Reprints

Reprints - OLEDB; no pain, no gain

I’ve just finished posting several OLE DB provider articles from back in 1999 and 2000 when the favourite method of data access that Microsoft recommended was OLE DB. This was relatively easy to use as a data consumer, especially from VB. Writing a data provider was another matter entirely. The OLE DB documentation was mostly written in a style that assumed that you were only using it for reference, this made it hard to get to grips with when you first started working with it.

Three reprints from when COM ruled the land

I’ve just finished posting three reprints from back in 1998 and 2002 when I was working on lots of COM stuff. Sinking connection points in C++ objects - shows you how to use the least COM possible to connect to Connection Points and provides a C++ template that does all of the hard work for you. Designing asynchonous COM components for VB - This example COM component provides three COM objects for using the Win32 Mailslot IPC mechanism.

More Reprints - CORBA, C++ and Java

I’ve just finished posting some more reprints from back in 2001 when I was working on CORBA systems with C++ and Java. The articles mostly compare CORBA to COM and show why providing a reference counted server object lifetime management system is harder than it appears. 1 - CORBA - Reference Counting. Adding reference counting to CORBA objects isn’t as easy as it first seems. 2 - CORBA - More Reference Counting.

Reprint: Using OpenSSL with Asynchronous Sockets

OpenSSL is an open source implementation of the SSL and TLS protocols. Unfortunately it doesn’t play well with windows style asynchronous sockets. This article, which was first published in Windows Developer Magazine and then reprinted on my company web site, provides a simple connector that enables you to use OpenSSL asynchronously. A new posting in the blast from the past reprints area. The article is here.

Reprints

I’ve started a new category, reprints, these are things from ‘way back’ that have been previously published on the web in other forms. First in this blatant search for more search engine hits is an old Java article I wrote in 2001 about caches in the middle tier.

Using OpenSSL with Asynchronous Sockets

OpenSSL is an open source implementation of the SSL and TLS protocols. Unfortunately it doesn’t play well with windows style asynchronous sockets. This article - previously published in Windows Developer Magazine and now available on the Dr. Dobbs site - provides a simple connector that enables you to use OpenSSL asynchronously. Note: If you need high performance SSL over TCP/IP then this is available as an optional part of The Server Framework; see here for details.

Sinking connection points in C++ objects.

Sometimes it would be nice to be able to use a simple C++ object as a sink for Connection Point notifications. This article shows you how. Sinking connection points in C++ objects. Many COM objects provide events to their clients by means on Connection Points. A Connection Point is a generalised method of allowing clients to register a COM interface so that the object can notify them of things that they may be interested in.

Designing asynchonous COM components for VB

This example COM component provides three COM objects for using the Win32 Mailslot IPC mechanism. The component may be useful if you need to communicate from VB using Mailslots. However, the reason I wrote it was to demonstrate creating a COM component in C++ that integrates well with VB and can fire asynchronous events. Overview The COM component consists of an object factory which is used to create instances of the Mailslot manipulation objects.

AVL Tree

A “generic” AVL Tree, from the dark days before templates… The code here is some of my first C++. Back in 1991 C++ was still pretty new. Looking back at my early C++ is better than looking back at my early C. At least my early C++ just looked like OKish C with some odd keywords… How do you index a data structure that keeps changing? The game world for the multi-user adventure system I was writing between ‘89 and ‘94 was stored in a network of interconnected nodes.

Rooms 1.7

In 1989 I taught myself C to write an adventure game, the code’s fairly bad, but 10 year’s later, the game’s still quite cool! A very simple adventure game… Over 10 years ago I taught myself to program in C. I wanted to write a program to help me customise the multi-user adventure game I was playing at the time. In MUD II when you reached the exalted rank of Wizard you could create your own rooms and objects.