July 14: Menachem Bazian presents "SQL in Many Forms"

Let the Southwest Fox rehearsals begin.

The next meeting of the Philadelphia VFP User Group is Tuesday, July 14 at 7 PM at Valley Forge Pension Management, 715 Twining Road, Suite 202, Dresher, PA 19025. There is a $5 fee for the meeting.

Our speaker will be Menachem Bazian, CPA, CITP and President and Founder of BC Consulting Services, Inc, a Business Management and Technology Consulting Firm based in northern NJ. Menachem has been a database developer for over 20 years, having starting out with Dbase II and moved on to Dbase III, Clipper, Foxbase and all the versions of Visual FoxPro to date. He returned to the Fox speaking circuit last year including Southwest Fox 2008. He has published numerous articles and books over the years.

He'll present a preview of his Southwest Fox session "SQL in Many Forms": SQL is the lingua franca of data. Introduced into FoxPro way back in 2.0, VFP developers have been using it in applications for years. With the growing popularity of using Client Server back ends, it is necessary to know the differences between the various favors of SQL you will encounter. The session concentrates on VFP, MySQL, and Microsoft SQL Server flavors of SQL.

Mark your calendars for two more Southwest Fox rehearsals:

August 11--Tamar Granor presents "Top 10 (or more) reasons to use the Toolbox."

September 8--Toni Feltman presents "Introduction to Subversion and Tortoise SVN."

Another exciting summer of Southwest Fox previews

Thanks to Southwest Fox, our summer schedule is full with exciting speakers. Menachem Bazian will visit in July, Toni Feltman will join us in September, and I'll fill the August meeting. Each of us will be previewing material for Southwest Fox. Session details to come soon.

June--Bob Pierce on VFP and the Internet

The Philadelphia VFP User Group will meet next Tuesday, June 9 at 7 PM at Valley Forge Pension Management, 715 Twining Road, Suite 202, Dresher, PA 19025. As usual, feel free to bring dinner and come as early as 6:30.

Bob Pierce will speak this month. His topic is "Nothing but Net": Visual FoxPro can be a great tool for interacting with the Internet. This session will include many different ways to use VFP to send emails, download content, send files using FTP, publishing content, and run a VFP web server. All of the techniques use freely available tools that can easily be integrated into your applications with a minimum of effort.

Those present will be eligible to win a 1-year MSDN Premium subscription, including Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Suite. (The subscription must be activated by 6/30/2009.)

May meeting--Jerry Noble or search and bar code scanning

The Philadelphia VFP user group will meet next Tuesday, May 12, at 7 PM at Valley Forge Pension Management, 715 Twining Road, Suite 202, Dresher, PA 19025. As usual, feel free to bring some dinner and come as early as 6:30.

Member Jerry Noble will demonstrate his search engine which sequentially searches for customers on 10 different criteria using class code which allows for the use of navigation keys and auto-capitalization. He will also show how he uses a Bar Code Scanner to search for and populate the application with the information found on the Vehicle Registration Card.

April 14 meeting--Craig Benson and more

Our April headliner is Craig Benson from TIW. He'll present two short topics.

Embedded Hyperlinks

Embedded File Hyperlinks provide a simple method from within a VFP application to access all types of files including Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and CAD drawings. An easy approach will be demonstrated for enabling the user to add these links to any existing application. This capability has been a real crowd pleaser with our customers.

Screen Modification Tool

The ALERE products include a screen modification tool that allows our users to change the layout and properties of objects on any form in real time. This feature provides form modification capabilities with a presentation consistent with the VFP Form Designer. This tool supports the dragging and dropping of objects and the changing of properties on a custom property sheet. The capabilities, design and underlying structure will be presented and examined.


In addition, Bill Fitzgerald will present a brief demo of the WAV player foundation class.

March 10: More member presentations

The Philadelphia VFP User Group will meet Tuesday, March 10 at 7 PM.Feel free to bring dinner and arrive as early as 6:30.

Several members will contribute to this month's meeting. Tim Saylor will present a calendar control and several other items. Tamar Granor will show the Control Renamer builder, which she recently contributed to VFPX. If time permits, Bob Pierce will follow up on the search utility he showed last month and show a GDI+ tool for rotating graphics.

February 10 meeting--A potpourri of useful techniques

We'll meet Tuesday, February 10 at 7 PM. As usual, come as early as 6:30 and bring dinner, if you want.

Two members will present this month.

Alen Kalati will show two things:

First, a customizable toolbar. Alen explains: My application starts with a number of empty toolbar buttons which the user can then choose what they would do. The selection is done simply by right clicking the toolbar button while a form is open, which then it assigns it its 'click' method.

Second, a simple way of associating photos with inventory items using a bar code scanner. Again, a simple but very effective trick of doing this, which since has really revolutionized the way photos are associated with rugs in the rug industry.

Bob Pierce will talk about searching within a grid, integrating with filtering and sorting options.

We anticipate some time for open mike or questions at the end of the meeting, so if you have a little something to share, come prepared to do so.