joe_pool_is

What's the best method of saving a client's password? For example, I have an FTP tool where the client has to supply a username and password. I could just store the password in a local variable, but then the client would need to re-supply that every time. Is there a recommended way to store passwords on the PC? Would I store in the registry, a binary file in the Application Data folder, or something else? Thanks for helping.

Thanks macdonab, that turns out to be exactly what I used. Still, it seems strange that Microsoft would point out the command CREATEDB and tell what it does without actually having a way to use it.

I've been doing a little searching, and there appear to be a LOT of Web Hosts out there. I'm still trying to ballance the good and bad points of each of them. If I decide to go your route, I'll certainly be in touch so you can have the referral.

I am looking for a new company to host my site. My current company "uplink earth" is bad. They do not have anyone on staff that knows how to answer technical questions, they have no one that can answer coding questions, and they don't even know what ASP.NET 2.0 is (much less when it will be implimented). All I want is a personal website where I can practice new techniques using ASP.NET, C#, SQL, etc. I already have my own domain name, and I would like to be able to experiment with things like ecommerce solutions at some point. Could I have some feedback from some of you out there that have ISP Hosts that you are particularly proud of? What is the yearly price? Why are you proud of them? Are there any to aviod? ...besides the one I already have, of course.

I see. My files are currently running on version 1.1 Framework, but I am trying to get everything to work offline before version 2.0 Framework is implemented. When I saw all the warnings, I was left to believe that these features did not work in 2.0. Since we do not have version 2.0 Framework running yet, there is no where to test.

Where can I find out how to do the things that I used with the older ASP.NET Framework? (v1.1) For example, ValidationExpression and onfocus appear to no longer be supported in Visual Web Developer 2005. What have they been replaced with? I used to use ValidationExpression to test email addresses in an <asp:textbox> field: ValidationExpression="^([a-zA-Z0-9_\-\.]+)@((\[[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.)|(([a-zA-Z0-9\-]+\.)+))([a-zA-Z]{2,4}|[0-9]{1,3})(\]?)$" Also, onfocus is a neat piece of javascript, but the new IDEs give a warning that this is not a valid attribute: onfocus="if(this.value=='Enter Text Here')this.value=''; Are these functions gone, or is the IDE simply pointing out that they are not part of ASP.NET 2.0? Will these still work when I post them to run on the server?

That's a good question, and I really don't know how Microsoft is going to address that. The Express Editions that I have installed seem to require an internet connection to register the product during the installation. Maybe after the 1 year grace period, Installers will be presented a screen in the IDE's Explorer interface listing how much it will cost them to "unlock" the product. Something like that would be relatively easy to impliment, and it would allow Installers to load it for free for one year. ...but that's just my idea, though.

That will probably prevent 2005 Express from being installed free on the new PC you get for Christmas in 2006 - even if you made backups of the downloads, since it has to be activated online through Microsoft first.

Is there any point in keeping the old .NET Frameworks on my PCs? I have v2.0 installed, and I have no projects that currently require v1.0 or v1.1. Is the new framework backwards compatible for installed programs that were compiled using the older versions? Also, I am thinking about uninstalling VS 2002 and VS 2003 now that I have VS 2005, since they each eat up about 1GB of HD space. Will VS 2005 handle most of the old code that I come across (with minor code syntax corrections in some cases)? I presume VS 2005 will prompt to convert projects like VS 2003 did when it encountered older VS 2002 projects. Any thoughts on the subject? If there are older threads that address and resolve these issues, feel free to reference them. I did a search, but mostly saw threads dealing with the BETA pre-releases.

I wasn't able to find anywhere on Microsoft's site that allowed someone with a slow connection to order VS 2005 Express on DVD, but I was able to find it on this site: http://www.poojo.com/2005express/

Thanks! That was all I needed... and fast, too!

Microsoft have VS 2005 Express Edition available for free download on their website. I have seen posts about problems with Visual Studio 2006, and I do not know what an Express Edition entails. What is in the Express Edition? What, basically, will it *not* do? Older Visual Studio 2003 Standard would not support databases, but the Express Edition comes with a host of SQL Server Express tools and samples. What is VS 2005 Express Edition, anyway?

Could someone point out how to create an Access database with ADO? Microsoft has an article mentioning that CREATEDB allows a user to create a new database (see http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnacc2k/html/acadvsql.asp), but it does not show how to use it. I like being able to use a database with my program, but if some bozo deletes it, the whole program becomes useless.

documentation Attachment 45_SAEj1939-71.PDF has 45 pages extracted from SAEj1939-71.PDF, showing the documentation of some SPNs and PGNs. 45_saej1939-71.pdf

I am not a database designer, so hopefully someone here can tell me how to set up what I need. The protocol is called J1939 and is a network protocol for industrial machines. Individual signals called SPNs carry information about specific parameters (temperature, pressure, rate). Most of these are either 1 or 2 bytes in length, but some are only a couple of bits. The j1939 protocol sends information in protocol groups called PGNs that group together the SPNs of related items, so the number of SPNs in a PGN varies. Though the PGN groups have similar structures, they vary in length, depending on the SPNs contained in the group. My database contains a table for the SPNs, but I need a table for the PGNs. How can I design a flexible PGN table?

Thanks. From the example, I understood that I had to wait for the thread to complete. That's what I needed. Maybe Microsoft could update their MSDN site to include that information one day. :)

In a C++ application, I need to call the external program "setup.exe" and then exit quickly. "setup.exe" performs updates on the program that calls it. Windows has an API called CreateProcess() that I am thinking about using, but their example on http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dllproc/base/creating_processes.asp shows WaitForSingleObject() and CloseHandle() calls immediately after. I can not wait. The program needs to shut down immediately after calling the external program "setup.exe". Is there a different way to call CreateProcess() that is better for my situation, or do I need to use something else?

In my code, I have a couple of different methods of calling my database. I'm not a database guy, so I don't know the names of the methods I am using. One method takes a DataAdapter (Adapter1) with an SQL string command (strSql) and a Database Connection (Connection1), then magically does its thing by calling Adapter1.Fill(DatabaseTable1). I don't understand how it works, but I use it in a few places, and it seems to work. Pure magic! The other method makes sense to me: Construct a similar SQL string command (strSql) and Database Connection (Connection1), but then supply these settings to a DbCommand (Command1). For this version, I have to use Connection1.Open() along with Command1.ExecuteNonQurey(), then include a "finally" statement with Connection1.Close(). The first method seems more elegant, but I don't know how to make it work for all situations that I might have, particularly when doing INSERT or UPDATE commands, as these to not return anything that Adapter1 would be expecting. My degree is in physics, but I like writing programs more. I have taken several programming courses and several database courses, but the programming courses, at best, include a chapter on how to work with databases. Meanwhile, books on databases seem to think that everyone is going to work with the database using their front end. Right now, I would like to learn how to create queries for my databases, but the books I have only show how to create a query using their front ends. Take a query such as: "UPDATE table7 SET value2=" + txtValue2.Text + " WHERE value9=" + txtValue9.Text + ";" How do I enter the txtValue2 and txtValue9 fields into this query if they are not included in the database's front end? Also, this is called a "stored procedure", right? Provided my Access database allows me to use the names txtValue2 and txtValue9, how do I make my program flexible by using this query with other values, such as txtValue112.Text and String1? (You get the point, right?) Where is a good spot for a physics guy to learn this type of stuff? I have a bookshelf full of different books on different techniques, but they are either too darned basic (This is called a keyboard, and this is called a floppy drive) or they get waaaaay too involved for me to follow (this writes to the kernel, and requires covering all 15 different possibilities while modifying the Northwind database). I'd just like a good spill on how to do some basic database stuff in the first chapter or two, spend the meat of the book showing me how to do moderate things like queries and stored procedures, then maybe get into covering relational databases with queries spanning two or three tables later in the book. It doesn't even need to be 400 pages! Really, 20 pages are just fine if I get the point. As for databases, Microsoft Access is preferred, because I haven't ever been able to get that darned SqlServer installed fully on my computer. I'm sure it's great, but I can't seem to get it to work for me. Microsoft Access is easy, and for the little stuff I do, it is working great for the moment. Maybe one day I can graduate to SqlServer, but not today. This may look long enough to be a blog, but it just represents a lot of the frustration I've come across while trying to get database programming to work. I get such a rush when it finally works, but getting the darned thing to work is worse than pulling teeth! My preferred language is C#, but I can generally figure out what VB means if I look at it for a while and maybe turn my head sideways a bit.

Poo-doo! This time I got:Insert Database error: Syntax error in INSERT INTO statement. INSERT INTO people (Name, Email, Username, Password, Website, Dated) VALUES ('John Doe', 'jdoe123@domain.com', 'jdoe123', '6184D6847D594EC75C4C07514D4BB490D5E166DF', '', '9/17/2005 4:27:29 PM');

Ah! Simple stuff. It so often turns out that way, too. Thanks.

I know this probably isn't very professional, but I generally include a hidden Label control that I will write error messages to and display whenever my form experiences errors. Generally, I include error prone routines in a try-catch block, and use the Exception Message as the Label's text with the note to kindly inform the webmaster (me). Hopefully, that doesn't happen too often, though.

My code:strSql = "INSERT INTO people (Name, Email, Username, Password, Website, Dated) " + "VALUES (\"" + strName + "\", \"" + strEmail + "\", \"" + strUserId + "\", \"" + strPassword + "\", \"" + strUrl + "\", \"" + strDate + "\");"; Command1 = new OleDbCommand(strSql, Connection1); try { Connection1.Open(); Command1.ExecuteNonQuery(); } catch (Exception ex) { lblCreateMsg.Text = "Insert Database error:<br />"; lblCreateMsg.Text += ex.Message + "<br />" + strSql; return; } finally { Connection1.Close(); }produces this SQL statement: INSERT INTO people (Name, Email, Username, Password, Website, Dated) VALUES ("John Doe", "[email="jdoe123@domain.com"]jdoe123@domain.com[/email]", "jdoe123", "6184D6847D594EC75C4C07514D4BB490D5E166DF", "", "9/17/2005 2:07:06 PM");but catches this error that is written to lblCreateMsg: Syntax error in INSERT INTO statement.Am I using a reserved word? What would cause this problem?

Ah! Okay, I guess that makes sense. Thanks.

I found a neat little command for encrypting passwords on my forms before storing them in my databases: HashPasswordForStoringInConfigFile, and I use it as such:strPwd1 = FormsAuthentication.HashPasswordForStoringInConfigFile(txtPwd1.Text, "sha1");This does a wonderful job of turning any password into a large string of garble, but how do I convert it back into something usable so that I can compare my Visitors' passwords with what I have stored? I tried using strPwd2 = FormsAuthentication.HashPasswordForStoringInConfigFile(txtPwd2.Text, "sha1"); if (strPwd1 == strPwd2) { // do stuff } else { // puke! }to compare what they punch in with what I have in the database, but it pukes every time!