Ebase Xi Queries : Unsafe by Default

Ebase Xi (from ebasetech.com) 4.5.2 is a rapid application development platform I recently encountered at a client. The previous developers had left and a security audit revealed that the (many) forms they built with Ebase Xi were susceptible to SQL Injection. In this blog post I will tell how I fixed the SQL Injections and discovered some interesting things along the way.


The case for separating front- and back-end

At 42 we have an ongoing discussion about the separation of the front- and back-end of an application. The back-end being a RESTful service, and the front-end being a modern MVC JavaScript application written in AngularJS.

There are two camps within our ranks: the first camp believes the front- and back-end should be completely separated, where both applications have separate version control, build processes, and deployments.

The second camp believes that the back-end should provide the REST API, serve the JavaScript application, and that there should be one deployment and build process that delivers the whole application (front- and back-end) in one package.

Disclaimer: I'm in the camp that believes strongly in separating the two. So I want to argue the case for separating front- and back-end completely in the post.

Aggregations in MongoDB with Spring Data

Aggregations in MongoDB


The MongoDB aggregation operations allow us to process data records and return computed results. Aggregation operations group values from multiple documents together, we can perform a variety of operations on the grouped data to return a single result. Spring Data Mongo makes the usage of this feature from your Java application very easy.

Checking framework vulnerabilities using Dependency Check

A web-application is never finished. Even when no new features are being developed new vulnerabilities may be found in the frameworks used in the application requiring a patch or an upgrade. Are you actively monitoring the frameworks that are in use in your applications? My guess is no, or at least not all of them. Well, luckily enough OWASP has a very nice utility that easily integrates into a build environment and can do most of the hard work for you. Let me tell you about it.