foxpro.catalyst «

FoxPro workBLOGS and MORE… . . .

For those programmer fathers out there, or humans who support someone or our very selves to live, which I think most of us do… we code not just for the challenge or for that ever-quench-the-thirst desire to solve things that tend to be abstract in an abstract way disguised in the form of for-loops, bits and 0101010001001s.

We code for food.

We may be directly solving and creating systems, thinking of our clients needs but in the cubicle filled workplace of our minds, there is that space in the server room inside our craniums exclusively reserved for our needs, our families’ needs and/or our children needs.

(Feel free to include your dog and your goldfish. (My pet tiger and pterodactyl are self-sustaining though.))

But of course, there are also humans who are, let’s say for the purpose of discussion… are from the start of their lives, financially and materially lucky. Almost everything are laid down at their feet.

Now I’m not generalizing on the next line, but some of these lovely humans tend to lack ‘TheDrive’. Again I am not generalizing all of them. It’s just that time and time again I seem to encounter and interact with some of them seeing sparks of that tendency. I mean the tendency to lack TheDrive.

If little forces lesser than TheForce tend to spoil someone or something with resources, it chips at parts of the inherent little drives that strive beneath, thus dissolving some good bits of the output.

When the Wachowski was on a tight budget, they produced one of the best sci-fi, mind-challenging movies of all time, The (first) Matrix. Fast forward almost three years later, they have huge resources to produce bloated Matrix follow-ups.

(Not that I don’t like them, they are major vfx eye-candies and there are still sparks of gems here and there (not to mention Monica), but they fade in comparison to the potential of what the first installment has to offer.)

Some probably will include George Lucas and Star Wars in this list, but hey… the third episode was probably enough to save what the first two episodes lack (Well at least the first half of the third episode).

In a way, FoxPro belongs to that make the most of what we have list.

Not only is it a good resource-friendly product, it creates database applications, which if properly used, makes use of existing resources, however scarce they may seem… efficiently.

Unlike other PLs that are so spoiled, bloated, hogs too much memory and requires system requirements above the roof… FoxPro uses what it really needs.

(There goes Avatar and Beakman yelling ‘We know where this part is heading!’ But trust me it didn’t started that way.)

Just as I was about to penetrate the coding zone after having a hell of a time freeing myself from the huge holiday hang-over, TheForce tends to display its mastery of randomly triggered events that somehow barfs me again out of the coding zone.

Now the holiday-hang-over-excuse realm won’t accept me anymore and I’m stuck in between this I-have-to-code-and-work-but-I’m-not-in-the-zone and the i’m-on-extended-vacation-i-can-justify-this-laziness sphere.

Good thing I can blog.

Anyway for the past few days, I’ve been receiving quite a number of client calls already, e-mails and sms-es, some of which even serve as my wake up calls (literally). It seems our clients are revving up faster than me.

One of the differences between the corporate and the freelance kingdom perhaps.

But inspite of these thing we were able to install one of our database systems (made in VFP9 this time (most current versions of our systems are done in VFP8)) to a new client, some details of which are the main reasons why I’m scribbling this while waiting for qs to finish using the bathroom (her bathroom usage tends to increase folds every year (and we’re not even going to include the dressing up part)).

Now back to the client I was talking about.

Our proposal to them was submitted last October of 2004, got approved last December 2005, and a couple of days ago we installed the first system, the Human Resource modules. We need to further customize our exising Payroll System to cater to their needs and interface it with a bio-thumbrint TimeKeeping/DTR system, which will be installed by another IT company.

The HR part is installed in four companies already (mostly schools and universities) so it is quite ‘mature’ already and needs no further customization. The Payroll System on the other hand is installed in one company, so I’m giving qs the responsibility of ‘stabilizing’ it.

Remind me not to create a title for a certain blog before scribbling it. My title’s supposed to be located seven degrees north and I’m heading the south in this blog. I will end this here and start a different blog on Visual FoxPro and the Developing Countries after this.

Hmmm… no wordwrap on GridColumns..? ONLY headers are allowed to wordwrap..?

I even tried adding a textbox and a label object inside the grid to simulate that Excel spreadsheet look on some fields but to no avail. Probably I’m missing something.

As of 5:23PM of the 18th of January 2006, I’m a BLOG-first-before-finding-a-better-solution programmer.

MY bloody pet bloody tiger bloody screams we bloody need bloody wordwrap feature on bloody grids.

Andrew MacNeill: How misinformation feeds FoxPro myths.

“It’s not about the product – it’s about the DESIGN!!!”

Indeed… indeed.

The problem with Visual FoxPro (or any RAD tool for that matter) is because they’re easy to use, some irresponsible programmers fire up wizards and tools to create applications without proper planning.

PLAN… plan plan… things on paper. Create solutions that will cater not just to the immediate need for this month, or this year… but to the future.

I usually spend two weeks (and sometimes even more) in the planning phase which includes the creation of the database structures and overall flow.

And in more than one instance, I’ve even brought some folded papers in my wallet so I can retrieve things easily if ever an idea or a possible problem pops into my mind.

Back in my previous workplace, we even brainstorm on things like this. Every programmer shares his input while the others fire up possible scenarios and problems.

As for the misinformation part, the world holds too much consultants and IT specialists already, who for the sake of discussion, let’s say are powered with the latest processor chips in their brains.

They think fast.

Too fast.

In this field of software development, thinking deeply is much preferred.

MY previous workplace/battleGROUND celebrates its Centennial Jubilee Celebration today.

Happy 100th year to the University of the Immaculate Conception.

I have quite a number of ‘BLOG-able’ work experiences from that place. One of these days, I’ll post some of them.

The Beauty of Simplicity.

Make it pure… less is more.

Same holds true with the interface of your forms and… your codes.

Programmers or developers or any human in the problem solving workforce, tend to have difficulty solving the problem if their minds are clouded beforehand with buffered and imagined scenarios that they think will cause complications to occur.

Anticipating problems which may possibly occur in the future is a good programmer virtue, yet sometimes, it can serve as a hindrance itself to attaining solutions.

It is always good to have a Plan B, but always keep in mind why you need that alternative. Forgetting the real reason of having conceived a plan B in the first place can sometimes mislead you.

I have this Plan B in case Plan A will not work considering I’m using an A-10 approach and Factor A-9 exists.

Enumerate first the real possible causes that prevent A-10 approach from working before jumping to Plan B, which most of the time is a lazy way out.

Never blame Factor A-9 too.

Sometimes we do have this set of possible causes which blind us.

And blind us big time, it does.

Validate those variables first. Sometimes the most efficient solutions are aligned with the most simple and obvious answers.

Last week, I decided to include a TreeView control in one of my newly converted VFP8-to-VFP9 projects. During the development phase, my mind was already clouded with the possible DLL-Hell related stuff, possible VFP9-libraries-on-site compatibility issues, the well-behaved Windows 98SE machines in my clients site, green alien abductions and countless possible shenanigans that might occur.

And so it goes, after two failed installation attempts, DependencyWalker tinkering, InstallShield version upgrades (and even downgrades), CD archive searching, three CPU testings, OLE/DLL manual gathering and regsvr32-in’, compilations and recompilations, VFP5 Developer’s Guide skimming, screaming, punching, calling the gods of Asgard… and countless other efforts, I still… was unsuccessful.

Only to find out that the real cause of the problem lies in my code itself.

You might blame my alien-related paranoia for not detecting the problem right away, but… the main reason is that my mind was already clouded with too many factors that prejudiced/poisoned/muddled the problem solving process.

Free the mind, human.

Even the most complex problems are dealt with with an array of systematic step by step simple solutions that work.

You don’t need to study rocket science to be able to do that.

(And go back to the pen and paper approach if needed. (Papers rock!))

Last week, Tuesday evening to be precise, a client called us. It was a rushed call, the line was not that clear too but from what I heard at that time, she wanted us to create a program which is due by Friday.

Qs and I have done two database projects for this client already, so I thought it was just a simple module modification, a new report perhaps, or probably help on a PowerPoint presentation or something.

But still, in the back of my mind, I was thinking, perhaps they really want a new database program.

A database program that needs to be completed in, at the most, two days.

When the client called us again during lunch of the following day, somehow worried that we haven’t arrived yet (we scheduled to visit around 3PM), I was thinking this must really not be a database program because database projects usually needs at least six months to be completed. (Well, at least in my case (some even years))

Three hours later, we found out that indeed the client wants us to create a ‘simple’ POS-type database program that will record the sales of their yearly three day bazaar.

It was indeed a database program.

The client did understand the situation and requested just the ‘basic’ modules. The things that can fit in that amount of time.

In times like this it is the ‘challenge’ that drives (and blinds) us usually.

We have some developed data entry engines already, and of course Visual FoxPro as a tool by our side.

Now at this point, I failed to mention that an alien activated my wisdom tooth 27 hours earlier. I was not feeling that well, so qs, my loving-wifey-who’s-been-using-VFP-for-a-year-already, decided to tackle this two day project.

I on the other hand if strength permits, would do the reports.

After almost a couple of sleepless nights, data transfers here and there on our computers (we don’t have that sourcevault/core-related stuff yet), at 5PM the next day, we were installing the basic modules in the client’s site.

Installed. Demo-ed. User test drive and every thing went smoothly except for one child database where I forgot to set filter to !deleted().

But aside from that the test went smoothly.

The next day I decided to visit the client early to oversee things. Thank heavens, after 90 transactions, the program was running well. I even interrupted to install a minor update, observed afterwards and things were still working perfectly.

There’s that joy a programmer/developer experiences when he sees his work at being used. I see buyers holding the print-outs and I’m having that same feeling I felt just like the first time a database program of mine was used in the university I worked in seven years ago.

How I wish qs was there that morning because for some reason she wasn’t able to accompany me. She was scheduled to visit the next day.

Now here’s the funny part.

It was around 9:30AM when I decided to go home. When I arrived, qs and her grandmother and her parents wanted to visit the bazaar. So I decided to come along.

(The client’s three hectare community is just three city blocks away.)

When we arrived, I decided to stay outside while qs is savoring that ‘my-database-program-is-running-running’ feeling.

After 30 minutes or so, qs and her parents and grandmother were in line to pay. There were three customers before them paying.

Now take note that at this point the program never crashed yet.

Three customers completed the transactions… print went well… no error.

Qsez dad and mom paid. Zoom the printer printed nicely.

… and now it is qsez turn to pay, she handed the goods to be recorded and…

Guess what… the database program crashed for the first time.

It worked smoothly during our test drive, the client’s test drive, from 7:30AM to 10AM up to the point where qs was the one paying.

The client who was also operating the database program even informed the swarming customers… ‘Naglalambing ang program kasi siya ang may gawa.’ (I can’t translate things exactly but partially it means that the program is being affectionate to its creator… something like that.)

Three minutes later we found out that the cause was a loose printer cable connection.

Call it coincidence, call it fate, baptism by fire… (I have my own experience in my old workplace (program crashes for no obvious logical reason + customers swarming and piling up).

Call it what you want… but I strongly believe, the aliens have something to do with it.

I was archiving the access logs of Pixelcatalyst.Lair and Foxpro.catalyst while The FoxPro Show 024 was playing once again in the background.

I did hint a while back that I’ll be posting something TFPS024 related. The FoxPro Show 25 came out, then 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 and 31… a couple of Mondays podcasts were also released and after a month, I’m still here unable to scribble those buffered thoughts.

OzFoxRocks even went online a couple of weeks ago.

So I was thinking it was about time I ‘unbuffer‘ those buffered thoughts which a couple of minutes ago are being electrocuted by strange toon-porn infested neurons.

There’s a problem though with unbufferring a month old casing of thoughts. The mind-to-fingertips-to-keyboard coordination just won’t work smoothly.

Though I remember most things discussed in the show, I would like to double check on one detail.

Now there’s a difference too, when you’re working, archiving, reading some parts and listening at the same time through an P850.00 (1 US dollar = P55.00) speaker… I kept on skipping the part where that detail was being discussed.

It was an insfoxpirational show, so I didn’t mind listening again and again.

After the fifth replay though I noticed that ants and a couple of six legged entities were slowly swarming in.

Sixth replay and I’m seeing metal plated grasshoppers with tiny boxing gloves and soccer shoes.

Now… It was the fear of the eight-legged creatures weaving out that got me to stop the other works and concentrate on listening… and there on the 13:27 timestamp, I found what I was looking for.

I’m currently multitasking once again (I can’t seem to blog if I’m not doing some other stuff, and returning to this window every now and then to continue my chain of thought (and listening to some loud Moby stuff)), so I hope I get this right.

Ken Levy was giving out the 100:1 ratio in terms of Visual Studio/Visual FoxPro’s usage. Which he further places on a different perspective that based on that 100:1 stat, VS can gain in three days what VFP can sell for a year.

(That would make approximately 122:1 though, but still… we get the point.)

My first thought/reaction when I first heard this a month ago was why not re-include Visual FoxPro (without changing the VFP core) inside the Visual Studio package.

Ah there… I’m hearing the uproar of CLR purists (and yes I admit I’m not an expert at this marketing/branding stuff (besides Microsoft’s licensing and pricing is not that simple to start with)).

But let’s just do a little elementary math.

Approximately VFP’s price is 650 dollars.

Now… Visual Studio comes with different prices and I don’t have the actual statistics to show which edition/package sells better. But for the sake of this blogcussion, let’s pick the Professional Edition which is around 800 dollars.

Now let’s go back to that 100:1 ratio above. If VFP can sell 100 copies in 300 days, VS can sell the same number in three days.

(Let’s use 300 instead of 365 since this is ‘elementary math’ and I will refrain from using the ‘for the sake of discussion’ line from here forth)

Going further VS can sell 100 * (300/3) copies in 300 days. And that is 10,000.

Now for the sake of discussion (didn’t I mention that I would refrain from using that already…), let’s include VFP inside VS and just jack up the price of VS to 800 + N dollars (where N is less than VFP’s current price).

(I know VFP is worth MORE and if I have enough bucks I wouldn’t mind buying VFP even if it’s base price is more than 650. Legacy is priceless… but just FTSOD (For The Sake of Discussion)).

Now if N = 50 then, 850 * 10,000 is 8,500,000.

The additional 50 * 10,000 alone is 500,000. Much more than 650 * 100 which is equal to a 65,000.

And even if N = 10, 10 * 10,000 is still 100,000… 935,000 more than 650 * 100.

Yes I know I know… the pricing of these shrinkwrap softwares are more complicated than elementary math and there are tons of factors involved.

And for the nth time, the things posted above are FTSOD. Though there are possible benefits for both products (VS and VFP) and the community as well, if MS packs back VFP inside the Visual Studio package.

And there are disadvantages too, which are in the first place the reasons why VFP was not included inside that .NET package. (As discussed inside the Fox.wikis site, the Universal Thread forums and countless other fox sites.)

(Also notable are the advantages of shipping Visual FoxPro as an independent product.)

A clientbase of 100,000 (though I think VFP’s actual client base is more than that) is still NOT negligible.

And if you can remember around 2,000 years ago, a shepherd left 99 sheep to find one missing sheep. Though the FoxPro community is far from being lost sheep, we deserve the same kind of lovin’.

Right..?

Zkarkakaorooom. More like Z… k… a… r… k… a… r… m. That is the sound of my fourth rssreader/tool conking out after months of accumulating feeds. And it’s not even overfed. Every now and then I ‘safestore’ the feeds into its .mht format to be stored in a directory somewhere. Yes, I do this part semi manually with the help of the ever-reliable Norton Commander designed for Windows 95.

Out of respect for their developers, I won’t mention their product names.

Most of these rss-readers bonk out when they accumulate tons of data. And I do expect more from them.

This fourth one, holds a lot of important features, well the features that a pack rat like me prefers, and in fairness it did survive longer than the previous three. (Well actually more than three, but I’m only counting those tools which I used for more than three months)

And now it crashes every now and then, hangs and pretends to be seeing drunk mouth-watering aliens almost too often.

(One or a few more crashes are forgiveable, a couple more is believable especially if aliens are indeed involved, but more than that… I’ll be blaming either a lame developer or a lame tool (or both))

Which gets me thinking. Are we really entrusting the storage of data, and the data format itself to the proper tools and formats?

Please don’t make me mention the three letter acronym.

(OK… most of the technologies involved in this have three letter acronyms… so take your pick.)

One can always download these rss feeds, convert them to a format that can be stored inside VisualFoxPro’s native database engine (or even use an SQL Server (though that would be an overkill in terms of what I really need for now))…

… use VisualFoxPro to sort and browse data and I don’t believe even in running this for a year, VFP would conk out because it was overwhelmed with more information than it can process.

Unless of course, the… ok… for once, let’s refrain from involving aliens.

Don’t even mention that 2GB limit this time. There are tons of workarounds for that excluding the use of nanotech and parallel universes.

Can these new tools at least make themselves reliable first before masking and donning that ‘the-future/the-next-big-thing’ cape.

… and Beakman wonders why I try and use old technologies.

They’re not old… they are reliable.

Yes… reliable.

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Here’s an offshoot of that chat I had with Beakman yesterday (Happy Trip by the way, Mark.)

WF: I’m porting some of my old VFP6/VFP8 projects to VFP9 already, Mark. Blah blah blah… and more detailed blahs.
Beakman: Is it compatible..?
WF: Dude, Visual FoxPro is 20 years backward compatible.

Darn… I did use ‘dude’ in that statement.

Better to sleep all day than to wake up hours after sunrise and spend the rest of the day… unproductive. -SIGH-

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.

Sometimes, in order to solve some problems, you, dear friend, have to recreate it first.

Just a quick quasi-rant.

Oh creative-and-innovative minds and fingers-pounding-the-keyboard influencing the human world… do place e.BackwardCompatibility beside e.Speed every time you re-design, recreate and develop things.

Always.

Ignoring it means two things (two for now… I’ll mention the others later). One you’re insulting the previous creators/developers/inventors and designers.

Not only that, you’re also insulting the user.

Second, which can be connected or not to the first one, is… you’ve released a product that is not well planned, well organized and is not able anticipate future changes.

In this field of binaries, bits and data, one should design/create applications that are designed to last for decades, if not years. Something that should stand the test of time.

(And time is one cruel alpha/beta/omega/post-release tester.)

Now… I know there are always situations that are exceptions… and humans tend to move if not cross the line. This is where efficient and cumbersome conversion tools must come in.

Now the proponents of profit are shouting out the opposite of what I’m saying here.

Money-infested-and-blinded humans, I will talk to you later… that I will.

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))

‘This day deserves a blog.’

That’s what I told qs as we were heading home after two consecutive client visits in five hours.

I tried to ‘cram’ visits to five different clients in the past two weeks prior to this one hoping that I could somehow rest and concentrate on the actual coding in front of a desk or something this week.

Turns out, we’ve done two visits today (make that yesterday since it is 1:35AM and this would probably be posted around 2 or 3 in the afternoon when I’ll get the chance to be online) and we’re still up to three more visits before this week ends.

But going back to this day (or yesterday) update-wise, with the help of this newly acquired pqi usb thumbdrive, things went smoothly. (Unlike before, where we have to deal with snobbish cd-rom drives pretending to be defective every time we’re around, misconfigured network shares, countless bugbear viruses, broken floppy drives and illogical office politics (don’t even let us go deep into the bloody details.))

Smooth… the database/system updates… yes. But there are some ‘other matters’ that made one of the visits disappointing.

For the past seven years of my freelance life (four of which spent alongside my qs), we have tackled some disappointing situations. But this is the third time in a row in a span of two weeks that this matter manifested itself.

Out of respect for the client, I would refrain from diving into the details.

I would however teleport my mind from this not-so-good thing and concentrate on two important matters in particular.

The first is one of those blah-blah-blah-things about life which you know already and it would make things redundant if I’ll state it once again.

The other is… in this world of database/system/software development… freelance adventures… clients… and all… there is also one thing which is as important as an efficient/stable/fortified/hacked-to-the-core software/database systems (the product).

And that is… relationships.

Your relationship, the trust and reputation you have with your client is as important (if not more important) than the software product itself.

Take good care of it.

Your relationship with your partner, employee/employer, borg-slave programmer/coder matters as well.

But that, dear children of the force, is another story for now.

After this week… hopefully… hopefully… I could transfer some buffered thoughts in my brain into a digital format stored in this blog.

A couple of hardware upgrades (and you think upgrades would make you more productive, eh..?) and a string of client visits are consuming a lot of my time for the past few weeks.

Ah… I’m not usually online during weekends, so I’ll take this time to greet the beloved essence of my life, who will be celebrating her birthday this Sunday.

Happy birthday, twuddles… : ]

Yeah… her blog is quite idle since the time she dived into Visual FoxPro database-related development.

The Altec Lansing FX6021 speakers that reside near Fahrenheit (that’s how she calls her PC), along with an Audigy 2 soundcard and a 160GB hard disk upgrade are parts of the fruits of her first project.

Right now she’s developing three more… but I’ll leave that to her to blog about.

‘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.