Sunday, November 13, 2011

Math Problem: Evenly spaced points on a sphere - Part 2

Continued from Part 1

In an ideal case, we would be able to position all the points around the sphere so that they formed equilateral triangles and all the adjacent points were exactly the same difference apart.

I should be more specific about what I mean by adjacent points. Draw a line connecting the two points that are closest to each other. Then draw a line connecting the next two points that are the next closest to each other and where the line wouldn’t cross any other existing lines. Continue along like this until no more lines can be drawn. The points with a line connecting them are considered to be adjacent.

In the ideal case, we can divide the surface area of the sphere by the number of triangles to find the surface area along the sphere of each triangle.

Let’s find the relationship between the number of points, the number of triangle edges, and the number of triangular faces. A tetrahedron has four points, six edges, and four faces. Whenever you add another point that is not in the same spot as an existing point, it will either fall along an existing edge or on a face. In either case, there will be three more edges and two more faces.

points edges faces
4 6 4
5 6+3 4+2
6 6+3+3 4+2+2
n 3 (n - 2) 2 (n - 2)


So in the ideal case, the spherical surface area A of each triangle is

A = (2 pi r^2) / (n-2)

Now let’s find the relationship between the distance 'd' along the surface of the sphere between two adjacent points and the spherical surface area of the triangle anchored by these two points. We can use Girard's theorem to find the relationship between the spherical vertex angle 't' and the spherical surface area A, and we can use the spherical law of cosines to find the relationship between the distance 'd' and the vertex angle 't'.

Use the spherical law of cosines.

Let a = d/r

cos(a) = cos(a)^2 + sin(a)^2 cos(t)

Solve for a.

First use the Pythagorean trigonometric identity to substitute.

cos(a) = cos(a)^2 + (1-cos(a)^2) cos(t)

Group the terms.

(1-cos(t)) cos(a)^2 - cos(a) + cos(t) = 0

Use the quadratic formula.

cos(a) = (1 +- sqrt(1 - 4 (1 - cos(t)) cos(t))) / (2 (1 - cos(t)))

Simplify.

cos(a) = (1 +- sqrt(1 - 4 cos(t) + 4 cos(t)^2)) / (2 (1 - cos(t)))

cos(a) = (1 +- (1 - 2 cos(t))) / (2 (1 - cos(t)))

cos(a) = 1 or cos(t) / (1 - cos(t))

We can ignore the case when cos(a) = 1 because that is when a = 0 or 2 π, which is when the two points are in the same location.

Now use Girard's theorem.

A = (3 t - pi) r^2

Solve for t.

t = (A + pi r^2)/(3 r^2)

Substitute for A.

t = (n pi)/(3 (n - 2))

Now substitute this for t in the equation for cos(a) above.

cos(a) = cos((n pi)/(3 (n - 2))) / (1 - cos((n pi)/(3 (n - 2))s))

In most cases we will not be able to position the points into perfect equilateral triangles of this size because the triangles will start to overlap or leave gaps with each other, but we can do it for n=4 the tetrahedron, n=6 the octahedron, and n=12, the icosahedron.

In the other cases, we can measure the amount of unevenness U by looking at the difference between the ideal distance between adjacent points 'd' and the actual distance between adjacent points dk. Define U as the sum of the squares of these differences:

U = sum( (dk - d)^2 )

For the tetrahedron, octahedron, and icosahedron, U = 0. For the other cases, we will try to position the points so that U is as small as possible.

So the next questions are whether there is a way to systematically position the points to minimize U, and given a configuration of points, how can you tell if U for this configuration is the lowest possible.

You can probably show that U is a local minimum if moving any one point by some small distance delta in any direction causes U to increase, but how do you determine whether that local minimum is the lowest minimum possible?

One way to explore this further is to build a computer simulation of marbles around the surface of a sphere that are all magnetically opposed to each other. Or better yet, let the force between any two adjacent points be proportional to the square of the difference between the actual distance between the points and the ideal distance between the points, so that the points are always being pushed towards the ideal distance.

Continue to Part 3

Saturday, October 29, 2011

Math Problem: Evenly spaced points on a sphere - Part 1

If place points around the circumference of a circle, it is not difficult to position them so that they're evenly spaced.

regular polygons

nangleanglename
32π / 3120°triangle
4π / 290°square
52π / 572°pentagon
n2π / n360 / nn-gon


But suppose you want to position points around the surface of a sphere so that they're evenly spaced.

What is the angle between adjacent points? Is it possible to position the points so that the angle is the same between all adjacent points on the sphere?

Let's look at some examples. For n=4, you have a tetrahedron.
tetrahedron

According to wikipedia, the angle between adjacent points is arccos(-1/3) or about 109.4712°.

For n=6, you have an octahedron. The angle between adjacent points is π / 2 or 90°.

octahedron

To summarize and expand:

nfacestri. facesedgestri. edgesangleanglename
44466arccos(-1/3)109.4712°tetrahedron
6881212π / 290°octahedron
86121218multiple anglescube
12202030302 arctan(2/(1+√5))63.435°icosahedron
n??????

So what's the answer? I don't know, but one thing we have learned is that a cube's points are not all evenly spaced. The angles between them follow a regular pattern. There are twelve edges with an angle between the points of 2 arcsin(1/√3) ≈ 70.528°, and if you include all triangle edges, there are six edges with an angle between the points of 2 arcsin(√2/√3) ≈ 109.4712°.

Continue reading Part 2

Saturday, July 18, 2009

Silverlight freezing when calling XMLHttpRequest?

I had a javascript handler for a Silverlight event that modifies the XAML, uses XMLHttpRequest synchronously, then modifies the XAML again, and I noticed that the browser would sometimes not show the first XAML change while the XMLHttpRequest was pending.

Example XAML:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> 
<Canvas xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/client/2007">
  <TextBlock Name="Txt1" Canvas.Left="25" Canvas.Top="25" FontSize="12" >Click the box</TextBlock>
  <Rectangle Name="Rect1" Canvas.Left="25" Canvas.Top="40" Width="200" Height="35" Fill="#8080FF" MouseLeftButtonDown="rect1_onMouseDown" />
</Canvas>
Example javascript:
function rect1_onMouseDown(sender, mouseEventArgs) {
  var txt1 = sender.findName("Txt1");
  var rect1 = sender.findName("Rect1");

  txt1.text = "In Progress...";
  rect1.Cursor = "Wait";

  var xmlhttp = new XMLHttpRequest();
  xmlhttp.open("GET", "long-running-url.asp", false);
  xmlhttp.send(null);

  rect1.Cursor = "Default";
  txt1.text = "Complete.";
}

Firefox shows "In Progress..." and then "Complete", but IE waits until everything is finished and then shows "Complete". So when exactly does Silverlight redraw itself when changes are made?

The answer is that changes are not drawn immediately after they are made. They are made the next available chance when no scripts are actively running.

Example that does not redraw on either Firefox or IE.
function rect1_onMouseDown(sender, mouseEventArgs) {
  var txt1 = sender.findName("Txt1");
  var rect1 = sender.findName("Rect1");

  txt1.text = "In Progress...";
  rect1.Cursor = "Wait";

  // keep busy for 0.5 sec
  var start = new Date();
  while ((new Date()).getTime() - start.getTime() < 500) {
    // do nothing
  }
  
  rect1.Cursor = "Default";
  txt1.text = "Complete.";
}

So if you want a redraw while an XMLHttpRequest is pending, do it asynchronously.
function rect1_onMouseDown(sender, mouseEventArgs) {
  var txt1 = sender.findName("Txt1");
  var rect1 = sender.findName("Rect1");

  txt1.text = "In Progress...";
  rect1.Cursor = "Wait";

  var fnOnStateChange = function() {
    if (xmlhttp.readyState == 4) {
      rect1.Cursor = "Default";
      txt1.text = "Complete.";
    }
  };
  var xmlhttp = new XMLHttpRequest();
  xmlhttp.onreadystatechange = fnOnStateChange;
  xmlhttp.open("GET", "long-running-url.asp", true);
  xmlhttp.send(null);
}

Here are a few more examples shown live. The first and third will be redrawn inconsistently and the second one will always redraw during the intermediate "In Progress..." stage. Click the download links below to see the source code for this.

Download source.html, source.xaml

Friday, December 12, 2008

Calling MySQL stored procedures from C# with Connector/Net

Have ever got this error when calling a stored procedure?
MySql.Data.MySqlClient.MySqlException: SELECT command denied to user 'your_user'@'localhost' for table 'proc'
  at MySql.Data.MySqlClient.MySqlStream.OpenPacket () [0x00000] 
  at MySql.Data.MySqlClient.NativeDriver.ReadResult (System.UInt64& affectedRows, System.Int64& lastInsertId) [0x00000] 
  at MySql.Data.MySqlClient.MySqlDataReader.GetResultSet () [0x00000] 
  at MySql.Data.MySqlClient.MySqlDataReader.NextResult () [0x00000] 
Let me explain what is going on here. The first thing Connector/Net does when you call a stored procedure is select the full text of the stored procedure from the server, parse it, and cache information about the parameters. It then uses that information to build the statement for the actual stored procedure call.

It does this by either calling
SELECT * FROM mysql.proc WHERE db LIKE 'mydb_name' AND name LIKE 'MyProcedure';

or by calling
SELECT * FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.ROUTINES WHERE ROUTINE_SCHEMA LIKE 'mydb_name' AND ROUTINE_NAME LIKE 'MyProcedure';

Why does it do this?

Let me give you a little background. Microsoft SQL Server has a nice feature in that it gives you a lot of flexibility when you call stored procedure. The syntax is
EXEC MyProcedure @MyParam1=123, @MyParam2='blah';

The parameters can appear in any order and any of the parameters can be specified as optional in the stored procedure. This is nice when you want to add a new parameter to a stored procedure and release it to your website without taking downtime. First you run an ALTER statement to release the new stored procedure with a new optional parameter, then you release the new application code which passes the new parameter to the stored procedure. Everything works fine when the application code and stored procedure are not in sync because the new parameter is optional.

MySQL's syntax is different. It is
CALL MyProcedure(123, 'blah');

The parameters have to appear in the right order and there is no support for optional parameters.

Now let's look at how stored procedures are called from the application code. Calling Microsoft SQL Server from C# code looks like this
string connStr = System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["MyConnectionString"].ConnectionString;
using (System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection conn = new System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection(connStr)) {
  System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand cmd = new System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand("MyProcedure", conn);
  cmd.CommandType = System.Data.CommandType.StoredProcedure;
  cmd.Parameters.Add("@MyParam1", System.Data.SqlDbType.Int).Value = 123;
  cmd.Parameters.Add("@MyParam2", System.Data.SqlDbType.VarChar, 40).Value = "blah";
  conn.Open();
  cmd.ExecuteNonQuery();
}
MySQL Connector/Net mimics this syntax fairly closely.
string connStr = System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["MyConnectionString"].ConnectionString;
using (MySql.Data.MySqlClient.MySqlConnection conn = new MySql.Data.MySqlClient.MySqlConnection(connStr)) {
  MySql.Data.MySqlClient.MySqlCommand cmd = new MySql.Data.MySqlClient.MySqlCommand("MyProcedure", conn);
  cmd.CommandType = System.Data.CommandType.StoredProcedure;
  cmd.Parameters.Add("@MyParam1", MySql.Data.MySqlClient.MySqlDbType.Int32).Value = 123;
  cmd.Parameters.Add("@MyParam2", MySql.Data.MySqlClient.MySqlDbType.String).Value = "blah";
  conn.Open();
  cmd.ExecuteNonQuery();
}
So in order for Connector/Net to figure out what order to put the parameters when it creates the CALL statement it gets the stored procedure definition from the server and looks at the order that the parameters appear in the original CREATE PROCEDURE statement.

There are a couple of problems with this.
  1. The account the application code is running under may not have select permissions on mysql.proc and if you are using shared web hosting it may not be possible to give your account these permissions.
  2. There is a performance penalty for retrieving and storing the stored procedure bodies.
So what I recommend doing is building the CALL statement yourself as a parameterized query.

My recommended way to call MySQL stored procedures
string connStr = System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["MyConnectionString"].ConnectionString;
using (MySql.Data.MySqlClient.MySqlConnection conn = new MySql.Data.MySqlClient.MySqlConnection(connStr)) {
  MySql.Data.MySqlClient.MySqlCommand cmd = new MySql.Data.MySqlClient.MySqlCommand();
  cmd.Connection = conn;
  cmd.CommandText = "CALL MyProcedure(@MyParam1, @MyParam2);";
  cmd.Parameters.AddWithValue("@MyParam1", 123);
  cmd.Parameters.AddWithValue("@MyParam2", "blah");
  // Or if you prefer this style:
  //cmd.Parameters.Add("@MyParam1", MySql.Data.MySqlClient.MySqlDbType.Int32).Value = 123;
  //cmd.Parameters.Add("@MyParam2", MySql.Data.MySqlClient.MySqlDbType.String).Value = "blah";
  conn.Open();
  cmd.ExecuteNonQuery();
}
Connector/Net will go through the CommandText and replace @MyParam1 and @MyParam2 with the values you provide so the statement that gets sent to the MySQL server is just CALL MyProcedure(123, 'blah'); It's a good idea to do it with parameters because the library code will properly escape single quote characters. If you don't do this, the SQL statement could end up with syntax errors, or worse, end users might be able to run malicious SQL queries against your MySQL server.

Output parameters

Connector/Net does not handle parameters with Direction = System.Data.ParameterDirection.Output unless CommandType = System.Data.CommandType.StoredProcedure. In our case we're using CommandType.Text so we can only use ParameterDirection.Input.

So what do we do if we want to call a stored procedure that has an output parameter?

We use MySQL User Variables. This is the statement we will send to the MySQL server.
CALL MyProcedure(@MyOutputParam1, @MyOutputParam2, 123, 'blah');
SELECT @MyOutputParam1, @MyOutputParam2;


But before we can make this work there are a couple things we need to take care of. One is that we need to include Allow User Variables=true; in the connection string.

Server=localhost; Port=3306; Database=your_database; Uid=your_user; Pwd=your_password; Connect Timeout=30; Allow User Variables=true;

If we don't do this Connector/Net will throw an exception. This is because it checks that the parameter names in the CommandText match up with the parameters that have been added to the list and it doesn't have a way to distinguish between user variables and parameters. If we set Allow User Variables=true; it will skip this check.

The other thing we have to take care of is the data type of the user variables. Connector/Net does not handle result sets with user variables in them properly.

To see for yourself, try running this query:
SET @a = true, @b = 222, @c = -1, @d = 'abcd';
SELECT @a, @b, @c, @d, true, 222, -1, 'abcd';
Connector/Net returns the first three columns in the result set as byte[] and sets the contents of the byte array to be the raw bytes sent back by the MySQL server. The fourth column is a normal string and the rest of the columns are all handled properly.

The MySQL Command Line Client, on the other hand, handles user variables properly. You can see it here.
mysql> SET @a = true, @b = 222, @c = -1, @d = 'abcd';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> SELECT @a, @b, @c, @d, true, 222, -1, 'abcd';
+------+------+------+------+------+-----+----+------+
| @a   | @b   | @c   | @d   | TRUE | 222 | -1 | abcd |
+------+------+------+------+------+-----+----+------+
| 1    | 222  | -1   | abcd |    1 | 222 | -1 | abcd |
+------+------+------+------+------+-----+----+------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
I was curious what was going on so I intercepted the response sent back by the MySQL server to see if I could tell why Connector/Net was failing. It sends the column definitions first and then the contents of each row. I could see that the row data was the same for column @a and column TRUE, column @b and column 222, and so on, but the header containing the column definitions were different. I didn't investigate further and instead looked for a workaround.

Here is what I did to make it work.

CALL MyProcedure(@MyOutputNum1, @MyOutputString2, 123, 'blah');
SELECT CAST(@MyOutputNum1 AS SIGNED), @MyOutputString2;


If your parameters are not signed integers you will need to cast them as something else. Read about using CAST and CONVERT. Note that SIGNED and UNSIGNED are both 64 bit integers.

Now that I know what to do I can create the application code.
string connStr = System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["MyConnectionString"].ConnectionString;
using (MySql.Data.MySqlClient.MySqlConnection conn = new MySql.Data.MySqlClient.MySqlConnection(connStr)) {
  MySql.Data.MySqlClient.MySqlCommand cmd = new MySql.Data.MySqlClient.MySqlCommand();
  cmd.Connection = conn;
  cmd.CommandText = "CALL MyProcedure(@MyOutputNum1, @MyOutputString2, ?MyParam1, ?MyParam2); SELECT CAST(@MyOutputNum1 AS SIGNED), @MyOutputString2;";
  // I am using the ?param style to make it easy to differentiate between user variables and parameters. @MyParam1 would also work.
  cmd.Parameters.AddWithValue("?MyParam1", 123);
  cmd.Parameters.AddWithValue("?MyParam2", "blah");
  conn.Open();
  MySql.Data.MySqlClient.MySqlDataReader rdr = cmd.ExecuteReader();
  // If MyProcedure returns a result set that will come first so you will need: 
  //   while (rdr.Read()) {...} 
  //   and rdr.NextResult();
  // Now get the output parameters.
  long myOutputNum1 = -1;
  string myOutputString2 = null;
  if (rdr.Read()) {
    int i = 0;
    if (rdr.FieldCount > i && !rdr.IsDBNull(i)) myOutputNum1 = rdr.GetInt64(i);
    i++;
    if (rdr.FieldCount > i && !rdr.IsDBNull(i)) myOutputString2 = rdr.GetString(i);
  }
}
That worked.

Saturday, December 6, 2008

Javascript and C# encryption

If you are unable to use SSL and you want to use encryption, one option is to use javascript to encrypt and send your data. Then on the server side you can decrypt the data, process it, and send back an encrypted response to be decrypted by javascript.

I have created a page which does this. I used AES (also known as Rijndael) for the private key encryption algorithm. The .NET framework has a built-in class library implementation of this called System.Security.Cryptography.RijndaelManaged and there are some javascript implementations out there on the web. I copied one of them and made some modifications to it, such as adding Base64 encoding.

The private key is hard coded in the server side code and must be entered into a textbox on the page by the user.

Download the code

Running T-SQL queries from your browser against Microsoft SQL Server

In a previous blog post I wrote about how to run MySQL queries from your browser. I thought I would post the source code for running T-SQL queries against Microsoft SQL Server as well, in case anyone wants it.

Download source code

I also made a version that encrypts data before transmitting it.

Friday, December 5, 2008

Running MySQL queries from your browser

Download the code. You will also need to download the Connector/Net binaries.

phpMyAdmin has a place for you to run MySQL queries but there are a few reasons you might want to have a your own admin page on your site for running ad hoc queries.
  1. You might want your queries to run under a different user than the one used by phpMyAdmin. See here for why you may need to run your stored procedure creation scripts this way.
  2. You might want to test a query going through Connector/Net.
  3. Maybe you just want a way to run queries faster without having to log in.
Here is a snippet from a simple page I created to run MySQL queries against my site.
protected void btnSubmit_OnClick(object sender, System.EventArgs e) {
  if (txtKey.Text == "some random string") {
    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
    using (MySqlConnection conn = new MySqlConnection("Server=localhost; Port=3306; ...")) {
      MySqlCommand cmd = new MySqlCommand(txtSql.Text, conn);
      conn.Open();
      MySqlDataReader rdr = cmd.ExecuteReader();
      while (...) {
        ...
        sb.Append(results of query);
        ...
      }
    }
    litOutput.Text = sb.ToString();
  }
}
Download the real code

Security considerations
  1. Remember to put in a random string for your key in the page.
  2. You may want to remove or disable the page when you are not using it.
  3. Use ssl encryption whenever you visit the page. If you don't have an ssl certificate for your site you can create a self signed certificate in cPanel if your hosting provider lets you. Mine lets me create and import certificates but they don't let me turn on ssl for my site unless I pay for an upgrade so I cannot actually do anything with them. A self signed certificate will give you a warning in your browser but the transmission will still be encrypted. If you are like me and can't enable ssl for your site another option is to encrypt the data in javascrypt before sending it to your server side code.
    Download source code of a version that uses encryption.