Developer Blog

Well I’ve just found myself a problem that’s much harder than it looks. One of the systems I’m working on at the moment needs to support international users in various time zones. At first glance it seemed reasonably easy, ensure all the dates are saved as UTC and then in the display layer add (or subtract) the right number of hours to get the correct localised time. I’d have to take into account daylight saving but that’s not a major problem is it?

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We are having difficulty making a site in ASP that is dual-language (Russian & English) where all translations are stored in a MySQL database.

We have used a UTF-8 encoding in the database table and it appears that the Russian characters are being stored in there correctly.

Only certain parts of ASP seem to have the ability to be able to deal with non-ASCII characters. Response.Write seems to be fine and so do the Request methods.

However, trying to get ASP to interect with a database in Russian using ADO seems to be problematic. When putting russian characters into the database it appears to try to put them in as ASCII, the database then just does not understand these and just displays a series of question marks.

When trying to retrieve the Russian characters from the database (after entering them directly using MySQL Query Browser), ASP is expecting ASCII therefore turns each UTF-8 character into multiple ASCII characters. Resulting in nonsense!

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Here is a list of some of the projects we are currently working on. For confidentiality reasons client’s names are usually not given. Please post any comments or questions you have about the projects and we will be very happy to read them.

eBay API
We make many pieces of software involving the eBay API. Currently we are writing a spreadsheet for a client to help them to analyse trends in their final selling prices.

International Property Management System
This system allows the client’s website to be easily updated, tracks client’s throught the buying process, manages the sales process, manages emails and documents, arranges inspection visits, allows users to be reminded about activity on a client account and much more. Once this system has been tried and tested by the client it is our intention to form a partnership to sell the system to other international property companies.

Door Company E-commerce Website
This website allows visitors to create their own UPVC door online selecting style, glass, dimensions, colour, letterbox, side panels, … etc. Then the user can order and pay for the door online. The company can manage their orders online.

Windows Blinds E-commerce Website
In a similar way to the doors website, this site allows users to create their own windows blinds online (roller, vertical & venetian), then pay for them online.

Russian Loyalty Scheme
An application to run on in-store terminals at a large russian chain store. The application will allow the users to apply for a loyalty card, their details are then printed on a form they must sign, they take this to a member of staff who scans the barcode on their form and issues them with their card.

Spanish Property Estate Agent
This is the website for a British based company who are selling property in Spain. An external company’s property database is integrated into the site.

Michael.

This is the first post in the brand new developer blog from Acid Computer Services. We will be posting news on projects we are currently working on.

Most importantly, we will be posting information on any problems we encounter and details of how we solve them. Hopefully this will help other developers.

Please feel free to link to this blog and if you have a blog you feel our readers would also enjoy, please contact us and we will add a link.

Michael.