Meeting Recap for March 10, 2001

Hi Everyone,

I want to thank everyone that attended our meeting, especially the newcomers. We had a total of 11 people attending -- 3 were new members.

SPECIAL THANKS:

I want to extend a special thanks to Optimal Solutions for providing the facilities as well as the beverages for our meeting. We really appreciate it. I also want to extend a special thanks to Martha Kroll who provided the donuts for everyone.

FOXPRO NEWS:

We discussed the recent announcement by Microsoft to detach Visual FoxPro 7.0 from the Visual Studio suite. Many feel this is a good thing while others were cautious about the long-term meaning of this separation. It was agreed by all that the future of FoxPro will be determined by how Microsoft spins this recent announcement and markets Visual FoxPro 7.0 as a stand-alone product.

Rick Bean mentioned an interview by Evan Delay with Robert Green and Ricardo Wenger that's available at www.universalthread.com/Interview/Microsoft.asp.

Rick also reminded us of the new Service Pack 5.0 that's available for Visual FoxPro 6.0 and can be downloaded from Microsoft's web site.

MAIN PRESENTATION:

Mike Potjer demonstrated the Stonefield Database Toolkit which is a highly recommended product available from Stonefield Systems Group, Inc. A free demo can be downloaded from their web site at www.stonefield.com.  

Visual FoxPro provides something FoxPro developers have needed for years -- a built-in data dictionary. Visual FoxPro's data dictionary provides table and field validation, field captions, triggers, even table and field comments. Unfortunately, many things are missing from the data dictionary, such as structural information necessary to create or update table structures at client sites and useful information such as captions for tables and indexes.

SDT overcomes the shortcomings of Visual FoxPro's data dictionary and provides additional functionality that serious application developers need!

There are three aspects to SDT:

  • It enhances the tools Visual FoxPro provides to manage the database container.

  • It provides the ability to define extended properties for database objects and set or obtain the values of these properties at run-time.

  • It includes a class library you can add to your applications to provide database management functions at run-time, including recreating indexes, repairing corrupted table headers, and updating table structures at client sites.

COOL TOOL:

This month's "Cool Tool" was presented by Glenn Domeracki. He demonstrated the COB Editor Extensions for Visual FoxPro. This utility provides additional features to the FoxPro editor -- older DOS and windows versions as well as newer Visual FoxPro versions are available as a free download from www.cobsystem.com.

Some of CEE's features are:

  • Keyword Expansion

  • Right-click Menu

  • FLOW (mini version of Beautify)

  • Insert Method Parameters

  • Tabs to Spaces

  • Compressed View

  • Quick Variable Scoping

  • Upper/Lower/Proper conversions

  • Quick Comment/Uncomment

  • Fast Open #include Files

  • Smart Buffer Cycling

  • Brace Matching

  • Block Indent/Outdent

NEXT MEETING -- SPECIAL PRESENTATION:

The next GRAFUG meeting will take place on Saturday, April 14th and we have a special presentation by Mike Feltman of F1 Technologies. The meeting will start at 11:00am and run approximately 3 hours (Click here for directions). Due to the special presentation, we have decided to provide pizza during the presentation in lieu of gathering for lunch afterwards.

Mike will discuss Visual FoxExpress 6.0, xCase and FullContact. 

  • Visual FoxExpress 6.0: Complete n-tier solution for Visual FoxPro application development. VFE 6 is powerful enough and flexible enough to allow you to easily incorporate the complex business rules you need. Did you know that Visual FoxExpress is the only Visual FoxPro framework to have a third party book written about it? Creating Visual FoxPro Applications with Visual FoxExpress, by Bob Archer and Dan Jurden. Purchase VFE 6.0 and get a free copy of the book (a $49.95 value).

  • xCase: allows you to accurately design your database by capturing every detail about your customer's business information world. xCase assists you in accomplishing the analysis and design of the database completely and with integrity. xCase, your database expert, handles the details while you focus on the design of the database. 

  • FullContact: F1 Technologies' New Product is a rich source-code based Contact management framework extension for Visual FoxExpress 6.0. The product reduces development time by providing many of the subtle aspects of Contact Management that most custom business applications require. FullContact goes beyond providing just user interface controls related to Contact Management and serves up an extensive and real-world-proven data and object model for managing contact information.

CONCLUSION:

I look forward to seeing everyone at the next meeting and I hope you've found this information helpful. If you have any comments, please send them to me.

Cathy Pountney

GRAFUG President & Secretary

cathy@frontier2000.com

 

Return to Archives page