Bug in Signal Lanes

Thursday, January 8, 2015 by Rainer Stropek

Unfortunately, we found a very unpleasant bug in time cockpit this week: in January 2015, the signal lanes are not shown. The signal details on the right side are displayed correctly but the lanes next to the time sheet entries are missing.

We have already fixed the problem in time cockpit's full and browser clients. We want to apologize for any inconvenience the bug has caused to you. If you have any questions regarding the problem or the fix we provided, don't hesitate to contact us at support@timecockpit.com.

Problem Description

This error occurs in all versions of time cockpit before 1.32.3362.7 (released yesterday). It is related to the selected month in the calendar. If you switch to December 2014, the signal lanes will be displayed correctly and in February 2015 they will work again.

The following image shows the problem (click to enlarge). While the signal details are displayed on the right, the signal lanes (orange rectangle) are missing.


Fix

We have already created a new time cockpit version that fixes the problem. You can download the new version from https://www.timecockpit.com/sign-in. We have also deployed an updated version of the browser client (https://login.timecockpit.com).

If you need to see the signal lanes for a specific day immediately without installing a new version, you can modify an existing time sheet entry e.g. by drag & drop. If no entry exists, create a new one first. After moving the time sheet entry, the signal lanes for the selected day will be loaded.

Root Cause

The technical root cause of the problem was a hash function used by time cockpit internally. It calculated identical hash values for particular dates. We found problematic date values e.g. in the years 2010, 2015, and 2025. We changed the implementation of time cockpit so that we can now handle duplicate hash values correctly.

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Rainer Stropek

Rainer Stropek

Co-founder, architect, developer

Bio

I am co-founder and CEO of the company software architects and have been serving this role since 2008. At software architects my team and I are developing the award-winning SaaS solution time cockpit. Previously, I founded and led IT consulting firms that worked in the area of developing software solutions based on the Microsoft technology stack.

In my work I focus on .NET development and software architecture. I have written some books and articles on C#, database development, Windows Azure, Windows 8 development, WPF, and Silverlight. Regularly I speak at conferences, do workshops and conduct trainings in Europe and the US. Since 2010 I have been MVP for Windows Azure.

I graduated the Higher Technical School Leonding (AT) for MIS with honors and hold a BSc (Hons) Computer Studies of the University of Derby (UK).

Contact

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