I'd like to know what's the best way to add keys in the machine.config file at the application deployment ? We have a series of WinForm apps that will need to use some keys that we wnat to store in the machine.config.
Thanks for your advices !
You could add a custom action to your installer (if you use one) that loads the machine.config, parses the xml, then adds the keys to the appropriate place, then saves the machine.config again. Only thing to be careful about is to create a backup before loading, parsing and writing the new contents and have some kind of rollback mechanism if any of these steps fails.
Related
Background
I have to migrte a existing javascript application (one page app) to extjs. The display and behavior of the application depends on the users permission.
Current design
The application is divided into plugins, which represent a feature set to which permissions are granted. Each of those plugins consists of a single javascript file. A user can have permissions for one or more plugins. Depending on the permissions, those files are loaded in the head of the page. Each of these plugins will add its entries to the main menu and expose the methods used to drive the application.
The permissions are stored in a mysql database.
ExtJs's default design
In ExtJs the source files contain each a class. During the build process, all .js files are concatenated to yield one big .js file, that contains everything.
What would be the best design approach?
I considered to use custom compilation with sencha cmd, and create that way a .js file for each plugin. Then I could load these plugins the same way I do it now. But this results in a complicated build and deployment process.
I also thought about creating one and only .js file with a standard Ext build process. I would then load the permissions from the server via ajax in order to construct the menu. All the objects and methods would exist, but only those are accessible where the user has permissions.
In my opinion, the second approach is much easier maintainable, but it seens to have a security problem, because everyone could look at the source and find out about the data interfaces exposed on the server and consumed by ajax.
Any comments, ideas or advices are welcome. Thanks !
Number two would be the way to go. If you keep your server side permissions in check (while updating data etc) you only need ExtJS to show/hide menu items based on permissions. That way, malicious users can turn certain plugins/items on or off, but they can never execute something that requires more permissions then they would normally have.
I am in the process of writing an offline-capable smartclient that will have syncing capability back to the main backend when a connection can be made. As a side note, I considered the Microsoft Sync Framework but since I'm really only going one-way I didn't feel it would buy me enough to justify it.
The question I have is related to SQLite vs. SQLCE and ClickOnce deployments. I've dealt with SQLite before (impressive little tool) and I've dealt with ClickOnce, but never together. If I setup an installer for my app via ClickOnce, how do I ensure during upgrades the local database doesn't get wiped out? Is it possible to upgrade the database (table structure, etc. if necessary) as part of the installer? Or is it better to use SQLCE for something like this? I definitely don't want to go the route of installing SQL Express or anything as the overhead would be far too high for what I am doing.
I can't speak about SQLLite, having never deployed it, but I do have some info about SQLCE.
First, you don't have to deploy it as a prerequisite. You can just include the dll's in your project. You can check this article which explains how. This gives you finite control over what version is being used, and you don't have to deal with installing it per se.
Second, I don't recommend that you deploy the database as a data file and let ClickOnce manage it. When you change that file, ClickOnce will publish it again and put it in the data directory. Then it will take the previous one and put it in the \pre subfolder, and if you have no code to handle that, your user will lose his data. So if you open the database file to look at the table structure, you might be unpleasantly surprised to get a phone call from your user about the data being gone.
If you need to retain the data between updates, I recommend you move the database to the [LocalApplicationData] folder the first time the application runs, and reference it there. Then if you need to do any updates to the structure, you can do them programmatically and control when they happen. This article explains how to do this and why.
The other advantage to putting the data in LocalApplicationData is that if the user has a problem and has to uninstall and reinstall the application, his data is retained.
Regardless of the embedded database you choose your database file (.sqlite or .sdf) will be a part of your project so you will be able to use "Build Action" and "Copy to Output Directory" properties of that file to control what happens with the file during the install/update.
If you choose "Do not copy" it will not copy the database file and if you choose "Copy if newer" it will only copy if you have a new version of your database file.
You will need to experiment a little but by using these two properties you can have full control of how and when your database file is deployed/updated...
I'm including in my installation package some backup files from my database, so I can restore it and have a complete running database in one easy step, and it's all fine, but i'd like to delete the database backup files as a step in the installation process right after it's restored.
Anyone know how?
You can add some InstallScript to do the job as a custom action. There is a function DeleteFile that does that.
Look at the link to the example at the bottom.
As a complement to Booberry's answer, I suggest you make this a deferred custom action, because you will be making actual changes to the system. Once you do this, you won't be able to access your properties so you will have to pass the file path via Custom Action Data.
Besides this, I also suggest you consider the approach of using your database backup, if in the future your application is deployed to international markets you will find issues with the collation (which may vary depending on the country) and cause your customers (and yourself) a headache.
Hope it helps.
Deletefile function will not remove "Read-Only, Hidden and system files".You have to remove the Read-only attribute then use delete file function..
If you are running this as a custom action , then choose deferred execution in system context mode.
I am working on a Ruby on Rails 3 web application using sqlite3. I have been testing my application on-the-fly creating and destroying things in the Database, sometimes through the new and edit actions and sometimes through the Rails console.
I am interested in emptying my Database totally and having only the empty tables left. How can I achieve this? I am working with a team so I am interested in two answers:
1) How do I empty the Database only by me?
2) How can I (if possible empty) it by the others (some of which are not using sqlite3 but MySql)? (we are all working on an the same project through a SVN repository)
To reset your database, you can run:
rake db:schema:load
Which will recreate your database from your schema.rb file (maintained by your migrations). This will additionally protect you from migrations that may later fail due to code changes.
Your dev database should be distinct to your environment - if you need certain data, add it to your seed.rb file. Don't share a dev database, as you'll quickly get into situations where other changes make your version incompatible.
Download sqlitebrower here http://sqlitebrowser.org/
Install it, run it, click open database (top left) to locationOfYourRailsApp/db/development.sqlite3
Then switch to Browse data tab, there you can delete or add data.
I found that by deleting the deployment.sqlite3 file from the db folder and inserting the command rake db:migrate in the command line, it solves the problem for all of my team working on sqlite3.
As far as I know there is no USER GRANT management in sqlite so it is difficult to control access.
You only can protect the database by file access.
If you want to use an empty database for test purpose.
Generate it once and copy the file somewhere.
and use a copy of this file just before testing.
I'd like to know your approach/experiences when it's time to initially populate the Grails DB that will hold your app data. Assuming you have CSVs with data, is is "safer" to create a script (with whatever tool fits you) that:
1.-Generates the Bootstrap commands with the domain classes, run it in test or dev environment and then use the native db commands to export it to prod?
2.-Create the DB's insert script assuming GORM's version = 0 and incrementing manually the soon-to-be autogenerated IDs ?
My fear is that the second approach may lead to inconsistencies for hibernate will have the responsability for the IDs generation and there may be something else I'm missing.
Thanks in advance.
Take a look at this link. This allows you to run groovy scripts in the normal grails context giving you access to all grails features including GORM. I'm currently importing data from a legacy database and have found that writing a Groovy script using the Groovy SQL interface to pull out the data then putting that data in domain objects appears to be the easiest thing to do. Once you have the data imported you just use the commands specific to your database system to move that data to the production database.
Update:
Apparently the updated entry referenced from the blog entry I link to no longer exists. I was able to get this working using code at the following link which is also referenced in the comments.
http://pastie.org/180868
Finally it seems that the simplest solution is to consider that GORM as of the current release (1.2) uses a single sequence for all auto-generated ids. So considering this when creating whatever scripts you need (in the language of your preference) should suffice. I understand it's planned for 1.3 release that every table has its own sequence.