David Stevenson's Talking Fox

News from Southwest Fox, at last!

2007-10-23T01:04:00.001-04:00

If, like me, you've been starved for some news out of Arizona at the Southwest Fox Conference, just head over to Steve Bodnar's blog to read some excellent posts. I had been looking around for something, anything from the conference, and the silence has been deafening. Evidently, I was looking in all the wrong places.

I've done conference reporting before (as an official reporter and also as a volunteer contributor to the Universal Thread), so I know it isn't easy to attend conference sessions and also capture some of the essence and publish it for the general Fox public. I had hoped that Southwest Fox would have some official reporters posting daily somewhere but I haven't found any such "official" coverage yet.

If someone knows of such a place, please let me know. Meanwhile, thanks to Steve for helping to fill in the blanks. I really wanted to attend this conference, but a heavy work schedule made that impossible this year. I'm glad to read that the conference was exciting and filled with great information -- and I expected no less than that from organizers Rick, Doug and Tamar.

Next year, Arizona.

A Wrong Set Order and a Big Assumption

2007-10-16T23:44:00.001-04:00

I'm feeling a little bit embarrased right now, but maybe you'll get a chuckle out of my missteps tonight.

Put these ingredients together and see what you get:

A SQL Update statement that has been in operation for over a year with no errors from a .NET application talking to VFP tables via the OLE DB Provider.
A VFP reserved word as one of the fieldnames, specifically "order", resulting in "set order = 70" as part of the update statement.
Five new fields added to the table and therefore to the update statement in .NET.
Update error "syntax error" when testing the Save function with the new fields.
A big assumption by the programmer that the problem must be with one of the newly added fields.

Result: Over 2 hours of frustration working in the .NET debugger, stepping through code, checking parameter values being created by my .NET data access code... all the while assuming that the problem MUST be with one of the new fields.

Finally, I tried the complete update statement with values in a simple VFP test program run from the command window. WOW! Syntax error, with the phrase "order = 70" highlighted in the code window.

Another big assumption -- it must be an SP2 beta problem. I wonder if they fixed it in the final release? Let's check on the other computer that still has SP1... oops, doesn't work there either.

Then, the lights went on upstairs, a new day dawned in my brain, and my heart sank.

What if the update statement never really worked at all, even during the year that the application has been in use on the customer's website? It all seems so very logical now, considering that the table being updated is a very static lookup table. The customer has certainly added lots of new categories, but evidently has never had a reason to edit the title or order of any existing categories, so the error went unnoticed until now.

The purest fix would be to rename the field, but that's not going to happen. There are too many pieces of legacy code, including ASP.NET, ASP and Web Connection, that are reading that table right now and I'm not about to upset all of that for a purer approach. When this rewrite is up and live and the old code is gone forever, maybe then I'll go for purity and change the fieldname. But for now, I'll just add the table name in front of the fieldname in the update statement and all will be well -- until the next big assumption bites me!

update categories set order = 70, etc... BAD

update categories set categories.order = 70, etc... GOOD.

I'm going to sleep now with my pride wounded, but with my application past this unfortunate incident.

SP2 Released for Visual FoxPro 9

2007-10-12T01:00:00.000-04:00

I was up late working on a project tonight and had a sudden hunch that I should check out the vfoxpro page on msdn.microsoft.com to see if anything was happening with release of SP2 and Sedna.

Bingo! There is now a link for the SP2 final release version and also a new (and very brief) message from Program Manager Milind Lele, where you'll also find a link to the SP2 fixlist.

In a nutshell, SP2 is here, but don't install it over a CTP or Beta verson of SP2. Uninstall those first or you'll be sorry. SP2 requires either the VFP9 Original release version or VFP9 SP1 for a correct installation.

XSource is also coming later and we should see Sedna bits appear sometime soon.

Way to go, Milind and many others who worked on this release. Thanks for all that you have done and continue to do for the VFP community!

My client fell through an FOPEN() hole

2007-06-20T11:02:00.000-04:00

I got a call from a relatively new online reseller client whose backoffice system was written (by someone else) in VFP. The orders they receive from their Amazon store have to be updated with shipping information and tracking numbers in Amazon's system. This is done when they enter the tracking number into a VFP form and click Save: the form code creates an XML order fulfillment file in a drive-mapped server folder, where it is picked up and sent to Amazon by an automated process.

They were alerted recently to the fact that their order fulfillments were not reaching Amazon, so I dug into the old code to see what the matter might be. Here is the essential code that saves the generated XML into a file:

lfhan = FCREATE(this.xmlfile)
=FWRITE(lfhan,this.xmlstring)
=FCLOSE(lfhan)

Assuming that this.xmlfile = "x:\feeds\orders\_1x3d8sfx.xml" can you guess the problem?

After looking at those three lines of code for a couple of minutes, I realized that the problem could be a missing drive mapping to drive "x" on the computer running the process. Because the code does not check to see if "lfhan" = -1 (problem creating file), the next line calls FWRITE (and doesn't check the number of characters written, which is zero in this case), then FCLOSE does nothing (since there is nothing to close).

No errors show up to the user and weeks pass before the problem comes to the surface.

Because such a complex, automated system was brought to its knees by a simple programmer oversight, I've resolved to "get it right" the first time in my work by coding in anticipation of errors instead of coding by oversight.

Visual FoxPro Sedna and SP2 betas are available

2007-06-15T14:03:00.000-04:00

The Visual FoxPro Sedna and SP2 betas are both available for download at:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=05a0e7c9-43c1-417f-8810-ae7d7c66bac8&displaylang=en&tm

There is a LONG list of SP2 bug fixes in one of the four downloadable files. Although many of them seem to be obsure bugs you aren't very likely to encounter, there are some that sound pretty important or helpful.

One fix that particularly interested me: the ability to change the XMLName property (don't forget to use STRCONV to make the name Unicode) of an XMLTable or XMLField object that is already contained in the Tables or Fields collection when using XMLAdapter.

Previously, we had to get an object reference to the XMLTable or XMLField object, then remove it from the collection, change the name, then add it back to the collection, which of course changed the order of the objects in the collection. This fix is a very nice enhancement if it works (I haven't tested it yet).

So why would you want to change the XMLName property anyway? Either to change the name of the XML tag when creating an XML file from a VFP table or cursor, or to use the XMLNameIsXPath property in conjunction with XMLName to point to a certain place in the XML document (using an XPath statement) when reading from an XML document into a VFP cursor.

So, what's your favorite fix in the list going to be? Take a look and see what's there.

Thanks, VFP Team, for this great package of fixes and enhancements!

Major VFP News from Redmond - Good and Bad (Sad)

2007-03-13T22:33:00.000-04:00

Alan Griver (YAG) and the Microsoft Visual FoxPro Team announced to VFP MVPs tonight at the MVP Summit several news items related to the future of VFP. There is good news and there is sad news.

1) It's now official -- there will be no VFP 10. This has been known pretty well for some time by all but the most stubbornly optimistic among us, but had never been officially stated by Microsoft. Today it is official.

2) Service Pack 2 (SP2) for VFP9 will be released by the end of Summer, 2007, with a goal of working through as many bugs as possible between now and then. Special focus is on VISTA compatibility and the team needs feedback right away from anyone encountering bugs running VFP9 apps on VISTA.

3) The SEDNA project (the official Microsoft release of VFP9 add-ons) will also be released by the end of Summer, 2007, and it will be FREE! Earlier discussions had hinted that Microsoft might charge for Sedna, but it will instead be available as a free download.

4) The SEDNA project will be released to the community as an open source project, meaning that all of the code included in it will be available for maintenance and enhancement by the community via projects to be set up on CodePlex, the site of the VFPX open source project. Details will be released later about how the SEDNA projects will be managed on CodePlex, but regardless of any future development, you will still be able to download the initial, official Microsoft release of SEDNA as a baseline that will be supported by Microsoft along with VFP9 until 2015.

5) As previously stated, VFP9 will be supported until 2010 in normal support mode and until 2015 in extended support mode. VFP9 will continue to be available as a standalone product for several more years, but the exact date of its discontinuance as a product will be announced at a later date. However, VFP9 will continue to be available in MSDN Subscriptions until the extended support runs out in 2015.

6) The VFP MVP program will continue, so the community will benefit from MVPs with VFP as a specialty.

YAG spent a good part of the day talking with various representatives of the press before meeting with MVPs at a 5pm VFP Team Meeting to explain the news being announced today. YAG's blog contains the only official announcement so far, although the news will appear on the Microsoft VFP site very soon.

Mary Jo Foley, who has written many articles about VFP and Sedna, has written about today's announcement on her blog ("Microsoft to release FoxPro ‘Sedna’ as Shared Source"), emphasizing the open source aspect of the story.

For many of us in the room tonight, it was a bittersweet moment -- being there with VFP team members who are just like family to us and sharing with them some laughs, and also sharing a sense of sadness at the impending end of an era. Sure, VFP support from Microsoft will go on, and the community will continue to support the product, but the finality of no new release from Microsoft beyond SP2 and Sedna is a truly sad moment.

Still, it's extraordinary that the product has morphed and wiggled its way to release after release over the years -- spanning well over a decade under Microsoft's support. That's a long time for any software product. And the the fact that Sedna is being released to the community as a FREE download and also as open source is very good news for every VFP user!

We asked some questions about the VFP Team and their responsibilities, and here's the scoop. The core team and testing team and working hard on SP2 and Sedna from now through release, but by the end of the summer, they will be moving on to other projects for the bulk of their time. There will still be a VFP "alias" for email circulation internally at Microsoft so that if Support Services identify a critical bug that cannot be worked around, the issue can be escalated internally via the email alias and those with VFP C++ experience (namely Calvin Hsia, Aleksey Tsingauz and Richard Stanton) can handle the issues that are escalated up from Support Services.

All three of the core coders named above are already working part-time on various aspects of the VB.NET implementation of the ground-breaking Language Integrated Query (LINQ) feature of the Visual Studio "Orcas" release, and they will likely continue those involvements when the VFP release cycle winds down later this year. Their years of experience working with the integrated data language in VFP will help to make VB.NET's LINQ integration spectacular and very compelling for VFP coders who decide to add .NET to their toolkits.

To all the VFP team members, both present and past: Thanks for all you have done to deliver such a fabulous development product to us year after year. You are all awesome!

Now, back to work. I've got several VFP9 projects underway at the moment, and I expect that to be the case for years to come.

Dave Crozier's Prague DEVCON Report

2006-09-12T08:27:00.000-04:00

Dave Crozier has just blogged about the first day of the Prague VFP DevCon, with lots of interesting details from Alan Griver's keynote and a few of the first sessions.

You might want to keep an eye on Dave's blog for the next reports.

One of the most interesting parts of the keynote relates to interop between VFP and WinForms, but if you haven't heard much about the details of Sedna yet, you'll learn a lot from this article. (However, Dave's comments about the name "VFP10" may be a bit imaginative -- I think YAG probably just used the term "next release" as Dave noted, but I could be wrong. Time will tell.)

Excellent reporting, Dave. I really appreciate the time you put into this and look forward to the next installment.

Getting an Integer Count(*) from the VFP OLE DB Provider in .NET

2006-07-18T16:54:00.000-04:00

I'm working today on an ASP.NET project that is using the VFP OLE DB provider to talk to VFP tables also used by a VFP7 Web Connection web app. When testing a method to get a count of records matching a certain foreign key, I got a "specified cast is not valid" error message with these lines of C# code when it hit the last line:

OleDbCommand cmd = new OleDbCommand(
  "select count(*) from courses " +
  "join categorylink on " +
  "courses.topicid = categorylink.topicid " +
  "where categorylink.CategoryID = ?", cn);
cmd.Parameters.Add("@CategoryID", 
  OleDbType.Integer).Value = CategoryID;
cn.Open();
return (int)ExecuteScalar(cmd);

A quick Google search of "VFP OLE DB ExecuteScalar" led me to a helpful post by Colin Nicholls, where he shows that the VFP Provider returns a .NET Decimal data type for the count(*) through ExecuteScalar. Colin's solution was to use an explicit conversion from decimal to integer, so I followed his hints and started changing my several Count methods to use this instead:

int resultCount = 
  System.Decimal.ToInt32( (Decimal)ExecuteScalar(cmd) );
return resultCount;

Partway through converting the code, I ran across these lines and realized that THEY were working just fine in returning an Integer datatype via ExecuteScalar (this code grabs the highest PK to increment it for an insert because the old app didn't use AutoIncrement keys):

OleDbCommand cmd = new OleDbCommand(
  "select top 1 ID from categories order by ID Desc", cn);
cn.Open();
int OldHighID = (int)ExecuteScalar(cmd);

So, what was the difference? Obviously, it's not that ExecuteScalar via VFP OLE DB can't return an Integer -- just that it was not returning an Integer for the Count(*) statement. The ID field in the second statement was already Integer type, and it was handled by the cast to int with no problems.

A quick check in VFP9 showed that the select statement with Count(*) gives you a cursor with the count populated into a Numeric(10) field. That led to an AHA moment. Because I'm using the VFP9 version of the Provider, the new CAST() function is available, so I left the original .NET code as it was and just replaced

select count(*) from courses...

with this:

select cast(count(*) as Integer) from courses...

Problem solved and lessons learned.

PS -- Take note of the use of "?" as a parameter in the select statement instead of using .NET's usual @CategoryID syntax in the SQL statement. VFP can't handle the named parameters, so you use one or more ? params and make sure you add the Parameters to the Command object in the correct order.

Good info on Craig Boyd's user group presentation

2006-05-19T10:49:00.000-04:00

Rick Schummer has blogged several entries (all dated May 18) about Craig Boyd's presentation that night at the Detroit VFP user group. You can find all six of Rick's entries about the meeting here.

One interesting note is that although VFP's XP themes support allows VFP to take on most of the Windows Vista look and feel (because the old APIs are automatically mapped to new Vista APIs), there are some incompatibilities. According to Craig (who is working on contract with Microsoft on the Vista Toolkit for VFP part of the upcoming Sedna release), those Vista API incompatibilities will be addressed in the VFP SP2 service pack that is now being worked on by the VFP Team.

This is all very good news and shows that Microsoft is serious about making sure VFP apps will be as compatible as possible with Windows Vista. In fact, I'm very excited about the possibilities for VFP apps to take advantage of Vista features via the Vista Toolkit.

Universal Thread Magazines are now FREE!

2006-03-28T11:09:00.000-05:00

Michel Fournier has announced that the Universal Thread .NET and VFP magazines are now freely available (including back issues) to anyone with a UT login (including the basic, free login).

This is a great deal and is well worth your time. There are some great articles included in the archive, and I'm sure there will be many more on the way with the newly-expanded base of readers making the magazine more attractive for writers.

If you don't yet have a free UT login, you can sign up easily to access the UT message boards and magazines at www.universalthread.com.

Way to go, Michel!

Grigore Dolghin planning for Romanian VFP DEVCON

2006-03-28T10:55:00.000-05:00

Grigore Dolghin from Romania has just reported on the Profox email list that a very successful one-day Romanian VFP conference was held on March 25 and that he is now making plans for a full 100-percent VFP conference later this year or early next year.

You can read some brief comments from speaker Uwe Habermann about the recent one-day conference here.

I'm very interested in this upcoming conference because it might give me a great reason to visit some dear Romanian friends if I am able to attend. I'll announce the dates here when they have been decided.

Kevin Cully's blog, FoxForward conference, dev tool ideas

2006-01-05T16:30:00.000-05:00

My good friend Kevin Cully in Atlanta surprised me with the fact that he has a blog that I didn't know anything about. You should add this one to your list of Fox community blogs.

Two posts on the blog caught my attention in particular. First, Kevin mentions that he is working on ideas for a FoxForward Conference in Atlanta this year. We discussed this a couple of times recently when I saw Kevin at the Atlanta Fox User Group, and I hope he can find the right mix of speakers, venue, timing, and pricing model to make it a success.

Also, Kevin posted some great food for thought in "What I Want (in a development tool/toolset)".

New VFP9 SP1 XSource download and modified license

2006-01-05T14:23:00.000-05:00

Ken Levy has just announced a new VFP9 SP1 XSource download, which includes the source code to various "XBase" parts of VFP9 that were affected by the SP1 updates. Also included is a new license agreement specifically for the XSource download, which overrides the normal license agreement to allow distribution of modified versions of the XSource components.

This is a major step forward, allowing the community to legally distribute customized versions of VFP's XBase tools. (For those not familiar with what we're talking about -- VFP consists of a core EXE, plus other tools in the User Interface (IDE) that are written in VFP code -- thus the saying that parts of VFP are written in VFP.)

More details are included in Ken's January letter.

Check out Bill Sanders' TerraFox site

2005-11-18T09:11:00.000-05:00

There is a new Fox-related site/portal/whatever, started by Bill Sanders, at TerraFox.net. The link routes to Bill's EFGroup site, where TerraFox is hosted.

I haven't had time to explore it yet, but he's put out a call for info to be posted, including entries for something called a FoxGuide. This is on my list of sites to explore when I get a few minutes.

Free FoxTalk article: Bo Durban: Add Rich Text Format (RTF) to VFP 9 Reports

2005-11-02T06:26:00.000-05:00

This month's free FoxTalk article is from Bo Durban, who demonstrates a clever method for including Rich Text Format (RTF) content on VFP9 reports. His approach to the challenge takes care of dynamic height adjustments and page overflow by using reportlistener methods and an API call to the Rich Edit Active-X control.

One of the joys of serving as FoxTalk's editor was working with the authors, especially those who had not been in print before or had been out of publishing action for a while. I'm glad that Bo agreed to "run the gauntlet" and put in writing some of the secrets he used in his Moxie Objects for Visual FoxPro Reports, a cool product that may interest you.

Including Rich Text Format (RTF) content on Visual FoxPro reports has long been a difficult task. While it can be done in a limited way with a general field and an OLEBound control, that approach can't handle dynamic height and page overflow. By using a VFP 9 custom report listener and a little-known Windows message call to the Rich Edit control, Bo Durban provides just what you need to reliably include RTF text in your reports.

Enjoy!

FoxTalk gets a new editor

2005-10-31T13:00:00.000-05:00

Foxtalk will have a new editor, beginning with the upcoming December issue, and I'm happy to announce that Rainer Becker is the man for the job.

While I have immensely enjoyed my "tour of duty" for the past nineteen issues, an overloaded personal and work schedule have made it increasingly difficult to devote the time and focus to FoxTalk that its readers and publisher deserve. It is with mixed feelings that I step aside and "pass the torch" to the next editor. The fact that I am swamped with VFP development work is a good thing, but it means that I cannot do everything that I would like to do. I am confident that Rainer will continue FoxTalk's long-standing tradition of providing the community with top-notch advanced technical articles.

Rainer is well-known internationally as a leader in the FoxPro community, a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional, a successful businessman, leader of the large dFPUG user group, publisher of a quarterly European FoxPro magazine, organizer of the legendary German Visual FoxPro Conference, and an all-around good guy! He knows all of the top VFP authors and speakers and has an extensive network of European authors who will supplement the team of writers that you are accustomed to seeing in Foxtalk.

I have complete confidence in Rainer's ability and commitment to provide FoxTalk's readers with the very best technical content, and I foresee a bright future for FoxTalk under his leadership. You'll be able to hear more about this editor transition in the next few installments of Andrew MacNeill's TheFoxShow podcasts. Andrew's interview with me will go online right away, to be followed soon by an interview with Rainer.

It has truly been a privilege to work with a long list of top authors who over the past year and a half have shared their wisdom in print as we re-launched the newsletter as FoxTalk 2.0. To all of you in the following list of all-star authors from May, 2004 to November, 2005, I extend my heartfelt thanks: Doug Hennig, Andy Kramek, Marcia Akins, Ted Roche, Cathy Pountney, Ken Levy and the Microsoft VFP Team, Rick Borup, Randy Pearson, Lauren Clarke, Walter Nicholls, Dragan Nedeljkovich, Rick Hodder, Anatoliy Mogylevets, Pradip Acharya, Dave Bernard, Rick Strahl, Art Bergquist, Mark Vroom, Lisa Slater Nicholls, Craig Boyd, Colin Nicholls and Bo Durban.

I urge the community to give your full support to Rainer as he takes the torch and runs like a Fox!

SednaX added to the GotDotNet CodeGallery

2005-10-15T20:35:00.000-04:00

A new SednaX section has been added to the GotDotNet CodeGallery source-sharing site, to be used by the FoxPro community for collaboration on new Sedna features and add-ons for Visual FoxPro 9.

Craig Boyd announced this during his part of the keynote at the SouthWest Fox Conference this weekend, and he has already posted on the site several of the recent add-on projects he has built.

You'll need to apply for membership to the SednaX area -- details are at the link above. Let's all join in and make the buildup to Sedna our community's finest hour (er, couple of years).

Check out the Exciting VFP Solution Explorer Community Effort

2005-10-08T12:43:00.000-04:00

I just heard about the VFP Solution Explorer community project that is headed up by Craig Bailey and Scott Scovell. While they form the core "SE" team, they welcome community involvement in testing, reporting bugs, working on add-ins, suggesting features, and perhaps more.

A portion of the project, FoxTabs, is available for download in a separate Alpha version. Check out the FoxTabs screen shots for a look at your new way of navigating multiple windows in the IDE!

Great work, guys, and thanks to Malcolm Greene for a ProFox post that alerted me to something I might have overlooked otherwise. I'll be watching this with great interest, as it represents the best of the VFP community and is a very viable way for us to improve VFP9 over the next few years.

Free FoxTalk Article: Lisa Slater Nicholls: A Print Job To Call Your Own

2005-10-07T08:59:00.000-04:00

This month's free feature in FoxTalk 2.0 ("A Print Job To Call Your Own") is an exciting explanation (with source code) of controlling your own print job with VFP 9, including the ability to send different printer setup info for individual pages or ranges of pages in the report!

Lisa Slater Nicholls shows the inner workings of a PrintJobListener class and explains how it can switch settings in the middle of a report run. Thanks, Lisa, for providing this important information and code for the benefit of the community.

As is usual with Lisa's articles, this one is full of useful tips and suggestions for how you can add your own specific functionality to this set of code to fine-tune it for your specific needs.

BTW, if you ever wondered if there is a good use for the INSERT BLANK BEFORE command, you'll find it here. :-)

http://tinyurl.com/amfdz

Enjoy!

Republished Blog to Stop Spammer Comments

2005-10-02T22:30:00.000-04:00

I have removed the comments feature from this blog due to a major spike in spam comments over the past week. I apologize for having to take this step, but I will not allow spammers to make use of my search engine listings to promote themselves. I also cannot afford the time it takes to find each unwanted comment and remove it.

I also apologize if my entire blog showed up again as fresh material in your aggregator -- it appears that my only option for removing the comments (and the capability for adding comments) was to republish the entire blog after changing the settings.

Public Beta Available for VFP9 Service Pack 1

2005-09-24T00:51:00.000-04:00

Microsoft has just released a public beta of Service Pack 1 for Visual FoxPro 9 and is asking the Fox community to test it out. The SP1 final release is expected in early December, so the time for testing is now!

You can read a lengthy list of bug fixes and also download the SP1 beta here.

Kudos to the VFP team for making the SP1 Public Beta available for extensive community testing.

New Screencast Video Series: Learning Visual FoxPro

2005-09-11T23:48:00.000-04:00

Craig Boyd has been at it again -- this time burning the midnight (and beyond) oil to produce a new series of screencast videos titled: Learning Visual FoxPro. This is just the first installment for beginners, to be followed by more at beginner, intermediate and advanced levels.

Craig has recently turned out tons of great new material for VFP developers, both on his blog as also in articles written for FoxTalk and other magazines. He'll also be speaking at the Southwest Fox Conference in October, and I'm looking forward to meeting him in person there.

Thanks, Craig, for all you are doing to support the VFP community!

Free FoxTalk Article: Colin Nicholls Extends the Report Builder Multi-Selection Dialog

2005-09-08T10:02:00.000-04:00

This month's FREE FoxTalk article is from Colin Nicholls, who helped put together many of the changes to VFP9's Report System.

Extending the Report Builder's Multiple Selection Dialog

In this article, Colin Nicholls shows you how to extend the VFP 9 Report Builder's Multiple Selection dialog with additional functionality you design. In doing so, he also reveals the secrets of the Report Builder's lookup table, or registry, and demonstrates how you can substitute your own version to customize the Report Builder's native behavior.

Someone's been talking: eWeek reveals details about the .NET "Zorro" (Fox) team

2005-08-26T18:26:00.000-04:00

New details about upcoming Fox-like features in .NET have emerged in today's eWeek article, Fox in Microsoft's Tool-Suite Coop, written by Ziff-Davis reporter Darryl K. Taft.

The article hints at announcements that will be made at next month's PDC Conference, which Taft says his sources tell him will have some content about Visual Studio 2005, but will also focus heavily on the later "Orcas" release.

One of the most interesting things about the article is its reference to what the writer called the "Zorro" team, which evidently has been working on future VB data integration technologies (gee, I wonder what familiar names are on that team?). I'd also be curious to know who is behind the "sources said" in this part of the article:

In Orcas, many of the new and innovative features actually borrow from Microsoft's FoxPro database, sources said.

And the team that has been working on the VB data integration capabilities has been referred to as the "Zorro" team inside Microsoft—in homage to the FoxPro ties, sources said. Zorro is Spanish for fox.

FoxPro and Visual FoxPro are all about data, and in the new world of Visual Basic, data handling and rapid application development become fused, sources said.

As is often the case, reporters not familiar with certain tools or technologies inevitably get something wrong, as in this reference to a future version of FoxPro (I'm sure he was describing Sedna, but called it VFP9):

Despite putting FoxPro features in the key Orcas language, Microsoft has said it will be releasing another version of FoxPro, FoxPro 9.

And finally, it's good to see that those long hours of transcribing my interview with Ken and Yag have been rewarded with extended coverage via the eWeek article:

There also seems to be a move afoot inside Microsoft to break down walls between the FoxPro team and the other Visual Studio data tools teams.

Levy and Alan Griver, who is Microsoft's Visual Studio Data Group manager, were interviewed in the FoxTalk newsletter, and Griver had this to say about Fox collaboration inside the company:

"I made a blog entry a few months ago—not in much detail—that basically talked about Visual Studio Data, which is the team that reports to me. It's a team that is made up of multiple groups, if you will. Fox is one of them, and the Data Tools in Visual Studio is another. I don't believe that there should be a wall between the two teams.

"To that end, some of the Fox people are bringing some of the great capabilities of Fox to .Net. But at the same time, there are people from the Visual Data Tools team who are working now on Fox. It's not a question of resources going only one way from Fox to Visual Studio."

Meanwhile, although Microsoft will discuss Visual Studio 2005, code-named Whidbey, at the PDC, the major focus will be on Orcas, sources said.

Thanks to Atlanta Fox User Group leader Russell Campbell for tipping me off to the eWeek article in an email he sent to the AFUG membership. Here is Russell's probably somewhat-sarcastic comment: "Isn't it great that in 2008 or so, .NET will finally be able to do data somewhat like FoxPro has been doing for a decade or more?"

Ain't it the truth!

Read Calvin's Blog -- VFP Secrets Are Revealed Regularly

2005-08-09T09:31:00.000-04:00

If you are not subscribed to Calvin Hsia's blog, you are missing some great "inside info" about how VFP works. Calvin, who is the Lead Developer on the VFP Team at Microsoft, regularly posts insightful narratives about how he has diagnosed customer problems.

One great example is today's post, Interesting Form Paint Behavior, which explains some mostly-unknown facts about how VFP handles form-painting. Thanks, Calvin, for giving us the benefit of regular brain-dumps.