This page is under construction since September 5, 1996

I have been working with computers since 1983.

As an undergraduate student I was developing software to run on home micros and, later, PCs.

In 1985 I founded a small company in Thessaloniki, Greece, where I started developing commercial software and teaching programming and computer use classes to highschool and undergraduate students.

In 1989, as a postgraduate, studying for the degree of MSc in Computer Science at the Department of Computer Science of the Victoria University of Manchester, UK, I was a member of the Software Environments group, led by Brian C. Warboys, Professor of Software Engineering.

The group was working on the ESPRIT II project, EDS (European Declarative Systems, 1989-1991),a large collaboration principally between three major computer manufacturers: Bull (France), Siemens (Germany) and ICL (UK). The output of the project was intended to be a single hardware and software homogeneous distributed system.

My work was to model the concurrent behaviour of the synchronous and asynchronous ADTs, basic building blocks of the BM (Base Model - a formal specification method for concurrent systems). The tools that were used for this modelling were C++ (programming language) and Chorus (distributed operating system). The abstraction models and communication mechanisms designed were later used for the implementation of the BM translator to C++ by Ann Apps.

In 1990, while doing my national service in the Hellenic army, after finishing my basic training I served as a systems analyst / programmer at two posts. First, at the HFA (Hellenic First Army) Information Systems branch where I developed a PC-based real-estate management database application. Second, at the ASO (Army Shares Office) where I was responsible for the acceptance testing and support of the data entry procedures for a section the office’s MIS.

In 1991, I joined UNISYS Hellas S.A. (the local distributor of UNISYS), as a Systems Analyst / Programmer. I was a member of the TOD (Technical Operations Dept) and the FinLoB (Financial Line of Business) group, focused on Banking Systems.

My domain of responsibility, was the support of information systems, promotion of new products and the development of IS solutions for ALPHA Credit Bank (ACB), Greece. Main tasks undertaken were production support, design of new products, configuration management, systems/DBMS administration and systems integration.

Initially a member of the "Branch Automation" project work-group, was subsequently the UNISYS representative at the Bank’s IS dept. responsible for production support and the development of new products. While at the IS dept of ACB, undertook several tasks such as:

Concurrently, I contributed to the documentation process and the presentation of proposals to various CFPs (calls for proposals) by Public Organisations and Banks as well as to the presentation of integrated Banking Solutions in special exhibitions such as BankTech, AmTech etc.

In 1993, I moved to my hometown, Larissa and I live/work there since. Having spent the last 5 years with workstations and mini systems, I was then re-introduced to the fast-growing and ever-changing world of PCs. Moreover in 1994 I made the acquaintance of a technology that I had, that far, no knowledge of; the GIS (Geographic Information Systems) technology.

Since then, I have developed an interest in systems that integrate conventional information systems with GIS and, in particular, DGIS (Desktop GIS) for the public and business sector. Drawing from my experience in the areas of Software Engineering and Business Information Systems, I view DGIS as a decision support tool for the contemporary manager. I also support the idea that, in order for them to be successfully integrated in the business environment of legacy systems and desktop computing they should be dealt with as Information Systems (which their name clearly states they are). For that, they should be considered as an integral part of the solutions that information systems intend to provide for the contemporary business and not as an isolated sub-system. They should be introduced in the software life cycle at the very first stages and evolve with it along the way for an integrated solution to be achievable.

DGIS has an enormous potential when viewed as a dynamic new technology in the hands of the software industry. It is a whole new market that needs to be explored. Of course these views are my own and they only intend to describe the role that I feel DGIS should play and the approach that should be followed for a seamless integration of the new technology with conventional wisdom. As an example for the real-world implementation of these views I could mention the YP-System, an integrated database/GIS application that has been installed and operates at the Prefectory of Corfu, Greece.