So after 16 years of selling e-clinical technologies (technologies used in clinical trials), I felt like I had truly absorbed vast amounts of technical knowledge.  After all, sales is learning some words to say in the right order to demonstrate one’s knowledge.

I know there’s probably more to it than that as there are technical sales people that have done real work and know exactly what they’re talking about.  For example, I can say, yes we’ll provide you your data in a flat ASCII file.  I have absolutely no idea what that means, stands for, looks like and how it happens.  There are some who do know. I’m told it’s a computer file (not a manila folder file) that has rows and columns with info in each cell.

So after those 16 years I go to another e-clinical tech company and in helping prepare a proposal I demonstrate my expertise thusly by writing this:

We need some words here to describe the application architecture.  The CIO is to provide some dazzling descriptions of this stuff.  To help him with it, here is a start from which he can edit my text.

We utilize a three layer approach (see image below).  The integration layer, known in tech language as “the back end” has a persistence layer as well as this really cool feature known as “hibernate”; similar to what bears do in the winter, the data rests in small caves until the proper conditions occur for it to be released.  Herein is also a rectangle labeled DAO and another one that says Resource.

In the business layer, we utilize a spring framework, which resembles a complex set of slinkies going down a never-ending escalator.  This endless loops allows for us to refresh data continuously.

For the “front-end” or presentation layer, also known as the user interface (UI) or graphical user interface (GUI – pronounced ‘gooey’), we have 5 rectangles of different sizes and the components of this layer are listed below: