 Christian Engström |
About
Christian Engström
Born in 1960, I graduated from Stockholm University in 1983, with a degree in mathematics and computer science.
While studying, I worked
as a tutor at the University, teaching object oriented programming in
Simula.
From 1978, I also worked part
time as a programmer at a small
company
with about 15 employees, which specialized in phonetic similarity
searches for
trademark names. When I had finished my studies, I started working
full time there, doing maintenance programming on the phonetic search
software, which was written in Fortran.
In 1984 it was decided that we should rewrite the system from scratch, using the same algorithms, but creating a completely fresh code base. For the next two years I worked full time on this project, before we could take the new system into production.
The system, including all its auxiliary programs, eventually grew to about 100,000 lines. Most of this code was written by me.
The primary reason why we
decided to rewrite the system from
scratch, was that we needed to port the system to an IBM mainframe for
a client. Our old system was running on a PDP-11, and because the code
had by then become quite old and ugly, it would have been impractical
to port it directly to the new platform.
Because portability was one of
our main objectives with the new
system, we used Fortran-77 (which was a sensible choice at the time),
together with a pre-processor that I designed and wrote, to overcome
some of the incompatibilities between different Fortran dialects, and
to
be able to handle record structures in the code.
Development of the new system
started on a PDP-11, but was completed
on a MicroVax running VMS, where it was then taken into production. It
was also taken into production by our client on the IBM mainframe about
the same time.
The system has since been
ported to OpenVMS on Alpha, HP Unix, AIX,
and Windows NT without any problems, and with very confined changes to
the code. Although the system has been running on different platforms
at the same time, we have always maintained it as a single code base.
After having implemented the new code base, I started working on gradually improving the phonetic algorithms used in the trademark search system, to improve the recall and precision of the searches. This was carried out in close collaboration with the users of the system (trademark researchers at private firms and at the Scandinavian Patent Offices), who were very helpful in providing feedback that we could incorporate into the system.
The resulting trademark search
system that is in production today is
the generally accepted de-facto standard for trademark searches in the
four Scandinavian countries. Although its algorithms are still based on
principles
from the original system, today's system represents a considerable
quality improvement compared to the original version.
While working as a programmer I began to take more of an interest in the business aspects of the company, and became a partner in the firm in 1987. In 1991 we did a management reorganization, and I became vice president (Swedish: vice VD) under a new CEO, taking an active part in the running of the company, while continuing to be responsible for the maintenance and development of our software
Our main focus outside the
Scandinavian market was setting up a
European on-line trademark search service, first in collaboration with
a large British information provider, and later together with partners
from Germany and Luxembourg.
Together with local partners we
also took part in governmental
tenders to the Singaporean and Malaysian Patent Offices, although we
did not succeed in winning either of those contracts.
In 1997 we sold the company to the leading European trademark search house Compu-Mark, which is part of the Thomson Corporation. I stayed on in a similar capacity as before until 2001, when I left the company to set up my own consultancy firm Glindra AB.
Since then, I have primarily been programming in C++ on Windows and Linux, as can be seen from the Glindra.org project.
I live in Stockholm together
with my wife and our son, born in 2000.
Languages: native Swedish,
fluent English, poor German.
Please feel free to contact me
if you think my talents might be
useful to you in some way.
Glindra
Glindra AB is a Swedish limited company, belonging to me (Christian Engström) and my wife.Glindra is also a registered trademark.
If you write other trademarks with their TM or ® symbols, like "Windows Server SystemTM" or "Linux®", the proper way to write Glindra is "Glindra®". If you don't add the funny little legal symbols to other trademarks, there is no need to do it with Glindra either, just "Glindra" will be fine.
Contact
christian.engstrom (at)
glindra.org
www.glindra.org
