Dan’s career in the computer industry began in 1976. After working 10 years at a service bureau using Digital Equipment PDP 11/70 and VAX systems, he joined COGNOS as a technical sales representative. COGNOS developed state-of-the-art Business Intelligence and Performance Management software which was purchased by IBM in 2008. His clients over the years included telecoms, hospitals, Government Justice systems, Universities, lecturing and building his own products.

Dan started Future Chalk Software in 1981 while working at COGNOS. He embraced Omnis in 1984, quickly realizing that building custom applications required a reusable code framework which Omnis was ideal for.

Leveraging the framework concepts, he and a team at Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, Canada) spent 6 months building an Omnis Studio 2 framework to speed up the university’s application development process. Productivity improvement was dramatic: instead of developing one large application and four small ones each year, the university could build four large application and eight smaller applications using their Omnis framework.

Data plays a big part in systems design. He designed his Mediator to synchronize data across many different databases in a timely manner. Dan’s customers use this custom Omnis application on servers and it never misses a beat. He still uses Mediator for data transformation and migrations for current projects.

Dan integrated RFID/IOT technology with Studio in a product called Gallery Guard. Omnis connected with RFID tag readers to triangulate location nd movement of valuable art assets in an art gallery. The unique design of Gallery Guard enabled visitors to visit the gallery and simultaneously monitor unauthorized movement of art pieces. The concept of location tracking was ahead of its time and is a precursor to now familiar location and movement tracking technologies like Apple Air Tags or Tile.

In 1998 Dan incorporated GIS technology into Omnis for an emergency services demo designed for FEMA type organizations before GIS was a thing. The application kept track of assets in the field such as fire hoses, vehicles and other equipment and used real time GPS tracking of inventory for emergency services.

Dan has developed many types of applications using all versions of OMNIS. He does consulting in Database Design, Project Management & Systems Design for large corporations. He also teaches third/fouth year students application requirements and design at Simon Fraser University using Omnis.

Dan is no stranger to Omnis conferences, having spoken at Ameromnis 2002, OzOmnis 2004, and Euromnis conferences since 2007.