foxpro.catalyst «

FoxPro workBLOGS and MORE… . . .

EndIf or End If.

Nice VFP-related blog… even the comments were informative and entertaining.

Related to that blog above is this post by YAG which enumerates some previous Fox developers working on other teams inside MS.

Looks like even Raymond Chen was a former Fox programmer..? (via FoxBlog)

I know I’m quite late on these links.

Even my RSSBandit is barfing out 558 feeds in the VFP folder and 8656 unread feeds all in all.

But I’ll catch up… I’ll catch up.

Ah this one is quite new: Undocumented APIs and 16 bit DLLs.

David and I went to Microsoft TechFest 2005. He’s the speaker for that Visual Foxpro session and I acted as his bodyguard so I can crash in. (If you remember I did blog about that event’s registration being closed before I can register myself.)

But the bodyguard approach was Plan B. One nice employee from Microsoft was kind enough to allow David to bring one companion.

Also, it was the second day of TechFest, so admission was not that tight.

Anyway… we arrived 30 minutes earlier, met Jojo Ayson (Product Manager for Microsoft Business Solutions and Platform Security), chatted for awhile and set the presentation equipments with the help of the hotel/event technical staff (which were good at what they’re doing btw).

The talk went smoothly with David discussing Visual Foxpro related approaches. It was when he presented his MzBot though when the crowd lit up.

Anyway he’ll probably post the powerpoint presentation within the week. (I’ll link to it once it is uploaded.)

There were giveaways… three shirts and two Windows 2003 server books. I was joking with David at the start of the session that we split the books and bring them home.

David gave out questions afterwards… first one was dbf related and off went the first book. The second, third and fourth questions were for the shirt and attendees who took down notes were able to answer them.

I refrained from participating, considering that I was with Mz and I was just a ‘gate-crasher’. (I didn’t even register (I hate sign up forms (online or ‘offline’ (one of those thousand reasons why I hate taxes)))).

Anyway… when the second book was about to be given away, I was whispering these ‘Goodbye-book’ words.

When David asked the last question… ‘When will VFP9 be released?’ Surprisingly, no one raised their hands. So when David told the crowd even the year would do… and no one still attempted to answer… I raised my hand.

For someone who’s monitoring VFP and VFP-related blogs, the question is quite easy to answer. I even included the exact date it was ‘RTM’-ed (Released to Manufacturing).

But then again… in that situation, probably even if I mumbled the wrong dates, they would still hand out that book to me.

It was meant for me.

Besides, it’s the first time in years I’ve taken a bath very early.

(I’ll post some pics tomorrow if time permits.)

The TechFest 2005 session on Visual Foxpro will be tomorrow from 9AM to 10AM. David Tindugan (Mz/DarkReligion) will be talking on the Best Practices in VFP and other VFP-related topics.

If you’re one of those lucky humans who was able to ‘get in’ before the registration was closed after just five days, be sure to check that session out.

Permutations sample code in Visual Foxpro.

Lack of posts as of late… I know.

It’s a gruesome battle between deadlines (stress the ‘s’) and me. So far the deadlines are clobbering me. The seductive entity known as ‘sleep-sleep-get-more-sleep’ has been helpful to the dark side.

Hopefully I could regain the balance in the force before this month ends.

Today is the 19 of January. Qsez celebrate the liberation from asterisks this very day.

Something to really smile about.

Good news: Microsoft Philippines TechFest 2005 includes a session on Visual Foxpro.

Bad news… registration is already closed. (Due to ‘overwhelming response’ (probably the inclusion of Visual Foxpro has something to do with it))

Perhaps I should accept Mz’s offer to talk in that event to get in, eh?

One more thing… if you’re like me who prefers downloading media files, storing them and watching them later instead of directly playing or streaming it… here’s a direct link to that .wmv file inside that Channel9’s First Look at Visual Foxpro 9 thread.

So… fire up your GetRight Downloader and sniff that link.

(Chan Kok Kiet also posted a direct link to the video stream.)

I’ve been busy with some artworks on Depthcore’s next release and the SeventhSense Project, there are still 114 Foxpro-related feeds inside my RSSBandit reader.

Again… I’ll catch up later.

A couple of days ago I posted some semi-disorganized thoughts about the 2GB-limit on Visual Foxpro databases/tables.

While reading this post about VFP9 on Channe9, I found a link to this article:

The Ultimate Power and Speed of VFP
Handling Extremely Large Data Sets
By Val Matison

It is a very informative read. A must read.

It also discusses areas such as speed (where Foxpro really shines), data compression, data access, maintenance, backup and restore procedures, data integrity, data corruption, security, power and speed and a lot more.

Months ago I was ranting about FoxproAdvisor.com‘s lack of dates on their archived articles. Now I know why it lacks them.

Information about VisualFoxpro is ageless, backward compatible and beyond.

I’m quite late with this but… VISUAL FOXPRO 9 is HERE!

Here’s the VFP9 Product info and the December VFP Newsletter from Ken Levy.

I’ll catch up with some VFP-related links later.

VFP9, space-baby!

Craig Berntson explains about Visual Foxpro/Foxpro and its 2GB database limit.

Honestly when I first heard about programmers complaining about the 2GB limit, my first reaction was who in Earth’s time would like a 2GB database?

That’s HUGE. Too huge.

That would slow down things that even Foxpro’s legendary Rushmore would have a hard time grinding.

Besides, there are tons of workaround for this limit.

Which I believe is not exactly a workaround per se, but a more effective means of solving the problem.

A better approach… a faster approach.

Better… that It should be the first choice instead of opting for the database to 2Giga-bloat that much in the future.

(‘Giga-bloat’… I like that.)

As one of my friends would say, Warcraft III’s greatest strength is its unit limits. Unlike the first version of Warcraft, where you can train warriors and footmen, drag them all to the opponent’s camp, find some soda or coffee while they’re marching forward… and when you’re back the enemy is leveled to the ground.

Sans the challenge…

But no… the 2GB limit can be seen not as a weakness… but rather a strength.

A well planned and normalized database will most likely prevent things from reaching that limit.

Memos and general fields or any objects that tends to bloat the database should be saved on a different location with only the path and the filename stored in the database.

No need to cramp all those jpegs and bitmaps into the database.

You can even link to external textfiles if you like instead of opting for the memo field in some cases. You can even separate the primary key and the memo field on a different normalized database if needed.

Of course a developer/programmer should think of the future… database files do grow.

Like a pineapple pie in the middle of the sacred forest… it grows.

But then, you can chop things… save records in tables created dynamically everyday.

You can even do it monthly… or store database separately by year… by month. That would even make things more organized. More compartmentalized.

You can easily create a ‘fetching algorithm’ that gathers only the necessary fields from the chopped databases let’s say for a report… or a statistical view.

The solutions are endless…

Yet inspite of these solutions, you still find yourself where you would still prefer databases that can handle more than 2GB in size, and chopping just won’t do… or normalizing, or calling the thundergods of database compression… there’s always MSSQL, MySQL, FireBird and the likes.

Pardon the disorganized thoughts… it is 3:33AM already, I can’t think well and I can’t find a way to knock myself down to sleep.

Calvin Hsia is on a roll. First he posted the Intellisense: inspecting live objects information a couple of days ago. I refrained from linking to it then since almost every Foxpro-related blog I have on my RSSBandit points to it already.

Today, he discusses Using non-Automation compatible types and Creating mailing labels automatically.

Why do we always link to Calvin Hsia you ask?

Well aside from his being the Visual Foxpro lead developer, his blogs are very helpful and informative.

(Insert your adjective here) programmers/developers always look beyond on how to just merely use a thing. We are also interested on why things are done that way.

Looking back to my high school algebra teacher… it’s more of a ‘how was the formula derived?’ and not only how to use the formula.

So why the link again..?

If the lead developer of the programming language of your choice shows passion towards his work, reflects that passion through sharing, sharing snippets, sharing informative stuff, sharing the VisualFoxpro experience… you tell me and I’d be glad to link to him/her.

It’s not only Calvin Hsia who shares these things though… the whole VS Data Team has a blog which includes Ken Levy, YAG and John Koziol from the VFP team.

… ah one of those reasons we prefer VisualFoxpro.

It’s a Saturday, and I’m turning off my coding mode for a while. I’ll turn on the GFX mode and finish up the SeventhSense 2004 Project before the 2004 part of the title becomes obsolete.

Andrew MacNeill: What VFP 9’s Removal of Array Limits Really Means.

Two very informative posts from two VisualFoxpro development team brains: The Limits of Architecture versus The Architecture of Limits (John Koziol) and Unbelievable performance gain by changing an Algorithm (Calvin Hsia).

One thing really good about VisualFoxpro is… every release, things get faster, performance improved… limits removed.

New versions = faster performance + increased productivity.

Unlike other PLs which tend to bloat, hog too much memory, slow things down and requires major upgrades to the existing hardware requirements… Visual FoxPro maintains its ode to speed and performance.

Rock on!

VFP9 is near…

Doug Hennig: Extending the VFP 9 IDE with MENUHIT and MENUCONTEXT. (via Microsoft Visual Foxpro Developer Center/FoxTalk)

From C2.com, some information on VisualFoxpro and Foxpro.

Also from the same site, I found links to Visual XBase++ (a replacement for Clipper 5.2 (Yup I’ve used that too before I upgraded to Visual Foxpro 5.0)) and FlagShip.

FlagShip:

An xBase dialect evolved in the Unix environment and now available for Windows platforms.

For long-time Clipper, dBase, and FoxPro programmers, quite possibly the way to continue using several years of accumulated skills and bodies of code in current OS environments.

Link

Interesting. Now if only I could squeeze a little more time.

But then again you’d probably delve into some Calvin Hsia code snippets and insights.

Robert Scoble:

“Ken Levy gave me a demo of this last week. It’s a very impressive tool. Has visual inheritance down to the button level where Visual Studio only has inheritance down to the form level. Among other things.”

Link

OK… that would be more than enough to wash out the effects of viewing this.

Do It Now by Steve Pavlina. (via Sacha Chua)

Can People Really Program 80+ Hours a Week..?

Slashdot already has tons of insightful, funny and drug-infused comments so I won’t delve into the logic, statistics, effects and mechanics of working 80+ hours a week.

Hmm… 80 hours a week is 80/7, that would be 11.42857 hours a day if we include the day of rest (Sunday). It would be 13.33333 if it’s 80/6 though.

To be exact my TimeCalcAdvanced algorithm shows it’s 11:25:43 hours in 7 days and 13:20:00 hours in 6 days.

Let’s assume that half of the programmer population has a life and half doesn’t, so let’s average these two results. With that we’ll get an average of 12:22:52 hours.

12:22:52 hours in a day in program mode.

Which makes me think if we should include the time when the programmer is ‘programming’ himself waiting for the mood to swing in? For the chi to re-align or something..?

Should we also include the times when he/she is pretending to be doing programs?

OK… enough of this already.

When I saw this feed on my RSSBandit last night, I wanted to go into a quest… to try if I could code for 12-13 hours for 7 days. I even started doing it from 12:01AM to 2AM but after three simultaneous calls from clients this afternoon, each separated by 2 hour bus rides, which are scheduled for next week, I don’t think I could complete that quest.

Besides as I am writing this part of the blog (I multitask, browse and watch Shrek 2 on DVD) it is 11:49PM already and I’ve done only 8.5 hours coding for this day.

I have this Excel file where I scribble down the accomplishments of the day… per hour, starting April of this year so I have some ‘stats’. Also from the same file I found out that it’s either I code straight for the day and am too tired to code at night… or bum around all day and work at night until the wee hours of the morning to make up for it.

The most I’ve done is 11 hours in five days last June but that was only good for 5 out of 30 days in that month.

I cannot remember too clearly if I have done that much lengthy coding during my previous work.

But then again… like anything in this world, it’s the quality that counts… and not the quantity.

Even my pterodactyl pet knows that.

… and breathes that principle.

Fox-download: Dave Bower’s Losing Focus Presentation. (via Sydney VFP User Group)

Three more days before OzFox!

More codes from Calvin Hsia… this time this involves screen saver tricks.

Running dynamic code with ExeScript (from Andrew MacNeill).

Chan Kot Kiet posted some Graph-related approaches you can use with Visual Foxpro.

Taking a break from the regular midnight coding to post this: Visual FoxPro 9.0: Still Here, Still Relevant.

Every FoxPro blog is linking to that article by David T. Anderson already.

A highly recommended read for the ‘renegades’.

I’d like to post parts of that article here and discuss some points but at 2:37AM I still have to wrap up a lot of things.

I’ll give an overview though of what I am currently tackling at the moment.

Imagine a project where you thought you have planned everything already… the database structures and flows, made things ready for networking… optimized the filter/querying speed… tweaked a lot of parts, normalized and de-normalized carefully the databases and laid things out so that future upgrades would not be difficult for your system.

Fast forward by 17 months in the future (which is the present time)… you’re in a situation where three offices separated by two and a half blocks apart will be using your program. Each office has the power/rights to edit mostly any part of the database…

… which is cool since you’re application is ‘network ready’ already… problem is there are no immediate plans to setup one yet and to interconnect these offices.

The diskette/log-modification was part of the worst case scenario during the planning phase but I wasn’t thinking I’d be diving into that.

Until now…