Image Cryptography System

The Challenge: Analog Chaos in a Digital Industry

Dental Laboratories operate at the intersection of healthcare and manufacturing. A single prosthetic case (like a crown or bridge) moves through 5-10 distinct production stages, involves multiple technicians, and requires precise financial tracking.

Most labs still rely on paper tickets and spreadsheets. This leads to:

1. Lost Cases: Physical trays getting misplaced in the lab.
2. Financial Leakage: Unbilled work or miscalculated technician commissions.
3. Lack of Insight: Lab owners have no real-time data on monthly revenue or debts.

I built Oscar to replace this analog chaos with a rigid, state-driven digital workflow.

System Architecture

Since dental labs often operate in environments with unstable internet or require direct hardware integration (printers/scanners), a Desktop-First approach was chosen over a web app.

Core Stack Decisions

• Framework: C# / WPF (.NET 8) for maximum performance and native OS integration.
• Data Layer: SQLite with Entity Framework Core. This provides a zero-configuration database that lives locally on the client's machine, ensuring data ownership and speed.
• UI Library: WPF UI (Modern Fluent Design) to break away from the "gray enterprise software" stereotype.

Key Modules

1. State-Machine Case Tracking

The heart of Oscar is the Case Manager. It treats every dental order as a state machine.

• States: Order Received $\rightarrow$ Designing $\rightarrow$ Milling $\rightarrow$ Ceramic $\rightarrow$ Quality Control $\rightarrow$ Delivered.
• Validation: A case cannot move to "Delivered" if financial requirements aren't met or if mandatory steps are skipped.

2. Automated Financial Engine

Dental technicians are often paid via complex commission structures (e.g., Technician A gets 15% of the ceramic work, Technician B gets fixed rate per unit). Oscar automates this entirely.

• Payroll Reports: Generates detailed salary slips instantly based on completed units.
• Debt Tracking: Tracks dentist payments and outstanding balances with visual alerts.

3. Analytics Dashboard

Integrated LiveCharts2 to visualize lab performance:

• Monthly Revenue vs. Expenses.
• Case volume per Dentist (identifying top clients).
• Technician efficiency ratings.

Technical Highlight: Serverless Licensing System

Since this is proprietary commercial software, I needed a robust way to handle license keys without maintaining a dedicated auth server.

I engineered a creative solution using the GitHub API as a backend:

1. Request: When a user installs Oscar, it generates a unique hardware fingerprint.
2. Issue Tracking: The app programmatically creates a "License Request" issue in a private GitHub repository via Octokit.net.
3. Verification: Once I approve the issue (add a specific label or comment), the application detects the status change on its next poll.
4. Activation: The app unlocks.

This architecture meant zero server costs and zero maintenance for the licensing infrastructure while leveraging GitHub's enterprise-grade security.

csharp
// Simplified Logic of the Activation Checkpublic async Task<bool> CheckLicenseStatus(string hardwareId){    var github = new GitHubClient(new ProductHeaderValue("OscarLab"));    // Queries private repo issues for the hardware ID tag    var issue = await github.Issue.GetAllForRepository("Oscar_Auth", new RepositoryIssueRequest {        Filter = IssueFilter.All,        Labels = { "approved", hardwareId }    });    return issue.Count > 0;}

Deployment & Updates

Desktop apps are notoriously hard to keep updated. Oscar solves this using AutoUpdater.NET.

• The app checks an XML file hosted on a public GitHub repo on startup.
• If a new version exists, it downloads the installer, runs it, and migrates the SQLite database schema automatically using EF Core Migrations.

Conclusion

Oscar is more than a database; it is an operating system for dental labs. By combining the raw performance of C# with modern architectural patterns, it turned a fragile paper process into a resilient digital workflow.