From: "Antti Kurenniemi" 

"Geo"  wrote in message news:4336ae09{at}w3.nls.net...
>> > ok but how does a scripting language do these sort of functions?
>>
>> Check out this site for example:
> http://www.frick-cpa.com/tvom/TVOM_lead.asp
>
> Awesome!
>
> But I was saying that if you implement a class in C so that you now have a
> new function, when they do this in ASP (create a new function) isn't it
> usually part of some dll?

Sorry, I've never done any ASP (hence the vagueness) so I can't really say.
I know I could do that in PHP, VB script, JScript etc. without any external
DLL's, right in the script code. If ASP is anything like other scripting
languages, it should be quite doable right in the ASP code, without
anything external - just a bit more work.


>> Complex schmomplex. Annyity calculations are far from complex. The reason
>> for "sort" (or anything similar) existing in many
languages as built-in
> (or
>> in some core library) is that it's a real pain to re-invent the algorithm
>> every time you need to sort something.
>
> Really? One of the first programs we learned to write in C++ was a
> bubblesort.

Good thing to know how sorting works - not so good thing to have to always
write the algorithm from scratch.


>> No, probably not better. By all means, use the external DLL if possible,
> and
>> if it's MS provided stuff I think it's safe to assume it's of reasonable
>> quality and contains no hidden "format everything" code.
>
> That would be a really bad assumption . But it's homemade not from
> MS so I have to assume it's not safe anyway,

Okay, but there are (at least) *two* DLL's (or other libraries) involved
here, the one to which you have the VB code, and then the other one which
seems to be a MS one, containing the actual calculations. The one you have
is just a wrapper for that functionality, because ASP cannot directly
access the functionality that is needed.

The one to which you have the code seems harmless to me, I'd have no
problem allowing it to be used. Also, since the *other* DLL (VB runtime or
something like that) is from MS, I don't think it'll be a problem.


> the advantage to homemade is that it's unlikely a hacker would
> know anything about it so they would have to spend hours
> messing with my specific server to figure out how to hack it as
> opposed to hacking a popular dll.

...assuming that the home made stuff isn't ridiculously easy to hack
because you missed something obvious that MS has learned the hard way seven
years ago... ;-)


Antti Kurenniemi

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