Management guru Peter Senge once observed that "today's problems come from yesterday's solutions."
An all to clear reminder of this happened when we started testing a .Net 2.0. Web application on our new build server. Typically we just use the IP address, but when we tried accessing the application using http://SERVER_NAME we noticed that for some strange reason the application lost session under Internet Explorer only (Firefox was working fine!). Several very frustrating developer hours were spent trying to fix this problem - until someone finally found the solution:
It turns out that due to a security issue in Internet Explorer, Microsoft decided that only websites having a domain name that contains only alphanumeric characters, hyphens and periods (i.e. full stops!) have support for cookies, and hence support for sessions. So if you called your server something like SER_EXCHANGE, you have a problem.
Which leads me back to the Senge quote: When we started ConseQuent, one of my jobs was to come up with a decent naming convention for our servers, laptops and desktops. I decided that to have a prefix followed by an underscore and then the name of the machine, e.g. SER_EXCHANGE for our Exchange server, LAP_DIGIN for my laptop, etc would be the way to go. (Our actual naming conventions are slightly different, and we have funkier names for our servers, but being an open blog I'll keep that private for now). My reasoning was that it would be easy to sort through the active directory, and see all the servers, laptops and desktops all neatly grouped together. In my last company I was always looking for servers among the names of the developers computers, wasting a lot of time, so this was my solution!
And there you have it - another classic Peter Senge moment: A single character which yesterday I thought was a good solution to a common problem become today's nightmare.
The Tech Preview of .Net 3.0. (formerly WinFX) has recently been released, and its a BIG download (1GB)! For thos of you who are bandwidth challenged, SADeveloper / SArchitect is providing a community DVD with .Net 3.0. and a lot of other cool betas / videos and stuff (see http://www.sadeveloper.net/News_Viewer.aspx?NewsID=501 for the full contents).
If you are in Cape Town, drop me a mail, and I'll send you directions to our office (it's in the Cape Town CBD) where you can pick it up. If you are in Joburg or Durban, some DVD's will be available at the next community events. If you don't live in the big three, and want a copy, let us know and we will make a plan.