Advice- Network Config Application

Hi guys,
I was just wondering if a could get some advice from you. I am about to undertake a project to write a network configuration tool. The network is a proprietary arrangement of embedded devices.

I am an embedded software developer and have had experience mainly in embedded C, and thought I could use C# (and .NET) to fulfil my requirements.

The application will need to
- Send/receive data from a com port. (56k)
- Display network traffic.
- Store configuration data from each device on the network ( ~500bytes from each node)
- Be able to display configuration data and manipulate it, with a simple GUI.

Am I right to believe I should do this in C#?

If I wanted to store a copy of the configuration data off site, how should I be opting to save the data. SQL?

Any relevant advice, suggestions, etc. would be greatly appreciated.

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Originally Posted by xtal

The application will need to
- Send/receive data from a com port. (56k)

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Then look at the System.IO.Ports namespace ( class -> SerialPort )

Quote:

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Originally Posted by xtal

- Store configuration data from each device on the network ( ~500bytes from each node)
- Be able to display configuration data and manipulate it, with a simple GUI.

Am I right to believe I should do this in C#?

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Well no one will tell you if you are right that you "should" do this in C#.
Write it in whatever you feel comfortable and more important in a language that can fullfill your needs.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by xtal

If I wanted to store a copy of the configuration data off site, how should I be opting to save the data. SQL?

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Using SQL for this seems like driving with a rocket proppelled car instead of a bicycle. Unless you will be monitoring a very very large network where lookup time for one record would take forever ....

If it will be a somewhat small amount of devices you will be monitoring I'd just use the XmlSerializer class. On startup of the program load the data from the xml file, deserialize the data so you can use it troughout your program.

Using SQL would probably mean less coding for you, since you'll just be sending queries etc... but then the machine where it is running should have acces to a sql server *duh*.

Which I think is a heavy demand, especially if the SQL server is going to be local.
But then again, since you are monitoring network traffic , I can imagine there will probably be some SQL server available in the network. And if the network is down, you cant connect to the SQL server probably and then again whats the use of monitoring a network when it is down ...

These are just some things you should think about before jumping into the coding part of this project.

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Originally Posted by GanglyLamb

These are just some things you should think about before jumping into the coding part of this project.

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Think before coding? HERETIC! ;)

Thanks Gangly,

I guess I would have been better asking 'Am I right to believe I could do this in C#?

I was just wondering if I could achieve the tasks i had outlined. My hidden agenda was to get some direction as to which classes, namespaces, etc. would be worth looking at before I started, so thanks again Gangly.

I also take on board what you say about SQL. I was thinking too that I would sidestep SQL and just store config data in XML's - except was a little nervous about getting flamed for being completely novice.

Anyways, thanks for the advice. Any further suggestions will be greatly received.