Eric Maino

Homework #2

Well today in my data structures and algorithms course we were given our second homework assignment. The assignment is to compare the execution times of a program that uses a TreeSet for one data structure and a HashSet for the other. As well all should expect the hashset should be a lot faster then the treeset, but the goal of the homework is to show by how much.

My problem is that neither versions of the .Net Framework (1.0 or 1.1) implement a treeset or hashset. Actually the framework to my understanding doesn't even implement a Set class or interface, nor do they have a true hashtable, but instead a hashmap. Also why in the heck did they put the TreeNodeCollection inside of the System.Windows.Forms namespace? I guess some things just baffle me, hopefully some of these things will be added to version 2.0 of the framework.

As for now I guess my homework will just take a little more time, because I will have to implement my own versions of these classes.

Student Ambassador Perks

Well, today I received my first shipment of goodies for my position as a student ambassador. Let me just say, they like to hook you up with all kinds of goodies to give out. I showed up to the office and there was a good sized box that weighed 55 lbs. sitting on my desk. I only opened it up to watch all the employees of the office gawk at all that was inside. Let's just say the students of GV's CSIS department will be happy once I start giving talks.

Any how better get going, gotta write a program for class that's due tomorrow.

Update: 9/29/2003
As Student Ambassadors we received a welcome kit, in order to help us promote the MSDN Academic Alliance and .Net.

The Package Includes:
15 - VS.Net Academic 2003
10 - Windows XP Pro Full Use
10 - VS.Net Posters
15 - VS.Net Boomerangs
  3 - VS.Net Compressed Air T-Shirts  
  3 - X-Box Halo Games
  3 - X-Box Mech Assault Games
  3 - Age of Mythology Games (PC)

Life's just a bunch of Politics

I stopped by the office of a departmental employee today to see what their reaction would be, when I asked to get an addition boot option in one of our labs. I told them I think it would be nice to have the option to boot into Windows XP,so hands-on labs using VS.Net could be taught, even if it wasn't public knowlege of everyone in the department or available to everyone on a regualr basis, just having the option available from time to time would be a great resource to have. Their reply to this was, “It's not gonna happen. No way!”. Even though there is pleanty of space on the hardware there is no possible way it will be approved. They said it's a game of politics and some of the decision makers for the lab will not let any MS products be installed. I just think this is BS and if the department has the ability to provide a resource to its students, I think it should almost be obligated to do so in order to futher the students applicable knowlege.

PDC Arrangements

Well I have finalized my PDC arrangements. It looks like I will be staying at the Omni and hopefully another Student Ambassador will be joining me to help split the cost of the room. I will be arriving L.A. sometime Saturday, October 25th in the afternoon and looking forward to an exciting week.

This is my first PDC ever and I am excited.

Win Forms Authentication

Over the past few days I have been trying to help an individual solve a problem trying to authenticate users across multiple domains using web forms as the authentication process. I have gotten most of the things working properly so far, but not everything. I have thought of solutions to almost all of the problems except one, but some of them I am scared to attempt to implement due to the fact that they may not be best coding practices.

Outstanding Issues
1. Having the ability to impersonate any user on any domain that is authenticated to login. The issue here is that the only way I have found to get a user token which is needed to impersonate a user, is by using the Windows API LogonUser function. The only issue with this function is that it only logs into the local machine that it was called from even though the machine may or may not be the domain. Secondly for this function to work the user must have logon access to the machine where LogonUser was called.

2. If we decided to get away from the whole impersonation side of things almost everything works great, except access to the AD. This solution could easliy be solved by storing the username, domain, and password in a session, but I don't feel this is a good idea. The other option would be to store the Directory entry object in the session, but once again I don't think this is a good idea either.

I am kind of dwelling on these issues doing more and more research everyday, trying to figure out what is the best path to take. I am sure the solution will come sooner or later, maybe it's just sitting right infront of me and I don't see it yet.

.Net Users Group

As a Microsoft Student Ambassador one of my objectives for the year is to get a .Net users group going on Grand Valley State Universities (GVSU) campus. I think this is going to be a challenge in it self becuase GVSU is primarily a commuting campus and it's hard to attract students to stick around after class or to get them to come back if they have already left. One of my ideas to help draw students attention to the users group is to provide them with hands-on training, my one problem is that I don't have alot of material as of this moment to setup hands-on meetings. I was wondering if anyone might have some resources or could point me in the direction of some .Net teaching material. I know this can't be the only way to attract students to the meetings so I will come up with more unique ideas and of course chime in if you have one your self.

Caclulating Execution Times #2

I would just like to thank everyone that chimed in on my last post about execution times. Using a high-resolution performance counter is much more effective and accurate.

Calculating Execution Times

I am currently in the process of creating a class for determining execution times of various programs for my data structures and algorithms course. I have been looking around and have found some alright classes but nothing that appears to be really what I want. I have been looking into the framework, trying to determine the best way to measure an execution time and so far, DateTime.Now.Ticks, I think would be the best choice (Please advise if their is a better choice). This class currently allows for laps (so that multiple executions can be run and compared), and it gives avearge, minimum, and maximum execution times.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Any Thoughts?

I will soon be developing an application utilizing the .Net Framework and I was just wonder if anyone has any input.

This application will be developed primarily in C# and its goal is to be a modular program. I would like to develop a program that then can have add-in modules, one of these add-in modules will perform the duties that the original conceptual program was supposed to and even more. Then other add-in modules could be developed to make the overall application more robust and scalable.

If anyone has any thoughts about how to go about this or any good articles, I would be most appreciative.

Bringing C# to the Classroom

This semester in school I am taking a data structures and algorithms course at GVSU. The course is directed towards Java and everything taught in Java, but the professor was kind enough to tell me that I could do all the assignments in C# using the .Net framework, if I wanted.

I was excited about this and my goal this semester in class is to compare the development of the assignments in the two languages and their performances. I plan to write up a short article on this and I will be sure it is posted as soon as it's complete.

--Eric