Feb 15, 2011 - Claremont, Calif. - Founder and president of Dulcian, Inc., an Oracle consulting firm, Paul Dorsey ’76 gave a talk at Harvey Mudd College (HMC) about the challenges that developing nations face when building IT systems.

Dorsey recently returned from an 18-month stint in Ethiopia, where he built financial infrastructure for the nation. His company, Dulcian, was hired by the Finance Ministry of Ethiopia to build a system that would allow the country to qualify for more international aid. The country is now reviewing the infrastructure.

Building a financial system for Ethiopia was not only an enriching cultural experience, said Dorsey, but also made him a better project manager.

“We had great success with building system architecture,” he said, “which we are currently using on many of our projects.” Dorsey and his team developed architecture that solved practical local challenges, such as access to and limitations of network and Internet infrastructure, particularly in rural areas. Dorsey explained the need to create a new architecture to improve performance and efficiency that uses minimal network bandwidth. They were able to provide an easy-to-maintain system using a 100% business rules-based development method, which is a method that helps to lower cost, shorten development time, share rules more easily among multiple applications and make changes faster and with less risk.

By providing insight about the current issues and trends in software architecture, Dorsey helped HMC students to better understand the challenges, as well as opportunities, in today’s field.

Dorsey says of his experience, “If you can build it there [Ethiopia], you can build it anywhere.”

Dorsey is the chief architect of Dulcian's Business Rules Information Manager (BRIM®) tool. He is the co-author of seven Oracle Press books about Oracle Designer, Oracle Database Design, Oracle Developer, and Oracle JDeveloper, which have been translated into nine languages as well as the Wiley Press book “PL/SQL for Dummies.” He is an Oracle ACE director, president emeritus of the New York Oracle User Group (NYOUG) and the associate editor of the International Oracle User Group’s SELECT Journal. 

Dorsey was honored by both the Oracle Development Tools User Group (ODTUG) in 2003 and the Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG) in 2001 as a volunteer of the year. He was also honored by Oracle as one of the six initial honorary Oracle 9i Certified Masters. He is the founder and chairperson of the ODTUG Symposium, currently in its 11th year. Dorsey's submission of a Survey Generator built to collect data for The Preeclampsia Foundation was the winner of the 2007 Oracle Fusion Middleware Developer Challenge and Oracle selected him as the 2007 PL/SQL Developer of the Year.