[announce] OPiuM -- stock Options Portfolio Manager

Well, I've finished the first version of what I'm affectionately calling "OPiuM" a stock option portfolio manager. So what's it do? In a nutshell, I (along with all the folks at my startup company and perhaps many of you) were issued this bunk thing called "stock options" at some point. They're basically worth dick until the company IPOs, then the plan is everyone is filthy stinking rich and doesn't have to work again. Well, my web based project tells me how many options I have total, how many are vested, how many days left each 'whack-o-options' has left to vest, what their worth is based on a given stock price, etc... So it's a way to keep tabs on if and when I should cash out and or find another job because I'm getting shafted... Options -- what a b.s. idea. WE should get STOCK. Pure and simple. Vesting blows. :) Especially when my boss has over 8 MILLION options and I'm still under the 100k option mark. And I'm employee #2 for god sakes. But I digress... :P I can't really show you a working example at the moment because it's behind our intranet, but perhaps I'll put a demo version on my site at some point. In the mean time, feel free to download it from: http://www.weberdev.com/get_example.php3?count=1616 it's only a 6k .tgz file. also if you need to, I can also email it to you... installation is quite simple. Just create the mySQL database (schema included) and tweak the mysql_pconnect string to your username/password preferences. it's two PHP3 files, plus the included header and footer files (which are not included, but you will need to create). You'll see when you look at them. Not difficult at all. Like my Photo_Album project, this isn't somthing I plan on actively developing and supporting as a full on project. It works for me and if it works for you great. If you have simple questions, I'm happy to give them a shot (if they're specific to my program), but don't expect me to start adding features and making this a full time job ;-) I started writing this yesturday morning and finished it just now, so if there are bugs or whatever, I'm sorry about that, let me know and I'll fix 'em. Note to the mySQL programmers: I have to say I'm very displeased with the whole way I *had* to build the database. It seems to me that security in databases should be paramount, and the ENCODE/DECODE functions feel like an afterthought. Like, "oh yeah, let's just slap this stuff in and have it only work on strings!". I would love to see the mySQL guys add another parameter to the CREATE schema (and I really don't care if it isn't ANSI SQL at that point) like the "BINARY" option, but maybe a "PRIVATE" or "SECURE" or something such that data is encrypted/decrypted on the fly and the database user is not burdened with that ENCODE/DECODE thing. I don't have a full solution, but it seems that you could then do something like: INSERT INTO mydb VALUES (...) ENCODE_USING('secret'); or some other way of telling mySQL what password to use to encrypt all the fields that were flagged as PRIVATE. then to retrieve, do something simmilar: SELECT * FROM mydb WHERE () DECODE_USING('secret'); again, I don't care what the actual wording (keywords) are, but the idea is sound doncha think? Then, anyone, even root, can't peruse the database and see values, and they can't even get out anything without the original 'secret' password. This would be transparent to the SQL user in their scripts too... daevid.com