Since 1981, DPRB has been offering professional systems design and business solutions using the finest software development tools in the world of Xbase beginning with dBase II. DPRB was particularly suited for such undertakings with over ten years of MIS mainframe systems design and programming experience behind the founder and senior professional programmer member, Frank "dFox" Picchione.
During the first half of the 1980 decade, hardware lagged far behind the capabilities of even the simplest software tools. In the second half, though, things caught up a little bit with a large base of IBM compatible PCs followed by the then giant of the power houses - the 286 AT Class personal computer...
In the first half of this marvelous decade of rapid advancement in all arenas of computer technology, DPRB was busy learning how to take mission-critical, bottom-line business applications and solving them with both minimal hardware and the most unsophisticated software there was, dBase II using Apple computers, Osborne computers, Kaypro computers, Televideo computers, "Leading Edge" computers and of course, clones of these base class machines.
The population of XT Class and 286 AT Class personal computers was a very nice improvement in a developer's capability to produce systems faster and in color, no less. Using dBase III and the availability of the first interpretative/compiler environment for Xbase'rs, DPRB single handily brought the great corporation of American Honda Motor Company of Gardena and Torrance, California into the Age of the PC with over three dozen mission-critical applications over the next 6 years from 1985 through the end of 1991.
In the last few years of the 1980 decade, DPRB expanded with Toyota Motor Company, U.S.A. of Torrance, California as well as many other side "adventures" during the entire decade! What follows is a list of projects and some clients referenced organized logically versus cronologically for your review and information.
Please note, many clients identity is not given where it is
felt that competitive firms or brokers may solicit to them.
With Honda and my oldest client, the Metropolitan Y.M.C.A.
of Los Angeles, DPRB does not fear such challenges!
Microsoft has "coined" an expression about "...not letting them (developers/consultants) through your doors before they pass through theirs..." Well, thier doors weren't even in existence nor had the tools to master business solutions until the acquisition of FoxPro technology in 1992!
At DPRB, we counter this with "Somebody has to be better than everybody else and it might as well be us!" The proven experts in bottom-line, mission-critical business solutions for today and tommorrow!
- Financial Reporting System for Pay Per View Films, Studios and Licensees
Written for DOS, migrated from an antiquated system originally written using dBase IV from Borland, producing audit reports for films and accounts payable information in a fraction of the original time of 4 to 6 hours per report; down to 30 minutes (first "cut"), to 3 minutes (second review of methods), to a final under a minute version! Under one minute... Shall we conclude that FoxPro is still the champion?
- Property Management for Investor Reporting and Accounting
Written in Windows, and just one facet of business applications dealing with property management, the ease of record(s) access, spooling of transactions for a given property and on-top-of-things customer service aspect of the system, was a real winner for this client. The client was still coming out of the dark age of manual operations and appreciated the back up utilities provided to export/import records based upon investor association!
- "Front Desk" for Corporate Recreation Center
Unlike private club management, a corporation facility has different needs and concerns. Honda was no different in 1987 nor when they approached DPRB to rewrite the software in Windows recently. They needed some additional features and features that were not authorized in the original version, but everything went very smooth for training and transition/migration. No user manual required!
- Administrative Assignments
Another system written in DOS in the age of Windows. Again, I refuse to take a position on my client's personal desires and second guess their reasoning. After all, they themselves know better what is good for them than I could ever.
The client is one of my oldest and established Accounting Firm with half a dozen firm partners and a staff of junior accountants reporting to any of the partner members. What was at issue was a record of current work load, approval of assignment changes and production for all members of the firm, partner on down.
- Job Order and Charge Back
Yeah... Another rewrite of a production system DPRB wrote ten years ago and migrated to FoxPro for DOS for the Honda Print Shop with monthly transaction business in the range of a quarter of a million dollars today!
No (migrated) system should remain the same. In other words, "feature" the outdated methods and/or take advantage in the improvement of the tools, such as FoxPro offers. Right mouse click, for instance, to pop open a detail transaction record from a browza(tm) window or SQL selection of data for reporting or search criteria.
DPRB believes that success follows those that know how to give freely of their time and energy and continues to work closely with the Laotian Community and providing both Lao and Thai Wats (Religious Temples) of the Buddhist Religion with software support from membership processing, to religious activity calendar appointments and accounting records for charitable donations and recognition of such people!
Today, the Lao people are working to build a monument to their Buddhist belief and the preservation of their culture on a 20 acre plot of farmland in Fresno, California. It is a 25 year plan that the founder of DPRB hopes to be alive to see flourish and enjoy! Having spent a great deal of his youth in Southeast Asia as an Army soldier for over ten years, Frank believes in the spirit of freedom for all!
With the coming of an all-new career area for technical publishing
skills, I became involved with a small, disadvantgaged youth group of Laotians provided
mentoring in web site publishing development using advanced methods found on this web site.
- Pharmaceutical Claims Adjudication
One of the leading applications for the medical industry, related to cash flow and claim verification for the Pharmacy Industry, Beneficial Financial Bank of New Jersey underwent an ambitious project in FoxPro for Windows to capitalize on the high volume of prescription claims. The system was designed around a Wide Area Network (WAN) and EDI transaction transmission.
- Rapid Application Development Training
Frank has always been an advocate of methods that relate to efficient and speedy development of end user software solutions so that more applications could be produced by the same man power resources.
Recently, his skills that have developed and evolved over the past twenty years of both mainframe and personal computer were validated with personnel from a local University of California. The response and results was dramatic and successful!
Having been a past beta site for RAD tools for FoxPro in 1994-95 and now similar tools under development for Visual FoxPro (ProMatrix,) DPRB has major plans in the proposal stage for bringing the Mekong Region and the Country of Laos into the next century with only the finest FoxPro libraries and tools available!
An ambitious undetaking, DPRB wrote an elaborate data entry system for a staff of one key person, coordinating with input files from cost center assistants throughout the Honda Motor corporation creating an elaborate formatted telephone directory complete with white pages and yellow pages by department, title and key designated personnel listings ordered by custom designed rules of placement.
Phase Two of this year long project incorporated the publishing operation on a mini-computer based system with proprietary software utilizing script technology for page design and layout. The department responsible for the processing of the DBMS output assigned two department personnel each period cycle for one week or a total of two man weeks to perform post editting and validation.
Goal: to reduce the amount of labor and error-prone edit process (eg, falling through the cracks) and objective of saving expensive material resources produced for electronic camera ready processing.
The goals and objectives were achieved reducing post-editting and validation to half a man day per section of white page and yellow pages! Furthermore, the expectations of quarterly cycles was surpassed to the point that a new directory was published every month!
The monthly operation became too much of a burden to the internal print centre and was reduced to quarterly for that reason and the ability of management to determine that there was no real need to be publishing such a document on a more frequent basis and personnel assignments and staffing levels did not change on demand that often; finally allowing the directory to be expanded into listings for temporary service personnel and contractors working with Honda...
- Point-of-Sale and Integrated Inventory Control
and Business Management
Giant Bicycle, a leader in the industry; producing over 60% of the low-end bicycles of the world and over 40% of the equipment costing $2,000 or more, asked DPRB to become the project leader for its POS system to be made available to over 1,700 bicycle shops nationwide and in Canada.
Franco Picchione, Product Manager (POS System @ Dealer Network)
Bike Show Convention/Las Vegas, Nevada ('93)
In cooperation with Computerland computer stores, DPRB managed a small team of FoxPro programmers with goals of producing a state-of-the-art software package.
System requirements included a special module for a Rental Operation, common in bicycle shops in tourist regions, Special Order Handling, Layaway Orders, Credit Orders, Bar-Code enhanced operation, Inventory Control and Purchase Order interface with Electronic Mail Box telephonically received and acknowledged-processed the next day by the corporate mini-computer based system; label producing bar-code enhanced for Receiving and assembly tracking and warehousing bin pick list.
Additional features desired by large and small bicycle shop owners alike were mailing list prepared and fine-tuned on "filter criteria" of sales, customer profile and general accounting reports for financial management.
During 1993, there were 100 beta sites and the initials sales of hardware and software was estimated at over one third of all dealers! Needless to say, the associated cost for the development of the software alone was over quarter of a million dollars and all project-related functions amounted to over half a million dollars. The return on the investment was planned over a five year post sale period and shake down period.
DPRB was very proud of its role in this project and to this day, feel honored that we were selected for such a responsible role.
- "Ghost Writer" for Commercial Products
As a leader in the software field for DBMS-based applications, DPRB was very proud to have been chosen over the past fifteen years of business for three (3) commercial-related products.
- Disaster Recovery Systems utilized by municipalitiy clients as well as industry
and authorized by one of the leading experts in the field.
- Coupon Clearing Service for retail outlets in the State of Washington
as well as prototype for the State of Montana
- Two related auto dealership performance management tracking systems authorized by one of Honda's leading managers and experts in the field of dealership management from sales to service bay to parts!
- Reseller and Author of Several Shareware Products with the DPRB Label
- Head-Hunter for Personnel Agency and Temporary Service Firms
Exhibitor at Disneyland Hotel, Anaheim in 1987
- Order Entry & Accounting Package for Manufacturing
- Immigration Suspense Documents
- Electronic Rep Commissions
- DOS-Hypertext (Off-Line) Publishing - custom to client needs
- FoxPro Shareware utilities for use in DOS and Windows from Resource Directory browza(tm) to Screen File Editor, Pop Up Calendar Black Box
and DOS-based Help Authoring Tool Kit.
- Under development - Class Libraries for browza™
with Multi-View/Order Views/Flat-View Update
Expanded Find/Search Facility
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Other key projects of recent times . . . |
o Walt Disney World
o Resort Guest Questionnaire Statistical Reports
o Vacation Package Products
o Honda "Merit Badges"
o Motorcycle Dealer "Tech" Symptom/Solution
o Summer '88 Litigation "S.W.A.T." Team
and Legal Document Docket
o Auto Insurance Claims Damage Prevention
o Immigration Suspense Documents (see DPRB offering!)
o Japanese Payroll "Kyuyo Keisan" for U.S. & United Kingdom
o Other Motorcycle Systems -
Customer Service Relations S.W.A.T.
o Sports Racing o "Fun Days"
o Small Engine School Donation Program
o All Terrain Vehicle Summary
o Warranty Service Tracking
o Sales-Service-Parts Products Mailing Lists
o Auto Dealer Performance Analysis
o Auto Dealer Service/Parts Publications Indexes
o Honda North America Law Department Support
o TWQ from Japan - "MR. FRANK"
o Legal Case Management
o "Expert" Witness o Retained Attorney Law Firms
o Legal Case Expenses & Reporting
o Parts Division Camera-Ready Motorcycle Catalog
o Honda Finance Corporation
o Funds Transfer
o Financial Notes (Canadian version also)
o Office Automation Support Systems
o Product Pricing
o Hardware/Software Inventory Survey
o Hardware/Software Requisition Business Cases
o Vendor Billing Reconciliation and Audit
o Toyota Motors, U.S.A.
o Field Service Training Records
o Parts Service Training Records (mirror of the above)
o Kia Motors of America
Prototype for shipment tracking to dealer
o Full Service Car Rental
Commission Referral Accounting and Cheque Producing
o Independent Car Specialist
Work Order Processing with integrated Job Order Estimating
o Independent Auto Dealer Support Systems
o Ray's Auto Sales (Inventory, Detailing and Customer Service)
o Co-Op Motors - Sales and Inventory Control
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- Ocean Pacific (Op) Advertising Department providing Purchase Order Inquiry,
and Advertising/Licensee Budget Expense Ledger System
- Cedar Grove School (Private) providing Teacher/Student Administration and Scheduling; Grade Reporting, Medical Emergency Data Inquiry,
and Tuition Accounts Receivable
- Happy Feet, a multi-level marketing consortium, provided a Commission reporting, statement and audit system
- Sports applications sponsored by Coors Beer and Kaypro Computers for the U.S. Sky Diving Team, Federation of Go-Karting, Association of Surfing Professionals and the National Scholastic Surfing Association
- Small Business expert for over five years creating customer service, order entry and accounting applications from Photography Studios to Precious Metals Gold Dealers to Industrial Refrigeration Warranty and Repair service-based companies
Technical Support and Advisory Roles to Management
- Advisor to Ashton-Tate on their Expert Panel for dBase
- Beta Test Site for dBase IV
- Steering Committee for DP Standards at Continental Airlines
- Technical Trainer for Commercial Staff using Hieracrchial-Input-Output Design Methodology for the entire Commercial Division of programmers and analyst
(some fifty professionals) at Continental Airlines
- Business Operator/Owner - Garment and Thai Food Restaurant
Technical Development and Employment of the Founder of DPRB
- U.S. Army, 1966-77, with assignments in Administration, Military Intelligence and Operations, and Data Processing with significant tours in Southeast Asia (Thailand) and the Pacific Hqs in Honolulu working with Federal Civil Service Personnel in support of Payroll Systems for all major operation theatres
throughout the Pacific
- After discharge from the active army, joined the Hawaii National Guard
for fun'n games as a Finance Clerk and guerrila warfare terrorist trainer
using special forces tactics to harrass "friendlies"
with small unit forces
- Senior Programmer on the Accounts Payable Team performing a major role in the audit/validation of systems conversion mainframe hardware working closely with the Customer Service Department of the Hawaii Medical Service Association, the largest Blue Cross Insurance Carrier in the Hawaiian Islands
- Senior Programmer for Financial Systems notably rewriting the flight profitability system and ticket analysis for Continental Airlines
- Senior Programmer/Analyst and Project Leader in the Area of Manufacturer Order Entry Systems for McDonnell Douglas outside clients such as Sunstrand International and Pratt&Whitney in which project awarded for distinction in work
- Working with the Consulting Group of New York in 1981 and 1982, produced all of the specifications for a mainframe manufacturer order entry system with integrated accounting, my current area of expertise from two years with McDonnell Douglas, became the project leader with a programming staff of 20 programmers and went on to work with another subsidiary of the client in writing specs, Garrett Airesearch and Garrett Casting *** 100 online specs and 30 batch accounting ***
Education and Training of Founder
- Bachelors Degree in Business Administration,
Chaminade College of Honolulu, 1976
- Masters in Systems Management Program
(4 courses / 4.0 G.P.A.) at U.S.C. to 1978
- Military Instructor Training
at the NCO Academy '72
- Officer Candidate School for Artillery '67
U.S. Army Veteran 11 / 66 - 4 / 77
Final DD214
Computer Specialist/Systems Analyst
GS-12 Rating in San Diego ...
G.I. pix above, (Company Clerk) Korat, Thailand in '68; below, (Programmer) USARPAC Hqs '76
Hobby-type work in publishing for my military service
and my buddies from my time in Thailand/S.E.A. at -
US Army Support - Thailand
and when I'm not making money, I'm helping Lao/Thai monks and refugees with
their paralegal
needs!
Today !
Veterans' Advocate
Veterans Affair Section.
Click on the above Duffy Classic cartoon for more!
Favorite cartoons Page!
The past few years has seen major advancements in DPRB primary development product, FoxPro! Microsoft deserves all the credit for first bringing to market a robust, cross-platform version for Windows, UNIX and Macintosh and improving all versions including DOS through recent times (except the UNIX determined to be not profitable...) The latest release of the product holds with it the latest in programming technology and methodology for rapid response to user requirements!
DPRB realizes that it has to stay active and current in the field of software development tools and is aggressively working to those objectives and goals with other fine developers around the corner and around the world! Innovation today is history tommorrow. That is the type of technology age and dramatic shortening of development cycles we are experiencing now and for undoubtedly ever. DPRB is ready to meet these kinds of challenges for you!
