SAML and Shibboleth
Next: Shibboleth installation and configuration. What is SAML I am currently dealing with a project that involves single sign-on (SSO) and SAML protocol. Single sign-on means you enter your credentials […]
REST: PUT request and calculated fields
If I have a REST server and do PUT on an resource, should the server return new resource state in the response, or should the response body be empty? RFC-7231 […]
OOP Gone Wild
In a piece of code I inherited from some smart, well meaning, but a little disorganized East European consultants, I found the following class hierarchy: RestClient (abstract) JsonClient (abstract) XyzClient* […]
Looking back at WPF/Silverlight/WinRT
Last week I had to write a small WPF application, and I was surprised how hard it is to get WPF right. By “right” I mean not just getting the […]
You ain't gonna need it… You ain't gonna need it…
Two parables about the YAGNI principle: both true stories. Long time ago in a company far far away there was a piece of software. Every time we designed a new […]
How to copy trusted root certificates to another machine
I have created a VM from an image with a very clamp down security setup. In particular, it had a very limited set of trusted root CAs. It would not […]
Access denied when creating a certificate enrollment request
As part of creating self-signed certificate, we use the following code: var enroll = new CX509Enrollment(); enroll.InitializeFromRequest(cert); enroll.CertificateFriendlyName = friendlyName; string csr = enroll.CreateRequest(); // may fail with ACCESS DENIED […]
A year of using Git: the good, the bad, and the ugly
I have been working with Git for about a year now, and I think I am ready for some summary. Before Git, I used SVN, and before it Perforce, TFS, […]
Thank G-d for StackOverflow
I have just run into a problem: a test passes fine on the CI sever, but breaks on my machine. Reason: it gets a wrong config file. Root cause: when […]
PHP SimpleXml is Broken: Part 2
In a nuthsell, SimpleXMl has two things broken: 1. Elements that represent “emtpy” tags evaluate to false. This is weird design. 2. Other elements sometimes evaluate to false due to […]