MTV Network IS

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MTV Network IST Internship

• Charles Mancinelli
• Summer 2003

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Outline of Presentation

• About MTV Networks/Viacom.
• How I got this internship?
• My original expectations.
• What I actually did compared to my original
  expectations.
• Database conversion project with the Ad sales
  division.
• Acquisitions System with the Applications
  Development division.
• Extended time as freelance.

3
About The Company

• MTV Networks is just one of many companies owned
  by the Viacom Corporation.
• CBS
• Showtime
• Paramount Pictures
• Simon and Schuster
• MTV Networks consists not of just MTV.
• VH1, Nickelodeon, TNN (now Spike TV), TV Land,
  CMT, MTV2, Nick at Night, VH1 Classic, Comedy
  Central and CTN.

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How did I get it?

• My search began with Career services but it only
  led to one interview.
• I heard about that there where internships
  available for web design at MTV from a friend.
• I went to the web site and applied for the web
  design and IST. https//jobhuntweb.viacom.com/job
  hunt/main/internships.asp
• I then mailed a copy of my resume to human
  resources.

5
The Interview

• I Spoke with Ellen Celzalada in HR and she
  forwarded my resume to Xavier Tan head of the Ad
  Sales Division of IST.
• I had a half an hour phone interview with Rex
  basically discussing the courses I have taken
  Software Engineering, Real-Time Systems etc.
• I spoke to him about my senior project, and my
  minimal experience with web design.
• He stressed databases in the interview and wanted
  samples of my software engineering documents.
• Two days later I was hired and I was told I would
  be working with the Ad Sales team.

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What does the Ad Sales division do?

• Maintain and develop two software products
  Winsales and Winsales Print.
• This includes enhancements, fixing bugs, user
  acceptance testing.
• Also create or develop any new software for the
  needs the company.
• I worked with a team of four people.
• Xavier(Rex) Tan Manager/Everything
• Brian OShea Business Aspects/System testing
• Cathy Wollerman ClearQuest Guru
• Jerry Desktop Configuration

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What Are Winsales and Winsales Print?

• Winsales is an application bought from an outside
  vendor that they have the rights to.
• The application allows sales agent to buy and
  schedule air-time for commercials.
• A company like Ford, IBM would purchase blocks of
  airtime throughout a quarter in which their
  advertisements would be shown on one of MTVs
  various networks.
• Winsales does all of the calculating and
  scheduling. Ex. CPM, amount per 30 sec
  commercial.
• Winsales Print allows clients and agents to view
  and print reports of the scheduled commercials.

8
Original Expectations

• I was told in the interview it was a software
  engineering internship.
• I figured I would mostly be doing documentation
  for their software products.
• A quote from Rex You will be improving and
  implementing an application development process
  (includes re-engineering, conversion and software
  implementation) for an Applications Development
  division of Division of IST, Target software
  will include Rational Clearquest/Clearcase (and
  probably a supplementary Access Database).

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My First Task.

• Learn Rational Clearquest and SQA and devise a
  method to convert the underlying Microsoft Access
  Database of SQA to be imported into Clearquest.
• In doing so I was also logically converting there
  workflow to conform to their current Clearquest
  database.
• What is SQA and what is ClearQuest?
• In the middle of the process I was asked to do a
  Visual Basic for applications (VBA) project with
  Michael Martelli.

10
IBM VBA Program

• IBM help desk, which Viacom uses, asked us to do
  write this VBA program.
• The task was to write a VBA for Excel macro that
  would match rows from one worksheet with a rows
  another worksheet and place an approximate
  description in the column that matched.
• NEWclosedfctesting.xls

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Access database conversion

• Convert the data held in the SQA database to a
  format that could be imported into ClearQuest.
• Task was thrown at me with no method to solve it.
• I choose to use Excel VBA and Java to convert the
  data and then import the data into Clearquest. A
  difficult process.

12
ClearQuest import and Export format.

• Records can be imported in .txt ASCII format.
• "dbid","application_family","application_manager",
  "appname,"33554434","","Rex Tan","Winsales,
  
  "33554435","","Tony Conaghan","Liability
  Mgmt System
• Very top line indicates the fields of the
  database and items below it indicate the data
  inside each field.
• This format can be obtained by saving and excel
  spread sheet as an .txt file comma delimited.
• Defect.txt example

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Steps to format and import data.

• Run the macro I wrote that queries the SQA
  database and returns the data to an Excel
  worksheet.
• Same macro puts the data in a correct format
  based on Clearquest data, and saves it into
  another worksheet.
• A User then saves the worksheets as a comma
  delimited .txt file.
• Run the Java program parser.java to add
  in-between empty fields.
• Import .txt file into ClearQuest.

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Sample Code

• Defect.txt
• parser.java
• clearquestTemplate.xls
• ClearQuestConversion.doc
• userinfo.txt

15
Acquisition System

• I worked with Scott Jeffrey and Sam Rosa of the
  Applications Development Division of IST on the
  Acquisition System.
• What is it? Its a web based system on an
  intranet that networks use to store and organized
  data for each movie or TV series.
• It was originally used just for Showtime but they
  where adapting it to also be used with all MTVN.
• The system uses ASP, JavaScript for client side,
  and Vbscript for server side.

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Sample of the System

• My main task was to add a tree view to the
  episodes page and add a function to hide the view
  of those currently inactive episodes.
• Acquisitions System
• episodes. asp

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Additional Work on System

• Edited the deal memo page to include more
  information from the database.
• I also had the opportunity to participate in user
  acceptance testing.
• Teach users how to use the system.
• Survey them to find what they like and dislike
  about the functionality of the system compared to
  the pez system.
• Aid in the changes made to the system.

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Freelance

• I was hired by the Applications development
  division for an additional two weeks I was
  paid.
• Based on my performance with the Acquisitions
  system.
• I plan to work there again after winter break.
• I just found out there are two job openings and
  they would like both Mike Martelli and I to apply.

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Any Questions or Comment?