foxpro.catalyst «

FoxPro workBLOGS and MORE… . . .

Foxite sports a new look. It loads faster… more organized.

And the previous HTML links still work. Great job!

Craig Bailey: Microsoft supports VFP.

Indeed.

But just look at the FoxPro team. If a company handles a good team such as that for ten years… that’s part of the support. As long as the developers and managers (product/project) are there, relax and fire up some codes instead of worrying too much.

Hentzenwerke Publishing releases ‘Taming Visual Foxpro’s SQL‘.

Learning Visual FoxPro Videos. It’s about time.

Imagine this.

You’re working your arse off in a form with multiple tabs with each tab having their own reports with spider-like relationship settings in the reports’ data environments.

(You use RELATIONs instead of VIEWs because you feel like VIEWs are for lazy bummers and RELATIONs are cool because they’re ‘old school’)

Now after hours of creating, re-aligning, adjusting your reports holding more than 10 normalized tables each. You found out that after going to Tab-02 and previewing the report, going to Tab-07 fires up this error:

Target table is already engaged in a relation.

You already have SET RELATION TO in place but still the error shows.

And SET RELATION OFF won’t work. I wonder why it is even included in the help file.

You ‘google-d’ the ‘net. Taking you to places that list errors but with no definite answers because probably this was an easy problem and was solved years before.

You found a couple of links that are unrelated and refer to problems occuring only in version 4. Now you wonder if there was really a version 4 out there hidden from the minds of the humans which will be used in the up coming alien invasion.

The closest you can get is a link to Microsoft’s MSDN site which you can also find in your help file.

You got irked and you tried to CLOSE DATABASES and fire up your DatabaseInitialization() routine every time you execute the print command.

But then that’s too lame. Although VFP’s speed is legendary and the delay is negligible… you don’t want to tarnish FoxPro’s name with a lame code patch manuever.

Now in case in the future someone stumbles upon this problem, decides to search the ‘net, wants to join the old-school-frat (when database development tools were dedicated to speed and the proper use of resources and backward compatibility) and is allergic to views, I hope the following steps could be of help.

Fire up LIST STATUS. If it scrolls too fast, dump it in a text file.

list status to file SEXYDUMP.txt

Survey the tables with RELATIONs. Do a search on the word ‘RELATION’. Note each table name and do a SET RELATION TO in every table in your noted list.

select Table01
set relation to
select Table02
set relation to

Once I can find a faster way, I’ll post. Or if you have one, feel free to e-mail me… and I’ll be glad to update this.

Of course… better you learn VIEWs. It’s an alien technology to begin with.

What’s New in Nine: Visual FoxPro’s Latest Hits. A copy of the book is now online.

VFP9 SP1 (Beta)

Calvin Hsia: Binding to Internet Explorer Instances.

Microsoft Visual FoxPro September 2005 – Letter from the Editor… is online.

This, I like… so I’m posting the lines again on a separate blog entry:

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.

Source: Fox in Microsoft’s Tool-Suite Coop.

Did I even mention that things will be ‘normal’ this week..?

But that’s just us.

Here are some Fox-related stuff: Fox in Microsoft’s Tool-Suite Coop.

This however is quite sad. (‘Another leaves the den’ entry (I can’t seem to connect to DevBlog’s archived entry right now))

The ‘foxpro-warp’ of the day: SPS: Visual FoxPro Grid – A Tip and a Calendar Class.

‘Foxpro-warps’ are pixelcatalyst.Lair‘s equivalents of ‘pixelwarps’… comic-warps… photowarps. Whatever.

Visual FoxPro DevCon 2005 Interview with Alan Griver and Ken Levy.

New Visual FoxPro 9 case studies. (via Ken Levy)

Calvin Hsia: Create thumbnails of all your digital photos in a single table… with Visual FoxPro and GDIPlus Foundation Class.

Speaking of GDIs, here’s something to look forward to.

‘Only the strongest will survive…’

One of the loudest lines from the second track inside the Halo 2 soundtrack. I haven’t played the game though (nor am I into computer games for that matter) but I have a copy of the music that comes with that game.

And I must say it blends well with a coding environment. The type of music that fires up and ignites syntax and semantics formation and other countless music-fueled-sound-intoxicated-coding-related tasks. (see Music… war and neurons)

I’m adding this to my collection of coding soundtracks which include, but is not limited to… Nine Inch Nails/Puddle of Mudd/The Crow soundtracks/Industrial themes, the Swordfish soundtrack (one of the best power-up-your-coding-tracks), Paul Oakenfold beats and trance, Enigma and of course U2 (with that Go Home Slaine Castle concert).

‘Only the strongest will survive…’

When it comes to PLs, my bet is on C++, Delphi, Python… and of course, by this time you’ve guessed it already… Visual FoxPro.

(I’ll probably include CSharp once it hits version 3.00 when parts of the legendary FoxPro technology is injected into it.)

But just because I did not mention your choice of PL, doesn’t mean it is weak and I have disrespected your soul. VB is still one of the most widely used PLS around and Java, which two of my friends consider a ‘very elegant language’, has reached Mars already.

… and from what I’ve heard, 128-bit .asm programs are aiming for the sun.

In the other hand, the aliens invented CGI and PERL, that’s why they looks cryptic but are still reliable… and undeniably PHP is fast (which is probably because the faction of aliens who created the specs for that language runs on slower CPUs (do the math and logic.))

But aliens aside, strength, dear friends, comes from within. It doesn’t need sky-rocketing budgets for marketing.

Good PLs do not show off. (Though I have heard that ‘Nothing demos like the Fox’ line from Ken Levy (and from other VFP gurus as well) countless of times already.)

You have to look inside it, test it, feel it and use it to see its strengths.

And bring it to the ‘real world’… not just within the confines of your room, bragging about it online, sharing it with other online friends, who by the way, are also dwelling in their own world.

Bring it out to the real user… a real world task.

When it comes to the real world, real life to life database-related applications, Visual Foxpro by far is the strongest.

Heck… it even survived ten years and a month and more of pondering inside an ‘are we dead yet?’ mindset.

A four part (Part 1A | Part 1B | Part 1C | Part 1D) blog post on sending e-mail from inside your VFP application from the SPS WEBLOG.

Chaos in computer performance. If microprocessors don’t have any appeal to you… then how about teleportation..?

Andrew MacNeill mentions this VFP9 book. Exactly what the VFP community needs (And the whole ‘real world database programming’ communities as well).

I’ve been seeing too much books on the shelves in most bookstores here in our place that makes me do that ‘come-on-VFP-is-much-better-than-this’ grumble.

Now if only we can see more of these despite the fact that writing computer-related manuals/books is not that financially rewarding.

But not everything in this world is about money.

Some nifty WMI+VFP-related codes you can find at Stuart Dunkeld’s BLOG.

Whither .NET (Andy Kramek).

Here’s a related post from Craig Bailey… .NET Return on Complexity (ROC).

Good luck… John Koziol.