🚀 go-pugleaf

Hi folks,

we have a very strange problem and I think
it is a very interesting one and that discussing
it here might be quite productive. OK, lets start:

We are writing a GUI client that needs to communicate
with a C++ server (we are using TCP connections 
for this purpose). The communication works in two ways:

1 Server says: i will send you now 100 K of data
  Fine; my program reads the exact amount of bytes.
  Works fine every time.

2 Server says: i am going to send you data from
  the DB; dont know how much.
  Then the server will start to send packages with 
  a header, that tells me how long each individual package
  is. The idea behind that is that I ALWAYS know how much
  bytes I have to expect from the server.

We use technique no. 2 for sending the rows of DB
tables. Because we are splitting the data into blocks
of 5 rows or so we are able to start displaying the
first rows before all the rows have been send.

(I am using a special TableModel that uses invokeAndWait
to notify the table listeners).

OK, now its time to talk about our problem: 
sometimes we dont receive proper data. I dont have
an IOException or any kind of visible communication
problem; it is just that my InputStream gives
me bytes that should not be there!

For example, our server would send data like:

"a string"; 2424;"another string";;; 
"a string"; 2424;"another string";;;
"a string"; 2424;"another string";;; 
"a string"; 2424;"another string";;; 
"a string"; 2424;"another string";;; 

Most of the time that is exactly what pops up in my
InputStream. 

But sometimes (with JDK 1.3 SUN - and ALWAYS with 
JDK 1.3 IBM) the InputStream gives me data like:
 
??? ???? "a string"; 2424;"another string";;; 
"a string"; 2424;"another string";;;
"a string"; 2424;"another string";;; 
"a string"; 2424;"another string";;; 
"a string"; 2424;"another 

Where ? are ASCII chars like 0x0, 0x2, 0xA, etc (no 
pattern could be recognized). 

We are 99% sure that the C++ server sends 
correct data - but I have no clue how it is possible
to receive bytes from a socket based InputStream 
that have NOT been inserted on the other side.

I assume that it is some kind of threading problem:
in JDK 1.3 IBM the first errors happen when the table
should display a scrollbare and start scrolling. 

I think I need to use SwingUtilities.invokeAndWait() for
notifying the table that rows have been added - when
I used invokeLater the table will display the first rows
after the last rows have been received. Maybe invokeAndWait
needs to much time - but why on earth can this effect
my InputStream?

Any idea?