Code working differently on Windows Server 2008

[delt93]

Hello all and thank you in advance,

I have built a time and attendance application that imports swipe data from terminals that I have also built. Both the terminal and server applications were built using VB.NET 2005. The Terminal links to SQL Server 2005 Express and the Server into SQL Server 2005. The server application polls the Terminal to get the swipe data. This application was coded/compiled on a Windows XP worstation and I have forced it to be x86. My SQL query's ORDER BY clause forces the data to be ordered by Employee ID, Date and Time of swipe, therefore they should be in chronological order. When running the application on my XP computer, everything works just fine. When I run the application on their Server 2008 computer, it does not.

There is too much code to post, but simply said, a shift consists of many swipes. An employee swipes IN when the shift starts and then swipes IN each time they transfer departments. The transfer swipes complete the previous record and creates a new incomplete one. The shift does not end until an OUT swipe completes the last record. Because people often forget to swipe IN or OUT a rule is set to consider an IN swipe as a separate shift if it is 12 hours after the first IN swipe and an OUT swipe is considered part of a separate shift if it is 24 hours after the IN swipe.

The difference in behaviour seems to happen when employees swipe IN and OUT on one day (thus completing their shift) and then IN again within the 12 hour rule. On the XP computer, it works as it is supposed to, creating two shifts. On the Server 2008 computer, it drops the first OUT swipe, creates a full swipe with the IN from the first date and the OUT from the second date, plus creates an incomplete record with the second day's IN swipe, but still considers this swipe as part of the other shift.

All that to say that the application is not behaving properly on the Server 2008 computer. Is there an issue with Server 2008 and VB.NET 2005 application that would create this kind of behavior?

Thank you,

delt93

[eclipsed4utoo]

My suggestion would be to do some logging. Logging to a text file would probably be better. Only log for this specific situation so you wouldn't have to search through the log to find what you are looking for.

Also, if you want swipes that are in chronological order, there is no reason for you to be ordering by the employee id. The employee id does not matter if you want to order chronologically.

[delt93]

Thank you for the quick reply. I'm currently in the process of logging for this situation to see exactly what order they are coming in and the such.

The ordering by Employee ID is simply for the purpose of speed and efficiency. There are lookups that have to be done from several locations to gather the proper information and I would rather have the application run those lookups once per employee than every time their swipes pop up. These clients usually only do an import of their swipes about once a week, so it can get quite cluttered.

I'll let you know what I find.

Thanks again,

delt93

[eclipsed4utoo]

Thank you for the quick reply. I'm currently in the process of logging for this situation to see exactly what order they are coming in and the such.

The ordering by Employee ID is simply for the purpose of speed and efficiency. There are lookups that have to be done from several locations to gather the proper information and I would rather have the application run those lookups once per employee than every time their swipes pop up. These clients usually only do an import of their swipes about once a week, so it can get quite cluttered.

I'll let you know what I find.

Thanks again,

delt93

Then your data is not going to be in chronological order. If you code is expecting the data to be in chronological order, then that could be the problem.

[delt93]

The swipes have to be in chronological order for each employee ID, so by setting my Order By clause to Employee ID, Date, Time is just fine. This process is simply to get all of the employee's data together and in order to create the shifts properly.

My problem is that on one O/S (XP) it is working fine and the shifts are being created properly, but on the other (Windows Server 2008) it behaves differently and does not create the shifts the way they are supposed to be, which leaves me to conclude (after having tested as much as I could on the XP side) that there are incompatibilities between both O/S's that are causing the problem. I will create a log file and see exactly how the application is behaving on both ends and that might bring some information to light.

Thanks,

delt93