Marvin Trilles

D eploying a Point-Of-Sale system on a large store with existing security protocols is not a walk in the park. Processes that can be easily done in a test environment can be prohibitive in the actual production setup. ( TL;DR Scroll further down for the script) Scenario You are implementing a new electronic payment system in store ABC. Hardware replacement went well, installation went well, then its time to test. That easy, just run a few transactions and you will be out of the site in no time. Then it hits, the PINPad system had an issue downloading the configuration file from the server across the internet. The device routes its request to the POS so it will be easy testing the connection. The lengthy documentation tells you to just send a get request to a URL address in the Internet Explorer. Great! What Windows machine doesn't have IE? None you know of! But the system administrator is wise enough to disable it, avoiding possible vulnerabilities that might jeopardize their ...

Image Credit: https://www.pioneerrx.com A year ago, I was looking for a simple workflow manager for a project I was working. Its a medium sized application that involves tracking the state of assets in the system. Back in 2008, Microsoft (MS) introduced new technologies along with the release of Visual Studio 2008: Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), and  Windows Workflow Foundation (WF). Having worked in a company utilizing mostly MS products for development, my first option was to go with WF. After doing some time reading and studying the library, I paused and decided it was too complex for my requirement. Using WF would be an overkill and the fact that it has, a rather, steep learning curve, there has to be another option. My mind toyed with the idea of developing a simple workflow library myself. It would be a learning experience but it might end up consuming a lot of time. Why reinvent the wheel? So I started querying the ...