foxpro.catalyst «

FoxPro workBLOGS and MORE… . . .

Ted Roche updates the Conference Materials section of his site which contains articles, speaker’s notes and white papers.

Foxpro-related reads:

• Visual Foxpro Software Development
• Choose the right Microsoft database for your development needs

VFPConversion.com | I’m hoping though that the said site won’t make you move away from VisualFoxpro but rather enhance your projects and/or make them operate with .NET and other development applications.

But really… almost everything depends on the nature of the project. Each development tool has its strengths and weaknesses. Once you get an overview of the project, you’ll know what tool to use.

Ah well of course… it depends sometimes on the clients too.

What is a C0000005 crash?

Calvin Hsia gives an overview of that crash which you see and read once in awhile in some of the VisualFoxpro-related forums in the ‘net. (Probably next to the Read/Clear Events… I-can’t-view-the-Exe-it-pops-and-disappears question)

Sometimes it is nice to know the brains, the faces and the persons behind the development of a great product. Although currently you can view only one person in the Visual Foxpro section, we can expect more entries in the weeks to come. Here’s the link to Microsoft’s Employee Biographies.

You can find more brains behind the history of VisualFoxpro, Foxpro and DBase at FoxproHistory.org though.

Also… the first set of Channel9 videos which features Ken Levy and YAG can now be downloaded here.

This is still one of those buffered and backlogged blogs of mine. (There’s still one more before I’ll delve into the ‘normal operations’)

A couple of weeks ago, VFUG released their June newsletter which I printed and brought along to read while I was waiting for a bus en route to a client Wednesday last week. The wait was more than two hours so I was able to finish the whole printed newsletter.

There are a number of good read inside that newsletter. On top of the list would be Les Pinter‘s Data Management in Visual FoxPro and Visual Basic .NET which was also included in one of DevTeach Pre-conference training sessions.

I would like so much to comment on how Foxpro one liners are bloated into three or even 20++ lines in .NET (which is quite obvious already) but that would be unfair for .NET for now since I haven’t delve much into it except for the occasional listening to episodes in .NET Rocks!, the .NET overview the Microsoft website gives plus the codes and snippets that I see online and in some .NET-related magazines.

Yes. I haven’t jumped yet into that .NET bandwagon. Quite ironic that years ago I was into this pulling of some friends who are doing things in Clipper 5.2/DOS-related PLs to use Visual-powered tools. And now I’m the one who’s quite hesitating to change the ‘old-school-ic’ ways of mine.

I can give a comparison though between Visual Foxpro and Visual Basic 6 if you like… anytime. But then again I don’t want to ignite a VFP versus VisualBasic in here. Well… not now, so give those flame gears of yours some rest. Besides we all know who’ll emerge on top when we talk about database-related transactions.

Another irony reveals every time I look back and I remember that when we entered a certain university after graduating from college (five of us to be exact), we were the ones who introduced Visual Basic into that environment. It was predominantly VisualFoxpro and Clipper individuals that were existing in that place back then. Now, here I am convincing an old friend who’s still there, to include VisualFoxpro in their curriculum. Quite sad, that not too many institution in this country of ours are into VFP these days.

But still… no worries, child. No worries.

Helpful Foxpro-related articles at LesPinter.com are available for reading.

Two Foxpro-powered minds at Redmond started their own blogs too: Calvin Hsia (Visual Foxpro’s lead developer) and Ken Levy (Microsoft VS Data Product Manager).

You’ve read them blogging before inside the VS Data Team Blogs.

A snip from Jeff Julian’s Blogs:

After the show, I have a new respect for the passion of FoxPro developers. During a panel discussion, they show us .NET panelist that they have had features in their tools, that we are so excited about, for years.

DevEssentials is over… good show

The 46 Best-ever Freeware Utilities. Cephei posted this link inside the Outpost 0725 Forums.

Mary Jo Foley: Visual FoxPro ‘Europa’ Lives.

Visual Foxpro 9.0 Beta Download is now online… and the VFP June Newsletter from VS Data Product Manager Ken Levy as well.

I was reviewing this a while ago: Universal Thread Magazine April 2003. Plus here are some useful Visual Foxpro KB Articles at KBAlertz.com
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This is the Windows 98SE-compatible snippet I use for shutting down the CPU.

procedure SYSTEMSHUTDOWN

#define EWX_LOGOFF 0
#define EWX_SHUTDOWN 1
#define EWX_REBOOT 2
#define EWX_FORCE 4
#define EWX_POWEROFF 8
#define EWX_FORCEIFHUNG 16
declare integer ExitWindows IN user32;
����������integer dwReserved, integer uReturnCode
declare integer ExitWindowsEx IN user32;
����������integer uFlags, integer dwReserved

‘ = ExitWindowsEx(EWX_LOGOFF, 0)
‘ = ExitWindowsEx(EWX_REBOOT, 0)
= ExitWindowsEX(EWX_SHUTDOWN, 0)

EndProc

Note: The html CGIs i’m using auto eliminates * so i’m replacing it with ‘.

There’s a better one which can shutdown Windows XP and Windows 2000 and do a lot more ‘cleaning up’ procedures. I’ll post that one later once I figure out to whom I can give credits for that code.

One of the issues yesterday involves this ‘automatic’ shutting down of computers at a given time. There were no problems in the client computers but in the server module, which uses a mapped/shared virtually-created-drive approach, it shows this ‘there are n users connecting to this computer… shutting down will make them whine and howl…’ type of error. For a moment there which lasted for 10 minutes or even more, I was formulating solutions and knocking once again on the doors of WinAPI, hoping that there’s a way I could somehow supress that confirmation.

Only to realize that I can make things easier if I set a different shutdown time for the server and make it do the shutdown process after all the client PCs are knocked out.

Yeah… sometimes the best solution to a problem are those little simple things we often overlook.

A snippet compiler application, a dbRepair function from Sergey Karimov (via foxite.com) and John Koziol’s bio at VS Data Team’s WebLog.

That would be our FoxPro-related links for the day.

Wait there’s another one: Pathological Testing for AppDevs. Automatic ‘self-destruct’-related routines in the program once it detects a paranoid user who’s IQ is below three digits is included with this test, right?

Rick Strahl: Is the Rich .NET Client ready yet?

Since the day I upgraded to Visual Foxpro 8, I considered it knocking out VF6 in all departments. And indeed it does prove itself far superior than the last version that was bundled with Visual Studio. That was until yesterday when I discovered that a certain Database Utility application I created could open databases that were corrupted by power interruption and ‘magical reboots’ (possibly caused by computer viruses).

I have already installed NAV on a client’s computer which could possibly have eradicated that ‘magical reboot’ problem but I created a patch still… just in case. Problem is, when I tested it last week on the client’s computer, the patch won’t work so I have to use that old but reliable Database Utility I have created to open the corrupted database and delete the last record which is often a blank one. After that the corrupted database is fixed.

It was yesterday when it came into my mind that probably the reason that UTILS can do these things was because it was compiled in VF6… and after a number of isolating-the-problem experimentation, I found out that the said theory was right. You see, when VF6 encounters a corrupted database, it still opens it during the use DatabaseName line but when you do the database manipulations such as Append Blank/Replace (Add) or Delete it generates an error. With Visual Foxpro 8… once it encounters a corrupted database, even in the start (use DatabaseName line), it generates an error at once.

However Visual Foxpro 8 still has an advantage, it displays the name of the corrupted database while VF6 just points to the line of code where the error occurs. Here are the exact lines:

VisualFoxpro 6

Fatal error: Exception code=C00000FD
Called from – frmProfile.frame.page_03.cmdgc_add.click line 6…
Called from – main line 2…

VisualFoxpro 8

Error loading file – record number 12. FRMPROFILE . Loading form or the data environment : Table ‘f:\hra\communit.dbf’ has become corrupted. The table will need to be repaired before using again.

Combining the strengths of both version, I created a small module patch in VF6, compiled it in .exe form and called it from the main VisualFoxpro 8 module using the ShellExecute API.

DECLARE INTEGER ShellExecute IN shell32.dll ;
INTEGER hndWin, STRING cAction, STRING cFileName, ;
STRING cParams, STRING cDir, INTEGER nShowWin

ShellExecute(0, ‘open’, ‘FIX-0_545.exe’, ”, ”, 1)

I’m still studying how the Flush+TableUpdate approach could also help solve this problem but for now I’m using the patch above and an auto backup feature that copies the database to a different folder every five hours.

I also added two features to that Database Utility application yesterday, a feature that saves the structure of the database and the indexes along with it which is useful for documentation and reference related things and a MERGE databases feature. It was a special addition since it was done with my little Angel on my lap playing with a diskette and a floppy drive while I’m doing it.

Oh… this is great. VFP Automates OpenOffice.org

A new batch of Visual FoxPro 8.0 Samples and Visual Foxpro’s May 2004 Letter from the Editor is out.

Problems of code reliability in Microsoft Visual Foxpro.