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Tag Archive for data

Storing ‘sensitive’ data in settings file

I’m writing a small utility in AutoIt that connects to Twitter. I would like to store the username and password in the programs setting file, but I know that it needs to be encrypted obviously. Previously when I’ve done this for personal use I’ve just adopted an iniformat – written to a temporary file and then encrypted it using a rediculously long password and 256 bit AES encryption, just calling the file “settings.eini”.

Design strategies for storing and validating serial numbers

We are writing software to track Foo Widgets. Each Foo Widget has a serial number. The serial number is an 32-character alphanumeric string. The string is separated into five sets. Each set is separated by a dash (so the s/n is 32-characters NOT including dashes).

What’s a good format for documenting hundreds of data feeds?

Several governments are starting to publish open data: datasets generated by the goverment, made freely available for citizens to use for value-added app development, analysis, and feedback. For instance, the City of Vancouver (Canada) Open Data Catalogue publishes 130 datasets. The subject matter ranges from tabular files of city councillor contact information to geographical datasets of zoning districts. Formats range from Comma-Separated Value (CSV) to SHP to KML and beyond.

Matching two lists of data with different conventions

I have two lists of data, A and B. These lists are themselves aggregated from multiple sources, and contain typos, abbreviations not found in the other, and also lack a 1-1 mapping, but will never have a value in A that maps to two values in B and vice-versa.