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1. AAA Figure 4 4 Screen shot of the registration form Figure 4 4 shows what the browser rendering of user_registration php The form questions are basic questions and can be later on used as filters for other types of alerts other than amber alerts if further implemented Upon hitting the submit button the user input is sent to a 29 script named register php 4 2 1 3 Register php This script takes in the parameters sent from user registration php and retrieves them from the session array It checks the format of each array item and makes sure that they are in the correct format If not the flag status is set and the script redirects the user back to the registration screen with the new corresponding error message Its next task providing the error flag was not set is to check for duplicates in the user database This is done by checking though users email addresses All the user parameters are copied to a local array and the email address string is used to query the user database This is achieved using the Structured Query Language SQL command COUNT The query string SELECT COUNT sEmail FROM tbl users where sEmail SESSION email is then saved to a variable and used as a parameter in an ODBC execute command This command queries the user database and generates a count of instances of the given email address string The result is returned and stored in a variable where it is checked to see if th
2. else header Location login system php flg red amp userid userid exit 2 gt 67 Name Place of Birth Year of Birth Secondary Education Awards Name Place of Birth Year of Birth Secondary Education Awards Name Place of Birth Year of Birth Secondary Education Awards Vita Shadley Davidson Cape Town South Africa 1984 John Taylor Collegiate 1998 2002 Deans Honour List 2003 Hogg Centennial Entrance Scholarship Christopher Lim Winnipeg Manitoba 1983 Glenlawn Collegiate 1998 2001 Guertin Centennial Entrance Scholarship Oliver Tran Winnipeg Manitoba 1982 St James Collegiate 1996 2000 Red River Writing Competition Award St James Student Alumni Award 68
3. be sent to account php 4 2 1 6 Account php This page is the only secure page to the public user It was designed to demonstrate how a user must be logged in to view this page The script simply checks the value of loggedin within the session array and determines whether or not to redirect the user or not This page also displays the users information retrieved from the database upon logging in for demonstration of the session array system From this page the user s only option is to log out through the logout php script 900 4 2 1 7 logoff php This script is a simple script designed to log out the user from the current session they are in while navigating through the website This scripts only function is to destroy the current session This is achieved by calling up the session unsetting the session and then destroying the session through PHP commands The user is then redirected back to the home page 4 2 1 8 Web Master Scripts Web master scripts are duplicate versions of the registration login and account page with an additional admin page These scripts are used to register a new official with granted access to the user and missing child database log in the new official and grant access to the add remove edit script for the child information The way these scripts function is the same as the earlier mentioned scripts except all user information is stored in a separate table within the user database This table is different
4. This is almost an instant notification as compared to times on the order of minutes and hours This means that the functionality of the application can be greatly improved The second test was done to see memory usage The memory usage is shown in the Figure X 50 Windows Task Manager La a gg File Options View Shut Down Help Performance Networking l Users Image Name User Name CPU Mem Usage EN spoolsv exe SYSTEM oo 5 612 K svchost exe LOCAL SERVICE oo 6 704 K devenv exe 32 Administrator 00 62 720 K svchost exe NETWORK SERVICE 00 5 376 K svchost exe SYSTEM 02 28 748 K rundll32 exe 32 Administrator oo 2 812 K svchost exe NETWORK SERVICE 00 4 416K smss exe SYSTEM 00 632 K sqlserwr exe NETWORK SERVICE oo 1 876K svchost exe SYSTEM taskmgr exe Administrator Isass exe SYSTEM services exe SYSTEM winlogon exe SYSTEM svchost exe SYSTEM csrss exe SYSTEM L iTunesHelper exe Administrator jusched exe 32 Administrator bd show processes from all users End Process Processes 38 CPU Usage 4 Commit Charge 373M 2490M Figure 5 15 Memory Usage In Computer systems where 512MB of RAM is getting more and more common 4 2 MB of RAM usage is not a significant amount Even on computer with 256MB of RAM this amounts to less than 2 This program should be functional on both high speed and economical systems 51 Chapter 6 Conclusion Many options were con
5. Available at HTTP http www data360 org graph group aspx Graph Group Id 315 DB2 Express C Web Site What is DB2 Express C March 1st 2007 Available at HTTP http www 306 1bm com software data db2 express getstarted html LINC Project Microsoft Windows March 1st 2007 Available at HTTP http www lincproject org toolkit cos guide operating system windows IBM Software Web Site DB2 Product Family March 1st 2007 Available at HTTP http www 306 ibm com software data db2 Internet World Stats Internet Usage Statistics for the Americas March Ist 2007 Available at HTTP http www internetworldstats com stats2 htm Madden Mary Internet Penetration and Impact April 2006 Data Memo for PEW Internet Pew Internet amp American Life Project 2006 March 1st 2007 Available at HTTP http www pewinternet org pdfs PIP Internet Impact pdf MySQL Web Site Why MySQL March 1st 2007 Available at HTTP http www mysql com why mysql 55 ODBC07 Ram05 Sun07 Wik07 MySQL5 1 Reference Manual 25 1 1 2 2 ODBC Driver Managers Online document March 1st 2007 Available at HTTP http dev mysql com doc refman 5 1 en myodbc general information html Ramana U V and Prabhakar T V Some experiments with the performance of LAMP architecture Computer and Information Technology 2005 CIT 2005 The Fifth International Conference on p
6. data The implications of this time to check value will be discussed in a following section The other two values run at startup and run in background minimized would be user preferences for the actual program function within their system It should be noted that for maximum benefit the program should always be running when the computer is on hence 1t should be run on startup The run in background option will be so that the program does not interfere with the users normal operation 5 2 2 Connection to Website The following table shows the methods used in the connection of the program to the InternetOpenUrl Used to establish a connection to a website URL such as www amberthesis com website HttpSendRequest Used to request certain files or directories within a site U InternetReadFile sed to download a file to a local computer InternetCloseHandle Used to close the connection with the web server Table 5 1 Connection Methods A flow chart of the connection to the website can be seen in the following figure ds Create file to store InternetOpenUrl HttpSendRequest data Write to Open file Start for writing InternetReadFile Don Close file End d InternetCloseHandle Figure 5 6 Application connection to Website The program simply goes through each step of the connection process until the desire
7. of a table The table is displayed by embedding a PHP script in the section of the HTML code where the table is to be displayed 4 2 1 2 User_Registration php This script is designed to take in a general user s information when registering on to the website For the prototype version of the web site the registration form does not grant a user special access or privileges if a user decides to register If desired by authorities the purpose of the user registration script can be used to keep track of users and grant them access to download the pop up client software This script is mainly composed of HTML with some key PHP sections The code starts with a PHP script that is used for disabling caching to prevent stored information in the browsers temporary files and to preserve up to date information when data is sent to and from the browser This is achieved by the header Cache Control no cache must revalidate line for HTTP version 1 1 and the header Pragma no cache line for HTTP version 1 0 A session is then started for the user The amount of data to be loaded was minimal so disabling caching did not effect the time it took to load up the web page A session enabled page allocates unique identifiers to users the first time they access the page and then re associates them with the previously allocated ones when they return to the page Any global variables that were associated with the session will then become available to
8. on is a 1586 architecture using Linux kernel 2 6 15 27 386 The hardware specifications include an AMD K6 3D processor with a clock speed of 500MHz and a 40 0 GB Hard drive running on 184 MB of SD RAM The database system holds all the necessary information in our case the missing child data and provides the information to the web server 2 1 2 The Web Server Module The web server is run on the same hardware that the database server is run on and uses the Apache HTTP server software available for the Linux operating system PHP scripts are used to serve the main web pages and create the login scripts and registration for users HTML Hypertext Markup Language is used in conjunction with PHP to give aesthetically pleasing web sites for users The web server acts as the medium between the database system and the notification application as it retrieves the information stored in the database and displays it on a web page for the notification application to view 2 1 3 The Notification Application The notification application is programmed in C and uses a graphical user interface to display messages to the user The application runs on any workstation running the Windows operating system The application is updated on a regular basis specified by the user and checks the web site on the web server for updates New updates trigger a pop up on the users Windows task bar and gives the option to visit the corresponding web site Chapter 3 The
9. the code These variables are stored within the session array SESSION key where key can be any type of index for the array integer or text Cookies are an alternative to sessions Cookies are files that are stored onto the clients workstation and contain information to be referenced if the user returns to the site The reason sessions were decided to be implemented over cookies was to Ds avoid security measures with operating system security and virus scanners The minimal amount of information to be stored was not significant enough to require a time saving approach such as cookies An immediate action performed once the session is started is a check whether the session has been initiated before If it hasn t the script will include another PHP script called session init php in which its role is to simply define some specific variables within the session array Such variables include the database name what table to look up the login and password to connect to the database The second task is to check a flag status to see if there were any exceptions that has been generated If so then the corresponding message would be displayed at the top of the screen After submitting user information there is a chance where the data would not be in the correct format or not exist at all Such exceptions would include a null entry within a field and entries that are too long to be entered The exception would be caught the flag set to the app
10. vs External Req bek 45 Boies U Ser INTET EP EE a r a erent eee las 46 5 3 Speed Memory Considera gaar Gre eneste 48 Chapter 6 E OACI SA AAA S AEA 52 6 1 Future Work and Considerations ssnnrrnvnrnnvrrnverennrrnrrrennernrnrernesnnnsennessrnssnsssnesenee 32 6 1 1 Dynamic Page Cienc ia pais 52 612 Email SEIS ri AGS een 53 6 1 3 Uploading media files to database EE 53 6 1 4 Notification Application EnhancementS ocoooocnnoccnoccconccoonoconnconnncnnncnnnccancconnonns 53 A A A A ENE 55 Appendix A AED is A A 57 Appendix B l ggedin php RS 66 pe EE E EE 68 vi List of Figures Figure 1 1 The Web Based Notification System sreerrnenrnrnnrvrnerrrrnevennerrnerrerrseenserneennnenseenserrsensee 2 Figure 3 1 Process flow of display php using MySQL functions sreesrronrronrrvnnrvrnenrrenrernsennnensnenne 9 Figure 3 2 Process flow of display php using ODBC fuUNCHIONS cooooccnonnconcnnoncnonnnononccnonnconnnconnnnns 11 Figure 3 3 Inputting child information into the database for admin php eorororrovrrorrronrvrnnernnenn 14 Figure 3 4 SSL enabled Web Server serving data over port 80 HTTP and Port 443 HTTPS A A 16 Figure 3 5 Diagram showing relationship between unixODBC Driver manager and MySQL ODBC Connector with the MySQL database and the Apache Web SerVeT ooooonconocccoccocconncnononnnon 18 Figure 4 1 Web Server Flow of Data ssnonnnonrnenrnrnarnrnenrnenrnernnernensnensneneseneersnenssensesnnennsensesnse
11. with added functionality similar to Java in the form of classes operator overloading and exception handling Wik07 Having a class structure allows portions of the code to be reused in other projects It also allows entire sections of the project to be changed without having to alter the way the rest of the project functions Operator overloading allows a designer to create classes that enhance functionality of already well defined frameworks Exception handling allows developers to create their applications with a known method of resolving errors resulting in the greatest system stability A disadvantage of using C C is that the compiler used to translate the source code into an application will result in an application that cannot be used on multiple platforms only the one that 1t was compiled for This will reduce the potential user base for the application but using a known Microsoft compiler will allow for use of the Microsoft Windows framework The authors also have significant experience using the C language which is a good base for the C language 5 1 2 3 CH JH Net C and J are two relatively newer languages that are used within the NET dot net framework This framework was designed by Microsoft to allow developers to create completely system safe code meaning that security and error handling are explicitly defined and implemented by the operating system C is a language very similar to C and J is a language very similar to
12. would need to be run on an operating system that would maximize performance and efficiency in order to quickly retrieve and process the necessary data The data being transferred on this system would need to be transmitted to the users as quickly as possible while reducing time spent processing the data 2 Reliability The reliability of the operating system would prove to be valuable in that by not having to spend time maintaining the system administrators would be able to better spend their time on regular database management Also by reducing the 4 number of times a system needs to be rebooted the probability of losing critical information is greatly reduced 3 Security The information contained on our database server if accessed by the wrong individuals could result in harm coming to vulnerable persons including children Being sure that secure connections and access is implemented in our system is an important requirement 4 Cost Minimizing the cost of the system makes it more attractive to public sectors that are particularly interested in the transmission of important data such as amber alerts and kidnapped children 3 1 1 2 Windows XP Operating System Windows XP strives for ease of use with plug and play operation of peripherals and an installation process thats relatively painless Dirk04 While Windows XP is the most common operating system available it contains a large amount of drivers and software packages t
13. 1l mWebAddr BEGIN MESSAGE MAP CAlertDlg CDialog ON_WM_SYSCOMMAND ON_WM_PAINT ON_WM_QUERYDRAGICON ON_BN_CLICKED IDC_WEB amp CAlertDlg OnBnClickedWeb ON_BN_CLICKE DC_BUTTON1 amp CAlertDlg OnBnClickedButtonl D 1 ON BN CLICKED IDC UPDATE amp CAlertDlg OnBnClickedUPDATE D ON BN CLICKE ON WM TIMER ON CBN SELCHANGE IDC COMBOL DOK amp CAlertDlg OnBnClickedOk amp CAlertDlg OnCbnSelchangeCombol ON BN CLICKED IDC SaveWeb amp CAlertDlg OnBnClickedSaveweb ON MESSAGE WM TRAY MESSAGE OnTrayNotify ON BN CLICKED IDC Minimize amp CAlertDlg OnBnClickedMinimize END MESSAGE MAP CAlertDlg message handlers BOOL CAlertDlg OnInitDialog CDialog OnInitDialog Add About menu item to system menu IDM ABOUTBOX must be in the system command range ASSERT IDM ABOUTBOX amp OxFFFO IDM ABOUTBOX ASSERT IDM ABOUTBOX lt 0xF000 CMenu pSysMenu GetSystemMenu FALSE if pSysMenu NULL CString strAboutMenu strAboutMenu LoadString IDS_ABOUTBOX if strAboutMenu IsEmpty pSysMenu gt AppendMenu MF_SEPARATOR pSysMenu gt AppendMenu MF STRING IDM ABOUTBOX strAboutMenu Set the icon for this dialog The framework does this automatically when the application s main window is not a dialog SetIcon m hIcon TRUE Set big icon SetIcon m hIcon FALSE Set small icon TODO Add extra ini
14. A typical message DOX cccescesecesecseceeteseesceesceeaeesecsaecaeeeseceseceecseesaeceseceseseeeeaeees 47 Figure 5 11 The Notification Application minimized seevernornarnrrvarnrrvrevrrvrevvnrnarnasvarvrensrvsevsesse 48 Figure 5 12 Message Box vs Message Window assasnarnarvarvreverenevnervarvarvasvasvasvreversrevvesvasvesvasvrsnsee 48 Figure 5 13 CPU usage before application rrnnrrrnnrrrnvrronrrrenvrrnnrrrrrrrrnrrrnrrennerenrererrrrsnrssnsrennnn 49 Figure 5 14 CPU usage after application sooonrrrnorrnonrvenrvrnnerrnenrernrnsnnesnnenseenseenserrnenrnensssnessreenn 50 Figure 5 15 Memory Usp arosine ratara EAn NEE EAE T E T TE 51 vii Table 5 1 Connection Methods List of Tables Vill NET Dot Net Apache ASP C C CA CFML DB2 DSN Garbage Collection GNU HTML HTTP HTTPS IL Java LAMP Linux Managed Classes Nomenclature A framework used to help developers write managed programs see Managed Code Web server for most operating systems Active Server Pages A specification that enables Web pages to be dynamically created using HTML scripts and reusable ActiveX server components A well established computer programming language A newer language used in Microsoft s NET framework Coldfusion Markup Language The programming language used to build dynamic web pages that automatically draw their content from a database IBM s Database 2 softwar
15. Database System This chapter will focus on the operating system and database server of the Web Based Notification System These two components will function as the system back end that will store the necessary information of the kidnapped child data The development environment chosen was the LAMP Linux Apache MySQL and PHP architecture since a large number of web sites are built using PHP and MySQL on the Linux platform with Apache as the web server Ram05 3 1 Design Considerations and Alternatives The design of the database server in the Web Based Notification System involves many design considerations The following sections will outline some of the choices made by the authors and discuss the reasons for these choices The sections that will be discussed are selection of operating system choice of database to be used and the methods of connecting to the database 3 1 1 Selection of operating system In the software market various operating systems are used to provide users with variety and functionality The majority of users are most familiar with the Windows operating system since it is the most common operating system used in the software industry Two options were considered for this project the Windows operating system and the Linux operating system Both options were brought up to the following criteria in determining which would best match our project 3 1 1 1 Operating System Criteria 1 Performance Our web server
16. Davidson e Programming of the pop up notification application e Designing of the update notification system e Programming of the Graphical User Interface O Designing the connection to the website from the application Christopher Lim e Installation and configuration of the operating system and database e Programming of the connection between the database and the web server e Implementation of the security measures of the system O Aiding in the programming of the web server scripts Oliver Tran e Graphical designing of the web page e Administering the functionality of the web page e Implementation of the login process and registration for users 0 Designing secure administration logins for the web page zine Acknowledgments First and foremost we would like to thank our advisor Dr R McLeod for his guidance and support throughout the entire process of the project His feedback greatly aided us in identifying what was necessary in the project implementation and helped us to achieve our goals Our thanks goes out to Dr Udaya Annakkage and Mr Paul Card for administering the Group Design Project Course and for providing constructive feedback towards our project A very special thanks goes out to Michelle Benoit Sergeant 1530 of the Criminal Investigations Bureau Division 441 of the Winnipeg Police Service who gave us the criteria used for Amber Alerts in Manitoba and for her advice on how to better improve our system We would al
17. Java Both of these languages can be used to create code that is converted to the Net language and run on Windows computers The major advantage of using the NET framework is the reliability of the project The major disadvantage is that the authors have never used C or J and are unfamiliar with the proper programming practices for writing managed code This potential learning curve would detract from the emphasis on the design of the project and result in misused time AT It was decided that the application would be written in C using Microsoft Visual Studio as the design environment compiler This would allow for the greatest number of benefits with the fewest trade offs 1 Authors are familiar with C a good base for C 2 C is object oriented allowing for the greatest design flexibility 3 Microsoft Visual Studio has a framework for direct access to components of the Windows environment 4 Only a slight trade off of limiting the end user base 5 1 3 Update Notification Design A significant concern in the implementation of the notification system is the method in which the end user connects to the information that is stored in the database There are three possible ways in which a user can connect with the information directly with a server directly without a server or passively 5 1 3 1 Direct with server This implementation would involve setting up a client server architecture whereby a user connects to a server Th
18. M Howard ID should be 6 2007 01 02 17 34 32 Advertisement copy goes here 7 Gary D Edwards Child Missing 2007 01 02 17 35 42 er B Henry M Coutier No information yet 2007 01 02 17 36 27 9 Ilyana P Teluth Location unknown 2007 01 02 17 37 14 10 Jack M Burns No sighting 2007 01 02 17 37 28 11 Kyle B Palal Cannot find 2007 01 02 17 38 16 12 Lucy E Vanteel Secure addition 2007 01 02 20 25 03 13 Michelle N Natoyo Secure login 2007 01 02 21 48 27 15 Nathan sS Petrelli You guys can try adding children into the database now 2007 01 03 14 16 23 17 Oliver T Ran Hello Ollie 2007 01 03 14 16 49 ja Done Figure 4 3 index php displayed on a Web Browser 26 4 2 1 1 Index php Index php serves as the main home page that the user will see upon visiting the site HTTP requests made from the browser upon reaching a site traditionally searches for a web page with the name index hence the home pages name The home page is designed with a minimalist approach where its main functionality is to display the missing child information and provide links to further navigate Figure 4 3 shows the layout of the home page It has a traditional homepage look with navigational links on the left hand side along with ample space reserved for web advertising if desired The structure of the page is coded using a series of HTML beginning and ending tags In the center of the page the missing child information is displayed in the form
19. S HTTP POST VARS passwd SESSION USERID Suserid form variables must have something in them if Suserid Spasswd is numeric userid header Location login system php flg red amp userid userid exit check in database query SELECT FROM tbl users WHERE iUserID userid echo query conn odbc_pconnect SESSION ODBC_DSN1 _SESSION ODBC_LOGIN1 _SESSION ODBC_PASS1 or die Unable to connect to SQL server mysql select db SESSION MYSQL DB1 or die Unable to select database result odbc_exec conn query or die Invalid query odbc_error if userid is not present in DB go back to login page if odbc_fetch_row result 1 header Location login system php flg red amp userid userid exit check for password active state user type and then send to appropriate section if row sPassword odbc result result sPassword echo row sPassword lt br gt md5 Spasswd if strcmp row sPassword md5 Spasswd 0 header Location login system php flg red amp userid userid exit set standard session variables SESSION LOGIN_TYPE user type SESSION USERID Suserid SESSION EMAIL email SESSION LOGGEDIN true SESSION FNAME Srow sFName SESSION LNAME Srow sLName header Location account php exit 66
20. Totals S Physical Memory K Handles 7922 Total 1047692 Threads 437 Available 554260 Processes 37 System Cache 603812 Commit Charge K Kernel Memory K Total 379468 Total 101452 Limit 2550448 Paged 71784 Peak a 608636 Nonpaged 29668 Processes 37 CPU Usage 0 Commit Charge 370M 2490M Figure 5 13 CPU usage before application The system is using approximately 370 MB of RAM 1 and running 37 processes 2 The following screen shot shows the system after the application has been started including the initial check for updates 49 Windows Task Manager aax Options View Shut Down Help CPU Usage 1 CPU Usage History O as PF Usage Page File Usage History Totals Physical Memory K Handles 38076 Total 1047692 Threads 440 Available 549300 Processes 38 System Cache 601844 Commit Charge K Kernel Memory K Total 382512 Total 101532 Limit 2550448 Paged 71828 Peak 608636 Nonpaged 29704 Commit Charge 373M 2490M Processes 38 CPU Usage 0 Figure 5 14 CPU usage after application There is only a slight discernible spike in the CPU usage history after the program is started 1 It was found that due to the small size of the data that was being downloaded approximately 7kB the system hardly registers CPU usage during the update phase Therefore it was found that a connection and test for updates could be done as often as every 20 seconds
21. Web Based Notification System using LAMP Architecture and C by Shadley Davidson Christopher Lim Oliver Tran Final report submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Manitoba Faculty Supervisor Dr R D McLeod Course Coordinator Dr U D Annakkage Teaching Assistant Mr Paul Card March 2007 O Copyright by Shadley Davidson Christopher Lim Oliver Tran 2007 Abstract With its growing usage rate and dependency the World Wide Web can provide a great medium for Amber Alerts The Web Based Notification system is composed of a database server web server and a pop up notification application that interacts with each other to alert a user of an Amber Alert The web server and database server were designed using the Linux Apache MySQL PHP software stack and the pop up application was written in C Missing child information would be stored in the database where police officials can look up and edit information through a collection of web pages that reside on the web server The pop up application runs in the background of a user s workstation and monitors the web page for updates in missing children information A pop up is generated notifying the user of an Amber Alert The performance of the Web Based Notification system was successful in notifying the user of an Amber Alert The client ran smoot
22. aching the end user It was decided that the passive implementation would be used in this case due to the indirect connection to the database the requirement of the web server already having been met and the fact that the requirements of the system could be met without introducing unneeded complexity In summary it was decided that the alert application would be designed as a visual cue in the form of a pop up window It would be written in C using the Microsoft Visual Studio design environment The format of the updates would be passive requiring a check by the software and not a signal from the server 5 2 Design Implementation The design of the notification is based on the reading of the database table through the website Figure 5 2 shows the output of one of the display files ID First Name Middle Initial Last Name Message Date Added Time Added 152 Taylor Vv Wiebe Missing 2007 02 28 18 50 33 151 John Smith 2007 02 27 23 00 23 138 For Mr Shadley 2007 02 20 13 43 43 136 I C Lim 2007 02 19 23 09 37 134 Chris R Lim 2007 02 19 23 06 09 117 Marty s Bucati 2007 02 03 13 42 01 115 Louis dE Canter Missing 2007 02 03 13 09 16 74 Kayla M Murray Missing 2007 01 16 18 04 21 73 Jake M Pacho Unknown Location 2007 01 16 18 03 57 72 Ingrid U Vladovich Possible Danger 2007 01 16 18 03 32 Figure 5 2 Display Output It can be seen that simply reading in the files separati
23. an work with unencrypted data transmission by customizing the web server The web server was customized as to be able to serve web pages on port 80 unencrypted as well as port 443 15 encrypted When this was complete the following diagram Fig 3 4 shows the set up of the system Encrypted Connection HTTPS oo KK Administrator Port 043 Unencrypted Connection HTTP 7 E Port 20 gt Web Server P Clent Application Figure 3 4 SSL enabled Web Server serving data over port 80 HTTP and Port 443 HTTPS concurrently 3 2 3 ODBC implementation ODBC requires two sets of libraries in order to be implemented into our system The first is the driver manager and the second is the Connector ODBC driver for MySQL 3 2 3 1 ODBC Driver Manager The purpose of the ODBC Driver Manager is to manage communication between the application in our case the PHP scripts and the database driver The ODBC Driver manager resolves Data Source Names DSN The DSN is a configuration string that identifies a given database driver database database host and optionally authentication information that enables an ODBC application to connect to a database using a standardized reference ODBC07 The Driver Manager is in charge of loading and unloading the specific database driver that is associated with the Data Source being referenced It is also in charge of processing ODBC calls from the PHP scripts and passing them to t
24. antage is that code can be written on one platform such as Windows and work on multiple others such as Mac and Linux computers Sun07 This would allow the notification application to be used by potentially the greatest number of users In addition the authors of this paper have had the most experience in their university education with Java allowing more of a focus on design rather than computer coding problems The main disadvantage of Java is that for the application to be run the Java Virtual Machine needs to be running as well Any applications in Java are translated by this virtual machine into code that the host computer can understand This allows the platform independence but also slightly reduces speed Another consideration is that since it was decided that the application will produce a pop up window security issues on the W326 host computer will need to be taken into account For example in a Windows XP environment the pop up window will need to take control of the screen to display its message no matter what other applications are currently running If Java was to be used the virtual machine would need to take control While this may in fact be possible the authors decided that since the majority of the users would be using Windows based PCs that it would be more safer and more reliable to use a Microsoft based framework 5 1 2 2 C C C and C are two very popular interconnected languages C is an extension of C
25. aximizeFromTray this gt ShowWindow SW SHOW this gt ShowWindow SW RESTORE Shell Notifylcon NIM DELETE amp m TrayData m bMinimized false void CAlertDlg OnBnClickedMinimize this gt ShowWindow SW_MINIMIZE this gt MinimizeToTray void CAlertDlg OnSize UINT nType int cx int cy if nType SIZE MINIMIZED MinimizeToTray else CDialog OnSize nType cx cy void CAlertDlg OnDestroy CDialog OnDestroy if m_bMinimized true Shell Notifylcon NIM DELETE amp m TrayData Unload the menu resource m_menu DestroyMenu 65 Appendix B loggedin php lt php header Expires Thu 17 May 2001 10 17 17 GMT Date in the past header Last Modified gmdate D d M Y H i s GMT always modified header Cache Control no cache must revalidate HTTP 1 1 header Pragma no cache HTTP 1 0 session_start if isset SESSION SESSION require include session init php reset session variables SESSION USERID SESSION LOGGEDIN false SESSION EMAIL SESSION FNAME SESSION LNAME initialize variables Suserid Spasswd Semail make sure post parameters were sent if isset HTTP POST VARS userid Suserid addslashes S HTTP POST VARS userid if isset HTTP POST VARS passwd Spasswd addslashes
26. cense under which software from the Apache Foundation is distributed is a distinctive part of the Apache HTTP Server s history and presence in the open source software environment The Apache License allows for the distribution of both open and closed source derivations of the source code It is currently the most popular web server on the Net It can be run on popular operating systems such as Windows OSX and UNIX based operating systems It is a full featured server with many powerful add ons freely available Apache is primarily used to serve both static and dynamic content on the World Wide Web Many web applications are designed expecting the environment and features that Apache provides 4 1 3 2 Microsoft Internet Information Server An alternative to Apache is Microsoft s Internet Information Server IIS This web server is Apaches main competitor and is also widely recognized and supported and has similar feature as Apache It is the world s second most popular web server in terms of overall websites IIS runs only on Microsoft s Windows operating system With these two choices for web servers APACHE was agreed to be the better choice It was chosen mainly because of its open source nature and can be run on Linux operating systems This would remove the need for cost for licensing other competing operating systems The popularity and greatly vast support for APACHE also gives it a slight advantage over Microsoft IIS 4 1 4 Choice o
27. child within the table would pass on its own key variable which would be used to query the database and retrieve information specific only to that child and display that information in anyway desired The template page would display all information on the child and display media as well including images video and maps A link to contact officials regarding that specific child would also be provided 6 1 2 Email Service An Email server would be integrated and built into the main web server in order to allow an Email service from the web site Users would receive an email confirming their registration and displaying their information The email service can be used to send out forgotten passwords when logging in and provide updates to users about new versions of the notification application If desired an email can be sent out to all users upon an Amber Alert to provide users with a record of the event in the case that a user s workstation is not online at the moment A function has been written into register php called sendMail This function takes in the user s id and password as parameters What sendMail does is simply concatenate a series of text strings that include a user s specific information retrieved upon registration and generates a proper greeting and confirmation letter The message is then emailed to the user using the PHP command mail Mail takes in the users email as one parameter and an arbitrary text string to serve as a topic as ano
28. could customize the configuration file to their own already existing database configuration such as Data Source Name for ODBC which contains the database name database user name database user password and specific table with the requested kidnapped child information The opening and closing of the connection to the database were also put in separate files named opendb php and closedb php respectively The regular display php file was then changed to include the aforementioned files and was used only to display all the contents of the table The original file display php displayed the ID first name middle initial last name a small message the time and date that the child was added to the database As the script developed it was decided that only the latest ten children added to the database should be shown rather than the whole content of the table in order for the application to not have to parse through so much data Eventually the display php was changed to remove the message information and only show the ID number first middle and last name of the child City Province Country Priority Level and Date and Time added to the database 3 2 1 3 Administration script design After much discussion with the team it was decided that an easier way for administrators 12 to access and update the table in the database needed to be implemented It was agreed that the majority of administrators of this type of system may not have experience w
29. creation for the Microsoft Windows Environment Open source database that uses SQL syntax Open Database Connectivity Standard Connection protocol for databases The PHP Hypertext Preprocessor is a programming language that allows web developers to create dynamic content that interacts with databases PHP is basically used for developing web based software applications Relational Database Management System A specialized programming language used to create scripts that when inserted into a Web page control various elements of the page such as the user interface styles and HTML markup Secure Socket Layer is a commonly used protocol for managing the security of a message transmission over the Internet An acronym for Structured Query Language this is a standard method of conveying information to and from a database Open source Linux distribution Operating system developed in the 1960 s and 1970 s Chapter 1 Introduction In approximately the last seven years the number of people who are connected to the Internet has increased by more than 100 IWS07 Currently the percentage of the North American population who are connected is approaching 70 IWS07 D307 Mad06 Many people now look to the Internet as a major source of information and as such are connected every day This project hopes to capitalize on the large percentage of Internet users to theoretically design a large scale notification system f
30. d data has been received During the read phase the program continues to download data until the entire file has been copied into memory This is then written into a file If at any point there is an error the program will generate an error message and delay until the next check 5 2 3 Pop up generation handling There are a few concerns when handling the pop up generation The system should check for updates periodically according to the user settings but a user should be able to select to manually check at any time for updates The pop up window should also provide the necessary information in the most compact form possible The following section will discuss these concerns a walk through the basic design of the pop up generation Figure 5 7 shows a flow diagram of the system after initialization 43 Set Timer av x gt Waiting User Input WM Timer Message OnTimer Function Elapsed Time lt Desired Time A Last Update Elapsed Time Desired Time v y Check Updates and Compare New Update N Show Notification Yes New Update m Show Notification O No Yes as ita Manual Update Figure 5 7 Application after initialization In the initialization of the program a timer is set This timer will send a message to the system every time the a default number of seconds has pas
31. dded programs within the web site The following sections will discuss design criteria of the web server along with alternative design solutions and the web site that resides on the web server along with its scripts and programs 4 1 Design Considerations and Alternatives 4 1 1 Design Criteria There are many options to consider when designing the Web Server The following sections will outline the design choices made when implementing the Web Server Such sections are The type of web server to serve public web browsers the choice of scripting language to interact with the database server and the layout of the web site The registered address of the web site is www amberthesis com 20 4 1 2 Web Server Criteria 4 1 2 1 User Compatibility A key factor when designing the web server was to provide a user friendly environment for police officials who would have access to the child and administrative databases To provide a user friendly environment the web server would have to provide web pages that would contain a graphical user interface GUI through any common web browser in order for officials to lookup modify and add data into the database without having to log directly into database server and entering Structured Query Language SQL commands With this in mind the web server will be employing Hypertext Transfer Protocol HTTP and Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure HTTPS protocols to display web pages to the user to interact w
32. e Data Source Name defined by Microsoft s ODBC A heap management strategy where a run time component takes responsibility for managing the lifetime of the memory used by an object GNU s Not Unix Defines Linux operating systems Hyper Text Markup Languageis the authoring software language used on the Internet s World Wide Web HTML is used for creating World Wide Web pages Hypertext Transfer Protocol is the set of rules for exchanging files text graphic images sound video and other multimedia files on the World Wide Web Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure HTTP Over SSL Protocol enabling the secured transmission of Web pages Intermediate Language A language used to convert different languages into a single one that can be run on a system A well established multi platform computer programming language with object orientation Linux Apache MySQL PHP software stack used for Linux servers A Unix like operating system A managed class can interact with other managed classes even 1f they are written in another language ix Managed Code Managed Data MFC MySQL ODBC PHP RDBMS Scripting Language SSL SQL Ubuntu Unix The developer must specify certain aspects of the code including security and error handling Data can be handled destroyed by a garbage collector see Garbage Collection Microsoft Foundation Classes A framework used to simplify application
33. e login system simply involves a Boolean value named loggedin Upon the calling of loggedin php loggedin is set to false automatically The script then looks for a single exception where null is entered for both fields from the login screen and generates a flag status and redirects back to the login screen 1f necessary The script then takes the user id number and creates a query string for ODBC to execute The query asked returns all the information about the user that was stored Another check for an exception is made where the user name does not exist and a flag redirection to login is generated if needed Since md5 encryption is one way only the password submitted from the login screen is also encrypted and then a string compare is made between the encrypted password from the database and the given password in its encrypted form Upon a match then and only then is loggedin made true As long as the user remains on the website and the browser is remained open the user will be granted access to secure pages that require a user to be logged in to be viewed Secure pages will always begin by starting the session up and checking to see if the loggedin value is set to true If loggedin is at its default value of false the user is automatically redirected to the main home page If loggedin is true then the script resumes and the user is allowed to browse through the secured page For the prototype page upon logging in users will
34. e number is more than one Ifthe email address exits then the flag is set again and redirected back to the user registration page occurs along with the proper message Before inserting to the database a key operation is done involving the user s password Within the user database the password field is set up to store a character string of up to sixty characters The reason for the large string is to accept an encrypted form of the password The user s password is encrypted using Message Digest 5 md5 encryption Message Digest 5 is a standard algorithm that takes as input a message of arbitrary length and produces a 128 bit fingerprint or message digest of the input Any modifications made to the message in transit can then be detected by recalculating the digest This provides a one way hashing of the password where it is stored in the database in its encrypted form In the case of a malicious user getting access to the user database they would still have to decrypt the password Finally all user variables including the md5 encrypted user password are concatenated into the following string query INSERT INTO tbl users SFName sMName sLName sAddr1 sAddr2 sCity sState sPCode cCountryCode sPhone sEmail sPassword sQ1 sQ2 sQ3 sAccessPeriod VALUES arVals fname SarVals mname SarVals Iname 302 SarVals addr1 SarVals addr2 SarVals city arVals state Sa
35. eBox Timer Killed OnOK void CAlertDlg OnTimer UINT_PTR nIDEvent AfxMessageBox timer CTime CurTickValue CTime GetCurrentTime 62 CTimeSpan Difference CurTickValue CompTime m_timer Format d Difference GetTimeSpan mTimerInterval UpdateData FALSE if Difference GetTimeSpan smTimerInterval 0 AfxMessageBox time internReg 1 CAlertDlg OnBnClickedButtonl CDialog OnTimer nIDEvent void CAlertDlg OnCbnSelchangeCombol UpdateData TRUE if m_time Compare 2 mins 0 mTimerInterval 120 else if m_time Compare 5 mins 0 mTimerInterval 300 else if m_time Compare 30 mins 0 mTimerInterval 1800 else if m_time Compare 1 hour 0 mTimerInterval 60 60 void CAlertDlg OnBnClickedSaveweb CString mOldAddr mWebAddr FILE fp char filename 255 sprintf_s filename data webAddr cfg UpdateData TRUE int nResult AfxMessageBox Save Website URL as mWebAddr MB YESNO MB ICONQUESTION if nResult IDYES if fp fopen filename w NULL fprintf fp s mWebAddr fclose fp save to file else mWebAddr m01dAddr UpdateData FALSE reset to original afx msg LRESULT CAlertDlg OnTrayNotify WPARAM wParam LPARAM lParam UINT ulD UINT uMsg uID UINT wParam uMsg UINT lParam 63 i
36. eensnrrrnernr 25 4 1 5 WebSite DEM SNE 24 FIS LUREN EET 24 4152 E00m S te rai a e a a til del 24 4 1 5 3 Embedded PHP atid HTML iia 24 4 2 Design Implementatonmvasjaqusskrsasenikkue annie hkdrmndde 26 TIN 26 AZUL Index pip sr ne eee 27 4 2 1 2 User R istr tion PhP isoen irrt erkanee ui ieie 27 ATA Register php NG 30 AL AN SCA Pie 31 42 NU pipe 32 4216 CCOO a E Aaa 32 AD NS et 33 4 2 1 5 Wo M ster SPSS STAS erones Mae 33 4 3 Bea ad ni 34 Chapter 5 The Notification Application s ssesesseeseessessssresseeseesrossreseesresseeserssesseesee 35 5 1 Design Considerations and AlternativeS ooooconccnoccnonccnonnconcconnncnnnonnnc cnn cconnc cnn ccnnnos 35 SEL ALS Ce DESI gier n en annaa er E a EE e A a Et 35 SKI Interface Desi e oli 35 Sin Met NN a decos 35 E A A meet EE R E ER 36 Dic ah ALTE A EE TS SE a tsa 36 5 1 2 Software Desi Gt CHOICES suc sncasons sed eiayshansnenstaaenesshednanVennewuaysedecattdane i 36 S EP A E E A A 36 TIE 37 HE Ne 37 5 1 3 Update Notification De iones rider veria 38 oE e R DITE WIM SCUV SE cos yevackss RE seas vanes E AA eae env 38 51 32 Direct Without SERVER ta 38 LIA NE EN n 39 5 2 Design Mp EAN e aa a eaa 39 5 2 1 ConfigurationFilesSystem Initialization a savanne 4 5 2 2 Connection to Website occccccncnononononononononononononononononononononononononononononononenos 42 5 2 3 Pop up generation handling uunansssap ersnsnsemteath riedtmsann 43 5 2 4 Internal
37. erver can service enforcing security on the system implementing ODBC to be able to connect to different databases 3 2 1 PHP scripts design process Sils 3 2 1 1 Original simple script design In the first stages of our project the only requirement for PHP scripts was to have one script be able to connect to the database acquire the necessary most up to date information and display the information on to the web page As stated earlier this was done using MySQL functions at first and then was changed to use the ODBC functions included in PHP Once the main script display php was completed the entire system was checked for functionality and the application was able to acquire the necessary information When additions to the database needed to be made we accessed the table through the MySQL client on the database server When we were connected and chose the correct database we were able to add children to the table using SQL Structured Query Language syntax This process was done for the first few months As children were manually put into the table in the MySQL database it was discussed how usable this would be to administrators who may use this system 3 2 1 2 Changes to original simple script design In order to make the scripts extensible to other already existing databases that organizations may already have it was decided to split up the configuration of the database information into a separate file called config php Administrators
38. f HttpSendRequest File NULL 0 NULL 0 while InternetReadFile File amp ch 1 amp dwBytes if dwBytes 1 break putc ch fp fclose fp if fp fopen filename r NULL cptr fgets buffer 256 fp sprintf s filename2 data latestCase txt if fp2 fopen filename2 w NULL fprintf fp2 s cptr fclose fp2 60 AfxMessageBox cptr fclose fp sprintf_s filename data previousCase txt if fp fopen filename r NULL mPCase fgets buffer2 256 fp if mPCase NULL if strcmp mPCase cptr 0 AfxMessageBox New Child Missing CString cptr AfxMessageBox still working if t_MsgWnd gt IsOpen true AfxMessageBox test message mMsg Multiple Updates t MsgWnd gt ChangeText mMsg else mMsg New Child Missing CString cptr AfxMessageBox New Child Missing CString cptr MB ICONINFORMATION MB OK t_MsgWnd CMsgWnd CreateObject _T New Child Missing CString cptr the message to be displayed 180 width of the window 150 height of window 4000 time for the message to be displayed 5 delay for animation how fast the window opens and closes CRect 30 30 130 110 rectangle in the window where the message will be displayed this parent of the message window Di if t MsgWnd NULL t MsgWnd gt PopMsg Messa
39. f uID 1 return true CPoint pt switch uMsg case WM LBUTTONUP GetCursorPos amp pt ClientToScreen amp pt OnTrayLButtonDown pt break case WM RBUTTONDOWN case WM CONTEXTMENU GetCursorPos amp pt OnTrayRButtonDown pt break return true void CAlertDlg OnTrayLButtonDown CPoint pt pt pt Prevents compiler warnings MaximizeFromTray void CAlertDlg OnTrayRButtonDown CPoint pt m menu is the member of CTrayMinDlg as CMenu m menu m menu GetSubMenu 0 gt TrackPopupMenu TPM BOTTOMALIGN TPM LEFTBUTTON TPM RIGHTBUTTON pt x pt y this void CAlertDlg SetupMinimizeToTray AfxMessageBox setup minimize m TrayData cbSize sizeof NOTIFYICONDATA m TrayData hWnd this gt m hWnd m TrayData ulD 1 m TrayData uCallbackMessage WM TRAY MESSAGE m TrayData hIcon this gt m hIcon strcpy m_TrayData szTip test6 m_TrayData uFlags NIF_ICON NIF_MESSAGE NIF_TIP BOOL bSuccess m_menu LoadMenu IDR_MENU1 if bSuccess MessageBox Unabled to load menu Error m bMinimized false void CAlertDlg MinimizeToTray AfxMessageBox minimizeToTray BOOL bSuccess Shell NotifyIcon NIM_ ADD amp m_TrayData if bSuccess MessageBox Unable to set tray icon Error this gt ShowWindow SW_MINIMIZE this gt ShowWindow SW_HIDE 64 m bMinimized true void CAlertDlg M
40. f Scripting Language A scripting language is required to produce a program that is to display information dynamically from the database server onto the web sites These programs are appropriate whenever you a page is to be created dynamically when the browser requests the page An example would be to display date time and other information in different ways Often these program scripts will query a database and format the data retrieved for display in a HTML page The programs written in these languages would be embedded into the current Hyper Text Markup Language HTML script used to display the web pages Although there are many languages to be chosen from there were three that were focused on because of their popularity and large support community The three choices for scripting languages were Hypertext Preprocessor PHP Macromedia ColdFusion Markup Language CFML and Microsoft Active Server Pages B NN ASP NET 4 1 4 1 Hypertext Preprocessor PHP PHP recursive acronym for PHP Hypertext Preprocessor is an open source server side scripting language for creating dynamic Web pages for e commerce and other Web applications A dynamic Web page is a page that interacts with the user so that each user visiting the page sees customized information Dynamic Web applications are common in Web sites where the content displayed is generated from information accessed in a database or other external source PHP offers a simple and universa
41. geBox New Child Missing CString cptr ShowWindow SW_RESTORE fclose fp if fp fopen filename w NULL fprintf fp s cptr fclose fp else if internReq 0 t_MsgWnd CMsgWnd CreateObject _T No New Updates the message to be displayed 180 width of the window 150 height of window 4000 time for the message to be displayed 5 delay for animation how fast the window opens and closes CRect 30 30 130 110 rectangle in the window where the 61 message will be displayed this parent of the message window Di t MsgWnd gt PopMsg fprintf fp s cptr fclose fp fclose fp close file terminate server connection and deinitialize the wininet library InternetCloseHandle File InternetCloseHandle Connection InternetCloseHandle Initialize SetCursor LoadCursor NULL IDC ARROW void CAlertDlg OnBnC1ickedUPDATE CString m_oldURL m_inurl FILE fp char filename 255 sprintf s filename data url cfg UpdateData TRUE int nResult AfxMessageBox Save Website URL as m_inurl MB YESNO MB ICONQUESTION if nResult IDYES if fp fopen filename w NULL fprintf fp s m inurl fclose fp save to file else m inurl m oldURL UpdateData FALSE reset to original void CAlertDlg OnBnClickedOk KillTimer IDT TIMER AfxMessag
42. h Error Select Database No Database Selected Database Selected Query Failed Query Table in Database mysql_query Query Successful Array not empty Process Data mysql_fetch_array Exit Successfully Display Data Array empty printf data Figure 3 1 Process flow of display php using MySQL functions The disadvantage of using this method was that the functions only work specifically with the MySQL database This limited the use of our system to that particular database If the system was to one day be ported to another database the entire source code of the web page scripts would also have to be re designed and made usable for another particular database This would amount to tedious programming and added cost Our supervisor suggested that we try to make our system as portable as possible by using a standard in object database connectivity such as ODBC Object Database Connectivity Standard 3 1 3 2 Using ODBC functions After a basic connection was made using the MySQL functions the changing of the scripts to use the ODBC functions began ODBC was a better design choice as this allowed the 9 scripts for the web site to be portable to any database that has the ODBC connectors installed Most RDBMS s provide ODBC connectors to interface with their database which gave us more reason to use ODBC as the connection standard The disadvantage to using the ODBC connec
43. hat are largely unusable by our Web Based Notification System and would only serve to hinder the performance of our database server Due to the proprietary nature of the operating system tweaking the configurations of the operating system is quite limited and therefore reduces the potential of increasing the performance Due to the popularity of the Windows operating system constant updates are required to keep the system sustainable and current This negatively affects our choice of operating system in two ways The fact that constant security updates are required shows that malicious attacks from users that send viruses and denial of service attacks are quite common with this operating system This also leaves the systems data prone to vulnerability having it compromised and potentially stolen by malicious individuals The second negative result of choosing this operating system is that some of the security and system updates that are done automatically by the operating system require a reboot of the system As previously mentioned the forced reboots of the system would result in potential down times as well the potential loss of important data The Windows XP software is available to most users at a price in the mid 100 s to 200 s of Canadian dollars While this cost is minimal it is still a fairly large cost when compared to other free alternatives 3 1 1 3 Linux Operating System Alternatively the Linux operating system has been known for i
44. he Web server portion will be discussed in a later section The reliability of the Linux operating system has been well documented and proven to be a sufficiently reliable operating system It has been designed with the concept that no reboots are required and can provide software updates without the need for a reinitialization of the entire system This makes the reliability and up time of the system to be quite large and only susceptible to power surges and outages The limited usage of the Linux operating system helps in increasing the overall security of the system as most programmers tend to avoid writing viruses that would affect it since they would make minimal impact on society as a whole The mere conservative construction of the Linux operating system makes it difficult for a virus to appear and cause damage All of the files on a Linux operating system are strictly owned by its respected owners A virus would most likely arrive through a users home directory but would find that 1t could do no damage to the system where the vast majority of the executables are owned and can only be run by the root user The fact that the Linux operating system is open source also makes it difficult for a virus to hide in the program code as the development of the source code is constantly peer reviewed and being checked on by other experienced programmers All these reasons help to prove that the Linux operating system is very dependable when it comes to secu
45. he database driver On Linux operating systems two 16 options are available for the ODBC Driver Manager unixODBC www unixodbc org and iODBC www iodbc org unixODBC was chosen to be the Driver Manager for our system due to its helpful documentation and experience with MySQL databases The latest version of unixODBC available at the time was version 2 2 12 This version was used for our Web Based Notification System 3 2 3 2 Connector ODBC driver for MySQL The MySQL connector or ODBC driver for MySQL is a library that implements the functions supported by the ODBC API It processes ODBC function calls submits SQL requests to MySQL server and returns results back to the application If necessary the driver modifies an application s request so that the request conforms to syntax supported by MySQL ODBC07 The latest version of the MySQL connector available was version 3 51 12 and this was used at the beginning of the project The design of the ODBC implementation is shown in Fig 3 5 le ODBC function calls via PHP scripts Driver Manager unixODBC 2 2 12 DSN Configuration usr local etc odbc ini ry MySQL ODBC Connector 3 51 12 MySQL Figure 3 5 Diagram showing relationship between unixODBC Driver manager and MySQL ODBC Connector with the MySQL database and the Apache Web Server 3 2 3 3 Problem related to ODBC Connector During devel
46. hly within the task bar of a windows operating system workstation and required minimal resources in terms of CPU time and memory The web server provided user web server applications for officials to use in looking up and editing missing child information while in a secure environment The website was composed of embedded PHP scripts into HTML pages The site interacted with the MySQL database where all the users and missing child data were stored The entire system was designed to be used by the general public with little or no background in computers and programming Contributions This project is unique in that it provides a feasible low cost system that takes advantage of todays technologies including the Internet to transmit highly important information With regard to Amber Alerts there is no equivalent system that uses the Internet as a means of communicating urgent missing children information At the time of this writing only traditional news broadcasts and a system to transmit wireless text messages to cell phones have been implemented The components of this system were divided up amongst the members of the group but critical design decisions were discussed as a team Consensus was reached on how design should be implemented and the actual implementation was left up to individual members The major tasks as completed by each author are indicated below All Members e Theory and Background research overall design decisions Shadley
47. ication PASA s ndre 14 3 2 2 Security MP EME EA AT RN AENA cvees 14 32 2 0 SSbI plenen non kajakkene 15 3 2 2 2 Application Compatibility Problems Related to SSL errrvervrnrnvnrnernne 15 ENS el A A E AA 16 3 2 51 ODBC Driver Mini 16 3 2 3 2 Connector ODBC driver for MySQL erresnvrennrsesvernrsvannranssssnnsennsaennrsnsere 17 3 2 3 3 Problem related to ODBC Connector rrrrnrrrnrvrrnrrrnrrrrrrernrrernrersrrserrernne 18 3 2 3 3 1 Do not implement the ODBC standard seeveronervrnonerrrernrrenrrrnnensn 19 3 2 3 3 2 Use another ODBC Driver Manager esrvrrnnrrnnnrrnrernrrrrnrrrnrnrernernne 19 3 2 3 3 3 Change the MySQL ODBC Connector version s rsnvrvrvrnrvenevrnnenr 19 iv Chapter 4 The Web Server MG GU 5 x syccsasycgustens dean scdoduosoans tucgshaettny es teh nadduayshaesteg 20 4 1 Design Considerations and Alternatives srrrsnrrrnvrrvrnrrnrrrnnrernnrrrrrernrererneenrnernneenne 20 FT DET EAN NG 20 4 1 2 a NG 21 4 1 2 1 User Compatibility ie 21 IS A TERT O A EE 21 412 COSt FMS ee A E E eaeeess 21 4 13 Choice of Weh A a Eo nE EE eh cede E E 21 41 3 1 APACHE HTTP Server anke 22 4 1 3 2 Microsoft Internet Information Servet cccescceeseeseeeseeeeteeeseeeeteeeeees 22 4 1 4 Choice of Scopare STG 22 An Al Hypertext Preprocessor PHE aS 23 4 1 4 2 Macromedia ColdFusion Markup Language CMFL esvrrrnrnvrnrnrnrnrnnne 23 4 1 4 3 Microsoft Active Server Pages ASP NET J rrnnrnnnrenvnrrnnrrnrrrrrr
48. is server would then notify all active users whenever an update occurred The major advantage of this implementation is that any notification would immediately be sent to any active users The disadvantage is that in a potentially large scale design the server would be connected to many users required significant hardware A passive implementation might reduce this need 5 1 3 2 Direct without server It is also possible to design a program to connect directly to a database and upon any changes in the database the application would be notified The fatal drawback of this system however is that allowing users to be directly connected to the database could result in security issues and since the proposed implementation of the notification system is an amber alert system security is a major factor Direct access to the database cannot be allowed 38 5 1 3 3 Passive In this implementation the application itself is responsible for all updates removing the need for the client server architecture The application will connect to the web server on regular intervals and check for the latest updates The only requirement in this case is the web server which is already functional separately from the application The major disadvantage of this implementation is that the responsibility of the update is on the end application and depending on when the application checks there could be significant delays between an update being ready and it re
49. ith This would expand the usability to all police officials and the general public who would have no experience in database management 4 1 2 2 Security Since the web server is the component that is the most interactive security will be a critical asset The database containing important missing children s information must be protected from malicious users Security would be implemented in the server layer through secure socket layer SSL and also in the scripting language layer 4 1 2 3 Cost Efficiency The Amber Alert system in Manitoba is run by a partnership between law enforcement agencies and broadcasters and is completely voluntary Our goal is to have any user to be able to use this system Because of this our web based notification system is aimed to be cost effective and will have very low hardware requirements The web server and its features will be implemented using open source software freely available and will run off a Linux operating system to greatly reduce cost and make the project feasible to integrate in to the current Amber Alert system 4 1 3 Choice of Web Server Based on their popularity and large support community there were two main alternatives when selecting the type of web server The two types of servers to choose from were APACHE HTTP Server and Microsoft s Internet Information Server IIS 294 4 1 3 1 APACHE HTTP Server Apache is an open source HTTP Web server software The software li
50. ith SQL and a simpler method of adding children to the database needed to be developed An administration script that uses a MySQL user id specified in the usr local etc odbc ini file called searcher would be able to add children to the database The script created three text boxes that would define the first name last name ID number and a small message to be inserted into the database As the table grew larger and larger it was decided that future administrators would also need to be able to remove children from the database in the case that there was a mistake or that the child had been found A remove button was created to remove a child from the database by passing the ID number as a parameter to the same script admin php The admin php file would then check to see 1f that specific parameter was passed to it and it would delete the corresponding child associated with that ID number At the output when the remove button is pressed the page reloads and the corresponding child will be removed from the table displayed As the administration page developed more descriptive information about the child was added to the database and the corresponding administration script needed to be changed to reflect these changes as can be seen in Fig 3 3 The ID number was changed to be a unique ID and the option to input the ID manually was removed from the admin php site This was done so that every child would be assigned a unique ID that would not be m
51. ken scheme displayed in Figure 5 8 45 Start intReq 0 Yes intReq 1 MsgWnd called No Update Figure 5 8 Internal vs External Requests When the system is initialized the intReq internal request variable is set to 0 This variable is set to 1 if the timer calls the MsgWnd object At the end of the MsgWnd method intReq is set to 0 once again This ensures that a message window will always be shown unless there are no updates and an internal request has called the method 5 2 5 User Interface The graphical user interface GUI was implemented as a dialog based application using Microsoft s Foundation Classes MFC The main goal of the user interface was to make the use of the program as simple as possible It also provides users with the current settings of the application so that they can make any adjustments necessary The final interface can be seen in Figure 5 9 46 a Amber Alert Notification Job Check for updates every 2 mins I v Website Address http www amberthesis com index php gort Go To Web 7 RSS Data Address Ed Save rad gegen EXIT I Run on Startup Figure 5 9 The Graphical User Interface The upper left corner 1 shows where a user can input the amount of time they would like to expire before a check is made This should be adjustable so that a user doesn t get messages when they do n
52. l solution for dynamic Web pages The intuitive interface allows programmers to embed PHP commands right in the HTML page PHP s syntax is similar to that of C and Perl making it easier to learn for a person with previous C or Perl experience Its elegant design makes PHP significantly easier to maintain and update than comparable scripts in other languages 4 1 4 2 Macromedia ColdFusion Markup Language CMFL CFML is a Web page markup language that allows a Web site developer to create pages with variable information including text and graphics that is filled in dynamically in response to variables such as user input Along with the usual HTML tags that determine page layout and appearance the page creator uses CFML tags to bring in content based on the results of a database query or user input CFML tags perform all server side tasks such as database queries by condensing complex processes that would normally require knowledge of programming languages such as Java or C CFML has gotten praise for its ease of use because with its integration with Macromedia s Dreamweaver software 4 1 4 3 Microsoft Active Server Pages ASP NET ASP is a server side programming language that enables the creation of dynamic and interactive web pages that are not affected by the type of browser the web site visitor is using ASP pages are scripts that are run or executed on the web server The script is interpreted from top to bottom to create HTML pages tha
53. mation to anyone who is interested Also from the home page users have access to links to the user registration and login pages Each block represents a script containing HTML and PHP programs Blocks in the front represent pages that a user will see on their web browser Blocks sitting behind represent support scripts that are executed in the background and will direct to a display script page when done executing The only other page that allows access to the missing child information is the administrator s page This can be accessed through a separate login The log in and registration modules are used to modify and access the users database Depending on the type of login a different table would be selected admin or public Registration is not required for administrators because a select few are only allowed access to the child database To allow another the web master would manually add an 25 snowy PPv APA admin to the database A script can be written for registering officials but will not be linked to the home page or can be accessed by the public for security reasons 4 2 Design Implementation 4 2 1 Web Pages This section will discuss the main web pages that make up the Amber Alert web site The key pages that make up these sites are index php user registration php and login system php Along with these pages a number of support scripts that these pages refer to and are needed to function All HTML coding was writte
54. n of the Web Based Notification System It will function as the main method for notification to the user This was designed as a dialog based Windows application using C C with the Microsoft Foundation Classes MFC library The design environment was Microsoft Visual Studio 2006 5 1 Design Considerations and Alternatives The design of the notification application in the Web Based Notification System involves many considerations The following sections will outline some of the choices made by the authors and discuss the reasons for these choices The sections that will be discussed are the alert cue design software design choices and the update notification design 5 1 1 Alert Cue Design 5 1 1 1 Interface Design Since the main goal of this project was to design a system that would be used by many different people of varying technical computer skills 1t was important that the interface was easy to use for beginners but also something that computer users would find familiar Since the actual implementation is dependent other factors 1t will be discussed in detail in a later section However the basic desired layout can be seen in Fig 5 1 aw QuE Web Address www amberthesis com Save Changes Time Between Checks 2 min v Go To Web Theck Updates Fig 5 1 Ideal Application Interface 5 1 1 2 Alert Notification In the event of an alert a user would need to be notified There are a few well kno
55. n such as the Secure Socket Layer SSL By enabling SSL on our web server we would be able to comfortably use an administrator login script to process the login and password information The login information and password information would be sent over an encrypted network so that unauthorized users trying to read the data on the network would not be able to This would not only protect the login and password information but also the registration information on the registration page which allows users to register if they wish to be notified of updates This would also ensure that only authorized users will have access to change the table information in the database 3 2 2 2 Application Compatibility Problems Related to SSL Originally 1t was proposed that the entire site should be sent over SSL to ease navigation and writing of the scripts This was thought also to be safer than having information being sent over an unencrypted network Once SSL was installed it required a certificate to be authenticated on the client side If the client acknowledges the certificate then data transmission is followed through While this was good for security 1t ended up becoming a large obstacle for the application When SSL is enabled the application is unable to acknowledge the certificate and access the required data This became a concern as we did not want to have to decide between functionality and security Further research showed that encrypted data transmission c
56. n using Macromedia Dreamweaver whereas certain PHP scripts where also written in Dreamweaver along with basic notepad J AmberThesis com Group 01 Thesis Project Mozilla Firefox File Edit view History Bookmarks Tools Help o E gt E QS Se ru0 1724 77 59 131 ticequbel lal GI sooe ce Getting Started GY Latest Headlines Thesis Page Utility Link Utility Link Utility Link global link global link global link global link global link global link global link subglobal4 link subglobald link subglobal4 link subglobald link subglobald link subglobald link subglobald link Amber Alert System z Login Registar AMBER Feature Title Section Link L E RT Section Link Group 01 Thesis Project Amber Alert Notification System Section Link Section Link Related Link Category Related Link Related Link Related Link Related Link f Related Link Middle Date Time Related Link ID First Name Initial Last Name Message Added Added Related Link Category 1_ Abby fr Smith First Child to be added to the table 2007 01 02 17 28 45 Raha LAK 2 Blake F Nietz Checking if id is correct 2007 01 02 17 29 45 R ends le 3 Christopher V Goshen Third child added 2007 01 02 17 33 02 oee 4 Darren N Liu Not found 2007 01 02 17 33 24 Related Link 5 Edward s Wawrin Missing since 12 20 06 2007 01 02 17 34 08 A l6 Frank
57. new information The cycle then repeats 40 5 2 1 Configuration File System Initialization Whenever the program is run it should check for the user s desired setup options A flow diagram can be realized as the following Check For Configuration Configuration File File Continue Normal Yes p Load Settings Operations No y Start Wizard Figure 5 4 Application Initialization The program should first check for a configuration file If there is a configuration file stored it should be loaded into memory and all settings should be active If there is no file one should be created and set up according to the user s preferences Most computer users even those with limited experience have previously used a setup Wizard so 1t was decided that this should be the form of the initial user input A flow chart can be seen in Figure X VEVEN Run at Run in Input Website Startup Background Figure 5 5 Configuration file initialization 41 This figure shows some of the options that would be important in an amber alert notification program The input website would be the main Internet site of the amber alert organization providing the data The data website would be the data address that is used by the program to check for updates The time to check value could be how often the program is to check for new
58. ng each entry parsing and sorting 39 based on the unique ID and or the date would allow a check for new updates The basic flow could be seen in Figure 5 3 Time not reached Time Expired F Read Last Data E Wait Update it Manual Update Check Newest Time Notify Figure 5 3 Basic Application Flow When the system starts it will check for the last entry stored in its local file If there is no file it will assume that any entry in the database is new If there is a file in storage the last entry is loaded into memory The system then connects to the website and downloads the all latest information This is the content of the full display php file It will contain the ten newest entries into the database If at a later date the display php file is altered to contain more or less entries the pop up application will still function in the same manner In a simple setup with only one type of data in the table the program only needs to check the top entry to see if it is different from the last one stored in memory In a more complex implementation such as an amber alert table with multiple priority levels and regional information it would be necessary to check all the entries with the valid tags to distinguish new data After this data check a notification can be given in the case of new information or the system can wait in the case of no
59. ocusing on an Amber Alert This paper will outline the design and implementation of a generic Web Based Notification System with an Amber Alert used to create specific requirements An Amber Alert occurs when a child is kidnapped and the situation meets a standard agreed upon by law enforcement agencies and broadcasting companies CFM07 In this situation regular television and radio broadcasts are interrupted with the information of the missing child The main goal of the Amber Alert system is to get the information to as many people as possible Using the Internet could open up new avenues and result in the immediate notification of many people 1 1 Background The criteria used for deciding when to issue an Amber Alert was based on the criteria given by the Winnipeg Police Service and is as follows 1 The missing person must be under 18 years of age or have a medical disability 2 After investigation it is found that the missing person may have been abducted by a stranger or may potentially be in serious bodily harm or death 3 There must be sufficient information to share with the general public 4 The abductor can be apprehended or the child can be found within a reasonable time frame Once these four criteria have been met media releases are faxed to the local news media and Amber Alerts are issued during the regular news broadcasts Chapter 2 System Overview The Web Based Notification System was designed as three separate com
60. odifiable by any administrator sk a Mozilla Firefox File Edit View History Bookmarks Tools Help lt a p v e tt A http Avww amberthesis com limmer21 secure admin php gt G Welcome Administrator i Middle i First Name Initial Last Name City Province Country Priority Level Date of Birth i yyyy mm dd Age Missing Since yyyy mm dd Race Skin Color hh mm ss Eye Color Hair Color Hair Length Height ft Height in Height cm Weigh Distinguishing Weight bs kg Features Clothing Description Latest Clip Message File to upload Browse Add Child ID Fist Name Middle Initial Last Name City Prov State Country Date Added Time Added Level Remove 153 2007 02 28 18 54 27 Remove 152 Taylor V Wiebe 2007 02 28 18 50 33 Remove 1151 John Smith 2007 02 27 23 00 23 146 test E test2 2007 02 27 15 05 43 I EE TEEN T Done Figure 3 3 Inputting child information into the database for admin php 3 2 1 4 Script for application parsing DE Sn m D Male O Female During development it was found that the script display php that was originally chosen to be parsed for data by the application was raising problems during the parsing It was requested that a simpler script be made to remo
61. opment a problem occurred that would cause all the PHP scripts to malfunction with an error warning concerning corrupted char sets It seemed that this problem occurred directly after the implementation of ODBC The problem seemed tolerable at first but as more users were connecting to the web server the intensity of the problem increased and created the web server to be greatly unstable Three modifications to the design of the ODBC implementation were considered 18 3 2 3 3 1 Do not implement the ODBC standard This option was eventually abandoned due to ODBC being a huge advantage towards the portability of our system Not implementing the ODBC standard would have forced the administrators of the system to use the MySQL database even if they already had a previous contract with another database system This option was eventually disregarded as we did not want to constrain the requirements of the system to be so tight 3 2 3 3 2 Use another ODBC Driver Manager Another design consideration involved using the ODBC Driver Manager rather than the unixODBC driver manager as it seemed that the problem was specifically with the unixODBC Driver Manager After further investigation it was found that the problem actually resided with the MySQL ODBC Connector 3 2 3 3 3 Change the MySQL ODBC Connector version After the problem had been found to originate from the MySQL ODBC Connector many measures were taken to try and resolve the problem The
62. or execution by a supported database Malicious users take advantage of the fact that programmers often chain together SQL commands with user provided parameters and can take this opportunity to embed SQL commands inside these parameters The result is that the attacker can execute arbitrary SQL queries and commands on the database server through the Web application An example would be where a malicious user where to login by entering a or t t for a user id Upon submission and parsing the input the result query for the database would look like SELECT FROM users WHERE name a or t t If this code were to be used in an authentication procedure then this example could be used to force the selection of a valid username because the evaluation of t t is always true To prevent SQL injections all scripts involving forms perform a PHP command called magic quotes What this command does is takes in the input strings and adds backslashes to all single quotes double quotes backslashes and null characters The added backslash escapes these characters and prevents a Boolean argument Although not the best way to defend against SQL injections magic quotes was a simple approach to solving this problem and did not require much research into the subject which would diverge from the main goal of the project 34s Chapter 5 The Notification Application This chapter will focus on the end user notification applicatio
63. ot want them Also memory and cpu usage are issues for some users Ideally though for a notification program the program should check as often as possible Item 2 the Go to Web button launches the computer s default Internet browser to the web page located in the website address 3 This value is user configurable and is stored if it is changed and loaded each time the program starts Item 4 is the location of the simple data table that is used to check for updates It functions in the same way as item 3 If either of the Save Changes buttons 5 or 6 are pressed The user is prompted with a message box such as Figure 5 10 test6 Figure 5 10 A typical message box If the user selects Yes the changes are written to the configuration file If the user selects No the value is restored to the value that previously occupied the field Button 7 CheckUpdates initializes a manual check for updates Item 8 the Run on Startup was not implemented in this design due to time constraints The purpose of this check box would be to allow the application to run whenever a user started and logged onto the computer This would allow a user to be notified without having to remember to start the program each time they logged on An additional enhancement that was added to the GUI was the option of minimizing to the system tray When a user clicks on the minimize button 9 the program is minimized as
64. p 916 920 21 23 Sept 2005 Sun Microsystems Commercial Website About Java Technology March Ist 2007 Available at HTTP http www sun com java about Wikipedia C March 1st 2007 Available at HTTP http en wikipedia org wiki C 56 Appendix A AlertDlg cpp AlertDlg cpp implementation file include stdafx h include Alert h include AlertDlg h ifdef DEBUG define new DEBUG NEW fendif CAboutDlg dialog used for App About class CAboutDlg public CDialog public CAboutDlg Dialog Data enum IDD IDD ABOUTBOX protected virtual void DoDataExchange CDataExchange pDX DDX DDV support Implementation protected DECLARE MESSAGE MAP 7 CAboutDlg CAboutDlg CDialog CAboutDlg IDD void CAboutDlg DoDataExchange CDataExchange pDX CDialog DoDataExchange pDX BEGIN MESSAGE MAP CAboutDlg CDialog END MESSAGE MAP CAlertDlg dialog CAlertDlg CAlertDlg CWnd pParent NULL CDialog CAlertDlg IDD pParent minurl T m timer T m time T mWebAddr _T internReq 0 m bMinimized false m hIcon AfxGetApp gt LoadIcon IDR MAINFRAME void CAlertDlg DoDataExchange CDataExchange pDX CDialog DoDataExchange pDX DDX_Text pDX IDC_EDIT3 m_inurl SJ DDX Text pDX IDC EDITS m timer DDX CBString pDX IDC COMBOl m time DDX Text pDX IDC EDIT
65. ponents 1 The Database System 2 The Web Server Module 3 The Notification Application User Interface Each one of these has a specific function that can be used independently of each other depending on the final implementation The basic design can be seen in Fig 1 1 SIN Local Update Browser Any IP Device Database Server HTTP Call Response AA pp TCP IP Pop Up E Ssl DB Web Server Raknes DB Post Call Response Post Call ODBC Service Method Call ODBC User Interface Application Web Server Module Database System Figure 1 1 The Web Based Notification System In this implementation the database houses the information of each missing child The web server is connected to the database and will update its pages depending on the information stored in the database The notification application will connect to the web site check for missing children then notify the computer user of any updates The following chapters will discuss the design and implementation of each of these parts concluding with an overall system evaluation 2 1 Components 2 1 1 Database System The database system comprises of a Ubuntu Linux operating system that runs a MySQL database with installed ODBC Open Database Connectivity drivers and connectors The ODBC is used for MySQL to appropriately communicate with the PHP Hypertext Preprocessor scripts that are on the web server The hardware architecture in which this system is run
66. rVals pcode US arVals phone arVals email arVals passwd arVals q 1 arVals q2 SarVals q3 SarVals access period The string variable query is then used as a parameter for the ODBC execute command The user s attributes are then stored into the user database and is assigned a user id number The user id number is an arbitrary number assigned to registered users and is used for logging in 4 2 1 4 login system php User ID Password Back to main page please click here Figure 4 5 Login Screen Figure 4 5 shows the login screen that the user will see when logging into the system The first check this script does is check a key Boolean value called loggedin This value is stored within the session array and will be explained in the next section If loggedin is true the user is automatically redirected to a page called account php which will later be discussed If false the script resumes normally This script works similarly to the user registration script but much simpler In this case this script only accepts two inputs from the user The user s user id number and password is required in order to login Caching is disabled a session is started error flags are checked for and the user input is stored within the session array upon hitting the submit button The data is then sent to a script named loggedin php 31 4 2 1 5 loggedin php The functionality of th
67. rectangle int cxIcon GetSystemMetrics SM_CXICON int cyIcon GetSystemMetrics SM CYICON CRect rect GetClientRect rect int x rect Width cxIcon 1 2 int y rect Height cyIcon 1 2 Draw the icon dc DrawIcon x y m hIcon CDialog OnPaint The system calls this function to obtain the cursor to display while the user drags the minimized window HCURSOR CAlertDlg OnQueryDragIcon return static cast lt HCURSOR gt m hIcon 59 void CAlertDlg OnBnClickedWeb ShellExecute NULL NULL LPCSTR mWebAddr NULL NULL SW_SHOWNORMAL CAlertDlg ShowWindow SW SHOWMINIMIZED TODO Add your control notification handler code here void CAlertDlg OnBnClickedButtonl HINTERNET Initialize File DWORD dwBytes har ch ILE fp ILE fp2 har filename 255 har filename2 255 har cptr har mPCase har buffer 256 har buffer2 256 nt popHeight 100 nt popWidth 100 har mMsg No New Updates QPPQ000000HTHO SetCursor LoadCursor NULL IDC_WAIT Initialize InternetOpen HTTPGET INTERNET OPEN TYPE DIRECT NULL NULL 0 if Initialize AfxMessageBox InternetOpen Failed return open up an HTTP request File InternetOpenUrl Initialize LPCSTR CAlertDlg m inurl NULL 0 0 0 open file to write to sprintf_s filename data datafile txt if fp fopen filename w NULL i
68. rity concerns Being an open source operating system also means that the operating system is provided to the general public free of charge This is because the source code is under the GNU public license and is non proprietary so no one specifically can claim the source code as their own since it is a collectively developed entity The zero cost as previously mentioned will be particularly attractive to organizations in the public sector to whom would be interested in this Web Based Notification System 3 1 2 Choice of Database As there are many choices of operating systems there are also many choices of databases Three options were considered in the choosing of the database system to hold the necessary kidnapped child data Microsoft SQL Server DB2 Universal Database and MySQL MySQL was the database that was eventually chosen to hold the kidnapped child data in our Web Based Notification System 3 1 2 1 Microsoft SQL Server Microsoft SQL Server is a relational database management system RDBMS found on many industry servers due to it s interoperability with the Windows operating system Unfortunately as a result Microsoft SQL Server is only available on the Windows operating system As mentioned in the previous section we have chosen Linux as our operating system of choice for this project which makes this alternative incompatible with our set up Using this RDBMS would also have added more cost to our system while there are other alterna
69. ropriate value and the page refreshed with the new flag status where the error would be displayed The remainder of the code is now for displaying the form for which the user fills out their information to be submitted The type of fields varies from a standard text box to a pull down menu to demonstrate the customization of a user registration form that an amber alert system or any other type of implementation would require These forms are then mapped to PHP variables and stored within the session array For the prototype script in this case a reset button and a fill with samples button were added to clear all data and quickly fill in the forms to speed up testing of the page shown in the figure below The majority of the code in this section describes how the form is to be displayed and is mainly done in HTML 28 Amber Alert Registration Form Registration Form Status First Name Bob Middle Name Last Name McLeod Email Address mcleod umanitoba ca Phone 204 555 1234 Mailing Address 123 Fake Street City Winnipeg Province Albera Zip Postal Code RIR IRI1 General Interest Amber Alerts Which Precinct are you most interested in Precinct Two where did u hear about this program Advertisment Please select a password for your account ACACACACACA Re enter your password to confirm
70. roved to generate a feasible system that can be used in emergency situations and would help in the communication of important information With the expanding use of the Internet a web based application will be a great communication tool in transmitting life threatening emergencies such as Amber Alerts This system hopes to contribute to the communication of important data and hopes to eventually aid in the saving of lives 6 1 Future Work and Considerations Many features were considered when designing the Web Based Notification system However due to time constraints some of these features could not be fully realized This chapter will discuss future work that can be done to further enhance the Web Based Notification system Such features include dynamic page generation an E mail service from the web server uploading files to the database and additional functions to the application 6 1 1 Dynamic Page Generation Currently missing child information is displayed on the main page in the form of a table The main goal was to have each entry within that table to be a link to a full dedicated web page to sd that missing child This would be achieved through a template web page that would take in specific variables in order to dynamically render a web page to display more information about a specific child Upon selecting a child entry in the displayed table each entry would link to the same template web page The key difference is that each
71. sed The message generated activates the OnTimer function Inside this function the number of seconds since the last check is tested against the desired time between checks This value is input by the user in the user interface If 44 the two are the same then the system behaves as though a user has pushed a button for a manual check Distinguishing between timer checks and a user s manual check will be discussed in the next section The system then establishes a connection to the web server and downloads the datafile writing all data into a local file The name and location of the file to download can be changed by the user The data is then compared to the latest stored data If the downloaded data is newer the message window class is called with a New Update message containing the relevant data If the data is not newer then the message window class is called with a no new updates message However this message should not be sent if this was not a manual check If the system is working with the timer there should only be a message if there is an update If the user manually checks there should be a message in either case telling the user of the current findings 5 2 4 Internal vs External Requests It was decided that to facilitate possible upgrades to the code the system should distinguish between user requests and timer conditions without having separate methods with duplicate code This was accomplished with the to
72. shown 47 a Figure 5 11 The Notification Application minimized This allows a user to enjoy the benefits of the application without seeing it or having it interfere with other work The design of the notification window was also changed in implementation from a simple message box to a message window When designing the notification it was found that message boxes could not appear if the application that created the notification was not the topmost window in the system This would mean that a user would need to click on the application for a notification to appear nullifying the usefulness of the application A switch to the message window format meant that the application was functional and also more visually appealing A comparison of the two styles can be seen in the following figure test NEW UPDATE A No New Updates No New Updates Figure 5 12 Message Box vs Message Window 5 3 Speed Memory considerations The application was tested on an AMD Athlon 64 3000 running at 2 07 Ghz with 1GB of RAM Basic testing of the application was divided into two parts CPU usage and memory RAM usage The following figure shows the CPU usage before the application is run 48 og Windows Task Manager File Options View Shut Down Help Ag Applications Processes Performance Networking Users CPU Usage CPU Usage History PF Usage Page File Usage History
73. sidered in the design of the Web Based Notification System The main goal of this project was to provide a cost efficient and user friendly application for the general public and police officials to be able to interact with in order to spread missing child information The Linux Apache MySQL PHP bundle proved to be a great choice for such a task The LAMP platform reduced cost of implementation significantly and still provided a robust environment to develop a user friendly web application The system showed great support for portability to implement itself with other existing databases by using the ODBC standard The notification application provided a practical form of alerting a user working on a desktop computer The programs ability to hide within the task bar and generate an alert window made it feasible to have as a constantly running application hidden from the users view The embedding of PHP scripting into HTML pages created a user friendly environment and easy to navigate web site that serves its functionality by giving the public the latest update on Amber Alerts Using a passive Internet connection based form of checking allowed the focus to be put on the application functionality and ease of use rather than the design of a complex client server architecture System testing proved that CPU and memory usage were not an issue and that the application could check very often without slowing down the computer Overall the design implementations p
74. so like to thank Mr Mount First Ng from the Tech Shop who aided us in the purchasing and configuring of the domain name for our website 111 Table of Contents Als i COMIDO A A See 11 PCR MOW IEC SINGING A A A NA 111 Tabla EST iv Eist of F de vii A aeaeatas viii Norlis ix Chapter 1 Introduce 1 1l Background A geek 1 Chapter 2 SA ENTEN 2 A eiere desert 3 2011 Diabelli 3 2 1 2 The Web Server Modules 3 2 1 3 The Notification Appa EAN 3 Chapter 3 The Database S VStenn uss scesdercansena vain sheeskes suns dyaebazegabonn euiasbsnsteverd jane 4 3 1 Design Considerations and AlternativeS ooooccnoccnonccconoconnconnaconccnoncnnncconnn con ccnnccnnnnns 4 3 1 1 Selection OF operating sved 4 3 1 1 1 Operating System Criteria di a a taa 4 3 1 1 2 Windows XP Operating System tradi ic 5 STEDS EN ed 5 31 2 Choice ODE NR T TT Microsoft SQL SE eee 7 31 22 DBZ Universal Dita ter ata ea aie 7 31 2 3 MySQL Dita do bles 8 3 1 3 Methods of connecting to the database oooooconincnnoconoccconccconncnononancconcccnnacnnos 8 2 sing ODBE ANECA S ara rta p aiai a ao ei endene 9 3 2 Design Implement tionsusersomduekmaekuedm deaiantru add 11 3 2 1 PHP scripts design Protest an 11 3 2 1 1 Original simple script Ces Oth vasre 12 3 2 1 2 Changes to original simple script design rrrrrnrrrnrrrrrrernrrrrrrrrrrrrnrernnn 12 3 2 1 3 Administration script design u suiuvusnnemniviseeisiisverimiesee 12 3 2 1 4 Script for appl
75. sreenn 20 Figure 4 2 Layout of the Web Site srrsnnronnoornrrrnenrrennennnenreenrrenseennenrnensnenessnnenneenssenssenesrnenssenssnnee 25 Figure 4 3 index php displayed on a Web Browser rresnnennnenrrenrernnennnrnnnenrernrennsenrnensnensssrserrnensee 26 Figure 4 4 Screen shot of the registration form sresnrrvrvrnrnenrnenrnrrnnrrnenrnensvennernnersnensrensesnsennnenseen 29 Fi ure4 5 LOBO O eds 31 Fipur 4 0 sAdmin php A A As dea a 33 Fig 5 1 Ideal Application Interface sroosnnonrnonnnrrnrnrnenrnenrvernerrnenserneernnennnenseenseenaerrnenrsensssnessneenn 35 Figure 5 2 Display Output oteren iiir AKE E E AA NARE E E ESS EEANN RENEE 39 Figure 5 3 Basic Application FOW ioaea a a E S N A AA 40 Figure 5 4 Application Initialization seonoronnornnonrnrnrrrnrenrnenrnenrnenserrnersnensnennsernsrresnssenssenssnesnsesnn 41 Figure 5 5 Configuration file initialization oeerrorrrorrrorervrrerrrrnrernrrrnnenreenrernserrnensnenserressrnenseene 41 Figure 5 6 Application connection to Website rmarnranrronnnrnnerrnenrrensernnennnenrernseerserrnensnenssernevsnenne 43 Figure 5 7 Application after initialization eseesnoonrronrrrnrrrrnenrnenrnrrevrrnerrnensnennseresrreerseensseneesneenseene 44 Figure 5 8 Internal vs External Requests srrrnnrrnnrnrnenrvenrvernernnenrernersnnesnnenreensernserrnensnensssnessneenn 46 Figure 5 9 The Graphical User Interface seisine taiii anra ir aiaa ar a aiina 47 Figure 5 10
76. t are sent to the browser for display Because ASP is a Microsoft product it was designed and optimized for IIS web servers Although it was the most difficult language to work with the final decision was to go with PHP scripting This was mainly due to its open source nature and packaging with APACHE 93 in the LAMP Linux Apache MySQL PHP bundle ColdFusion was enterprise level software and would require a high cost to license ASP ran optimally on Microsoft Windows platforms as opposed to PHP s versatility on any platform This versatility gave PHP a slight advantage 4 1 5 Web Site Design The website serves as the users graphical user interface to view information stored on the remote database For administrators the web site is also the means to edit add and post data through simple straight forward forms and buttons The original website was aimed to be two pages that users will see the main page which would display missing child information in a table format and administrative page that only officials would have access to in order to add and update the child database More features and pages were added to the prototype design to demonstrate features and flexibility of the web site The flexibility allows the Amber Alert authorities to redesign the site as they see fit 4 1 5 1 User Registration A registration form was added to store user information within a separate database designed to store user information These at
77. then that of the public user table Upon logging in the webmaster account page grants the official a link to the admin page where the official can add edit and remove a missing child Faye Group 01 Thesis Amber Alert Main Page LERT Web Master Administrative Page Welcome Administrator First Name Middle Initial Last Name Message Add Child ID First Name isc Last Name Message a Pelion Remove 156 John M Smith 2007 03 01 19 01 20 Remove 155 John P Doe 2007 03 01 18 57 07 Remove 152 Taylor v Wiebe Missing 2007 02 28 18 50 33 Remove 151 John Smith 2007 02 27 23 00 23 Remove 138 For Mr Shadley 2007 02 20 13 43 43 Remove 136 J c Lim 2007 02 19 23 09 37 Remove 134 Chris R Lim 2007 02 19 23 06 09 Remove 117 Marty s Bucati 2007 02 03 13 42 01 Remove Figure 4 6 sAdmin php Figure 4 6 shows sAdmin php This page allows an official to edit missing child information through the ease of a simple form This removes the need for an official to login to 33 the SQL database and write lengthy syntax that would require a steep learning curve 4 3 Observations When implementing user forms to be parsed and uploaded into the database the threat of SQL injections surfaced SQL injection is a technique used to take advantage of non validated input vulnerabilities to pass SQL commands through Web applications f
78. ther parameter Although this function was written and integrated into the registration procedure the function was not called This was due to the web server not having an E mail server integrated Because of time constraints an E mail server was not installed and development within this area was at a halt Future work would include additional written email functions which embed other scripts and the rebuilding of the web server with a built in email server 6 1 3 Uploading media files to database An option to upload media files such as images and video files to the database was put into the admin php script Unfortunately the necessary work to transform the uploaded file to BLOB format in SQL was not completed due to time restraints 6 1 4 Notification Application Enhancements For future work the application could be set up to run every time the computer is turned on allowing a user to use the system without having to interact constantly Also the application 53 could be rewritten using another programming language to provide multi platform support using Java or a managed application using C or J 54 CFM07 D307 DB2EC07 Dirk04 IBMDB207 IWS07 Mad06 MySQL07 References Child Find Manitoba Web Site Manitoba Amber Alert Plan March Ist 2007 Available at HTTP http childfind mb ca en missing children amber alert Data 360 Global Internet Usage March 1st 2007
79. tialization here SetupMinimizeToTray input default addresses m inurl http www amberthesis com limmer21 simple php mWebAddr http www amberthesis com riceqube index php set internal request token internReg 0 m timer timer for 100 m time 2 mins used for edit boxes UpdateData FALSE create a new timer CompTime CTime GetCurrentTime utimer SetTimer IDT TIMER 1000 NULL if utimer 0 AfxMessageBox Error timer not created 58 mTimerInterval 20 start minimized gt int nResult AfxMessageBox Minimize Program Now MB YESNO MB ICONQUESTION if nResult IDYES CAlertDlg ShowWindow SW _SHOWMINIMIZED do initial check CAlertDlg OnBnClickedButtonl return TRUE return TRUE unless you set the focus to a control void CAlertDlg OnSysCommand UINT nID LPARAM 1Param if nID amp OxFFFO IDM ABOUTBOX CAboutDlg dlgAbout dlgAbout DoModal else CDialog OnSysCommand nID lParam If you add a minimize button to your dialog you will need the code below to draw the icon For MFC applications using the document view model this is automatically done for you by the framework void CAlertDlg OnPaint if IsIconic CPaintDC dc this device context for painting SendMessage WM_ICONERASEBKGND reinterpret cast lt WPARAM gt dc GetSafeHdc Center icon in client
80. tives in the market that are open source and free for use 3 1 2 2 DB2 Universal Database DB2 Universal Database is another RDBMS provided by IBM that delivers a flexible and cost effective database platform to build robust on demand business applications see IBMDB207 While traditionally DB2 has only been available to purchase they have recently released a free version for developers to download develop deploy and distribute see DB2EC07 which is called DB2 Express C It was originally proposed that this database system would be used to test the portability of our system by replicating the database into a DB2 Express C database and making sure that the functionality of the web server scripts and application stayed the same Unfortunately it was later discovered that the production machine that we were using to hold our database server did not meet the minimum system requirements in regards to CPU and memory It was also dropped in favor of MySQL which was already included in the LAMP software bundle that came with the Ubuntu 6 06 LAMP Server Edition 3 1 2 3 MySQL Database The MySQL database claims to be the world s most popular open source database because of its consistent fast performance high reliability and ease of use see MySQLO7 MySQL is one of the easiest to use database systems in the market and is provided free of cost since it is an open source product The MySQL database was chosen for its simplicit
81. tors was that a database could not be selected the same way as the MySQL functions In MySQL a simple mysql select db dbname could have been written but this could not be done in ODBC A data source name DSN needed to be created in the usr local etc odbc ini directory for ODBC to perform properly This data source name needed to be able to use a userid and password that was registered in the MySQL database and be able to know the database name that it is supposed to access If a different database needed to be accessed another DSN needed to be created This resulted in more overhead needing to be done for ODBC to work as can be seen in Fig 3 2 10 Connect to MySQL Unable to connect dbc_connect DS Connection made Y ck usr local etc odbt ini DSN not found to see if DSN exists DSN found Query Table in Database odbc_exec Query Successful Row returned Process Data odbc_fetch_row Display Data printf data No more rows Exit with Error Query Failed Exit Successfully Figure 3 2 Process flow of display php using ODBC functions 3 2 Design Implementation The work required to implement the Web Based Notification System on the database server side includes PHP scripts to make connections to the local database access the data and populate the data onto web pages that the web s
82. tributes can be called later for filters for data display Such attributes that would be used to display specific information to a user would be updates regarding city or location of the user and email of the user to notify them of updates to the client program and site Each user can have a password of their choosing where it would be encrypted and stored in the user database 4 1 5 2 Login System Although the information displayed is meant for the general public a login system is required for personnel with authority to access the database securely in order to modify it In other applications other than an amber alert the user login system can be used for general users as well ifthe design called for only registered users to be able to view database information 4 1 5 3 Embedded PHP and HTML Each page is composed of HTML scripting code along with some embedded PHP Because the web site is made up of more than one page a form of passing user variables from one page to another is needed to perform certain functions 24 Logout Cc ORE Es a9 loggedin EEK mM Display Missing Child Figure 4 2 Layout of the Web Site Figure 4 2 displays the design layout of the web site There are two databases MISSING CHILD database and the USERS database The HOME page will be the first page that users will see when they visit the site The home page will have direct reference to the database and display missing child infor
83. ts achievements in 5 performance reliability and security in the server industry The Linux operating system is an open source operating system which means that the source code used to build the operating system is freely available for developers around the world to make changes to it This provides constant improvement to the operating system and makes for a very dependable operating system The Linux operating system offers a wide variety of choice during installation as to what is to be desired in regards to programs being installed Other than the kernel any additional features or programs can be included or taken out of the given software package By making it s operating system completely customizable it offers the best solution for improving performance on a database server Through minimizing what is necessary and excluding the software that is not required we can acquire a system with maximized performance Fortunately the minimizations for determining what is necessary in a database web server has already been set out in the Ubuntu 6 06 LAMP Server Edition Ubuntu 6 06 LAMP Server Edition is a distribution of the Linux operating system that provides the minimal amount of software programs required to properly run a database web server It also provides the extensibility to add any additional programs that are available for the Linux operating system making it more customizable if it is discovered later that other programs are required T
84. ve the table formatting that was implemented in the display php file The simpler script appropriately named simple php was written to provide the application with an easier to format collection of the exact same data that the display php presented The simple php script presented the data as plain text and the information could be parsed properly by the application 3 2 2 Security Implementation With the type of data that is involved in this project it is imperative that the proper security measures are implemented in order to protect the children involved and avoid the 14 possibility of false data being entered into the database and propagated to the many clients using our program When evaluating the types of security that should be implemented we found two areas of concern that needed to be addressed 1 Only authorized persons and administrators should be able to make changes to the database and table information involved 2 Login password and personal information should not be compromised 3 2 2 1 SSL Implementation By ensuring that the above two criteria were met it would guarantee that no nuisances such as advertisement spam or profane messages would be sent over the system The two criteria would also ensure that falsified data are not entered into the database causing unnecessary alarm In order to implement the necessary security measures we decided to support data transmission over a secure encrypted connectio
85. w ways of doing this in a computer environment the two most popular being 35 5 1 1 2 1 Auditory A user could be notified using a specific sound The main advantage of this method is that a user can be away from the computer but will still be able to be notified A sound also means that current work on the computer does not get disrupted as with a visual notification 5 1 1 2 2 Visual A user could be notified using a visual cue such as a pop up window The main advantage of this method is that there is virtually no way to miss a visual cue If computer speakers are off or there are none which can be the case in many work environments an audio cue could be missed The main disadvantage of this system is that it could be a disruption to work It was decided that the notification would be a visual cue in the form of a small pop up window The goal would be to create a notification in the same form as popular Microsoft applications Outlook and MSN Messenger However an emphasis should be placed on making the notifications as unobtrusive as possible 5 1 2 Software Design Choices In the current state of software design there are many computer languages to choose from each having certain advantages and disadvantages There were three languages that were considered for the current application Java C C and C J Net 5 1 2 1 Java Java is a well established computer language developed by Sun Microsystems Its main adv
86. y and speed in retrieving information and being able to transmit that information as quickly as possible The ease of use aspect was particularly attractive since it easily installed and configured itself upon installation of the Ubuntu 6 06 LAMP Server Edition Another advantage of using the MySQL database was that ODBC connectors are also available on the company s website These ODBC connectors ended up being our database connector of choice in implementing our design of this product 3 1 3 Methods of connecting to the database Two methods of connecting to the database were considered One was to use the MySQL functions that are already included in the PHP scripting language Another was to use the ODBC functions that are also available in the PHP scripting language Their advantages and disadvantages are discussed below 3 1 3 1 Using MySQL functions MySQL functions were readily available and used to quickly implement a test system The functions were easily referenced from the PHP documentation and from other user s experience on online forums It s ease of use and common use on the Internet proved to make using the MySQL functions a viable choice Development progressed well with the speed of using the functions and implementing them immediately into the design The flow chart of the mysql_functions is shown in Fig 3 1 Unable to connect Connect to MySQL mysql_connect Y Connection made pb Exit wit
87. y included upgrading the MySQL database version recompiling the MySQL ODBC Connector from source code and trying to apply suggested patches from the MySQL developer bug system The solution that was eventually implemented was installing an older version of the MySQL ODBC Connector Once the older version was installed and tested the problem was resolved and did not re occur 19 Chapter 4 The Web Server Module This chapter will focus on the Web Server component of the Web Based Notification System With the system being composed of a client application sitting on an end users workstation and a remote database server elsewhere the web server was needed to bridge the gap between these two components Since this project was aimed for police officials and public use the web server serves as the main interface between the user and the web notification system For less computer experienced police officials and the general public the web server is designed to display simple web pages containing a user friendly environment to interact with the database server WEB SERVER APPLICATION WEB BROWSER DATABASE SERVER Figure 4 1 Web Server Flow of Data Figure 4 1 shows the layout of the web server In the event of an Amber Alert or voluntarily a user can visit the web server via any common web browser The web browser will display dynamically the missing children information directly from the database through the use embe

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