Mark David Edwards has been authoring computer programs since 1971, when his first program was written on a teletype machine and saved on 1-inch wide yellow punch tape.  As a Flight Officer in the United States Navy, he created programs in the Basic programming language on IBM desktop computers to handle deployed units with a 2.5 million operations budget.  As the training officer for the Naval Space Surveillance Center, he performed the in-house alpha-testing on the military's first desk-top program for avoiding observance by spy satellites.  Later, as a member of a five-man team, LCDR Edwards worked with Sky Lab astronaut Dale Gardner of the US Space Command to develop and train reservists for the Alternate Space Defense Operations Center, which earned him the Navy Achievement Medal.  

At the conclusion of his naval service in 1990, he returned to his native Raleigh, NC, engaged in desktop publishing, using the early versions of Microsoft Word, among others.  He went on to become proficient in Microsoft Excel, creating complex spreadsheet  and VBA applications for companies, as well as training their executives and employees on how to use Word and Excel.

Upon discovering Microsoft Access in 1995, he began building complex, custom database applications for a 100 seat call center that could not find software that met their special needs.  These applications were integrated with predictive dialer equipment and fax servers!  The applications could get new calling campaigns - complete with database, forms, reports and mail-merge - up & running from scratch in 48 to 72 hours after receipt of the campaign materials.  Several years later, he was a member of the development team that migrated these Access applications to Visual Basic 6.0 and SQL Server.

In another situation, one well known company in the Triangle area of NC had just migrated their flat-table database system to the JD Edwards relational database system - without a reporting package.  They were having trouble finding a developer who could handle their complex report requirements successfully.  Previous Access developers had failed in trying to get reports to run in a timely manner (some took over 30 minutes too long!)  They gave Mr Edwards a three week trial run.  Within a week he had them up-and-running in less than a minute and a half!  He continued to provide the company with Access and web reporting solutions for the next year and a half!  When the company's needs were finally satisfied, the CIO remarked to his staff, "Mr Edwards has taken Access and VBA development to levels we never thought possible."

Although he became disenchanted with Microsoft's .NET platform in 2003, he still recognized the need for RAD/AG programming services, products, and technologies in the private sector, and continues to focus his energies toward the research, development, and delivery of these emerging technologies for the benefit of companies and software solution developers.  (see my recent projects)