Widely known for his high-quality work, he has been instrumental in developing ideas and processes that have shaped modern-day technology.
LAS VEGAS, NV, December 17, 2024 /24-7PressRelease/ -- David Olof Been has been selected for inclusion in Marquis Who's Who. As in all Marquis Who's Who biographical volumes, individuals profiled are selected on the basis of current reference value. Factors such as position, noteworthy accomplishments, visibility, and prominence in a field are all taken into account during the selection process.
Mr. Been, a retired software engineer, has led a distinguished career marked by significant contributions to the field of computer science. Widely known for his high-quality work, he has been instrumental in developing ideas and processes that have shaped modern-day technology. As a senior software engineer and architect at Sharebase, a company producing hardware and software for a database machine, he played a crucial role in re-architecting the client-server software to move from IDL to SQL, requiring an entire rewrite of the client software side, the client server protocol and the front end of the server including query trees and the SQL parser. The client server protocol was improved reduce latency and increase speed or returned data by piggy backing requests to reduce turnarounds. Four client side parsers were replaced by a single SQL query parser, which significantly reduced complexity and improved efficiency, allowing for easier maintenance and software updates. Mr. Been dedicated five intense years to this project: demonstrative of his commendable work ethic, this period of intense focus and achievement stands out as a highlight of his career.
In addition to his work at Sharebase, Mr. Been was a successful senior software engineer at the startup Miro (renamed Montage), renamed Ilustra in 1993, a company that created an object oriented extensible database, allowing the addition of custom data types, such as time series for the stock exchange, geospatial positioning, multi media (X-ray, MRI, movies, images) as data types, etc. Mr. Been worked on various client side projects, porting clients to different architectures followed by becoming manager of Multi Media and working with third parties to create new solutions.
Informix purchased Illustra in 1996 at which time all effort shifted to incorporating extensible types into the Informix database which also involved learning the Informix architecture.
Hamish Reid and Chih-po Wen in 1997 created a design to embed "Java in the (Informix database) Server" allowing Java custom written in Java data types to be supported, all callable from the C language using JNI. Mr. Been was a key contributor to this effort which included creating a Server database side JDBC interface from Java all within the database server.
Mr. Been transitioned to Cloudscape in 1998, the all Java Database, which was also purchased by Informix in 1999 and was soon asked to work on a MIDP mobile device version of Java. Mr. Been working on a RIM phone created an SQL interface through a Web server Servlet which communicated with the Cloudscape database. Everything had to fit within 4K of code space (in Java bytecode) which led to the use of a state machine to implement the SQL protocol.
In 2001 IBM purchased Informix and Mr. Been was moved directly into IBMs DB2 Database Everywhere micro device project headed by Distinguished Engineer Josephine Cheng's group.
Mr. Been was quickly able to reverse engineer the DB2 everyplace protocol and with his mentor Ben Wilde's suggestion created a FilterServlet which translated DB2E into Cloudscape. Within a week Mr. Been had a working demo of the DB2 Everyplace Nurse application to demo to IBM when they came to introduce themselves a week after the purchase of Informix.
Just prior to IBM shutting down DB2 Everyplace, Mr. Been was moved into the Omnifind project (C++) where he met his future mentor Andreas Neumann. Omnifind was an Intranet search (Google within your own company's network) based on C++, written by many different research scientists (many of whom would move on to Google) from Almaden Research, Haifa Research, etc. This change from SQL to terms, tokenization, lemmas, lemmatization, indexing of terms, numerous search algorithms was a very big learning curve to master. With Andreas Neumann's tutelage Mr. Been was soon contributing to the project. During this time Haifa Research presented a "Faceted Search" algorithm in Slide Deck form. It so impressed Mr. Been that he implemented it at night and on the weekends with Mr. Neumann's guidance in C++.
IBM created another product during this time, eDiscovery Analyzer and Mr. Neumann and a majority of the Omnifind team was pulled into this project leaving Mr. Been working as a Level 3 engineer with customers in India, Japan. Luckily eDA needed a Faceted Search solution and Mr. Been moved back with his old team plus many new members in Germany and Japan where he translated his work to Java, made it bullet proof, added error handling, improved performance. Performance for this feature was critical and each line of code, each Java byte code (similar to machine language) was executed per document in a potentially huge data set. A new member, Michael Busch, a contributor to the Lucene open-source search engine library, joined Mr. Been and created a number of algorithms (compliment counting, if matching documents was _ X% of data set size, count the complements ((X%))) to improve performance.
The Faceted Search feature was leveraged heavily by many groups, e.g. UI visual email conversation rendering, the user could click on a sender of email and refine to just those senders emails. UIMA (another Apache open-source) frameworks, tools, annotators, defined many new facets by Thomas Hampp of Germany. For example: telephone numbers, cities, states, countries, document characteristics, etc. A majority of the user's search experience was facet based.
Mr. Been held this position from 2003 until his retirement in 2013 to Seligman, Arizona, a very remote high desert area off Interstate 40.
Other career highlights have included starting and owning a trucking business B&B Bovine Express LLC that specialized in hauling cattle, and later hauling gravel using 80,000 lb Semi trucks. It became apparent a repair facility was needed so Mr. Been started Seligman Truck and Auto Repair, LLC in a four bay 3,000 sq ft facility just outside Seligman, AZ. This repair shop was very popular with the locals, saving them driving 75 files to the next closest repair shop. Mr. Been sold the business in 2021 when he moved to Las Vegas.
Mr. Been's educational background includes a bachelor's degree in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley Lab. At Lawrence Berkeley Mr. Been built a pre-Microsoft personal computer, C compiler, with Analog to Digital inputs to sample magnetic and electric field effects on the eye, outboard filters and automation to run the experiment, and analysis programs to extract data from the experiments. This academic foundation provided him with the skills necessary to excel in his roles at Sharebase, Illustra, Informix and IBM, where he made valuable contributions to database and search technology.
Beyond his professional endeavors. Mr. Been has been a classical pianist since age five, violinist age 10, cellist age 15, and music major at Hayward State University, amassing 66 years of musical experience. After relocating to Las Vegas post-retirement, he pursued his passion for music more fervently, engaging with other musicians in sonatas, trios and quartets and his Las Vegas Classica Chamber music group. Las Vegas allows for the enjoyment of numerous concerts which are frequently attended and contributed to. Mr. Been has a deep appreciation for enjoying the talents of other talented pianists and enjoys attending piano competitions like the Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition and the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. Cooking multi-cultural dishes, eating at the incredible restaurants of Las Vegas, attending concerts and shows are also thoroughly enjoyed.
An avid bicyclist in his teens, Mr. Been completed several impressively long journeys, including biking from El Cerrito to Yosemite at the age of 16, Marin CA to Crater Lake Oregon, and from Montreal Canada to Minnesota, then Calgary Canada to the San Francisco Bay Area, age 18. It should be noted that no one else was doing this at the time, maybe 1 to 5 people a year.
He is also a talented recording engineer, an activity he has enjoyed since 1969; he owned his own El Sobrante-based studio, HowlingDawg Studios, from 1998 to 2005, then in Seligman, AZ until 2021.
Mr. Been credits his professional success to the guidance of key individuals, including his father, Richard Olof Been, a PhD economist, and his mother, a schoolteacher, and mentors Eric Allman, Andreas Neumann, and Michael Busch.
He also attributes much of his success as a senior software engineer to his background as a musician, noting the complementary nature of the two fields. Both take dedication, numerous hours of study/practice, both are mathematically based.
Now retired from all business activities, Mr. Been enjoys a leisurely life in Las Vegas, cooking and going out for multi-cultural foods, shows, concerts, and lives with several beloved rescue cats named Stella and Rita. In addition to his musical pursuits, he continues to engage with fellow musicians in sonatas, trios and quartets, whenever possible.
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