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There are 6 conference tracks at Southwest Fox. Click a track's icon to jump
to the sessions for that track.
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Extending VFP: The sessions in this
track cover technologies that extend VFP's capabilities
(including COM, ReportListeners, etc.)
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Integrating VFP: This track looks at
using VFP together with other products, including back-end
servers, Automation servers, and .NET.
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Pre-Conference: These half-day sessions
are offered on Thursday, October 16, and are available for
an additional cost; see the Register
page for details.
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Solidifying VFP Development: This track
appeals to all VFP developers. Sessions cover either VFP
fundamentals, aimed at those newer to VFP (whether moving up
from FP2.x or coming to VFP from other languages), as well
as VFP best practices, aimed at helping all VFP developers
improve.
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Taking Advantage of VFPX: The sessions
in this track showcase the projects in VFPX, providing
enough information to put those projects to work for you.
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Working with Sedna and SP2: This track
covers the new features and changes introduced in Sedna and
in VFP 9 Service Pack 2.
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Extending VFP
This session shows how to create custom controls for use in VFP 9 reports. Bo
discusses how to utilize the ReportListener class with the GDIPlusX library to
render custom objects onto the report canvas with a focus on easy implementation
and performance. He walks through several how-to examples including rotated
text, dynamic text formatting, graphs, custom shapes and advanced image
rendering. He also shows how to modify the VFP report designer to make it easy
to incorporate these custom controls into a report. The session will also cover
how to maximize compatibility with 3rd party reporting tools.
You will learn how to: - Create report controls
- Render graphics onto the VFP report canvas
- Optimize report code for maximum performance
- Modify the report designer
Suggested prerequisites: Played around with the ReportListener class and know
what REPORTBUILDER.APP is.
Explorer-style user interfaces are among the most popular for today's
applications. However, working with and integrating the controls necessary to
implement an Explorer interface can be challenging. This session presents a set
of classes and techniques that makes short work of developing Explorer
interfaces for your applications.
You will learn: - How the controls necessary for an Explorer
interface work
- How to deal with the many idiosyncrasies of certain controls, including the
TreeView
- How to design an Explorer interface for your applications
- How the classes presented in this session collaborate
- How to use the classes in this session in your own applications
They have been popular in Visual Basic and other languages: Owner drawn
controls. Instead of combining shapes, images, labels and textboxes into a
compound control that looks close to something we want, we can exploit the power
of GDI+ to create our own controls. Whether we are talking about new pageframes,
progress bars, formatted text, chart controls, basic text input or Unicode text
output, we can create all these with GDI+. This session covers some of the
fundamentals of creating your own controls in GDI+ including dealing with mouse
and keyboard input. We also see some the possibilities as well as some of the
limitations.
You will learn: - how to use GDI+ for your own controls
- how to handle input
- how to handle focus and tab order
- what you can do, and what you can't do
Mobile devices are a natural extension for many Visual FoxPro applications.
They allow you to collect and retrieve information whenever and whereever
needed. This session is an introduction for developers that haven't yet
developed for mobile devices. We cover the basics of Windows Mobile, limitations
of mobile devices, differences to desktop systems, creation and installation of
FoxPro applications on mobile devices using Guineu, setting up an development
environment, and transfering files between mobile devices and desktop PC.
You will learn: - what Windows Mobile is
- how mobile development differs from desktop development
- how to develop a mobile application
- how to deploy a mobile application
eTecnologia.NET's .NET Extender for VFP makes it possible to use any .NET
class from within VFP without requiring ActiveX or COM registration. .NET
Extender provides a pain-free way for VFP developers to access all of the power
of the .NET framework, while still writing code in VFP. A few custom functions,
CLRCreateObject, CLRNewObject and SetCLRClassLibrary make the .NET framework
completely accessible within VFP. CLRBindEvent even makes it possible to bind
VFP code to .NET event handling. .NET Extender for VFP also makes is possible to
include .NET controls directly on VFP forms as well as use .NET non-visual
classes in VFP applications. .NET Extender also includes tools, such as an
assembly browser, that allows .NET assemblies to be browsed from within VFP.
This tool is one more way to bring power and pizzazz to your VFP application
with very little cost.
You will learn: - About the foundation classes included with the
.NET Extender
- How to access .NET framework classes programmatically from within VFP
- How to make use of .NET controls, such as ToolStripMenus directly from
within VFP
- How to use the various tools included with .NET Extender for VFP
Prerequisites: Basic OOP knowledge
Microsoft's Isolated Shell allows us to create a new integrated development
environment for Visual FoxPro that provides the same features used by C#/VB
developers in Visual Studio. Coupled with Microsoft's Dynamic Language Runtime
(DLR), the Visual FoxPro language can even be extended to include .NET. This
presentation of VFP Studio shows one of the best approaches for extending the
life of Visual FoxPro moving forward.
You will learn: - What the Isolated Shell is and why it should be of
interest to Visual FoxPro developers
- What the DLR is and how it can be used to extend the Visual FoxPro language
to include .NET
- What features VFP Studio provides and what is being considered for future
inclusion
- How to get involved
Integrating VFP
Advantage Database Server is a full-featured, high-performance client/server
database engine. Interestingly, it can use Visual FoxPro DBF files as its data
store and provides a number of benefits over accessing these files directly.
This session introduces Advantage and discusses how to access it from VFP
applications.
You will learn: - What Advantage Database Server (ADS) is and its
features
- How to install and set up ADS
- How ADS supports VFP better than any other client/server engine
- How ADS' full text search abilities can dramatically improve performance of
queries
- How to access ADS from VFP using remote views, SQL passthrough, ADO, and
CursorAdapters
Suggested prerequisites: Minimal knowledge of client/server technologies would
be useful.
Have you ever had the need to retrieve serial numbers of various components
on a computer? How about just trying to figure out what kinds of hardware or
software are installed? WMI can help you with these problems and a lot more!
This session gives an overview of WMI, including samples of the kinds of
information it can provide and how to use it. A VFP wrapper to make WMI calls
easier is provided with this session.
You will learn: - Where to look for a wealth of information on WMI
- Some of the limitations of WMI
- Basics of using C structures
- How to connect to a remote computer with WMI
- Things you never thought were possible
Prerequisites: A solid understanding of OOP
Developers who create software solutions for small and medium-sized
businesses are often asked to integrate their products with the popular
QuickBooks accounting system from Intuit. While Intuit provides the QuickBooks
SDK, a free software development kit for this purpose, the SDK can be somewhat
challenging to work with. QODBC is a commercial product that offers an
alternative to the QuickBooks SDK by enabling access to QuickBooks data files
through ODBC using standard SQL commands. In this session, Rick demonstrates the
installation, configuration, and use of QODBC to automate QuickBooks, while also
exploring some of the intricacies of the QuickBooks database schema itself.
You will learn: - What QODBC is and how it is licensed
- How to install and configure QODBC for use with VFP
- How to read data from a QuickBooks database using VFP and QODBC
- How to insert data into a QuickBooks database using VFP and QODBC
- Details of the QuickBooks database schema for several frequently used tables
Suggested prerequisites: A working familiarity with VFP SQL is required. Some
familiarity with accessing data via ODBC would be helpful but is not required.
Persistence Ignorance means that an application has no intimate knowledge of
where data comes from and how it is stored. Benefits of persistence ignorance
include a more maintainable and flexible architecture able to support different
data sources and deployment scenarios. We examine how we can best abstract the
source of data from the logic accessing the data. We will use XML as the
transport method for our data from a variety of backend sources including VFP
tables, SQL Server and SQL Compact Edition. We examine the options for accessing
our data repository through local objects, web services and COM+.
You will learn: - How to deserialize large XML streams using MSXML
when XMLAdapter cannot
- How to use a factory to create application components
- How to use the CursorAdapters to connect to disparate data sources
- How to create and apply XML DiffGrams with the XMLAdapter
Prerequisites for the session: Some familiarity with XML, comfortable working
with OOP, understanding of N-Tier Architecture
Mobile devices are a natural extension for many Visual FoxPro applications.
They allow you to collect and retrieve information whenever and whereever
needed. This session is an introduction for developers that haven't yet
developed for mobile devices. We cover the basics of Windows Mobile, limitations
of mobile devices, differences to desktop systems, creation and installation of
FoxPro applications on mobile devices using Guineu, setting up an development
environment, and transfering files between mobile devices and desktop PC.
You will learn: - what Windows Mobile is
- how mobile development differs from desktop development
- how to develop a mobile application
- how to deploy a mobile application
Visual FoxPro is an extremely powerful back-end development language for web
development. Third party tools such as Web Connection, Active FoxPro Pages,
FoxWeb and others allow VFP developers to seamlessly take their skills from the
Desktop to the Internet. In the world of Web 2.0 applications JavaScript has
become the language of choice for front-end development. This session introduces
you to JavaScript from a Visual FoxPro perspective.
You will learn.:
- JavaScript basics, such as operators, types and syntax
- How to manipulate the Document Object Model (DOM) using JavasScript
- JavaScript error handling
- How to emulate classes using JavaScript
- How to use AJAX/Web 2.0 Techniques to communicate with Visual FoxPro on the
back-end
Suggested prerequisites: A basic familiarity with HTML would be helpful but not
necessary.
eTecnologia.NET's .NET Extender for VFP makes it possible to use any .NET
class from within VFP without requiring ActiveX or COM registration. .NET
Extender provides a pain-free way for VFP developers to access all of the power
of the .NET framework, while still writing code in VFP. A few custom functions,
CLRCreateObject, CLRNewObject and SetCLRClassLibrary make the .NET framework
completely accessible within VFP. CLRBindEvent even makes it possible to bind
VFP code to .NET event handling. .NET Extender for VFP also makes is possible to
include .NET controls directly on VFP forms as well as use .NET non-visual
classes in VFP applications. .NET Extender also includes tools, such as an
assembly browser, that allows .NET assemblies to be browsed from within VFP.
This tool is one more way to bring power and pizzazz to your VFP application
with very little cost.
You will learn: - About the foundation classes included with the
.NET Extender
- How to access .NET framework classes programmatically from within VFP
- How to make use of .NET controls, such as ToolStripMenus directly from
within VFP
- How to use the various tools included with .NET Extender for VFP
Prerequisites: Basic OOP knowledge
With the increasing size of tables and changing application requirements,
many seasoned FoxPro developers are being forced to move their data out of
FoxPro and into a real database server. This would be an easy task if we all had
the time to completely rewrite our applications from the ground up.
Unfortunately most business cannot just be put on hold while 15+ years of
development is evaluated, refactored and rewritten for client-server. This
session will look at ways to easily migrate existing applications into client
server architecture without much disruption to the business.
You will learn: - The many ways in which remote data can be queried
and modified
- Methods for integrating the client server data access into existing
application code
- How to choose the best access method for distinct purposes in the
application
- How to build a data dictionary and use it to simplify the migration
- Pitfalls to watch out for during migration
- Tips for making the migration easier and less painful
Prerequisites: Basic knowledge of SQL programming syntax.
We live in a connected world and Web Services are an increasingly more common
part of business applications. With the SOAP Toolkit discontinued and never
having supported Web Services with complex types very well, FoxPro has always
had limited tools for accessing and hosting Web Services. By leveraging the .NET
runtime from FoxPro code, it's possible to plug in sophisticated Web Service
client and server functionality into your FoxPro application. In this session
Rick looks at using .NET as an intermediary to access Web Services by using COM
Interop to .NET generated Web Service proxies and hosting .NET Web Services in
ASP.NET and using COM Interop to access FoxPro business logic to serve FoxPro
data to Web Service clients.
You will learn: - How to use COM Interop to interact with .NET Web
Service Proxies
- How to create .NET hosted Web Services and use FoxPro code for business
logic
- How to manage type differences and data conversion between Fox and .NET
- About problems with the COM based Web Service solutions
Prerequisites: Basic familiarity with .NET and COM Interop
JavaScript, Ajax and client side development is becoming more important in
Web development as users expect Web applications to be more responsive and
interactive than the static post back based HTML interfaces of the past. This
session introduces Ajax concepts and the powerful free jQuery client JavaScript
and uses these tools in conjunction with Web Connection to create rich Web user
interfaces.
You will learn: - How to use HTTP communications to send and receive
data from the Web
- How to use XML in the message layer to pass data between client and server
- About different approach to use data for communication
- Choose the right persistence mechanism for data and objects
Suggested prerequisites: Some familiarity with Web Development
Pre-Conference
This session discusses the basics of writing a client server application
featuring MySQL.
You will learn: - Why to use a Client Server model for an
application
- What options are available for a back end and what the relative advantages
and disadvantages of each are.
- How to set up a development environment in MySQL
- How to create tables in MySQL and Working with the server
- How to create forms and reports in VFP to work with back end data
Suggested prerequisites: Visual FoxPro development with local tables, GUI
development, DML
Transact SQL (T-SQL) is Microsoft SQL Server's native programming language.
Although it is by no means as rich as VFP, nevertheless it has capabilities
which can be used to extend VFP applications that utilize SQL Server as a back
end database. In this session Andy covers the basics of working with Transact
SQL constructs including Variables, Table Variables, Temporary Tables, Cursors
and Common Table Expressions. He also shows how to create stored procedures,
Table and Scalar Functions and Triggers and discuss the various ways in which
they can be made available to Applications through Roles and Grants.
You will learn: - How to work with T-SQL built-in functions and
execute T-SQL code interactively
- How to use the different types of T-SQL construct including Variables, Table
Variables, Cursors, Temporary Tables and Common Table Expressions
- How to create and execute Stored Procedures
- How to create and Implement Table and Scalar Functions
- How to create and implement Triggers
Suggested prerequisites: Understand the differences between remote and local
data servers and the process of creating connections from a VFP application to a
back end server.
The Visual FoxPro Report Writer isn't always intuitive and it leaves many new
VFP developers confused. In this session you learn how to create reports that
leave your customers impressed. We start with the basics and continue to
progress until you've learned how to add all the pizzazz and functionality you
need to solve your reporting needs. This is the first of a 2-part session.
You will learn: - How to approach reports
- How to prepare data for reports
- How to take advantage of report variables and data groups
- How to use multiple detail bands
- How to hack .. er .. fine tune reports
This is the second of a 2-part session.
Solidifying VFP Development
Visual FoxPro has great support for collections. Virtually all of the objects
that can contain other objects have a native objects collection that can easily
be traversed to access their members. Object collections provide a great access
point for performing the same or similar actions on groups of objects. They also
provide the means necessary to locate and act upon objects in a loosely coupled
fashion. In this session, Mike introduces some utility functions and classes
that:
- make it easy to dynamically create and act upon collections
- dramatically reduce the amount of redundant code you write in dealing with
collections
- helps you to eliminate object dependencies and write code that is more
adaptable and easier to maintain
- eliminate drill down code
Visual FoxPro also has a wealth of functions for dealing with arrays, however;
developers often write very redundant code when it comes to dealing with arrays.
Mike also provides a set of utility functions and classes that streamline
redundant array operations and add more power and flexibility to arrays.
You will learn: - How to easily access objects and groups of objects
from anywhere within a containership hierarchy with a single line of code
without drilling through the object hierarchy or writing error prone lengthy
object references
- How to perform operations on groups of objects that are not contained within
a single container
- How to make single line calls to convert an array to a string, merge arrays,
remove specific items from arrays, remove duplicates from arrays and more
- How to create loosely coupled object references that won't break when
controls are moved or even renamed
Suggested prerequisites: A basic familiarity with collections and arrays.
Writing a vertical market application can be very rewarding. You write one
application, sell it numerous times, and sit back while the money rolls in.
Well, that's the theory anyway. The reality is that often times, new clients
want to buy your software, as long as you can change this one little thing.
Managing custom code for various clients within your application can easily turn
into a nightmare as your client base expands. This session shows you how to
implement a customization methodology in your vertical market application that
keeps your standard code independent from your custom code, yet have the two
code bases play nice together.
You will learn: - How to provide custom menu options
- How to implement companion tables for storing additional data
- How to customize existing forms and controls
- How to implement new forms and controls
- How to implement custom reports
The Visual FoxPro Foundation classes are a valuable yet often overlooked
resource for the Visual FoxPro programmer. Comprising one hundred twelve classes
in thirty-nine class libraries, the Visual FoxPro Foundation classes provide
access to all kinds of functionality that might otherwise be more difficult to
achieve. This session surveys the foundation classes and looks at several of
them in detail, with the goal of helping developers learn to use them to their
advantage when building applications.
You will learn: - What the Visual FoxPro Foundation classes are
- How they are arranged and categorized into class libraries
- How to use selected foundation classes, with sample code
- How the foundation classes can be sub-classed and extended
- How the foundation classes are licensed
Suggested prerequisites: Working knowledge of Visual FoxPro and experience with
VFP classes, sub-classes, and class libraries.
Persistence Ignorance means that an application has no intimate knowledge of
where data comes from and how it is stored. Benefits of persistence ignorance
include a more maintainable and flexible architecture able to support different
data sources and deployment scenarios. We examine how we can best abstract the
source of data from the logic accessing the data. We will use XML as the
transport method for our data from a variety of backend sources including VFP
tables, SQL Server and SQL Compact Edition. We examine the options for accessing
our data repository through local objects, web services and COM+.
You will learn: - How to deserialize large XML streams using MSXML
when XMLAdapter cannot
- How to use a factory to create application components
- How to use the CursorAdapters to connect to disparate data sources
- How to create and apply XML DiffGrams with the XMLAdapter
Prerequisites for the session: Some familiarity with XML, comfortable working
with OOP, understanding of N-Tier Architecture
Software development is complex business. In order to deal with this
complexity, agile practices have been developed to break development into
manageable cycles of development called iterations. The rapid application
development features of Visual FoxPro make it very well suited to the constantly
changing nature of agile software development. We examine the use of user
stories to gather requirements. We practice refactoring code aided by unit
tests. We examine ways to automate our build and deployment process in order to
produce more frequent releases. Finally we look at ways to implement each of
these practices in existing projects.
You will learn: - iterations
- user stories
- unit testing
- refactoring
- automated processes
Prerequisites for the session: Some experience with the full lifecycle of
application development is beneficial, familiarity with OOP principles and
practices
Sometimes optimization means to make things faster, sometimes it only means
to change what you measure. Before you can optimize an application you need to
define what and how to optimize. If you find that you need to take out the slow
parts, there are various tools that help you identifying those. We cover
monitoring and coverage tools extended by an in-depth explanation of how to make
sense of the results.
You will learn: - how to use monitoring tools
- what makes an application slow
- how to debug more efficiently
- to understand testing results
Sooner or later, almost every developer has to take over an existing
application. This session looks at tools and techniques for understanding how
such applications work, improving the data model, dealing with non-developers
who wrote the original code, and more.
You will learn: - What legal issues to address up front
- How to dig into the application
- How to improve the data model without losing existing data
- How to work with fragile code
Refactoring is the art of clean-up and can be useful. Many books have been
written about it, so it can seem daunting but the VFPX Code Analyst does make it
easier. In this session, we see how the Code Analyst along with existing tools
like the Coverage Profiler can make figuring out how to clean up your code can
be made easy, simple and dare I say it, fun!
You will learn: - How to use the Code Analyst to identify common
programming mistakes
- How to customize the Code Analyst to handle environment specific approaches
or techniques
- How to integrate Code Analyst into regular daily development
- Using the Coverage Profiler logs in ways that can be more useful than just
the standard Overview process through add-ins
With the increasing size of tables and changing application requirements,
many seasoned FoxPro developers are being forced to move their data out of
FoxPro and into a real database server. This would be an easy task if we all had
the time to completely rewrite our applications from the ground up.
Unfortunately most business cannot just be put on hold while 15+ years of
development is evaluated, refactored and rewritten for client-server. This
session will look at ways to easily migrate existing applications into client
server architecture without much disruption to the business.
You will learn: - The many ways in which remote data can be queried
and modified
- Methods for integrating the client server data access into existing
application code
- How to choose the best access method for distinct purposes in the
application
- How to build a data dictionary and use it to simplify the migration
- Pitfalls to watch out for during migration
- Tips for making the migration easier and less painful
Prerequisites: Basic knowledge of SQL programming syntax.
This session will cover SQL in depth.
You will learn: - SELECT/INSERT/UPDATE basics
- Structuring data (Normalization)
- Aggregating Data
- JOINS (INNER and OUTER)
- UNIONS
- Optimizing SQL
Suggested prerequisites: Understanding of tables
Do you know the difference between global, private and local variables? What
about PCOUNT() versus PARAMETERS() or PARAMETERS versus LPARAMETERS? Why should
you declare variables and arrays? And what is a form property anyway, and why
would you want to use one? What happens if you have a RETURN statement in the
middle of a WITH�ENDWITH section? This session answers all these questions and
more. Included are real world examples to help solidify these concepts in your
mind.
You will learn: - Standard variable naming conventions
- Best practices for use of variables
- Techniques to avoid difficult-to-debug problems
- Some debugging pointers
Prerequisites: Basic understanding of programming constructs
This session shows the fundamentals of the VFP 9 ReportListener and what's
new with SP2. This includes an explanation of the ReportListener object model
and how to leverage this class for your reports, what's required for VFP 9
reporting distribution, how to extend the VFP 9 reporting APPs and an
introduction to the many new features in SP2. The session also includes tips and
tricks for getting the most out of VFP 9 reporting including some productivity
and performance enhancements. We will also cover the fact that the VFP 9
Reporting components are now part of the CodePlex/VFPX project and how to submit
bugs and enhancement requests.
You will learn: - Why you should use VFP 9 SP2 reporting
- What is required for distribution
- How to maximize reporting productivity
- What SP2 has stuffed under the hood
Suggested prerequisites: Must know what "MODI REPO" means
This session takes developers through the process of creating a
commercial-grade Visual FoxPro application. Craig walks you through all of the
steps he takes to produce a professional, polished Visual FoxPro application.
You will learn: - How to set up the directory structure for a new
project
- How to properly subclass the VFP base classes
- How to create a main.prg, a database, and professional looking screens and
reports
- How to implement advanced error handling that allows users to email
exception reports
- How to provide automatic database backup
- How to automatically update the application using a Loader application
- How to protect the application from piracy using Armadillo
- How to create an install for the application using Installshield Express
Each new version of Visual FoxPro has brought new ways to do things, but
breaking old habits is hard. Now that the VFP language has stabilized, it's time
to hone our skills. This session examines some of the changes in the language
over the years and demonstrates that learning to use the newer constructs can
result in better, more maintainable, faster code.
You will learn: - How to easily parse and build filenames and paths
- Easy ways to work with text data
- Why you never have to work area work areas again
- What kind of loop to use when
- Much more
In this session Andy takes the example of a simple form that performs a
look-up on a ZipCode database and traces how the code and design structure
changes as the implementation moves from Instance level programming (where all
the code is directly in the form) through three different class-based
implementations, first using Composition, then using Aggregation and finally
using Delegation.
You will learn: - The difference between classes and objects
- How VFP implements inheritance, what the "inheritance trap" is and how to
avoid it
- How, and when, to create composite classes
- How and when to use aggregation instead of composition
- How and when to use delegation
Taking Advantage of VFPX
Explorer-style user interfaces are among the most popular for today's
applications. However, working with and integrating the controls necessary to
implement an Explorer interface can be challenging. This session presents a set
of classes and techniques that makes short work of developing Explorer
interfaces for your applications.
You will learn: - How the controls necessary for an Explorer
interface work
- How to deal with the many idiosyncrasies of certain controls, including the
TreeView
- How to design an Explorer interface for your applications
- How the classes presented in this session collaborate
- How to use the classes in this session in your own applications
They have been popular in Visual Basic and other languages: Owner drawn
controls. Instead of combining shapes, images, labels and textboxes into a
compound control that looks close to something we want, we can exploit the power
of GDI+ to create our own controls. Whether we are talking about new pageframes,
progress bars, formatted text, chart controls, basic text input or Unicode text
output, we can create all these with GDI+. This session covers some of the
fundamentals of creating your own controls in GDI+ including dealing with mouse
and keyboard input. We also see some the possibilities as well as some of the
limitations.
You will learn: - how to use GDI+ for your own controls
- how to handle input
- how to handle focus and tab order
- what you can do, and what you can't do
Refactoring is the art of clean-up and can be useful. Many books have been
written about it, so it can seem daunting but the VFPX Code Analyst does make it
easier. In this session, we see how the Code Analyst along with existing tools
like the Coverage Profiler can make figuring out how to clean up your code can
be made easy, simple and dare I say it, fun!
You will learn: - How to use the Code Analyst to identify common
programming mistakes
- How to customize the Code Analyst to handle environment specific approaches
or techniques
- How to integrate Code Analyst into regular daily development
- Using the Coverage Profiler logs in ways that can be more useful than just
the standard Overview process through add-ins
So you want to help out in VFPX? This session goes through how to get started
with the VFPX Project and dealing with issues like source control, the
Wiki-style attitude of Codeplex and more.
You will learn: - How to attach to the Codeplex using at least 3
different techniques for source control
- How to effectively vote up issues to bring them to a higher point
- How to propose a new project in VFPX
- Techniques for managing open-source projects on VFPX
Working with Sedna and SP2
This session shows how to create custom controls for use in VFP 9 reports. Bo
discusses how to utilize the ReportListener class with the GDIPlusX library to
render custom objects onto the report canvas with a focus on easy implementation
and performance. He walks through several how-to examples including rotated
text, dynamic text formatting, graphs, custom shapes and advanced image
rendering. He also shows how to modify the VFP report designer to make it easy
to incorporate these custom controls into a report. The session will also cover
how to maximize compatibility with 3rd party reporting tools.
You will learn how to: - Create report controls
- Render graphics onto the VFP report canvas
- Optimize report code for maximum performance
- Modify the report designer
Suggested prerequisites: Played around with the ReportListener class and know
what REPORTBUILDER.APP is.
The enhanced Data Explorer shipped with Sedna has improvements to help VFP
developers be more productive with data of all types (VFP or backend SQL). This
session will show you numerous ideas to extend this powerful tool and inspire
add-ons you can share with the Fox Community. During the session Rick
demonstrates and walks through several extensions he has written to help make
his life inside the VFP IDE easier when it comes to working with data.
You will learn: - What is new in the Sedna version
- How to leverage existing extensions
- How to alter behavior of the drag and drop features
- How to write add-ons to the Run Query dialog
- How to extend the functionality of the Data Explorer by adding features to
the menu
Suggested prerequisites: Familiarity with the Data Explorer in VFP 9
Visual FoxPro developers have long mocked the Upsizing Wizard as a weak
attempt to assist VFP developers migrating VFP database containers to the SQL
Server database platform. The Sedna release completely changes the perception
and gives you a great tool to migrate data easily to SQL Server. During this
session you will see all the steps necessary, and the actual process of
migrating a Visual FoxPro database to SQL Server using the revamped wizard. This
demonstration discusses the options you should consider and gotchas you might
experience along the way. The upsizing engine is demonstrated during this
session so you can see how to write reusable code to run the same migration
several times without using the wizard interface.
You will learn: - What has been improved in the Sedna release
- How to use the Upsizing Wizard user interface
- All the options available to you through the wizard interface
- How to run a migration to SQL Server programmatically
- Why the SQLXMLBulkLoad is your new best friend
Suggested prerequisites: Working knowledge of SQL Server
This session shows the fundamentals of the VFP 9 ReportListener and what's
new with SP2. This includes an explanation of the ReportListener object model
and how to leverage this class for your reports, what's required for VFP 9
reporting distribution, how to extend the VFP 9 reporting APPs and an
introduction to the many new features in SP2. The session also includes tips and
tricks for getting the most out of VFP 9 reporting including some productivity
and performance enhancements. We will also cover the fact that the VFP 9
Reporting components are now part of the CodePlex/VFPX project and how to submit
bugs and enhancement requests.
You will learn: - Why you should use VFP 9 SP2 reporting
- What is required for distribution
- How to maximize reporting productivity
- What SP2 has stuffed under the hood
Suggested prerequisites: Must know what "MODI REPO" means
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