Im porting an app from XPe to WinRT, which runs on 1000's of machines remotely, it downloads a few other critical exe's and runs them, occasionally updating them etc.
I'm a bit concerned that unlike in XPe this may somehow be a big no-no for security reasons. No I don't want to use any kind of generic update process.
Can anyone comment on the feasibility of this? Im a bit afraid I'll hit a brick wall from security point of view. As so far WinRT seems very restrictive by comparison, bit like Android where everything is an app etc..
(PS. this is a corporate project, the machines are embedded and completely owned by us.)
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I apologize for the length of the question, but I believe it is difficult to understand the “why” without the background.
Background: I have two applications running in a Windows Embedded Standard 7 environment. They should be the only two applications running on the machine. One, called “Controller”, is written in C++ the other, “DBconnector”, is written in c#. This is not new code. It has been in active use and development for almost 20 years.
The purpose of the software is to run a manufacturing machine for producing parts. These machines are big and dangerous if the program crashes. Long ago, I discovered that if the network went down for some reason, all the threads in the application would stall – not just the network thread. This was disastrous since leaving the controller in a state with the wrong relays on in extremely rare circumstances could cause the machine to literally explode. Note: Several things have been added to the software and hardware to prevent this now. While this danger doesn’t really exist anymore, stability is still extremely important. I never want the operator to be stuck in a state where they can’t hit the reset button. My solution at the time was to move the networking tasks into a separate application. The OS was windows XP based at the time. I have no idea if the problem still exists in windows 10 since I really don’t want to rewrite hundreds of thousands of lines of code to try and merge the two programs now.
The development of the two programs diverged such that the one that controlled the machine, Controller, was designed for extreme stability and the other, DBconnector, was where dangerous things like networking and most file I/O happened. Communication between the two programs is facilitated using a memory mapped file that they both can access. I have no problem sharing window handles or process id’s or any other data that might be needed between the two programs.
Here is my question. How can I make the Controller application display the GUI of DBconnector? For example, I have started to add functionality to Controller that requires DBconnector to display the quality control sheets that are held on a web site on company servers. I want for an operator to be able to pull up the quality control sheet directly on the machine. The operator currently only interacts with the Controller application. I don’t want Controller to be able to access the network. Also, C# has some tools to make displaying a web page easy. It seems to me that the place to do this is DBconnector. The problem is that DBconnector runs in the background and cannot currently be seen or accessed by a user. So, the question is how to solve this.
First option I have tried is to tell DBconnector to come forward and put Controller in the background. Then, when the user is done, Controller comes back to the front. I have made this to work using some hacks, but it is inconsistent. The trick I used was to minimize and then maximize DBconnector which seems to bring it to the front most of the time and try to hold focus on one or the other. There still might be a way to do it this way, but it needs to be something that is consistent.
The second option is to run the DBconnector application inside of one of Controller’s windows. I have no idea how to do this. I thought about using ATL or COM, but I think these run as threads within Controllers process rather than as a separate application.
The third option I’ve considered is to create a window inside Controller that intercepts and passes all user input messages directly to Dbconnector using a windows message handle and takes a screenshot of DBconnector whenever the it is invalidated and passes it through the memory mapped file. Currently, this is what I am swaying towards.
Are there any suggestions on how to do the first and last option better, or how to do the second option at all, or another solution that I have missed? Keep in mind that our current hardware is running Windows Embedded Standard 7. The project is currently in visual studio 2015. The C++ window technology is MFC implemented using libraries originally from around 2003 I think. DBconnector is in .NET framework 4 in C#.
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I am a software engineer intern for a manufacturing company and they want me to develop an application for the company. They are leaning towards a web application however, I wish to know whether a desktop application would better fit the job. Therefore, I have been googling and looking through stackoverflow to find out what the pros and cons between desktop applications and web applications are. The following is essentially what I found:
Quick disclaimer, I have background in C# and WPF so I am a bit biased as it would be easier for me to develop a desktop application. I have no web experience so there is nothing I can really talk about in that area which is why I wish to know more about whether this application is better suited as a web application or desktop application. I am absolutely open to learning Php and web development to expand my abilities. I have started (a bit) looking into developing the web application using Php7 with Laravel framework.
Pros of desktop applications:
Typically faster than Web Applications (Assuming web application will perform complex queries, calculations, etc, and not just display markups)
Development of GUIs is faster
More secure as desktop applications are private by default.
There are more available controls allowing for a more rich and interactive experience for user (Or at least, these controls are easier/faster to implement on desktop based applcations compared to a web-based application)
Can take advantage of user hardware.
Cons of desktop applications:
Use/deployment is limited by system (However, this should not be a problem because all our systems are Windows based.)
Updates and installation must be manually implemented.
If every client desktop gets a database connection, scaling is not
good as database suffers from heavy load. (However, this probably
will not be the case since we won't have more than 500 users).
Pros of web application
Cross platform (No need to deal with different operating systems) so it is easily portable
Development is quick and easy
Deployment is easy as updates are automatic and server side.
Large community support and available frameworks.
Cons of web application
Larger overhead (Applications tend to be slower due to need to transmit data across the internet).
Need to deal with different browsers. Javascript most likely needs to be tweaked to be perfect on one web platform (Chrome, Firefox, etc) and will not be perfect on the others. (However, this is not that big of a deal).
Security is an issue since data will be public.
Please let me know if any of the above is outdated (most of the posts I found were from 2011 or prior) or wrong. Also, if there is any other pro/con to consider.
Moving on to the application description....
Background on the company: We build and process dozens of different parts every day. For each type of part, after X amount of the part is processed, a sample needs to be taken for inspection. So for example, part Y has 3 samples taken every 120 minutes to be inspected (Because the machine typically finishes processing X amounts in 120 minutes). The inspection results (measurement data) are then stored in the database (MySQL database).
General summary of the application's purpose:
View the schematics of all the parts we design (We store all the schematics as pdfs on a network drive, so this is simply just pulling up the specific pdf requested from the drive and displaying it onto the application).
View/update the status of all the machines in the company (What parts are they working on, are they online/offline, etc). A certain user (Inspector) will use this application to update machine status/information. Then another user (Operator) will use the application to view the statuses.
Monitor part inspections. So, for every machine and part being processed, there will be a timer to let a Operator user know when a certain part needs to be submitted for inspection. Upon part submission, an inspector will then receive a notification to inspect the part, and after letting the application know that they completed the inspection, the timer will restart to let the operator know whens the next time they need to submit a part.
The application will calculate statistical data (For example, Cpk values) from the part measurements obtained from inspection results and display the statistical data along with a graph/chart.
I hope I explained all of this clearly enough. Some other things to note, from my understanding, the users will not need remote access. This application will pretty much only be used on company site. Also, the original reason that the company wanted a web application was because operators will be using a tablet for the application and the tablets they acquired were original android based. However, they decided to switch to using Windows Surface tablets so WPF applications are now a possibility.
With all of this being said, I am really looking for input on what route people with more experience would recommend. I am still in college so please forgive my lack of knowledge/experience. What else should I be thinking about when deciding between a web application and desktop application?
Here are some of the pages I have seen while pondering this topic:
Advantages of web applications over desktop applications
https://www.quora.com/How-much-different-is-it-to-build-a-web-application-vs-a-desktop-application
https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-advantages-and-disadvantages-of-web-based-application-development-vs-desktop-application-development
There were more stackoverflow pages but the one listed above pretty much has everything that the other pages stated.
EDIT: Seems like web-application is winning so far (Not that I mind at all, I am actually excited to develop a web-application based off what I am hearing). Is there anyone who would rather do a desktop application? If so, why?
I'm inherently biased against web apps. They're difficult to get right due to browsers, they're typically insecure (by accident though). The platform sucks (JavaScript and the bazillion libraries from random people/orgs), "everything is a string". I could go on.
However it's undeniably the best platform for reaching a wide, public audience and allowing continual updates.
In a corporate environment the advantages do tend to go away, but not entirely. Updates, for example can be achieved generally by storing all your .exe & DLLs in a shared directory. As you say, you can build a much richer UI quicker and cheaper using the Windows platform.
With regards to your architecture, something that has worked for me in a similar situation is to have a Windows front end, but also have the guts of the business logic, data access (connection pooling) and processing off on a stateless web server (or two) accessed from the UI via Web Services (protocol of your choice - I prefer SOAP due to WCF and WSDL but plenty of folks won't).
This allows for centralised data access and a place to put your one-off batch jobs or calculations that can then be shared. It also has the advantage that if you need to do something really intensive, not every client machine has to have that capability.
Your situation seems to fit this model but without a lot of insider knowledge it's primarily opinion, but possibly one to consider.
Sounds like assembling or similar company work proccess monitoring to me.
If i have to build this application then first i will search and do some research if the function you want is possible and easy to develop with the programming language you will use
for example, if i choose to develop using web based then :
Larger overhead (Applications tend to be slower due to need to
transmit data across the internet).
you can use intranet and good spec server computer
Need to deal with different browsers. Javascript most likely needs to
be tweaked to be perfect on one web platform (Chrome, Firefox, etc)
and will not be perfect on the others. (However, this is not that big
of a deal).
then set the standard browser for working in your workplace
View the schematics of all the parts we design (We store all the
schematics as pdfs on a network drive, so this is simply just pulling
up the specific pdf requested from the drive and displaying it onto
the application).
you can upload pdf to server and view it within browser using pdf viewer plugin like pdfjs or similar plugin
View/update the status of all the machines in the company (What parts
are they working on, are they online/offline, etc). A certain user
(Inspector) will use this application to update machine
status/information. Then another user (Operator) will use the
application to view the statuses
is the machine have ip ?
can i use ping function to the machine to determine the machine is online or not to ease the task ?
if not then what is the schedule of the inspector to inspect the machine ?
of course the inspector can login to the system then update the machine status manually using web application
Monitor part inspections. So, for every machine and part being
processed, there will be a timer to let a Operator user know when a
certain part needs to be submitted for inspection. Upon part
submission, an inspector will then receive a notification to inspect
the part, and after letting the application know that they completed
the inspection, the timer will restart to let the operator know whens
the next time they need to submit a part.
this one sounds like scheduling mechanics to ensure the quality, you can make a timer with jquery and using ajax to send notification to the operator with specific data about certain part that need to be inspected
The application will calculate statistical data (For example, Cpk
values) from the part measurements obtained from inspection results
and display the statistical data along with a graph/chart.
this one is depends on your statistic formula, you can use highchart plugin for this one
the second one after you ensure your choosen programming language able to accomplish the task you want is to design the database structure
Quote by Linus Torvalds :
"Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships."
Have a nice day, good luck with deciding after give it some good thinking to avoid development problem in the future
I have a large-ish Winforms application written in C# which is periodically unresponsive. The issue seems to occur once the application has been use for an hour or so. Exact timings are difficult to gather as users often go off to work on something selse, get back to it and find it has become unresponsive.
I think a memory leak can be ruled out as I'm not seeing excessive memory usage (I've asked users to send a screenshot of the task manager and memory usagage is the same as I would see when the application is runnning normally)
Similarly, CPU usage is normal (single digit %)
As I've so far been unable to recreate the issue on mydevelopment PC I am planning on sitting next to one of the affected users and mirror every action the user performs in order to recreate this. (I'll be setting up a laptop to RDP in to my main PC)
Recreating the issue is one thing, but I'll need to find out what is actually going on in the application.
Could anyone tell me if running in debug mode (through visual studio) will be sufficient or will I need to do something different?
I've searched through a few posts and I've seen mention of profiling software, however I'm not sure if this would only help with general performance issues or memory management issues.
Alternatively, if anyone has come across similar freezing issues then do you have any suggestions of the kind of causes for this?
Some technical details: Aplication is C#, compiled against .NET 3.5, winforms GUI. There are a few external libraries (most significant is ComponentFactory Krypton Suite). Data access is to a Microsoft SQL Server 2005 database. The solution contains 39 projects, I'm not sure if that might have something to do with it?
Any suggestions/pointers would be greatly appreciated.
The application is working much more reliably now, freezing issues still occur on occasion but nowhere near as often as before.
The issue appears to be related to the endpoint security (in this case, Cisco Security Agent) present in the environment I'm working in, application has been whitelisted and has has significantly rediced the instances of application hangs. The development system I work on does not have this endpoint security present, so it didn't show up in early stages of testing.
Thanks for all your feedback, I think there are still threading and garbage collection issues that need cleaning up, hopefully this should sort out the last few issues.
I have created a multi-threaded application that runs fine on every system except for one. The system is a windows 7 home edition setup. The 2 systems is running fine on are windows 7 Ultimate. Instead of each thread running independently, they seem to run in tandem. Also it runs really slow. It is really strange. I think the system is a quad core system and not sure if that has anything to do with it. I know I don’t have any code up here, but I was hoping you all might have some ideas.
Update:
Well, it turned out someone had removed the indexes out of my database. It seemed like the applicaiton was hanging, but it really was having trouble updating the records becuase the PK was removed. Thank all for your thoughts.
I'm pretty sure Windows 7 home basic has a built in limit of a single processor.
Yup:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7_editions
Was an issue with indexes being removed fromt he database.
We have a 2 x Quad Core Xeon server with 8GB of RAM and Windows Server 2003 Enterprise installed on it. We installed our application server which is based on .NET Framework 3.5 on it. The server uses SQL Server 2005 as its database server.
When we installed the application server, it used to have ultra fast performance and everything was fine. Once we joined it into our domain, its performance decreased dramatically. For example a task that took 1 sec to complete, now takes about 30 sec. This is very strange since only .NET based applications' performance got this performance hit but the other applications still run at their normal speed.
Does anyone have any idea about why is this happening? Any help or suggestion is much appreciated.
Unfortunately, more is probably needed to answer your question. There are a host of possible reasons why this is occurring, and most of them involve your code.
Based on the symptom that you joined the domain and then things started causing trouble, I'd say you've got a lot of networking that you're doing that previously was able to be done locally on your machine and the latency is now actually causing trouble.
But that's a wild guess based on not nearly enough information.
I'd suggest you profile your code. Find out where the majority of your time is spent during execution and then post the code or a sanitized version of it here so we can help you optimize it.
I did find the answer to my question so i thought it might be good to share it here. The CLR want generate publisher evidence for assemblies with authenticode signature when it tries to load the assemblies. In our case CLR was trying to connect to clr.microsoft.com but our server's internet access was blocked so it caused huge delay whenever the application server tries to load a new assembly.
The following post describes how you can disable this feature:
Bypassing the Authenticode Signature Check on Startup
I'm going to make a guess here and think that you're talking about a web application. If this is correct, you might want to take a look at the application pools you have setup on the webserver. Your application might be getting confused about which pool to set itself in when it starts running.
Another thing to check might be your data connections and make sure that you're closing everything that's been opened.
The last thing, like Randolpho said, you're just really going to have to follow your code execution with some kind of profiler and see where things are getting tied up.
Good luck!