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• what's a good approach to working with multiple databases?

  - by Riz

  I'm working on a project that has its own database call it InternalDb, but also it queries two other databases, call them ExternalDb1 and ExternalDb2. Both ExternalDb1 and ExternalDb2 are actually required by a few other projects. I'm wondering what the best approach for dealing with this is? Currently, I've just created a project for each of these external databases and then generated Edmx and entities using the entity-framework approach. My thought was that I could then include these projects in any of my solutions that require access to these databases. Also, I don't have any separate business layers. I just have a solution like below: Project.Domain ExternalDb1Project.Domain ExternalDb2Project.Domain Project.Web So my Domain projects contain the data access as well as the POCOs generated by Entity Framework and any business logic. But I'm not sure if this is a good approach. For example if I want to do Validation in my Project.Domain on the entities in the InternalDb, it's fine. But if I want to do Validation for entities from either of the ExternalDbs, then I wonder where it should go? To be more specific, I retrieve Employees from ExternalDb1Project.Domain. However, I want to make sure they are Active. Where should this Validation go? How to architect a project like this at a high level? Also, I want to make sure that I use IoC for my data contexts so I can create Fakes when writing tests. I wonder where the interfaces for these various data contexts would reside?

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• Should a software developer get a yearly equipment budget?

  - by CrazyDart

  I am looking at a new position with a new company. I have talked to some people in the past (in general, not at this company) that they had been given a yearly budget to buy new computer stuff to keep up to date. Now why I feel this question is worth asking here is that Joel comes right out and says an employer should pay for the best equipment money can buy... within reason of course. From The Joel Test: 12 Steps to Better Code 9. Do you use the best tools money can buy? Writing code in a compiled language is one of the last things that still can't be done instantly on a garden variety home computer... Top notch development teams don't torture their programmers. Even minor frustrations caused by using underpowered tools add up, making programmers grumpy and unhappy. And a grumpy programmer is an unproductive programmer... Does anyone know if the industry has such a standard to offer an allowance or budget? I have never worked for a company like this, but I am thinking I should toss this in the ring for negotiations. Seems reasonable. How do bigger companies like MS, Google, and Apple handle this? If you say yes, give a range... I have been told numbers from $5k to $10k. Seems high to me, but hey I would gladly take it.

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• How do I list all the relation variables and debug them interactively?

  - by mfisch

  I'm writing a charm that requires a mysql database, I found from looking at other charms that this (below) is how I get the info about the database: user=`relation-get user` password=`relation-get password` mysqlhost=`relation-get private-address` But I just found that from reading the wordpress charm example, is there a way to show all the relation variables that I can use? Also, while debugging my db-relation-changed script, I wanted to ssh into my host and interactively run those commands, for example relation-get user, but it didn't work. I resorted to having to restart everything and use juju log to print them out. This wasted a lot of time. Is there a way to print out these relations, either from my dev box or from the instance running my charm? (Below is what happens when I tried to interactively run relation-get): ubuntu@mfisch-local-tracks-0:~$ relation-get user usage: relation-get [-h] [-o OUTPUT] [-s SOCKET] [--client-id CLIENT_ID] [--format FORMAT] [--log-file FILE] [--log-level CRITICAL|DEBUG|INFO|ERROR|WARNING] [-r RELATION ID] [settings_name] [unit_name] No JUJU_AGENT_SOCKET/-s option found I tried juju debug-hooks tracks/0 -e local, that dropped me into a shell and relation-get still failed.

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• AR242x / AR542x wireless card not working

  - by Pipan87

  My wifi worked perfect until I updated to the latest version of Ubuntu. Now I don't find any wireless connections at all. I have tried lots of guides on the internet but I can't get it to work. I did however start to work once after writing something I don't remember in Terminal, but after rebooting it stopped working again. Some info (don't know if you need more to help): 01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications AR8121/AR8113/AR8114 Gigabit or Fast Ethernet (rev b0) Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device 022c Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 44 Memory at 55200000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256K] I/O ports at 3000 [size=128] Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 2 Capabilities: [48] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+ Capabilities: [58] Express Endpoint, MSI 00 Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting Capabilities: [180] Device Serial Number ff-93-2e-de-00-23-8b-ff Kernel driver in use: ATL1E Kernel modules: atl1e 02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR242x / AR542x Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01) Subsystem: Foxconn International, Inc. Device e00d Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 18 Memory at 54100000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K] Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 2 Capabilities: [50] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit- Capabilities: [60] Express Legacy Endpoint, MSI 00 Capabilities: [90] MSI-X: Enable- Count=1 Masked- Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting Capabilities: [140] Virtual Channel Kernel driver in use: ath5k Kernel modules: ath5k

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• Are small amounts of functional programming understandable by non-FP people?

  - by kd35a

  Case: I'm working at a company, writing an application in Python that is handling a lot of data in arrays. I'm the only developer of this program at the moment, but it will probably be used/modified/extended in the future (1-3 years) by some other programmer, at this moment unknown to me. I will probably not be there directly to help then, but maybe give some support via email if I have time for it. So, as a developer who has learned functional programming (Haskell), I tend to solve, for example, filtering like this: filtered = filter(lambda item: included(item.time, dur), measures) The rest of the code is OO, it's just some small cases where I want to solve it like this, because it is much simpler and more beautiful according to me. Question: Is it OK today to write code like this? How does a developer that hasn't written/learned FP react to code like this? Is it readable? Modifiable? Should I write documentation like explaining to a child what the line does? # Filter out the items from measures for which included(item.time, dur) != True I have asked my boss, and he just says "FP is black magic, but if it works and is the most efficient solution, then it's OK to use it." What is your opinion on this? As a non-FP programmer, how do you react to the code? Is the code "googable" so you can understand what it does? I would love feedback on this :) Edit: I marked phant0m's post as answer, because he gives good advice on how to write the code in a more readable way, and still keep the advantages. But I would also like to recommend superM's post because of his viewpoint as a non-FP programmer.

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• Making WatiN Wait for JQuery document.Ready() Functions to Complete

  - by Steve Wilkes

  WatiN's DomContainer.WaitForComplete() method pauses test execution until the DOM has finished loading, but if your page has functions registered with JQuery's ready() function, you'll probably want to wait for those to finish executing before testing it. Here's a WatiN extension method which pauses test execution until that happens. JQuery (as far as I can see) doesn't provide an event or other way of being notified of when it's finished running your ready() functions, so you have to get around it another way. Luckily, because ready() executes the functions it's given in the order they're registered, you can simply register another one to add a 'marker' div to the page, and tell WatiN to wait for that div to exist. Here's the code; I added the extension method to Browser rather than DomContainer (Browser derives from DomContainer) because it's the sort of thing you only execute once for each of the pages your test loads, so Browser seemed like a good place to put it. public static void WaitForJQueryDocumentReadyFunctionsToComplete(this Browser browser) { // Don't try this is JQuery isn't defined on the page: if (bool.Parse(browser.Eval("typeof $ == 'function'"))) { const string jqueryCompleteId = "jquery-document-ready-functions-complete"; // Register a ready() function which adds a marker div to the body: browser.Eval( @"$(document).ready(function() { " + "$('body').append('<div id=""" + jqueryCompleteId + @""" />'); " + "});"); // Wait for the marker div to exist or make the test fail: browser.Div(Find.ById(jqueryCompleteId)) .WaitUntilExistsOrFail(10, "JQuery document ready functions did not complete."); } } The code uses the Eval() method to send JavaScript to the browser to be executed; first to check that JQuery actually exists on the page, then to add the new ready() method. WaitUntilExistsOrFail() is another WatiN extension method I've written (I've ended up writing really quite a lot of them) which waits for the element on which it is invoked to exist, and uses Assert.Fail() to fail the test with the given message if it doesn't exist within the specified number of seconds. Here it is: public static void WaitUntilExistsOrFail(this Element element, int timeoutInSeconds, string failureMessage) { try { element.WaitUntilExists(timeoutInSeconds); } catch (WatinTimeoutException) { Assert.Fail(failureMessage); } }

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• How to know how much detailed requirements should be?

  - by user1620696

  This doubt has to do with the requirements gathering phase of each iteration in one project based on agile methodologies. It arose because of the following situation: suppose I meet with my customer to gather the requirements and he says something like: "I need to be able to add, edit, remove and see details of my employees". That's fine, but how should we register this requirement? Should we simply write something like "the system must allow the user to manage employees", or should we be more specific writing for points The system must allow the user to add employees; The system must allow the user to see details of employees; The system must allow the user to edit employees; The system must allow the user to delete employees; Of course, this is just an example of a situation I was in doubt. The main point here is: how to know how much detailed I must be, and how to know what I should register? Are there strategies for dealing with these things? Thanks very much in advance!

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• I've got my Master's in Software Engineering... Now what? [closed]

  - by Brian Driscoll

  Recently I completed a Master of Science in Software Engineering from Drexel University (Philadelphia, PA, US), because I wanted to have some formal education in software (my undergrad is in Math Ed) and also because I wanted to be able to advance my career beyond just programming. Don't get me wrong; I love to code. I spend a lot of my spare time coding. However, for me writing code is just a means to an end: what I REALLY love is designing software. Not visual design, mind you, but the architecture of the system. So, ideally I'd like to try to get a job doing software architecture. The problem is that I have no real experience in it besides my graduate course work. So, what should I do to make my "bones" in software architecture? UPDATE Just so it's clear, I have over 5 years of work experience in software development and an MCTS cert in addition to my education, so I'm not looking for the usual "I'm fresh out of school, what should I do?" advice.

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• Interface (contract), Generics (universality), and extension methods (ease of use). Is it a right design?

  - by Saeed Neamati

  I'm trying to design a simple conversion framework based on these requirements: All developers should follow a predefined set of rules to convert from the source entity to the target entity Some overall policies should be able to be applied in a central place, without interference with developers' code Both the creation of converters and usage of converter classes should be easy To solve these problems in C# language, A thought came to my mind. I'm writing it here, though it doesn't compile at all. But let's assume that C# compiles this code: I'll create a generic interface called IConverter public interface IConverter<TSource, TTarget> where TSource : class, new() where TTarget : class, new() { TTarget Convert(TSource source); List<TTarget> Convert(List<TSource> sourceItems); } Developers would implement this interface to create converters. For example: public class PhoneToCommunicationChannelConverter : IConverter<Phone, CommunicationChannle> { public CommunicationChannel Convert(Phone phone) { // conversion logic } public List<CommunicationChannel> Convert(List<Phone> phones) { // conversion logic } } And to make the usage of this conversion class easier, imagine that we add static and this keywords to methods to turn them into Extension Methods, and use them this way: List<Phone> phones = GetPhones(); List<CommunicationChannel> channels = phones.Convert(); However, this doesn't even compile. With those requirements, I can think of some other designs, but they each lack an aspect. Either the implementation would become more difficult or chaotic and out of control, or the usage would become truly hard. Is this design right at all? What alternatives I might have to achieve those requirements?

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• Keyboard not working 100% after Ubuntu 13.10 upgrade

  - by Marky

  If this has already been asked, my apologies, I did not find it before writing this. So please do point me to the correct page. Anyway, I have this weird issue on my laptop right now. The keyboard is not functioning 100%. This means, I can type my login details to get into Ubuntu. I can type something on Dash. But other than this (on the desktop), no output from the keyboard when using all the other apps - as in I start to type and nothing comes out. The surprising thing is that when I shift to Guest session, the keyboard functions normally. When I shift to another TTY, like Alt+F5, keyboard works normally. This is the first time I've encountered this so far in my use of Linux. Keyboards normally never fail on any of the desktop environments I've used over the years. Any ideas what's happening? Could be the config files on my home is too messy already. I've upgraded this from 11.10 to 13.04, then now 13.10 without a re-install. Works fine so far, until now that I can't do much without a keyboard. Thanks in advance! P.S. Mouse and touchpad works fine.

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• Javascript Module pattern with DOM ready

  - by dego89

  I am writing a JS Module pattern to test out code and help me understand the pattern, using a JS Fiddle. What I can't figure out is why my "private methods" on line 25 and 26, when referenced via DOM ready, have a value of undefined. JSFiddle Code Sample: var obj = { key: "value" }; var Module = (function () { var innerVar = "5"; console.log("obj var in Module:"); console.log(obj); function privateFunction() { console.log("privateFunction() called."); innerFunction(); function innerFunction() { console.log("inner function of (private function) called."); } } function _numTwo() { console.log("_numTwo() function called."); } return { test: privateFunction, numTwo: _numTwo } }(obj)); $(document).ready(function () { console.log("$ Dom Ready"); console.log("Module in Dom Ready: "); console.log(Module.test()); });

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• Java and C# in web development [on hold]

  - by azalut

  I am wondering whether C# development(ASP.NET) is rather kind of "rapid development" or something "big" like JavaEE/Spring? We all know, that RoR or Django are really rapid-development frameworks - and so - is C# closer to Java "long-timed-development" or to frameworks like the two above - Django, RoR? I am, for now, an amateur Java programmer and sometimes I get annoyed with the amount of code that have to be written to create even a short CRUD app. We need a lot of skills to create at least a small app. I want some change, at least for some time and learn something new. I tried (just few hours) first: RoR, then Django and now I am writing in C#. It seems to be like Java but a little bit extended. In respect of future work as a professional coder - Is it profitable to know both competitive technologies like Java (and its frameworks) and C# with .NET(ASP.NET for example)? Maybe better choice is Python? Or just stop being stupid and still work with Java but with another framework(and master my Java skills) or JavaScript, jQuery to be better at web-development? Actually this question depends on your own opinions that is why I know that this question could be blocked by admins. But main question is in the top of the post I mean: is C# web-development rapid or closer to Java? I am afraid, that if I don't try, I will regret in the future, when I awake and think: oh my god, how could I not get familiar with (another_technology_or_language) Thanks for your attention :) ps I had asked the same question on stackoverflow, but it was hold because of being opinion based. Hope it fits here ;)

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• Architecture Question

  - by katie77

  I am writing a rules/eligibility Module. I have 2 sets of data, one is the customer data and the other is the customer products data. Customer data to Customer products data is one to many. Now I have to go through a set of Eligibility rules for each of this Customer product data. For each customer products data, I can say the customer is eligible for that product or decline the eligibility and should move on to the next product record. So in all the rules, I need to have access to customer and customer product data(the particular record that the rules are being executed against). Since all the rules can either approve a product or decline a product, I created an interface with those 2 methods and is implementing the this interface for all the rules. I am passing the Customer data and one product data for all the rules (because rules should be executed on each row of customer product data). An Ideal situation would be having the customer and customer product data available for the rule instead of passing them to each rule. What is the best way of doing this in-terms of architecture?

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• Is application-specific data required for good unit testing?

  - by stinkycheeseman

  I am writing unit tests for a fairly simple function that depends on a fairly complicated set of data. Essentially, the object I am manipulating represents a graph and this function determines whether to chart a line, bar, or pie chart based on the data that came back from the server. This is a simplified version, using jQuery: setDefaultChartType: function (graphObject) { var prop1 = graphObject.properties.key; var numCols = 0; $.each(graphObject.columns, function (colIndex, column) { numCols++; }); if ( numCols > 6 || ( prop1 > 1 && graphObject.data.length == 1) ) { graphObject.setChartType("line"); } else if ( numCols <=6 && prop1 == 1 ) { graphObject.setChartType("bar"); } else if ( numCols <=6 && prop1 > 1 ) { graphObject.setChartType("pie"); } } My question is, should I use mock data that is procured from the actual database? Or can I just fabricate data that fits the different cases? I'm afraid that fabricating data will not expose bugs arising from changes in the database, but on the other hand, it would require a lot more effort to keep the test data up-to-date that I'm not sure is necessary.

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• i18n and L10n (1)

  - by Aaron Li

  Internationalization (i18n) is a way of designing and developing a software product to function in multiple locales. This process involves identifying the locales that must be supported, designing features which support those locales, and writing code that functions equally well in any of the supported locales. Localization (L10n) is a process of modifying or adapting a software product to fit the requirements of a particular locale. This process includes (but may not be limited to) translating the user interface, documentation and packaging, changing dialog box geometries, customizing features (if necessary), and testing the translated product to ensure that it still works (at least as well as the original). i18n is a pre-requisite for L10n. Resource is 1. any part of a program which can appear to the user or be changed or configured by the user. 2. any piece of the program's data, as opposed to its code. Core product is the language independent portion of a software product (as distinct from any particular localized version of that product - including the English language version). Sometimes, however, this term is used to refer to the English product as opposed to other localizations.   Useful links http://www.mozilla.org/docs/refList/i18n/ http://www.w3.org/International/ http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/view/Community+Group+int_localization/

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• Blog Rebranding

  I have been spending more and more time on learning as much as I can on Agile Development and also have been fairly immersed in rolling out TFS 2010 in our environment.  I feel like it is time to talk about some of my experiences.  With that, I am rebranding my blog to focus on these topics.  I am going to start with a bunch of blogs on the process I have gone through getting TFS 2010 configured for our development teams. Last week, Brian Harry was in our office and gave a great talk on the improved tools in TFS 2010 and how Microsoft uses the tools internally.  I followed that up with a high-level overview of the improved out of the box process templates and the process to customize them.  I am definitely very excited about the new features in 2010 and hopefully will keep up my motivation to blog about it.  I am writing my first post right now about the process I went through to build a task progress report based on the user story progress report in the MSF for Agile Development template.  Stay tunedDid you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Is the addition of a duration to a date-time defined in ISO 8601?

  - by Benjamin

  I've writing a date-time library, and need to implement the addition of a duration to a date-time. If I add a 1 month duration: P1M to the 31st March 2012: 2012-03-31, does the standard define what the result is? Because the resulting date (31st April) does not exist, there are at least two options: Fall back to the last day of the resulting month. This is the approach currently taken by the ThreeTen API, the (alpha) reference implementation of JSR-310: ZonedDateTime date = ZonedDateTime.parse("2012-03-31T00:00:00Z"); Period duration = Period.parse("P1M"); System.out.println(date.plus(duration).toString()); // 2012-04-30T00:00Z Carry the extra day to the next month. This is the approach taken by the DateTime class in PHP: $date = new DateTime('2012-03-31T00:00:00Z'); $duration = new DateInterval('P1M'); echo $date->add($duration)->format('c'); // 2012-05-01T00:00:00+00:00 I'm surprised that two date-time libraries contradict on this point, so I'm wondering whether the standard defines the result of this operation?

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• Finite Numbers and ExplorerCanvas

  - by PhubarBaz

  I was working on my online mathematical graphing application, CloudGraph, and trying to make it work in IE. The app uses the HTML5 canvas element to draw graphs. Since IE doesn't support canvas yet I use ExplorerCanvas to provide that support for IE. However, it seems that when using excanvas, if you try to moveTo or drawTo a point that is not finite it loses it's mind and stops drawing anything else after that. I had no such problems in Firefox or Chrome so it took me awhile to figure out what was going on. Next I discovered that I needed a way to check if a variable was NaN or Inifinity or any other non-finite value so I could avoid calling moveTo() in that case. I started writing a long if statement, then I thought there has to be a better way. Sure enough there was. There just happens to be an isFinite() function built into Javascript just for this purpose. Who knew! It works great. Another difference I discovered with excanvas is that you must specify a starting point using a moveTo() when beginning a drawing path. Again, Chrome and Firefox are a lot more forgiving in this area so it took me a while to figure out why my lines weren't drawing. But, all is happy now and I'm a little wiser to the ways of the canvas.

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• REST API wrapper - class design for 'lite' object responses

  - by sasfrog

  I am writing a class library to serve as a managed .NET wrapper over a REST API. I'm very new to OOP, and this task is an ideal opportunity for me to learn some OOP concepts in a real-life situation that makes sense to me. Some of the key resources/objects that the API returns are returned with different levels of detail depending on whether the request is for a single instance, a list, or part of a "search all resources" response. This is obviously a good design for the REST API itself, so that full objects aren't returned (thus increasing the size of the response and therefore the time taken to respond) unless they're needed. So, to be clear: .../car/1234.json returns the full Car object for 1234, all its properties like colour, make, model, year, engine_size, etc. Let's call this full. .../cars.json returns a list of Car objects, but only with a subset of the properties returned by .../car/1234.json. Let's call this lite. ...search.json returns, among other things, a list of car objects, but with minimal properties (only ID, make and model). Let's call this lite-lite. I want to know what the pros and cons of each of the following possible designs are, and whether there is a better design that I haven't covered: Create a Car class that models the lite-lite properties, and then have each of the more detailed responses inherit and extend this class. Create separate CarFull, CarLite and CarLiteLite classes corresponding to each of the responses. Create a single Car class that contains (nullable?) properties for the full response, and create constructors for each of the responses which populate it to the extent possible (and maybe include a property that returns the response type from which the instance was created). I expect among other things there will be use cases for consumers of the wrapper where they will want to iterate through lists of Cars, regardless of which response type they were created from, such that the three response types can contribute to the same list. Happy to be pointed to good resources on this sort of thing, and/or even told the name of the concept I'm describing so I can better target my research.

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• I cannot change the grub Default item from OS-1, but I can from OS-2 (dual-boot 10.04 on both)

  - by fred.bear

  My 10.04 system (OS-1) got into a tangle the other day, so I installed a second, dual-boot 10.04 (OS-2), so that I could trouble-shoot the hung system... In case it is relevant to my question, I'll mention that since I got OS-1 working again, it has shown a few battle wounds from its ordeal (.. actually the ordeal was mine ... trying to figure it all out ;) ... I lost some custom settings, but not all. (For the curious: the hangup was caused by rsync writing 600 GB to OS-1's 320 GB drive.. The destination drive was unmounted at the time, and rsync dutifully wrote directly to /media/usb_back; filling it to capacity... I have since, ammended my script :) Because the dual-boot MBR was prepared by OS-2, it is first on the grub list.. However, I want OS-1 to be the default OS to boot... From OS-1, I tried two methods to change the grub-menu's defaule OS. eg. Directly editing /etc/default/grub (then update-grub) Running 'Startup Manager' (then update-grub) Neither of these methods had any effect... so I started OS-2, and tried method 1... It worked! Why can I not change the grub menu from OS-1? .. or if it can be done, How?

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• Approach to Authenticate Clients to TCP Server

  - by dab

  I'm writing a Server/Client application where clients will connect to the server. What I want to do, is make sure that the client connecting to the server is actually using my protocol and I can "trust" the data being sent from the client to the server. What I thought about doing is creating a sort of hash on the client's machine that follows a particular algorithm. What I did in a previous version was took their IP address, the client version, and a few other attributes of the client and sent it as a calculated hash to the server, who then took their IP, and the version of the protocol the client claimed to be using, and calculated that number to see if they matched. This works ok until you get clients that connect from within a router environment where their internal IP is different from their external IP. My fix for this was to pass the client's internal IP used to calculate this hash with the authentication protocol. My fear is this approach is not secure enough. Since I'm passing the data used to create the "auth hash". Here's an example of what I'm talking about: Client IP: 192.168.1.10, Version: 2.4.5.2 hash = 2*4*5*1 * (1+9+2) * (1+6+8) * (1) * (1+0) Client Connects to Server client sends: auth hash ip version Server calculates that info, and accepts or denies the hash. Before I go and come up with another algorithm to prove a client can provide data a server (or use this existing algorithm), I was wondering if there are any existing, proven, and secure systems out there for generating a hash that both sides can generate with general knowledge. The server won't know about the client until the very first connection is established. The protocol's intent is to manage a network of clients who will be contributing data to the server periodically. New clients will be added simply by connecting the client to the server and "registering" with the server. So a client connects to the server for the first time, and registers their info (mac address or some other kind of unique computer identifier), then when they connect again, the server will recognize that client as a previous person and associate them with their data in the database.

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• Returning a flexible datatype from a C++ function

  - by GavinH

  I'm developing for a legacy C++ application which uses ODBC for it's data access. Coming from a C# background, I really miss the ADO style of data access. I'm writing a wrapper (because we can't actually use ADO) to make our data access less painful. This means no char arrays, no manual text blob streaming, and no declaritive column binding. I'm struggling with how to store / return data values. In C# at least, you can declare an object and cast it to whatever (as long as the type is convertable). My current C++ solution is to use boost::any to store the data value in a custom DataColumnValue object. This class has conversion and assignment operators to the various types used in our app (more than 10). There's a bit of complexity here because if you store an int in the boost::any and try to boost::any_cast<long> you get a boost::bad_any_cast. Client objects shouldn't have to know how the value is stored internally. Does anyone have any experience trying to store / return values whose types are only known at runtime? Is there a better / cleaner way?

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• How can I go about learning to write a shader

  - by Donutz

  So here's the background: I'm writing a game, just for my own amusement and education really. I've already come to the conclusion that XNA was the way to go for graphics, I've bought a couple of books, I've gotten basic game graphics going, and that's great. Now I'm starting to get a little in-depth and I'm starting to need to do stuff not covered in my (beginner) books. In particular, I need to display a sprite using a mask. Actually, what I need to do is display a generic sprite with a different color for each player. After banging around on the web, it seems the way to go is to have a color texture (one for each player) which I display using the mask, then display the generic part of the sprite. This has to be done dynamically, i.e. at runtime because there are too many sprites to keep in memory if I try to generate all the permutations at startup. So, I need to use a shader. Fine. I've downloaded a sample shader program, and managed to hit it with a hammer until it does something close enough to what I want so that I know I'm on the right track. And here, we come to my problem... I have no friggin' clue what I'm doing. While there are a lot of samples and such about shaders, no one ever actually explains what's going on. For instance, I can't find any real docs on Tex2D. I feel like the guys in Zoolander poking at the computer. So, my question (yes, I have a question) -- where is a good URL or what is a good book to take me from dumskie to reasonably competent to write a basic shader?

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• Who wants to keep developing?

  - by wcm

  I'm a bit older than most of my peers, having come into programming in my mid 30's. The thing is, I love what I do. Most of my project managers and bosses are my age or younger. I'm really OK with that. I, however, have no desire to climb the company ladder. While I regularly take on the responsibility of making sure that projects get done and my peers often look to me for programming and architectural guidance, I just like writing code and want to keep doing it for as long as possible. Honestly, my only real goal is grow into being a crusty old tech lead until I retire. IF I retire. I would so much rather learn the latest and greatest new technology than PMP my resume. Are there others out there who feel like this because I often feel rather alone in my pathology? EDIT Something I didn't make clear is that I really like helping and mentoring other developers. It makes me feel good and useful and (to be brutaly honest) important.

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• Extracting useful information from free text

  - by insta

  We filter and analyse seats for events. Apparently writing a domain query language for the floor people isn't an option. I'm using C# 4.0 & .NET 4.0, and have relatively free reign to use whatever open-source tools are available. </background-info> If a request comes in for "FLOOR B", the sales people want it to show up if they've entered "FLOOR A-FLOOR F" in a filter. The only problem I have is that there's absolutely no structure to the parsed parameters. I get the string already concatenated (it actually uses a tilde instead of dash). Examples I've seen so far with matches after each: 101WC-199WC (needs to match 150WC) AAA-ZZZ (needs to match AAA, BBB, ABC but not BB) LOGE15-LOGE20 (needs to match LOGE15 but not LOGE150) At first I wanted to try just stripping off the numeric part of the lower and upper, and then incrementing through that. The problem I have is that only some entries have numbers, sometimes the numbers AND letters increment, sometimes its all letters that increment. Since I can't impose any kind of grammar to use (I really wanted [..] expansion syntax), I'm stuck using these entries. Are there any suggestions for how to approach this parsing problem?

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