This platform underpinned the origin of several Providence search and business productivity web app initiatives.

Much of the platform architecture originated from work on an open source semantic search platform proof-of-concept cobbled together on a handful of desktop PCs pirated from abandoned office cubicles.

Backed by leadership and capital funding, I navigated the platform hardware and software through vendor agreements, IS security, networking, help desk, marketing, contracting, legal and other enterprise control processes.

I then operationalized and administered services on 12 of these servers in Providence's internal cloud infrastructure.

inf_psjh-search-stack
Providence's internal data centers hosted the platform stack on virtual machines in high-availability clusters for DEV, QA and PRD environments.

The platform demonstrated how Apache Solr's search engine, Smartlogic's Semaphore semantic graph, and Twigkit's search application framework could improve the value of enterprise data governance and business intelligence assets by combining transactional data with textual content.

A year later, the demand for new features had outgrown the stack, so I realigned search functionalities around Lucidworks Fusion. This commercial version of Apache Solr reduced routine platform upkeep and development time from 120 to 20 hrs/week. Application development time shrank as well after Lucidworks acquired Twigkit.

Fusion's end-to-end continuity between tools and resulting resource efficiency stimulated platform growth. With built-in data science, semantic knowledge graph and analytics tools, the platform could support a wider range of internal and public-facing applications.

Instead of just search, it offered conversational business intelligence analytics, natural language questioning, machine-learned relevance, measurable usage metrics, and hyper-personalized results relevant to a web app user's context and intent.

Responsibilities

  • Proof-of-concept, vision, administration, testing, engineering and operationalizing DEV, QA and PRD platforms.

  • 70+ SQL, Web, and SharePoint data connections.

  • Back-end -> Apache Solr, Apache Web Server, Apache Tomcat, Lucidworks Fusion, SmartLogic Semaphore, MySQL/MariaDB, CentOS.

  • Front-end -> JavaScript, HTML, LESS, CSS

Role: Senior Information Architect

Setting: Providence St. Joseph Health

Location: Portland, Oregon

Year: 2014 to present