How to decide whether to split up a VB.Net application and, if so, how to split it up? - vb.net

I have 2 1/2 years experience of VB.Net, mostly self taught, so please bear with me if I seem rather noobish still and do not know some of the basics. I would recommend you grab a cup of tea before starting on this, as it appears to have got quite long...
I currently have a rather large application (VB.Net website) of over 15000 lines of code at the last count. It does not do retail or anything particularly complex like that - it is literally just a wholesale viewing website with admin frontend, catalogue / catalogue management system and pageview system.
I don't really know much about how .Net applications work in the background - whether they are all loaded on the same thread or if each has its own thread... I just know how to code them, or at least like to think I do... :-)
Basically my application is set up as follows:
There are two different areas - the customer area and the administration frontend.
The main part of the customer frontend is the Catalogue. The MasterPage will load a list of products but that's all, and this is common to all the customer frontend pages.
I tend to work on only one or several parts of the application at a time before uploading the changes. So, for example, I may alter the hierarchy of the Catalogue and change the Catalogue page to match the hierarchy change whilst leaving everything else alone.
The pageview database is getting really quite large and so it is getting rather slow when the application is first requested due to the way it works.
The application timeout is set to 5 minutes - don't know how to change it, I have even tried asking this question on here and seem to remember the solution was quite complex and I was recommended not to change it, but if a customer requests the application 5 minutes after the last page view then it will reload the application from scratch. This means there is a very slow page load whenever it exceeds 5 minutes of inactivity.
I am not sure if this needs consideration to determine how best to split the application up, if at all, but each part of the catalogue system is set up as follows:
A Manager class at the top level, which is used by the admin frontend to add, edit and remove items of the specified type and the customer frontend to retrieve a list of items of the specified type. For example the "RangeManager" will contain a list of product "Ranges" and will be used to interact with these from the customer frontend.
An Item class, for example Range, which contains a list of Attributes. For example Name, Description, Visible, Created, CreatedBy and so on. The form for adding / editing loops through these to display relevant controls for the administrator. For example a Checkbox for BooleanAttribute.
An Attribute class, which can be of type StringAttribute, BooleanAttribute, IntegerAttribute and so on. There are also custom Attributes (not just datatypes) such as RangeAttribute, UserAttribute and so on. These are given a data field which is used to get a piece of data specific to the item it is contained in when it is first requested. Basically the Item is given a DataRow which is stored and accessed by Attributes only when they are first requested.
When one item is requested from a specific manager is requested, the manager will loop through all the items in the database and create a new instance of the item class. For example when a Range is requested from the RangeManager, the RangeManager will loop through all of the DataRows in the Ranges table and create a new instance of Range for each one. As stated above it simply creates a new instance with the DataRow, rather than loading all the data into it there and then. The Attributes themselves fetch the relevant data from the DataRow as and when they're first requested.
It just seems a tad stupid, in my mind, to recompile and upload the entire application every time I fix a minor bug or a spelling mistake for a word which is in the code behind (for example if I set the text of a Label dynamically). A fix / change to the Catalogue page, the way it is now, may mean a customer trying to view the Contact page, which is in no way related to the Catalogue page apart from by having the same MasterPage, cannot do so because the DLL is being uploaded.
Basically my question is, given my current situation, how would people suggest I change the architecture of the application by way of splitting it into multiple applications? I mean would it be just customer / admin, or customer / admin and pageviews, or some other way? Or not at all? Are there any other alternatives which I have not mentioned here? Could web services come in handy here? Like split the catalogue itself into a different application and just have the masterpage for all the other pages use a web service to get the names of the products to list on the left hand side? Am I just way WAY over-complicating things? Judging by the length of this question I probably am, and it wouldn't be the first time... I have tried to keep it short, but I always fail... :-)
Many thanks in advance, and sorry if I have just totally confused you!
Regards,
Richard

15000 LOC is not really all that big.
It sounds like you are not pre-compiling your site for publishing. You may want to read this: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/1y1404zt(v=vs.80).aspx
Recompiling and uploading the application is the best way to do it. If all you are changing is your markup, that can be uploaded individually (e.g. changing some html layout in an aspx page).
I don't know what you mean here by application timeout, but if your app domain recycles every 5 minutes, then that doesn't seem right at all. You should look into this.
Also, if you find yourself working on various different parts of the site (i.e. many different changes), but need to deploy only some items in isolation, then you should look into how you are using your source control tools (you are using one, aren't you?). Look into something like GIT and branching/merging.

Start by reading:
Application Architecture Guide

Related

Why is PrestaShop redirrecting to a random product when selecting variations from front-end?

I have an online shop in development, all went well until I decided to do SEO on the shop. After this, if I chose a product variation from front-end it just redirects me to a random product.
This picture describes the first state. The default product load.
This picture describes what is happening after you select a variation. As you can see the product name stays the same, but the link indicates that a totally different product is displayed.
If I have the debug mode enabled when selecting a variation it throws "An error occurred while processing your request" and in the request file I can see that besides some errors (Deprecated: array_key_exists(): Using array_key_exists()) it shows the request for a different product.
I can't understand why this is happening, so I am in dying need of your help.
That's the way Prestashop 1.7 works :
First time a customer lands in a multi-variation page, the default attribute will be loaded,
URL will show only the ID product.
Once you choose an attribute , an AJAX call will refresh the page
with the current attribute and URL will change with id_product-id_product_attribute value.
Not sure what you mean by "random product" as in both of your examples I see an attribute
being selected.
Anyway there are several (paid) modules to change this behaviour in a better SEO perspective,
this is definitely one of the most famous :
https://addons.prestashop.com/en/url-redirects/16633-pretty-urls-seo-friendly-url-remove-ids-numbers.html
EDIT: Just noticed that the ID product is different in the two screenshot, this could be related to some DB issues with attribute too, you should check if you have some not coherent values between id_product and id_product_attribute(s)
I found a fix for this. Apparently or appeared because I was using the duplicate function for uploading products. I don't know why but on some products it makes this behavior.
I've spent over 12 hours to find a explanation for this and I was unable to find one. The PrestaShop forum straight up banned me for posting this topic.
My advice is to NOT USE PRESTASHOP it's and old sistem and full of bugs, the support is expensive and I get the impression that even they don't understand their system.
If you find yourself in this situation, know this. Don't duplicate and upload products using "add new" function.
And I can't state this enough, do yourself a favour and don't use Presta, with all the expenses the time to invest and what the product looks like at the end of the road, is just a waste of time. Even after you finish is guaranteed to break in 1-2 years, any updates will break your store and you will need to invest even more more to fix it. It's an old, slow and buggy CMS. It's days are numbered.
Thanks a lot for help.
Best regards, Daniel.

VSTS Restrict access to sensitive work items

Foreword: I've searched around on this question a fair bit and found answers which are close to a solution, but not what I'm looking for. So here I am, and I hope someone can help me. I'm relatively new to VSTS, so be gentle (or at least constructive) ;P
The Question: I'm looking for a way to restrict access to specific tickets (NOT by ticket type) that contain NDA protected data, whilst keeping them in the same backlog and iterations as the rest of the tickets related to a project.
We have many different NDA protected customers, so whilst creating a new ticket type per NDA, and restricting access to this, could work, it's not the solution I'm looking for.
Alternatively, I'm barking up the wrong tree, and there is an entirely different and "better way" to support this use-case?
Edit 1 - More info: Let's say I have 1 backlog for a product. It contains only 2 work items. It's important there is only 1 backlog for planning and overview by a product owner.
One of the two work items contains sensitive information only half the development team should have visibility to. How do I keep both tickets in the same backlog and iterations, but hide the sensitive one from some team members?
Thanks in advance for your time!
Regarding permission of work items in a team project, you can set the permission in area and iteration scope, but can’t for specific work items.
So, you need to put these work items in different area and manage permission for this area. Simple steps:
Go to team project admin page
Work=>Areas
Click New/New child, to create a new area.
Click …=>Security, set the permission for the group(s) or user(s)
Click the default team’s settings => Areas
Click + Select areas to add that area in order to show related work items (in that area)

Rearrange inventory of specific game in steam?

Rearrange inventory of specific game in steam? is it possible or not?
I checked steamworks and steam api for some information but there is nothing about it, only getting items not changing positions.
There is not an API for this functionality. There is, however, a pull request to the (TF2 centric) SteamBot application that adds this functionality to that project. One thing to be aware of, though, is that this pull request is 7 months old and hasn't been merged in by the project developers. In that time, Valve has made changes that required SteamBot changes due to underlying Steam network changes. This request may or may not work any more. It may give you an idea of what needs to be done.

Prevent duplicated form submission MVC 4

I know this has been asked several times may be, but most (if not all) solutions I've seen were involving a javascript solution or disabling form/submit button, which I'm not preferring.
I have couple of huge forms that may take some time to complete submission which may let the user to re-submit many times during the first submission, which eventually will cause for many records in the database.
Proposed solution:
A proposed solution is to have a generic method that have an array including all submitted forms IDs, each time a user submit a form, it's ID will be added to that array if it's not already existed, after the submit complete the ID will be popped out the array. A drawback can be counted on this solution in case a user opened two or more pages of the same form and submit them synchronously, but that can be worried about later.
My question is how feasible is my proposed solution and how good it can be? and how can I implement that generic method?
I understand that Apache Struts 2 framework has some solution to prevent such thing (Token Interceptor), how to do that in MVC 4?:
Just add a GUID field to the ViewModel the view is bound to (You are using ViewModels right?) and every time the empty form is asked for, generate a new GUID (solves the issue of downloading two or more copies by same user) for it and have it included in the view as a hidden field (string representation of it). Then you can implement the array solution you are talking about in a session variable or even a database based solution in which all processed GUIDs are saved in a table that gets cleared every so often, a text file that contains the list of GUIDs, etc. kind of hard to pick a complete solution based on just what you provide. But the above should provide you with all the requirements you have outlined.

Solution for listening to file once/download

I have energyshop.se which is a small webshop im doing for a customer. She sells various stuff but she has meditations on .mp3 and on discs. The customers can choose to buy:
a disc which is then sent to their home address.
one listening to one part of a meditation or one listening to all parts in a meditation
some items are also available for download for another price.
So question is how do I solve this? We use PayPal at her site to make the payments and I know that after a payment I can redirect the users to a "thankyouforthepurhase"-page if I want to. That leads me to think that one option is to take the users to that page where they can download/listen, but I dont know how to "connect" the shopped item with the isplayed files to be downloaded and/or listene once too and how to limit this. I mean if the page is energyshop.se/thanks someone that have made the purchase can just copy that address and go straight there.
There is also a idea about codes in some way. If they make a purchase they get a code sent to them for download or listening, but how do I generate this code which has to be unique everytime and the password ha to change everytime someone has entered it so someone dont save the code as well.
Well im kinda out of ideas and not sure how to do this. I just wanna wrap this project up but I think I hve to solve this for her.
I guess the solution depends on how much control (or security) she feels is required. If all you need is a reasonable confidence that a user has paid, then you can be much more relaxed about the whole thing.
The 'thanks' page could easily provide the content in concert with the transaction id paypal will return - you can use this to control what is shown. If you're not too worried about a 'listen-once' item being replayed, or 'download' being downloaded a bunch of times then you can avoid a bunch of edge-case stuff (where download fails or listen-once feed dies halfway, etc) and simply serve links to content based on the transaction.
If its abused then you can put effort into locking down content, serving mp3 streams from one-time links, tracking downloads in a database etc, but that will cost significantly more (in both time and server resources) so if you can, try simple first :)