2009 Schedule

Schedule

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We're always looking for speakers to present topics at our meetings. If you'd like to present a topic, please send us an email describing the topic you'd like to present and whether you have a specific date in mind. We appreciate all presenters -- professional and amateur. Who knows, this could be the beginning of a new career path for you!

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Comments or suggestions are welcome.

Date	Topics	Presented By
07/10	No Meeting - Hope you have a wonderful summer.	Everyone
08/14/10	How Craig Boyd Makes Me a Hero! (German DevCon) Craig Boyd is one of the most generous developers in the Fox Community. Over the years his blog has been the source of many posts where he flat out delivers some cool FLL file that extends the functionality of a VFP application, or straight VFP code with numerous benefits, and in turn makes me look like a hero to my customers. Ever have a customer ask you to provide a feature where compressing a file is best handled with the ZIP format? Do you have users who want automated email and you are tired of battling Outlook security, but MAPI is the easiest way to get email through their email system? How about encrypting information in a table, or encrypting an entire file in your secure customer applications? Need to use FTP, SFTP, or other Web interactions to satisfy even the finickiest customer situations? Run up against the not-so-new Excel 2007 XLSX format and find it breaks your modules where previous versions of Excel worked fine? Ever wished for a smart grid that made it easier to develop data entry grids and made it so it is less painful to implement? Yeah, me too. This session is going to go through the best of the best of Craig's FLLs and other tools, show you how what they do, and how simple it is to look like a hero too. How VFPCompression.FLL will make zipping files a snap How email with attachments is simple thanks to VFPMapiEx.FLL Why security of the data is trivial with the VFPEncryption.FLL VFPConnection makes working with the Web as easy as cutting butter with a warm knife How the grid can easily be extended without writing a ton of code thanks to GridExtras How Excel 2007 introduced the XLSX file format and the Fox Team did not respond, but fortunately Craig did Mocking Your Customer (SWFox) In the past I have found that customers like to change their mind about what they want. This normally happens once they see the implemention of what they asked for during the first round of requirements discussion. Developers work hard to put together the user interface using the designers, but it is relatively expensive to the customer base if it gets thrown away. Sure there are times when we hit the nail on the head, but normally I find the real solution does not shine until the customer "spits on it." Balsamiq Mockups is a designer that lets developers and non-developers alike build wireframes/mockups. These are blueprints for how the application user interface can look or work. Developers and users can sit down and flow through the application before hours of development are completed. Balsamiq Mockups facilitates the creation of the wireframes with lots of controls developers are using from the toolboxes provided in the native application designers. You will learn: What the benefits are when you wireframe with your users How you can leverage customers and designers/artists to create mockups How easy it is to create mockups That wireframing actually leads to more business, and doesn't take away revenues from development The different ways Balsamiq Mockups makes you a more agile developer/team	Rick Schummer White Light Computing
09/11/10	Southwest Fox Rehearsal	Southwest Fox Speaker
10/09/10	Southwest Fox Rehearsal	Southwest Fox Speaker
11/13/10	Southwest Fox Review Dev Bits & Bytes! Do you have a developer's tool that you can't live without, a programming technique or gotcha moment that you would like to share. We are all ears.	Cathy Pountney, Jody Meyer & other SWFox participants And You!
12/11/10	No Meeting - Enjoy the time off. Happy Holidays!	Everyone
01/08/11	Annual Elections / Budget / What's Next? Currently held positions (2010): President: Jody Meyer Secretary: Cathy Pountney Treasurer: Mike Potjer Webmaster: Jody Meyer	Everyone

---	Past 2010 Meetings	Who to Thank
01/09/10	Annual Elections - 2009 elected positions were: President: Jody Meyer Vice President: Cathy Pountney Secretary: Mike Timpe Treasurer: Mike Potjer Webmaster: Jody Meyer Also, Discussed: Budget / What's Next?	Everyone
02/13/10	Cursor Adaptors & PEM Editor	Cathy Pountney
03/13/10	Open Spaces: Share a cool tool Show us your app Bring a topic you want to discuss Have an idea or challenge to ponder? Love these sessions. This is an awesome group of people. We always walk away with some great ideas and new found knowledge!	Everyone
04/10/10	1) VFP and MySQL: Case Study for Remote Data For many years Visual FoxPro developers have found backend databases to be a compelling alternative to the DBF data store. There are many good reasons to move to a backend database. The business model of distributed locations and facilities is not uncommon. Because of the way Visual FoxPro caches tables and indexes, DBF data does not scale well over the WAN, pushing people to a backend data store. Another business concern is the security of the DBF files and easy access to anyone with network/workstation access to the folder where they are stored. Businesses cannot afford to have their competitive advantage walk out the door on a thumb drive. Then there is the ever unpopular technical limitation of the two gigabyte table size limit. There are lots of good reasons you or your customer might want to migrate to a server-based backend database. Visual FoxPro is very flexible in working with backend data. In fact, even though Visual FoxPro has a long history deeply seeded with the DBF standard, the development environment and the language is really data store agnostic. In this session, you'll see how you can leverage MySQL (or for that matter, any backend data) to have data sit on a server (Web, file, or data), and have a Web application and a VFP desktop application both access the same database. The demonstrations will be performed on a live application developed as a prototype for two production applications created for actual customers that fit this model. The session is filled with real world experience and the wisdom shared should give developers a huge head start if they are just getting started with remote data, and some things to consider even if you have experience working with backend databases. You will learn: Fundamentals of working with MySQL and other backend databases Pros and cons to different access techniques to remote data (remote views, cursoradapters, SQL passthrough) Performance vs. ease of use vs. flexibility considerations approaching backend data Simple model for architecting a distributed application Lessons learned in setting up a distributed application Challenges to consider before you decide to make the jump to a backend database 2) Resume and Other Job Related Topics.	Rick Schummer White Light Computing
05/08/10	Prefilling PDF Forms with Data Sending a Visual FoxPro report to a PDF file is a wonderful thing. It makes it easy to attach to emails and saves on paper. It's one of the green things to do. But, like always, customers want to take it a step further. They want to have their PDF forms prefilled with their data from their application. It makes sense too. It saves time, ensures accuracy and there is no need to print the PDF to fill it in. It's another green thing to do. Well, they can have that. I would like to show you how.	Jody Meyer
*06/05/10	SQL Server Log Shipping in the Cloud - Log Shipping is an automated process that backs up a database and restores a standby copy on a secondary server. A key feature to Log Shipping is that it uses transaction log backups, which can be much smaller and faster than full backups, to keep the servers in synch. Frank will demonstrate how to implement Log Shipping using Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2). Creating Gadgets in Windows Vista & Windows 7 - Desktop Gadgets, such as clocks and weather controls, are those cool little mini-apps you can add to your Windows desktop. Ever want to create your own but figured they were probably too complicated? Paul will take us on a quick tour of what is involved in creating and deploying our own custom gadgets – you’ll be surprised by how easy it is to get started. We’ll build a real “business” gadget to show you what’s involved.	Frank Perez & Paul Mrozowski both of White Light Computing

Date

Topics

Presented By

07/10

No Meeting - Hope you have a wonderful summer.

Everyone

08/14/10

How Craig Boyd Makes Me a Hero! (German DevCon) Craig Boyd is one of the most generous developers in the Fox Community. Over the years his blog has been the source of many posts where he flat out delivers some cool FLL file that extends the functionality of a VFP application, or straight VFP code with numerous benefits, and in turn makes me look like a hero to my customers.

Ever have a customer ask you to provide a feature where compressing a file is best handled with the ZIP format? Do you have users who want automated email and you are tired of battling Outlook security, but MAPI is the easiest way to get email through their email system? How about encrypting information in a table, or encrypting an entire file in your secure customer applications? Need to use FTP, SFTP, or other Web interactions to satisfy even the finickiest customer situations? Run up against the not-so-new Excel 2007 XLSX format and find it breaks your modules where previous versions of Excel worked fine? Ever wished for a smart grid that made it easier to develop data entry grids and made it so it is less painful to implement?

Yeah, me too.

This session is going to go through the best of the best of Craig's FLLs and other tools, show you how what they do, and how simple it is to look like a hero too.

How VFPCompression.FLL will make zipping files a snap
How email with attachments is simple thanks to VFPMapiEx.FLL
Why security of the data is trivial with the VFPEncryption.FLL
VFPConnection makes working with the Web as easy as cutting butter with a warm knife
How the grid can easily be extended without writing a ton of code thanks to GridExtras
How Excel 2007 introduced the XLSX file format and the Fox Team did not respond, but fortunately Craig did

Mocking Your Customer (SWFox) In the past I have found that customers like to change their mind about what they want. This normally happens once they see the implemention of what they asked for during the first round of requirements discussion. Developers work hard to put together the user interface using the designers, but it is relatively expensive to the customer base if it gets thrown away. Sure there are times when we hit the nail on the head, but normally I find the real solution does not shine until the customer "spits on it."

Balsamiq Mockups is a designer that lets developers and non-developers alike build wireframes/mockups. These are blueprints for how the application user interface can look or work. Developers and users can sit down and flow through the application before hours of development are completed. Balsamiq Mockups facilitates the creation of the wireframes with lots of controls developers are using from the toolboxes provided in the native application designers.

You will learn:

What the benefits are when you wireframe with your users
How you can leverage customers and designers/artists to create mockups
How easy it is to create mockups
That wireframing actually leads to more business, and doesn't take away revenues from development
The different ways Balsamiq Mockups makes you a more agile developer/team

Rick Schummer

White Light Computing

09/11/10

Southwest Fox Rehearsal

Southwest Fox Speaker

10/09/10

Southwest Fox Rehearsal

Southwest Fox Speaker

11/13/10

Southwest Fox Review

Dev Bits & Bytes! Do you have a developer's tool that you can't live without, a programming technique or gotcha moment that you would like to share. We are all ears.

Cathy Pountney, Jody Meyer & other SWFox participants

And You!

12/11/10

No Meeting - Enjoy the time off. Happy Holidays!

Everyone

01/08/11

Annual Elections / Budget / What's Next?

Currently held positions (2010):

President: Jody Meyer

Secretary: Cathy Pountney

Treasurer: Mike Potjer

Webmaster: Jody Meyer

Everyone

---

Past 2010 Meetings

Who to Thank

01/09/10

Annual Elections - 2009 elected positions were:

President: Jody Meyer

Vice President: Cathy Pountney

Secretary: Mike Timpe

Treasurer: Mike Potjer

Webmaster: Jody Meyer

Also, Discussed: Budget / What's Next?

Everyone

02/13/10

Cursor Adaptors & PEM Editor

Cathy Pountney

03/13/10

Open Spaces:

Share a cool tool
Show us your app
Bring a topic you want to discuss
Have an idea or challenge to ponder?

Love these sessions. This is an awesome group of people. We always walk away with some great ideas and new found knowledge!

Everyone

04/10/10

1) VFP and MySQL: Case Study for Remote Data

For many years Visual FoxPro developers have found backend databases to be a compelling alternative to the DBF data store. There are many good reasons to move to a backend database. The business model of distributed locations and facilities is not uncommon. Because of the way Visual FoxPro caches tables and indexes, DBF data does not scale well over the WAN, pushing people to a backend data store. Another business concern is the security of the DBF files and easy access to anyone with network/workstation access to the folder where they are stored. Businesses cannot afford to have their competitive advantage walk out the door on a thumb drive. Then there is the ever unpopular technical limitation of the two gigabyte table size limit.

There are lots of good reasons you or your customer might want to migrate to a server-based backend database.

Visual FoxPro is very flexible in working with backend data. In fact, even though Visual FoxPro has a long history deeply seeded with the DBF standard, the development environment and the language is really data store agnostic.

In this session, you'll see how you can leverage MySQL (or for that matter, any backend data) to have data sit on a server (Web, file, or data), and have a Web application and a VFP desktop application both access the same database. The demonstrations will be performed on a live application developed as a prototype for two production applications created for actual customers that fit this model. The session is filled with real world experience and the wisdom shared should give developers a huge head start if they are just getting started with remote data, and some things to consider even if you have experience working with backend databases.

You will learn:

Fundamentals of working with MySQL and other backend databases
Pros and cons to different access techniques to remote data (remote views, cursoradapters, SQL passthrough)
Performance vs. ease of use vs. flexibility considerations approaching backend data
Simple model for architecting a distributed application
Lessons learned in setting up a distributed application
Challenges to consider before you decide to make the jump to a backend database

2) Resume and Other Job Related Topics.

Rick Schummer

White Light Computing

05/08/10

Prefilling PDF Forms with Data Sending a Visual FoxPro report to a PDF file is a wonderful thing. It makes it easy to attach to emails and saves on paper. It's one of the green things to do. But, like always, customers want to take it a step further. They want to have their PDF forms prefilled with their data from their application. It makes sense too. It saves time, ensures accuracy and there is no need to print the PDF to fill it in. It's another green thing to do. Well, they can have that. I would like to show you how.

Jody Meyer

*06/05/10

SQL Server Log Shipping in the Cloud - Log Shipping is an automated process that backs up a database and restores a standby copy on a secondary server. A key feature to Log Shipping is that it uses transaction log backups, which can be much smaller and faster than full backups, to keep the servers in synch. Frank will demonstrate how to implement Log Shipping using Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2).

Creating Gadgets in Windows Vista & Windows 7 - Desktop Gadgets, such as clocks and weather controls, are those cool little mini-apps you can add to your Windows desktop. Ever want to create your own but figured they were probably too complicated? Paul will take us on a quick tour of what is involved in creating and deploying our own custom gadgets – you’ll be surprised by how easy it is to get started. We’ll build a real “business” gadget to show you what’s involved.

Frank Perez
&
Paul Mrozowski

both of
White Light Computing

* Meeting is not our normal 2nd Saturday - Please check your calendar