My Co-op Experience

by

Jason Lucia
Introduction
 
     My Co-op experience began with the first company, of many, that I interviewed with.  I had several offers but I decided that the American Bridge Company was the one of most interest to me.  The American Bridge Company is a vertically integrated technical, engineering, manufacturing, and construction company who is the industry leader in innovation and technical capabilities.  The company develops unique and innovative methods for erecting and maintaining cable supported, movable, and other complex bridges and structures all around the world.  Their projects include bridges of all types, buildings and facilities, structural steel erection for large buildings, and marine facilities. The company also manufactures a wide range of structural steel, pre-cast concrete products, and specialized erection equipment.

     Even though I had several computer science classes under my belt, I really didn't know what to expect.  The IT department, in which I worked, used many different programming languages that I had no knowledge of.  It also used several different operating systems and servers that I never heard of either.  It was very intimidating to walk into such a diverse company with very little knowledge of anything.  That is where the company and my boss played a huge roll. 

 
Rotation One:  September '00 - December '00
 
     My first rotation was a big adjustment for me.  I really never had an office job before and I had to get use to sitting at a desk and working on a computer all day.

     My assignment for this rotation was to continue developing the intranet that was started the rotation before me by another co-op from the University of Pittsburgh.  I first had to learn the PHP development language, SQL database language, and I had to feel my way around the different servers that the intranet ran on.  Once I felt comfortable enough with the languages and the hardware, I created an online phonebook for the site.  It consisted of every employee in the company, the offices at which they worked, their addresses, and of course their phone and fax numbers.

     I then began to indulge deeper into the design aspect of the intranet.  I had create monthly themes and graphics for the entire site.  The graphics had to be interactive with the users.  Photo albums, design layouts, as well as images of company functions were interweaved throughout the site.

     Finally, I did hardware repairs and reinstallations of all computers within the company.  The company was converting all of the computers to Windows 2000 Professional operating systems.  I also had to configure the systems with the network settings in order for the employees could access the internet and newly published intranet. 

 
Rotation Two:  May '01 - August '01
 
     Upon returning for my second rotation, I was given the task of continuing the dynamic web reporting for the marketing department.  The goal of the project was to create easy-to-access pdf-based reports using PHP functions.  The employees had to be able to select any number of criteria and be able to select any number of records.  PHP's ability to incorporate object oriented programming was very convenient in the abstraction of data from the database and transform it into the information that was needed for whatever pdf-based report the employee needed.  For those who do not know what pdf-based reporting is, let me go into some detail.  Pdf-based reports are pixel based.  You need to specify where every element of the report will be located.  This is easily accomplished when you have a standardized set of criteria to be displayed, but this was not the case.  I had to develop a way to dynamically create a report not knowing what criteria and what records would be needed.  PHP and the pdf functions within it allowed me to dynamically add enough layers of abstraction to learn as much about the data before displaying it.

     Midway through the co-op semester my boss began to show me WAN and LAN networks actually work.  The company started several new jobs and opened several new offices all of which needed networks installed.  I got first hand experience when we brought up and connected several offices and job sites using VPN technology.  I got to see how to configure a Cisco firewall and router while assisting the setup.

     I also continued with maintenance of the employees computer hardware and software.  I got more involved with the purchasing of systems for new-hire employees.  I was able to see how the business world works when talking to customer service representatives from companies like Dell, Gateway, Microsoft, and many more.
 
Rotation Three:  January '02 - April '02
 
     Upon returning for my third rotation, I was given my first project.  I had to develop an e-commerce site for the company.  The site had to mimic an electronic shopping cart.  The major drawback with this project for me was that the AbleCommerce software that the company purchased for this project was written in the Cold Fusion language.  I once again had to learn a new programming language.  I started out by reading chapter after chapter of a book that came with the software to get a grasp of what the code looked like and what it was suppose to do.  I quickly learned that it was easier to just roll up my sleeves and dive right into the code.  I ran into many problems in which I had to consult with the technical staff of AbleCommerce.  Integrating the graphics was very complex and if not done correctly did not work.  The part of the site that caused me the most headaches was developing a form for secure credit card transactions.  There had to be certain settings set in order for the transactions to go through successfully.  I completed the project and passed it on to the marketing department for use.

     For the remainder of my co-op semester, I was given the task of creating a chat server for the company's intranet.  I used the following ensemble for the development of the site: JSP, IIS 5.0, and an Apache server.  I setup a foul-word-filter to catch inappropriate language on the site.  The ensemble worked out very well.  Unfortunately, the chat server is not being used on the site.  

 
Conclusion
 
     Co-oping provided me with work experience in the real world.  The experience that I received at the job has helped in the classroom.  I program a lot better.  I know how to work with databases and the servers that they run on.  I also feel more confident working on the projects/programs that are assigned to me.  More importantly this experience gives you confidence in your abilities as a specialized computer science student.