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Dominic Burford - Professional Profile



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I am a professional software engineer and technical architect with over twenty years commercial development experience with a strong focus on the design and development of web and mobile applications.

I have experience of architecting scalable, distributed, high volume web applications that are accessible from multiple devices due to their responsive web design, including architecting enterprise service-oriented solutions. I have also developed enterprise mobile applications using Xamarin and Telerik Platform.

I have extensive experience using .NET, ASP.NET, Windows and Web Services, WCF, SQL Server, LINQ and other Microsoft technologies. I am also familiar with HTML, Bootstrap, Javascript (inc. JQuery and Node.js), CSS, XML, JSON, Apache Cordova, KendoUI and many other web and mobile related technologies.

I am enthusiastic about Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery and Application Life-cycle Management having configured such environments using CruiseControl.NET, TeamCity and Team Foundation Services. I enjoy working in Agile and Test Driven Development (TDD) environments.

Outside of work I have two beautiful daughters. I am also an avid cyclist who enjoys reading, listening to music and travelling.

 

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GeneralAppropriate vs Consistent Pin
Dominic Burford9-Nov-17 3:24
professionalDominic Burford9-Nov-17 3:24 
GeneralCreating Generic RESTful API Services Pin
Dominic Burford20-Oct-17 5:01
professionalDominic Burford20-Oct-17 5:01 
GeneralIs your software team a democracy or a dictatorship? Pin
Dominic Burford16-Oct-17 21:44
professionalDominic Burford16-Oct-17 21:44 
GeneralSimplifying updating data Pin
Dominic Burford21-Sep-17 22:46
professionalDominic Burford21-Sep-17 22:46 
GeneralWhen 100% code coverage is not always enough Pin
Dominic Burford21-Jul-17 5:11
professionalDominic Burford21-Jul-17 5:11 
GeneralThat's the app in the app stores Pin
Dominic Burford18-Jul-17 5:00
professionalDominic Burford18-Jul-17 5:00 
GeneralDefensive Programming Pin
Dominic Burford28-Jun-17 7:23
professionalDominic Burford28-Jun-17 7:23 
GeneralMy first year - How time flies Pin
Dominic Burford19-Jun-17 1:40
professionalDominic Burford19-Jun-17 1:40 
I'm celebrating my first year at Grosvenor as a Senior Software Engineer. The year has gone by so quickly that you don't often take the time to sit back and savour your accomplishments. I thought I would break this rule and do just that. So here is a (very) brief summary of just a few of the key projects I've been involved in during the previous year, and my first year at Grosvenor.

I've been involved with their mobile app development. This gave me my first introduction to Telerik Platform. This is a cross-platform mobile development platform that uses Apache Cordova. I've previously used Xamarin for such things, so it made a nice change to learn a new mobile platform technology. Under the covers, Telerik Platform uses web technology i.e. HTML, CSS and Javascript. The UI controls are built using the Kendo UI framework and implemement the MVVM pattern to bind the UI controls to the corresponding Javscript properties. Having previously used the MVC design pattern with ASP.NET is was nice to use a different pattern. I have to say that I found the MVVM pattern very simple and straight-forward to use.

I introduced DevOps using Team Foundation Server (TFS). I setup and configured builds for the key applications, implementing continuous integration and continuous deployment as part of these processes. There are different endpoints for development, staging and production, each with its own TFS deployment configuration. The build processes are quite complex, involving over a dozen separate build tasks. We now have uniform and consistent builds across all products across the business. Whereas previously these applications were built and deployed manually by a developer, now this process is entirely automated. This ensures consistency between builds, not to mention simplifying the process and reducing the manual burden on the developers.

I also introduced unit-testing into the software development life-cycle. This has been a major change to the way software is developed. Unit tests are used for both development as well as the build process. All new code must have associated unit tests, and these need to be checked in as part of the build process. The build process performs a code-coverage analysis, giving detailed reporting of the areas of code that are not covered by unit tests. The minimum code coverage is 70%. At the time of writing the code coverage across the application is over 90%.

None of these processes existed until I implemented them Smile | :)

When the decision was made to re-develop the mobile app offering, the key functionality driving the new proposition was to integrate the mobile app with the enterprise applications at the back-end. To achieve this required architecting an entire suite of ASP.NET Web API RESTful services utilising a service bus architecture. All the RESTful services consume and return data in JSON format. The architecture is highly scalable and available due in large part to the fact that it makes substantial use of many Azure services including hosting, service bus, functions, webjobs and a SQL database. As the implementer and architect of this process, I feel immensely proud.

I've thoroughly enjoyed the challenges, projects and the people I have worked with over the previous year and I hope the next year brings many more challenges.
"There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult." - C.A.R. Hoare

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GeneralShould software architects write code? Pin
Dominic Burford16-Jun-17 4:22
professionalDominic Burford16-Jun-17 4:22 
GeneralEnsuring your data is safe with Azure SQL Database Pin
Dominic Burford2-Jun-17 2:24
professionalDominic Burford2-Jun-17 2:24 
GeneralWhat makes a Senior Software Engineer? Pin
Dominic Burford30-May-17 21:53
professionalDominic Burford30-May-17 21:53 
GeneralMore Software Interview Skills 101 Pin
Dominic Burford25-May-17 6:03
professionalDominic Burford25-May-17 6:03 
GeneralSoftware Interview Skills 101 Pin
Dominic Burford12-May-17 5:44
professionalDominic Burford12-May-17 5:44 
GeneralBeat the Thrashing Pin
Dominic Burford5-May-17 6:03
professionalDominic Burford5-May-17 6:03 
GeneralWorking with Azure Blob Storage Pin
Dominic Burford27-Apr-17 2:29
professionalDominic Burford27-Apr-17 2:29 
GeneralWrestling with Apple Pin
Dominic Burford20-Apr-17 3:37
professionalDominic Burford20-Apr-17 3:37 
GeneralTwo unit tests, zero integration tests Pin
Dominic Burford10-Apr-17 22:39
professionalDominic Burford10-Apr-17 22:39 
GeneralThe Mediocre Mindset Pin
Dominic Burford29-Mar-17 1:10
professionalDominic Burford29-Mar-17 1:10 
GeneralHow much code coverage is enough? Pin
Dominic Burford21-Mar-17 5:14
professionalDominic Burford21-Mar-17 5:14 
GeneralThe Mythical Full Stack Developer Pin
Dominic Burford14-Mar-17 3:18
professionalDominic Burford14-Mar-17 3:18 
GeneralCreating your own private NuGet server Pin
Dominic Burford2-Mar-17 0:36
professionalDominic Burford2-Mar-17 0:36 
GeneralConsuming a dependency using NuGet Pin
Dominic Burford28-Feb-17 6:05
professionalDominic Burford28-Feb-17 6:05 
GeneralCoding Standards Pin
Dominic Burford24-Feb-17 6:02
professionalDominic Burford24-Feb-17 6:02 
GeneralSoftware Architecture Challenges Pin
Dominic Burford17-Feb-17 1:31
professionalDominic Burford17-Feb-17 1:31 
GeneralGetting the Most Out of Your Unit Tests Pin
Dominic Burford9-Feb-17 9:21
professionalDominic Burford9-Feb-17 9:21 

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