Brief History Of IRC (Internet Relay Chat)

Jarkko, while working at the Department of Information Processing Science, University of Oulu, Finland, wrote first IRC (Internet Relay Chat) client and server back in 1988. The intention behind is to extend the functionality of BBS (Bulletin Board System, read more at URL) under his administration. Let's fast forward, now IRC servers are scattered all over the world, you can google and get the list of those servers. Download IRC freeware client. One famous such client is mIRC: URL. Then connect that client to one of those IRC Servers. Once connected, the IRC Server will spit out the channels (a.k.a. chat rooms) within that server. Most channels will allow you in whereas others are private and some moderated by channel admins. The RFC 1413 And RFC 1459 describes how behind the scene client and server make a connection. Moreover, it also describes how the chat protocol works in the background of IRC client and IRC server.

What Is Winsock And Winsock ActiveX Control?

TCP/IP are set of protocols involved in the connection and communication between two or more computers or electronic devices. The details of these protocols can be downloaded from URL website under RFC Pages. To implement these protocols from scratch, it requires lot of coding, testing, fine-tuning etc. Operating System vendors such as Microsoft has made the life of computer programmers easier by releasing set of pre-complied functions a.k.a. methods under Winsock (Windows Sockets) API (application programming interface) and Winsock ActiveX Control. If you are a Visual Basic programmer, you can either use Winsock API or Winsock ActiveX Control for rapid network based application development. It is comparatively easy to use Winsock ActiveX Control than corresponding API. The screenshot shows ActiveX tools bar from Visual Basic 6.0 IDE (Integrated Development Environment). IDE is a fancy name given to the software where we actually write Visual Basic code. The ASiRC application code is written in Visual Basic 6.0 which is known as the most rapid application development environment.

List Of IRC Servers, All Within Winsock ActiveX Control's Reach

cmdConnect_Click() this one of the major function in the whole ASiRC software. If you notice we used few IRC servers in the SELECT CASE ... END SELECT statement. The IRC servers closed to your geographical location can be found out by googling. It is comparatively better to have your IRC client connect to IRC server closer to your geographical than to have it connect to IRC Server 7000 miles away. Another thing I want your attention on is how easy it is to make a connection using Winsock ActiveX Control. All you have to do is to tell Winsock the name and port of remote server (IRC or any) and then simply calling a built-in very powerful "Connect" method/function. You can have as many Winsock ActiveX Controls in your application as you like but each should be having a unique name e.g. here we are calling it Winsock1.

Internet Relay Chat (IRC) Implementation Requires RFC 1413 And RFC 1459

IRC (Internet Relay Chat) implementation requires RFC 1413 (IDENT Server) And RFC 1459. Both of these protocols can be downloaded from The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) website: URL. The complete code/software, you can download from the source link provided below; it's written in Visual Basic 6.0. Here we want to discuss the some important aspect of implementation. In cmdConnect_Click() function, once you send a connect request to one of IRC servers using WinSock control: Winsock1; using another WinSock control: tcpIdentServer you will be waiting/listening for Ident Server response on port 113. Whenever the data arrives at the two WinSock controls; Winsock1_DataArrival() and tcpIdentServer_DataArrival() executes. If you want to gain expertise in Network Programming make sure you understand the theory behind Winsock control which is basically an API based TCP/IP and UDP interface. Moreover, if you want to gain expertise on the implementation of RFC network related protocols, make sure you are really good at string manipulation functions e.g. InStr, Mid, Left, Right, RegEx, Replace, Split. With a very simple method: "SendData" of Winsock control we can send any data to any TCP/IP or UDP server in any part of the world. It's that easy. In schools, most professors teach TCP/IP theory but very few shares the knowledge of actual implementation via RFC.

Converting Format Function In MS Access SQL Query To Equivalent Oracle SQL

As shown above in the Access SQL code, we have added single quote (') before the Format function because if you want to use this query to generate MS Excel report, then anything after the single quote will be displaced as-is and the single quote will not be displayed. To format the currency field we use FORMAT function whereas in Oracle we use the TO_CHAR function. Moreover, in MS Access SQL, the column alias can contain a space provided you surround the alias with brackets [] e.g. Count([Employee Monthly].ID) AS [Head Count] as depicted in the code snippet above whereas in Oracle SQL the space is not allowed in field names but you can use in alias with a double quotes.

Converting MS Access SQL Top N Query To Equivalent Oracle SQL

This is a easily go as you can see in the code snippet above. In IT (Information Technology), if you have the information, things will always easily. There is no Chemistry equations involved or any Physics formula and even no prerequisites. In Oracle we use the ROWNUM whereas in MS Access we use the TOP after the SELECT clause.

Converting MS Access SQL Query With INNER JOIN To Oracle SQL

INNER JOIN ... ON ... in MS Access can easily be replaced by having two tables separated by comma and using a = (equal sign) in the WHERE clause as shown in the code above. This code snippet also shows how to convert Right$ function in MS Access to Right function in Oracle. Moreover, in MS Access using dates is very simple and straight-forward, all you have to do is to surround the date by # (hash symbol) but in Oracle SQL to use the date in the WHERE clause you have to use the TO_DATE function.

Programmatically Generate Password Protected Excel File - A Missing Document On Google Index

I spent almost two days googling looking for answer to this problem but was not successful. This code snippet is a complete solution, just copy and paste in your application. The secret lies in xlsBook.SaveAs method. Hopefully soon I will publish how to decrypt/remove the password programmatically. You can also use this code in a .vbs file and with the help of .bat batch file and Windows Schedule Task, schedule this code for automatic executing daily, monthly etc.

Sprite Sheet Packer Helps You Pack Dozens Of Images As One

In words of publisher, "Sprite Sheet Packer is a fully featured tool for combining multiple individual images into a single, efficiently laid out image. Sprite Sheet Packer supports reading PNG, JPG, BMP, and GIF images and produces a single PNG image with all the images embedded inside of it. The resulting image is transparent anywhere an image is not drawn. The tool also produces an accompanying file that maps the image file names with their rectangles, for use in your program to find the regions of the image you are interested in." Such images are widely used in creating dynamic content in video games and even in Javascript libraries including but not limited to jQuery.

7-Zip's Power At The Hands Of .NET Programmers

SevenZipSharp is an open source wrapper for 7-zip and it supports .NET and Windows Mobile .NET Compact. As you know, 7-Zip is open source software used for compression and decompression of data/files/folders. With SevenZipSharp you can do the same stuff programmatically at run time based on end-user needs. Embed data/files/folders compression and decompression functionalities in your own applications. Supported formats for packing / unpacking: 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR whereas unpacking only: ARJ, CAB, CHM, CPIO, DEB, DMG, HFS, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MSI, NSIS, RAR, RPM, UDF, WIM, XAR and Z.