Projects (SAS Reporting) group at ADP (Canada)'s Montreal, QC office. They produce audit reports for internal use by ADP of for their outsourced payroll business. I'm learning about the business and the incredible power of the SAS language as the various layers of the onion are peeled back for me, in my training for this interesting new position (and it is GREAT to be working back in Montreal at the same time). High hopes, but poor fit.

I supported the systems programmed in PL/1 language and using their IMS database, as part of a small team during a change of outsourcing partner by SHQ (each member of the CGI team was individually assigned different systems within the client's portfolio). I had to quickly get up to speed with how the programmes were originally analyzed and documented, how they worked and connected to each other, what their production schedule was like and what outstanding problems there were (and how the client prioritized them), as my predecessor was not available for an extended knowledge-transfer period. As the only support person for these systems, I also had to build a Relationship with their users and depend on them for a lot of my initial knowledge and hands-on information.As my predecessor had been in place for a very long period, there wasn't much in the way of written documentation, so I built my own written documentation 'library'/binder to help my analyst and successor understand how things worked, especially the system that the client was the most concerned about. When it came time to for me to do a knowledge-transfer to my successor, she received a lot more than I did and has been able to profit from the written / searchable nature of the documentation that I produced.

Returning to my roots . . . The department that I am working in has a series of small mainframe projects that they require programming help with. I am part of a two-person CGI team - my co-worker is doing the analysis work and I am doing the programming work (as I have never previously worked in this environment, and that knowledge is VERY important setting up the analysis documents and setting up the testing environments). The programming is in COBOL, with an IDMS database, mostly in the batch environment.

Started new project in mid-May and am really enjoying it. On the plus side, "new" technology (Oracle DB and Cobol), server environment and more responsibility; on the minus side, more pressure to react and have production problem-free by EOB daily.My official title is "Oracle / Cobol Programmer" (in a maintenance capacity), but my real job is supporting production and clearing up production problems ASAP for the provincial land survey renewal. We receive data from licensed land surveyors from across Quebec, and sometimes they can come up with ingenious (new) ways of screwing up the authorized (input to us) file formats.

I am in a mainframe support group for an outsourced support project for a Canadian aircraft manufacturer. The work environment predominantly includes PL/1, SAS and JCL, with a mixture of many other smaller (and also older) technologies.

long-term analysis postings in the insurance business and the medical businesses. Home base was New Hampshire but also loaned out to Boston, Atlanta and Indianapolis offices of Keane.