Pre and Post-Conference Training
Want even more training than Southwest Fox provides? Plan on arriving a
couple of days early or stay a day later to attend one of both of these
additional workshops.
West Wind Web Connection
Are you a Web Connection Developer looking for an opportunity to expand
your skill set and hobnob with other Web Connection experts? Then look no
further than this year's Web Connection User Conference at the SanTan
Elegante Conference & Reception Center and Legado Hotel, just prior to the
Southwest Fox conference there.
Last year's event was a huge success, with attendees raving about what
they took away from the training, eager to apply the experience to their own
applications. The training is presented by Rick Strahl, creator of the Web
Connection Framework, so you can from the horse's mouth how to utilize the
new powerful and visual features of the new Web Control Framework. We want
you to walk away ready to build sophisticated Web Applications with Visual
FoxPro faster than ever before. As usual these training workshops involve
audience interaction so you as an attendee help shape the format of the
event. No two Web Connection events are ever the same!
So join us and take your Web Connection skills to the next level. For
more information, see the
West Wind Web Connection Training page.
Silverswitch World Roadshow 2011 (free)
Uwe Habermann and
Venelina
Jordanova are presenting a free Silverswitch workshop
on Saturday and Sunday after Southwest Fox ends. This workshop has the
following sessions:
Welcome/Registration
Saturday, 2:00 - 2:15
Registration, a welcome coffee, general information about the event, handing out of the Silverswitch roadshow USB sticks.
Migrating VFP forms with the free Silverlight Wizard of the dFPUG
Saturday, 2:15 - 3:30
You certainly remember the sample application of Visual FoxPro named
Tastrade. Introduced with Visual FoxPro 3.0 (and since Visual FoxPro 8.0 not
quite complete in the VFP Installer any more), "Tasmanian Traders" is a
textbook case of a classical order processing system. By means of the free
Sedna Upsizing Wizard we first convert the data model into the equally free
SQL Server Express version. Then, using the free Microsoft Visual Web
Developer 2010 Express, we create a Silverlight business application as our
base. In the next step we migrate all forms of the application to
Silverlight via the free Silverlight Wizard of the dFPUG and then we check
the result in various browsers in Windows and MacOS. In other words: With
these tools, converting the user interface and the data storage of a VFP
application (upsizing from VFP-DBF to client/server) into an Internet
application which runs on different operating systems and in different
browsers is feasible, it will run and can be demonstrated! And you find all
the required components, free, on the USB stick accompanying the roadshow.
Thus you can, for example, check whether the layout of your existing forms
has been completely duplicated.
Migration of a VFP application into a Silverswitch solution for Visual
Studio
Saturday, 3:45 - 5:00
Converting forms and databases is a nice first step, but we need a
complete application with all the usual standard functionality! And the
standard functions includes a user login and user management as well as a
toolbar (with XAML icons) for navigation and filtering, a (data-driven) Open
dialog for forms, and especially an MDI user interface for the multiple,
parallel opening of forms. We'd like to resize these forms and open the same
form multiple times. By means of the VFX Silverlight Wizard we convert
Tastrade as our sample VFP application once again, but this time into our
Silverswitch solution for Visual Studio. Our second conversion has something
special about it: We can work with DBF as well as with client/server,
switching between both, according to the customer's requirements, and even
if it was only a DBF-based application before. Our Silverswitch Solution
extends Silverlight by all the named features. Beyond that there is another
form of deployment: Cloud computing. This will also be briefly demonstrated.
Extending a Silverlight application with a webcam and multi-touch
Saturday, 5:15 - 5:45
We don't just change, we step up! We'd have a hard time explaining to our
customers that the Visual FoxPro developers regrettably have to change their
development environment. So it will look much better if we show the
customers new features which were not available so far. We modernize
our applications to enable customers to use webcams, picture recognition
(e.g. for bar codes) and especially multi-touch. Let us take a brief look
which new features we will be able to deliver to our customers soon or a bit
later.
Usage of VFP code in the back-end of Silverswitch applications
Saturday, 5:45 - 6:30
Currently the market sees numerous new products that want to open up the
brave new Internet world to us in free demonstrations, but they do not
support FoxPro code or FoxPro tables and they do not permit free
distributing. We want to use DBF directly, use our code in the back-end, use
our business logic in VFP, keep the way our forms are controlled. Above all,
we basically want to keep programming in VFP, the language in which we are
ahead of the pack. We want to keep doing all that although we build new
applications, support modern software architectures, and offer
browser-independent Internet apps. And we want to achieve that in a parallel
operation of the existing applications. What we especially don't want is to
start over from zero in a different programming language. Therefore our
business logic arrives in a VFP COM server and, for the purpose of a
switch-over capability of the data storage, in cursor adapters. Of course
you can also implement direct DBF access in the back-end by USE / SEEK /
SCAN. Structured legacy code can be taken over into a VFP COM server
(without controlling the user interface). The simple call happens via our
Action button which from the Internet user interface directly runs business
logic at the back-end.
Programming VFP Code in the front-end of Silverswitch applications
Sunday, 8:30 - 9:45
We don't just have business logic, but also a lot of code for refreshing
and validating in the user interface. Using the exclusive GUINEU
Silverswitch version we can convert this code and execute it as an .FXP file
in the browser at the client. To that end, a multitude of Visual FoxPro
commands and functions are natively available. You can also write code in C#,
though. This approach will be briefly demonstrated, too, because some
requirements can be fulfilled faster that way. And in both cases you can
make use of the Visual FoxPro COM server in the back-end, within the
multi-tier architecture of the Silverswitch solution.
Conversion of a VFX application into a Silverswitch solution for Visual
Studio
Sunday, 10:00 - 11:15
Our Silverswitch solution addresses all FoxPro developers, but users of
our framework Visual Extend (aka VFX) will find it a little bit easier
because the applications have a uniform structure. Thus arises a whole lot
of automatically migrateable power features of VFX such as document
containers, pictures (Up-/Download), incremental searching in grids and
sorting by a column header click. Equally important are table-controlled
pick lists and ready-to-use text boxes for Skype, e-mail, Internet,
calculator, date selection, date/time selection and further controls. Apart
from that, we can locally control Word, Excel, Outlook, Powerpoint, and
Mappoint; not bad for an Internet application! And our application shall
run multilingually, with a localization at runtime. Lots of elements from
VFX for VFP apps can be taken over automatically. As far as it makes sense
and is feasible, this will be made available in the future for pure VFP apps
as well, via switches.
Note: With the VFX form builders you can create e.g. a new layout for
basic data forms very quickly. The intermediate step via VFX may perhaps
sound a bit like a detour, but it's often the faster way.
Converting reports to Silverswitch and running VFP reports in
Silverswitch
Sunday, 11:30 - 12:15
In Silverswitch there are two basic ways of report output: running
existing reports in the back-end or converting existing reports to
Silverswitch. We show you the results of these two approaches. A third one
consists in the grid reports, a powerful professional feature which you will
see as well in a short demonstration.
What else do I need to know?
Sunday, 12:15 - 12:45
Closing session, questions and answers about the Silverswitch Roadshow.