About Eric Giguere

Welcome!

My name is Eric Giguere, pronounced jee-gair, and I've created this site to promote myself and my writings.

Work History

I'm a software developer working for iAnywhere Solutions Inc., a subsidiary of Sybase, Inc. Currently I'm on the team that is responsible SQL Anywhere Studio, the market leader in mobile databases and mobile middleware.

SQL Anywhere Studio comprises different sub-products. Right now I'm working on the database synchronization technology. Before that, I was working on messaging, including the development of a Java-based rules engine for custom message delivery. And before that, I was working on UltraLite database technology, a very cool way to build and deploy custom relational databases on small devices that can easily exchange data with conventional external databases.

Prior to UltraLite, I was a development manager for PowerJ, Sybase's Java development environment. My primary responsibilities were the design and implementation of the PowerJ runtime class library (PJClass, written completely in Java, of course) and anything to do with database access at runtime or design-time. This included JDBC access classes, query editing, and data-aware user interface components.

Before PowerJ, there was Power++, originally released as Optima++, and I was one of the original developers for that product. PowerJ in fact derives much of its looks and a good part of its code from Power++. As with PowerJ, I was primarily responsible for the runtime class library known as WClass, written in C++ for the Win32 platform. Development on the Power++ product has now ceased, but it lives on in PowerJ in many ways.

When I first joined Watcom (one of the companies acquired first by Powersoft and then by Sybase) in 1993, I worked on a product called VX-REXX, which was a RAD (rapid application development) environment that used the REXX language and (don't laugh now) ran on OS/2, back when OS/2 was a viable competitor to Microsoft Windows. In some sense, VX-REXX is really the ultimate ancestor of both Power++ and PowerJ, since much of what we learned with it greatly influenced the development of the other two products. VX-REXX is no longer with us, of course.

The years from 1990-1993 I worked as a software developer for the Computer Systems Group, a small research and development group at the University of Waterloo. There I worked on various projects such as early versions of VX-REXX and portable user interface libraries and resource languages, and I also did system administration for our small set of Unix servers.

Education

Education-wise, I hold a master's degree (MMath) in computer science as well as a bachelor's degree (BMath) in computer science and combinatorics & optimization, both from the University of Waterloo. I received my BMath in 1990 (full-time co-op) and my MMath in 1996 (part-time).

Published Writings

At the age of 14 I published my first article for a computer magazine, back in the days when I owned a Commodore VIC-20 and later a Commodore 64. For a while I was a regular columnist for a magazine called Commander, and later on when I moved on to Amigas I was published in The Transactor. I've also written articles for Computer Language (and its successor, Software Development), BYTE and Dr. Dobbs Journal. I also wrote the Programmer's Guide to ARexx under contract for Commodore, ARexx being a very good implementation of the REXX language on the Amiga.

I'm lucky enough now to have published three books with John Wiley & Sons. It certainly took a lot of work, but it's a very rewarding feeling when it's finally done and you see your books on the bookshelf of your favorite computer bookstore!