VFP Philly

February 14: Menachem Bazian on Class Design

2012-01-17T12:45:00.000-08:00

Just in! Our February 14 meeting will feature Menachem Bazian, presenting his Southwest Fox 2011 session "Class Design Strategies":

When is a class needed and when isn't it? How can you design classes that add power and flexibility not only to your current application but to all your projects? How can you simplify the development and maintenance by using classes?

The "textbook" answer is to do a full blown object orientation analysis and design. But what do you do if you don't have the time for that formal process?

This session, which is both theoretical and practical (code based), will discuss how to think in "OO" mode and how the traditional Cowboy Programmer approach of Visual FoxPro and the formal world of Object Orientation can come together and live in harmony.

The session will also discuss how to modify classes safely.

January meeting: Bob Pierce on status info

2012-01-05T06:53:00.000-08:00

Our next meeting will be Tuesday, January 10. Our speaker this month will be Bob Pierce. He willdemonstrate building a small VFP project that can be used to display statusinfo and data that is simple to build yet has a modern App/Gadget feel usingjust basic VFP controls and classes. Ifthere is time he will discuss his recent adventures in bar-coding and lotcontrol and some of the issues he ran into as well as the advantages it hasdelivered already and future planned enhancements.

We’re looking for speakers for upcoming meetings. If youhave something to share with the group (whether it’s 10 minutes or the wholesession), please get in touch with Bob, rpierce@smooth-on.com.

December meeting: Tamar Granor on event binding

2011-12-06T13:50:00.001-08:00

Our next meeting will be next Tuesday, December 13 at 7 PM in Room 158, DeVry University, 1140 Virginia Drive, Fort Washington, PA. As usual, feel free to bring some dinner and arrive as early as 6:30 PM.

I’ll be speaking this month, presenting my Southwest Fox session “Bind Events for Better Applications.” Here’s the abstract:

At first glance, the BindEvent() function may seem unnecessary. After all, why bind to an event when you can just write code in the event's method?

In this session, we'll look at why BindEvent() and its cousins, the Access and Assign methods, are so valuable. Using examples drawn from real applications, we'll see how event binding lets you do things you couldn't otherwise do, and simplifies code for other tasks. We'll also talk about the difficulties involved in debugging code that uses event binding.

November meeting: Conference review and tools we love

2011-11-03T13:18:00.000-07:00

Our next meeting is Tuesday, November 8 at 7 PM. As usual, feel free to bring some dinner and arrive at 6:30. This month, we'll review Southwest Fox and the DevConnections conference being held this week in Las Vegas. Then, we'll continue our ongoing conversation about tools we use. Plan to share information about one tool you love. Mark December 13 on your calendar. I'll present "Bind events for better applications," discussion BindEvent, Access and Assign.

Tuesday, October 11--Menachem Bazian on Stored Procedures

2011-10-04T08:49:00.000-07:00

Our Southwest Fox previews continue on Tuesday, October 11 as Menachem Bazian presents "Boosting Your Client Server Application Using Stored Procedures." Because this session will be 3-hour precon at Southwest Fox, we will begin very close to 6:30 PM.

We will provide dinner again this month (we'll eat while Menachem speaks), so if you plan to come and eat, email tamar@tamargranor.com to ensure we have enough food.

Bio: Menachem Bazian, CPA, CITP is 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 several years ago and has presented at Southwest Fox for several years. He has published numerous articles and books over the years.

Abstract: Stored procedures can be essential to an efficient client server application. Stored procedures provide a great many potential benefits including more efficient processing of certain operations, front-end-independent operation (which can be especially useful if your database is being accessed by both a desktop and a web based application) and more.

But stored procedures come at a cost too. Stored procedures are back end specific and they also require a little different way of thinking about your code and application.

This session will introduce you to stored procedures using two of the most popular SQL back ends: MySQL and SQL Server.

September: Steve Ellenoff on upsizing without pain

2011-09-08T08:30:00.000-07:00

We continue our Southwest Fox previews continue this month with a visit from Steve Ellenoff on Tuesday, September 13. The meeting will begin at 7PM. We'll be providing dinner this month, so come as early as 6:30 to join us. Please email tamar@tamargranor.com if you plan to share our dinner, so we'll make sure to have enough. Don't forget to mark your calendar for our October 11 meeting featuring the return of Menachem Bazian with another Southwest Fox Preview.

Steve will speak on "Working with Remote Data the 'VFP Way': Upsizing to SQL Server Without Redesigning Your Application."

Ask any developer who has migrated a FoxPro application to SQL Server and almost every one of them will tell you that you need to rethink the way your application works: No more Browse windows, no more record navigation buttons, no more XBASE style mentality. In other words, not only do you need to re-code your application for the actual data handling, you also need to re-design the way it works! That's funny?! I don't remember my customers asking me to redesign screens and functionality just because they wanted to take advantage of the many benefits of using a robust remote database such as SQL Server!

So are we stuck to take this advice without negative consequences? The answer is a resounding NO! While it's true that "redesigning" our XBASE styled FoxPro applications while upsizing to SQL Server is a recommended best practice, there are several ways we can minimize the need to change the way our Fox applications look and behave. Furthermore, we can do so with minimal negative side effects. This session will cover a variety of strategies and tips which will allow you to upsize your applications to any remote data back-end, such as MS SQL Server, MySQL, and many others, with minimal impact on the look and feel of your applications. We'll also cover a number of "how to do that" tips for upsizing the application when migrating from FoxPro local data that I have not seen discussed elsewhere.

Steve Ellenoff is the president of SJE Consulting / Custom Technology Solutions (http://www.sjects.com) founded in 1999. With over 20 years of programming experience, he and his company continue to use Visual FoxPro and other technologies to deliver cost effective, feature rich, database intensive desktop and web solutions for companies small and large. Steve has been working with FoxPro since version 2.6 for Windows, although he considers his many years using Dbase and Clipper to be his unofficial start with FoxPro.

Steve has presented topics on FoxPro at several conferences and user groups, and had numerous tips published by FoxPro Advisor magazine. Steve is the author of the Win7TLib VFPX project (vfpx.codeplex.com), which allows VFP developers to tap into the new functionality of the Windows 7 Taskbar.

Steve also has a background in C and C++ development and headed the popular open source pinball project PinMAME (www.pinmame.com) for many years. Additionally he made many contributions to the even more popular open source video game project, MAME (http://mamedev.org). Both projects rely heavily on virtualization and emulation which have long been one of Steve's favorite areas of technology.

In 2008 Steve became one of the founding members of Big Guys Pinball, LLC (http://www.bigguyspinball.com). The company has used his software emulation and reverse engineering skill set to create a product that allows pinball owners to replace their "proprietary / no longer available" pinball hardware systems with common, off the shelf PC components.

Steve fulfilled a childhood dream in 2009 when he was hired to do contract work to help develop the video game: Williams Pinball Hall of Fame for XBOX360 and Sony Playstation 3 (http://xbox360.ign.com/objects/143/14307127.html). As a kid growing up in the 80's video game craze, Steve taught himself how to program computers at a young age for the sole purpose of creating a video game some day. Along the way, the dream got put on hold as the more practical business side of software development took center stage. When video gaming console developer Farsight Studios contacted Steve in 2008, the long forgotten dream suddenly became a reality. The game was released in September 2009 and was met with rave reviews from critics and players alike.

Steve’s latest hobby involves fulfilling another childhood dream, learning to play the drums. Although already a decent guitar player, bass player, and singer from his teen years, Steve always dreamed of making tons of noise on the drums. Prompted by the fun he had playing the “toy” drums for the Xbox360 game Guitar Hero: World Tour, Steve decided to purchase a real set of drums in July 2009, a vintage red Tama “Rock Star” kit. Armed with some great instructional drumming videos, Steve’s been banging away ever since and loving every minute of it!

Southwest Fox previews for September and October

2011-08-09T07:55:00.000-07:00

We're excited to announce that both our September and October meetings will feature Southwest Fox 2011 previews. On September 13, our speaker will be Steve Ellenoff, while on October 11, Menachem Bazian will speak. We're still working with them to decide which of their sessions will be presented.

August meeting--Tools and more tools

2011-08-02T17:35:00.000-07:00

Our next meeting will be Tuesday night, August 9, at 7:00 PM. Our topic this month is "Tools and more tools" and we're all the speakers. Please come prepared to discuss or demonstrate a tool you use that makes software development easier. It can be a VFP tool or a more general computing tool. It can be a one-trick pony or a great big game-changer. (While we won't force anyone to speak, the meeting will be more valuable, the more people share.)

July 12 -- New location, Tamar Granor on hard SQL queries

2011-07-05T13:12:00.000-07:00

This month, the Philadelphia VFP User Group moves to our new meeting location in Room 158 of DeVry University, 1140 Virginia Drive, Fort Washington, PA. The folks at DeVry are letting us use the room for free; the only cost is that, at this first meeting, we'll hear briefly from a DeVry representative.

The meeting on Tuesday, July 12, begins at 7 PM. Feel free to come as early as 6:30 and bring some dinner.

This month, we'll continue with Southwest Fox previews. I'll be rehearsing my session "Joins and Subqueries: Using SQL Commands for the Hard Stuff."

Abstract: Writing simple SQL queries isn't hard to learn. But as soon as you need
something a little more complex, you get tangled up in inner joins vs. outer joins and where to use a subquery and so forth.

This session will bridge the gap between simple and complex queries with a deep dive into the JOIN clause and the use of subqueries. We'll also talk about how to
optimize queries and the tools VFP provides to help you.

While this session will focus on VFP's SQL commands, much of the information will be applicable to other SQL dialects.

Mark August 9 and September 13 for our next two meetings.

June 14, 2011--Jim Nelson on Thor--6:30 PM

2011-06-07T11:00:00.001-07:00

This month's meeting will begin at 6:30 PM; feel free to come as early as 6 PM and bring dinner.

We will be joining with the Chicago FoxPro Users and Developers Group for a remote presentation by Jim Nelson titled "To boldly go where no VFP'er has gone before -- the Tools of Thor." This will be the first of this year's Southwest Fox preview sessions.

Jim Nelson is a relative newcomer to the FoxPro world. He spent the first thirty years of his professional life programming in APL, a long-since extinct programming language. For the last twenty of those years, he worked for a company that sold Workers' Compensation Self-Insurance. During those years, he had a reputation throughout the APL community as a tool builder for utilities not available within the APL language.

His VFP career began in 2003, working for the Kong Company in Golden, Colorado. He now works full-time for them, acting as their software development department.

His involvement in VFPx projects (such as Thor, PEM Editor, and FoxCharts) mirrors his earlier interest in developing programmers' tools. He has been a presenter at SWFox once before, in 2009.

Jim lives in Newbury Park, California, with his wife of 38 years.

Abstract: There are a number of valuable tools that are available in other development environments, but are sadly lacking in FoxPro's own IDE. For some time, there has been a considerable effort afoot to expand the list of IDE tools by reproducing (where possible) the tools from other IDEs (such as Visual Studio), by building on and enhancing existing tools, and by creating brand new tools appropriate to FoxPro.

The most visible of these new tools is named Thor. Thor is a tool for managing add-on tools in the IDE. It provides a unified method for registering other tools, simplifying the task of disseminating them, and a user interface to control the assignment of hot keys and developer-defined menus. The UI provides four different methods for accessing these tools:

* By assigning hot keys to them
* By creating pop-up menus accessible via hot keys
* By adding them as bars under any of the VFP system pads (File, Edit, View, etc.)
* By creating new pads in the VFP system menu and adding them as bars under these new pads

Unlike the normal limited set of hot keys available from ON KEY LABEL, Thor provides for the full range of multiple-keystroke combinations (Ctrl + Alt + A, for instance).

This session will start by showing how to install and start using Thor, how to use its UI to assign hot keys and create menus and submenus, and how to use Thor to simplify access to your own private tools. We'll also delve into some of the more interesting details on how Thor works.

Using Thor as the backbone for the remainder of the session, we will explore published tools that can be made accessible in Thor, with particular emphasis on the tools mentioned in the first paragraph. The result of the work mentioned here is a suite of tools that provides a large number of features never before available in VFP. You will find that these tools will rapidly become indispensable in your day-to-day programming life.

There is a lengthy list of tools that will be covered, including the following:

* GoToDefinition: When editing code, you can go to the definition of a method, property or object, PRG file, procedure or function in a PRG file, constant (created by #Define), class or form with a single keystroke.

* GoToDefinition #2: When editing code, you can create new properties or methods with a single keystroke (and begin editing the method immediately, if desired).

* ExtractToMethod: When editing code, you can highlight a block of text and extract it to a new method (yes, with a single ...).

* BeautifyX: Apply native VFP Beautify and more: provide standard within-line spacing, choose standard operators for string delimiters and others, auto align assignments on consecutive lines, create LOCAL statements, and impose standard formatting on SQL-Select, Update and Replace statements, with a wide range of customization available.

* Compare objects with other objects or their parent class, change their parent class, or edit their parent class.

* Use the Format form, which provides enhanced options to the Format pad in the VFP system menu.

* And many, many more...

May 10 meeting--Another double-header

2011-05-05T13:40:00.001-07:00

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday, May 10 at 7:00 PM. As usual, feel free to come any time after 6:30 and bring something to eat.

We again have a double-header scheduled for this month. Jim Walsh will present “An example of developing a COM server in VFP," which was carried over from our last meeting. Raymond Knight will present "Grid Column Header Sorting Made Easy."

Jim Walsh has a PhD in Physiology and Biophysics, and an MS in Physics. He is an independent consultant specializing in biomedical, scientific and engineering applications, primarily in VFP and C++.

Jim's talk is entitled “An example of developing a COM server in VFP”. COM servers represent a good strategy for providing functionality that is needed by several programs written in different languages. Jim will describe the development of a COM server that provides access to the data in a Firebird database for VFP and C++ clients. Visual FoxPro makes developing COM servers relatively easy. It hides many of the underlying details. But, can the things hidden by the Fox come back to bite you?

Raymond has 30 years development experience since 1981 with heavy user contact and 4 years of call center (1991-1995) experience at the Naval Air Warfare Center (NAWC) in Warminster. Heavy C#/Visual Studio 2005 and ADO.NET along with heavy VISUAL FOXPRO design and programming through version 9. Very strong relational database background including heavy hands on SQL Server 2000/2005. For example, designed SQL tables for conversion of CCALC system from DBF’s to SQL tables. Previously converted a Salesman Commission System (CCALC) from VISUAL FOXPRO 8 to C#/ADO.NET and SQL Server 2000/2005. Previously worked in VISUAL BASIC 6.0. Presently doing work in VISUAL FOXPRO including DBF to SQL conversions.

The description of his session is:

Through the use of this grid column sorting class one can avoid the drawn out process of enabling each column in each grid for ascending and descending sorts. One need only throw this class onto a form and it will automatically find all the grids on a form and it will automatically enable column sorting for each column in each grid. You can also disable any columns within a grid that you don't want to be sorted as well as disabling whole grids through the properties settings. As an added feature, if a column is defined as character the actual sorting method within the grid sorting class will try determine the actual type (date, numeric, etc.) if the type is not really a character type. As a final feature, if the proper property is set the up and down arrow keys will go from top to bottom and bottom to top which a normal foxpro grid does not do when it comes to up and down arrow keys.

April 12, 2011--Double-header

2011-04-07T13:31:00.000-07:00

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday, April 12 at 7:00 PM. As usual, feel free to come any time after 6:30 and bring something to eat.

We have a double-header this month. Garth Groft will a look at his adventures in moving an application to the Web. Jim Walsh will present “An example of developing a COM server in VFP”.

Here are the bios and abstracts:

Garth Groft is currently the lead developer and owner of MicroComputer Task Group (MCTG) located in York Pa. With 22 years of custom Fox and Visual Fox programming experience, he has been a consultant, a contract programmer, and leader of a nine man development team. Clients include Fortune 500 companies. The company has an International applications user base numbering well over a1000 users in most every county worldwide. In addition to IT consulting and applications development, MCTG has a strong knowledge base of HVAC (Heating, Ventilating, and Air-Conditioning), heat transfer, numerical analysis, statistical analysis and CAD (Computer Aided Design). The company is currently focused on developing cost-effective strategies and solutions for porting VFP applications to the web. This strategy addresses growing interest by clients in "cloud" applications accessible via mobile devices while maintaining VFP as an integral part of the solution. Protecting my clients’ investments in VFP applications is also key to this strategy. The RAD advantages of VFP are ported to the web.

Garth's presentation centers on an invoice payment application developed in two distinct VFP-based web servers, VFP2IIS and FoxInCloud. FoxInCloud utilizes West Wind Web Connect, Active Widgets and FoxInCloud's own unique Application Adapter Assistant.

Jim Walsh has a PhD in Physiology and Biophysics, and an MS in Physics. He is an independent consultant specializing in biomedical, scientific and engineering applications, primarily in VFP and C++.

Jim's talk is entitled “An example of developing a COM server in VFP”. COM servers represent a good strategy for providing functionality that is needed by several programs written in different languages. Jim will describe the development of a COM server that provides access to the data in a Firebird database for VFP and C++ clients. Visual FoxPro makes developing COM servers relatively easy. It hides many of the underlying details. But, can the things hidden by the Fox come back to bite you?

Open Mike Night--March 8

2011-03-02T11:03:00.000-08:00

Our next meeting will be Tuesday, March 8. This month, we're having an open mike night, so please think of something to share with the group. It doesn't have to be much--a productivity tip, a book you think everyone should read, something cool you've done, or a question you need answered. (If you can't think of anything, please come anyway.)

As always, we're looking for speakers for future meetings. If you have something to share, please let Bob Pierce (rpierce@smooth-on.com) know. It can take the whole meeting or be a shorter presentation that can share the meeting with one or two others.

February 8 meeting--Bob Pierce on sidebars and Tamar Granor on presentations

2011-02-01T11:08:00.000-08:00

Our next meeting (weather permitting) will be next Tuesday, February 8. We'll try again with our planned January topics. Bob Pierce will present "Sidebars, add customizable convenience for your users."

A customizable sidebar is a great way to give your users quick access to information and functionality to increase productivity. I will show some of the benefits of a sidebar as well as the technique I used to create a production sidebar using VFP. I will then discuss some of the things I learned and would do different if I were to build a sidebar from scratch today.

Then, Tamar Granor will give a presentation on preparing and giving presentations.

In case of bad weather, we will post a cancellation notice on this blog by noon on the day of our meeting.

January 11th meeting cancelled

2011-01-10T17:41:00.000-08:00

Due to the prediction of snow and a National Weather Service Winter Storm Watch, the January 11th meeting is cancelled. Our next meeting will take place on February 8.

Snow in the forecast--check here before coming to the meeting

2011-01-10T06:00:00.000-08:00

Some forecasts for Tuesday include measurable snow in the afternoon and evening. We'll make a decision by noon on Tuesday whether or not to hold the meeting and post that information here. Please check this site before heading for the meeting.

December 14--Short presentations plus MSDN giveaway

2010-12-07T13:06:00.000-08:00

Our December meeting features a few short presentations. Bill Fitzgerald will talk about SQL Stored procedures with .NET. Bob Pierce will present "Sidebars, add customizable convenience for your users."

Here's Bob's abstract: A customizable sidebar is a great way to give your users quick access to information and functionality to increase productivity. I will show some of the benefits of a sidebar as well as the technique I used to create a production sidebar using VFP. I will then discuss some of the things I learned and would do different if I were to build a sidebar from scratch today.

Depending on time, we may have one more short take.

We will be raffling off a one-year Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN subscription, with a retail value of nearly $12,000. (Note: it must be activated by the end of the year.) All those present will be eligible to win. We have some nice giveaway items from Microsoft as well.

We're looking for presenters for 2011. Please get in touch with Bob Pierce (rpierce@smooth-on.com) if you have something to share with the group.

November, 2010--Tamar Granor on Office Automation

2010-11-02T12:21:00.000-07:00

Our next meeting will take place Tuesday evening, November 9 at 7 PM. As usual, feel free to come as early at 6:30 and bring dinner.

This month, Tamar E. Granor will present her Southwest Fox session "Office Automation Tips, Tricks and Traps":

Once you get started automating Microsoft Office, you're likely to find more and more uses for Automation. But you also start running into peculiarities of the individual servers, file format issues, and other complications. In this session, we'll look at a number of issues related to automating the Office servers, including exploring why recording a macro can lead you astray. Most of the topics will apply to multiple Office servers, but we'll also look at the so-called Outlook "hell patch" and how you can automate Outlook email with a minimum of fuss.

Tamar E. Granor, Ph.D., is the owner of Tomorrow's Solutions, LLC. She has developed and enhanced numerous Visual FoxPro applications for businesses and other organizations. She currently focuses on working with other developers through consulting and subcontracting.

Tamar served as Editor of FoxPro Advisor magazine from 1994 to 2000 and was Technical Editor from 2000 to 2008. She served as co-author of the popular Advisor Answers column from 1993 to 2008. She has also written for FoxTalk and CoDe; she currently writes for FoxRockX.

Tamar is author or co-author of ten books including the award winning Hacker's Guide to Visual FoxPro and Microsoft Office Automation with Visual FoxPro. Her most recent books are Making Sense of Sedna and SP2 and Taming Visual FoxPro's SQL. Her books are available from Hentzenwerke Publishing.

In 2007, Tamar received the Visual FoxPro Community Lifetime Achievement Award. She has received Microsoft Support's Most Valuable Professional award annually since the program's inception in 1993. Tamar speaks frequently about Visual FoxPro at conferences and user groups in North America and Europe and is one of the organizers of the annual Southwest Fox conference.

MONDAY, October 11--Christof Wollenhaupt on "How the Fox is Different"

2010-10-05T07:19:00.000-07:00

Come out on a special night for a special treat as VFP guru Christof Wollenhaupt visits our group. The meeting will take place MONDAY, October 11 at 7 PM.

As usual, we'll start with dinner at 6:30 PM. We'll provide dinner for this meeting, so please let Bob Pierce (rpierce@smooth-on.com) know if you plan to join us, so we have enough food.

Christof will preview his Southwest Fox session "How the Fox is Different":

You always knew that FoxPro is different from every other programming language! You had a pretty clear idea that the development environment of Visual FoxPro is far superior to the one found in .NET, Java, and PHP. How else is it possible that those languages exists for years or even more than a decade and still lack features that FoxPro sported for eons? Even the simplest task in any of these languages requires an incredible amount of time. It's certainly not surprising that every single .NET project takes a multitude of time of a comparable VFP project to complete.

Ever thought along these lines? Then this session might have a few surprises for you. There will be a few insights in how FoxPro and other languages (primarily .NET) differ. We will see how even minor differences in the languages lead to vastly different application designs. It shouldn't come as surprise that many techniques published in books are aimed at C++, .NET and Java developers. Those techniques are good for those languages, but often a sub-optimal choice for VFP. Nonetheless, they were adopted by the VFP community and naturally failed to deliver the promised value.

If you have years of experience with Visual FoxPro, this session will support you in using .NET more efficiently. Yet, at the same time, it should made clear that "knowing OOP" is by far not enough to master .NET. Becoming proficient in .NET isn't the matter of learning a language; it's a matter of learning an idiom.

If you are one of the poor souls that started as a .NET or Java developer and have been forced to work on a VFP project, you'll learn that VFP isn't as awful as you first thought; just very different.

Christof Wollenhaupt specializes in FoxPro and .NET development and consulting. Having worked with FoxPro for more than 18 years he now has made every thinkable error in FoxPro personally. Customers around the world rely on his experience to learn from these mistakes. Christof is an international speaker at user group meetings and conferences and the organiser of the Hamburger Stammtisch für Datenbankentwickler, a monthly meeting for Microsoft database developers. Despite spending his time writing way over a hundred articles for various magazines, he was awarded the Microsoft MVP award every year since 1997. Christof authored the Guineu product family, a development environment that moves FoxPro forward to other platforms. For more information please visit http://www.foxpert.com and http://www.guineu.net.

Durban on the Web Browser Control -- Tuesday, September 14

2010-09-07T11:00:00.000-07:00

Next Tuesday, September 14, Bo Durban visits to present "Extending VFP Using the Web Browser Control." If time permits, he'll also give us a peak at his second Southwest Fox Session "Using Direct2D with Visual FoxPro."

The meeting begins at 7 PM. As always, you're welcome to come starting at 6:30 PM for dinner. This month, the group will provide dinner. Please RSVP to tamar@tamargranor.com if you plan to eat the food provided, so we get enough.

Bo Durban is the founder and primary consultant of Moxie Data, Inc. He has been a software developer for over 20 years with an emphasis on reporting and Web development. He is the author of several reporting utilities including Moxie Report Objects for Visual FoxPro.

Bo is the project manager for the GDIPlusX project and the VFP9 Reporting APPs, located on VFPX, a community effort to create open source add-ons for Visual FoxPro 9.0. He has spoken at software developer conferences around the world as well as User Group meetings. Bo also has written technical articles for software development publications such as CoDe and FoxTalk.

Abstract: Enhancing the user experience has become a necessity for new development. Users are demanding easier ways to navigate and view their data. There is a figurative "world" of GUI elements and libraries out there for enhancing the user experience via the web browser. Why not incorporate some of these into your Windows form applications using the Web Browser control? This session will show you how you can significantly enhance the look and feel of your application by creating custom controls based on the Web Browser control. Learn how to seamlessly display data, accept user input, and respond to events and how to hook into a world of cool visual libraries and services using the Web Browser control. Practical examples will demonstrate the benefits the Web Browser control can offer.

Be sure to mark your calendars for MONDAY, October 11 for a special visit from Christof Wollenhaupt as he makes his way to Arizona for Southwest Fox. he'll present "How the Fox is Different."

Southwest Fox Previews to come--Durban and Wollenhaupt

2010-08-02T14:30:00.000-07:00

We're excited to present two Southwest Fox previews in the upcoming months, featuring two well-known speakers.

Tuesday, September 14, Bo Durban will present "Extending VFP using the Web Browser Control" and, if time permits, give us a peek at his other session "Using Direct2D with Visual FoxPro."

On MONDAY, October 11 (note the special night), Christof Wollenhaupt will present "How the Fox is Different."

For details on the sessions, check http://swfox.net/sessions.aspx.

No August, 2010 meeting

2010-08-02T14:25:00.001-07:00

We're taking August off this year. Enjoy the heat.

July meeting--Tamar Granor on "Collections-Managing Information the Object-Oriented Way"

2010-07-08T09:20:00.000-07:00

Our next meeting will take place on Tuesday, July 13, 2010 at 7 PM. We now meet at Valley Forge Pension Management, 550 Township Line Road, Suite 300, Blue Bell, PA 19422. As always, feel free to come as early at 6:30 and bring dinner.

This month, we begin Southwest Fox previews with Tamar E. Granor speaking on "Collections--Managing Information the Object-Oriented Way."

Abstract: When the collection base class was added to VFP 8, it gave us the opportunity to make our applications look more like those in other object-oriented languages. Collections let us manage groups of related objects through a straightforward interface, and avoid the peculiarities of working with arrays in VFP.

In this session, we'll cover the basics of using collections, the reasons why they're better than arrays, and show how they improve object models. We'll also consider the weaknesses of collections in VFP and talk about workarounds.

Bio: Tamar E. Granor, Ph.D., is the owner of Tomorrow's Solutions, LLC. She has developed and enhanced numerous Visual FoxPro applications for businesses and other organizations. She currently focuses on working with other developers through consulting and subcontracting.

Tamar served as Editor of FoxPro Advisor magazine from 1994 to 2000 and was Technical Editor from 2000 to 2008. She served as co-author of the popular Advisor Answers column from 1993 to 2008. She has also written for FoxTalk and CoDe; she currently writes for FoxRockX. Tamar is author or co-author of ten books including the award winning Hacker's Guide to Visual FoxPro and Microsoft Office Automation with Visual FoxPro. Her most recent books are Making Sense of Sedna and SP2 and Taming Visual FoxPro's SQL. Her books are available from Hentzenwerke Publishing (www.hentzenwerke.com).

In 2007, Tamar received the Visual FoxPro Community Lifetime Achievement Award. She has received Microsoft Support's Most Valuable Professional award annually since the program's inception in 1993. Tamar speaks frequently about Visual FoxPro at conferences and user groups in North America and Europe. You can reach her at tamar@thegranors.com or through www.tomorrowssolutionsllc.com.

June meeting--Advantage Database Server

2010-06-01T08:33:00.000-07:00

Our next meeting will take place next Tuesday, June 8, at 7 PM at our new location: Valley Forge Pension Management, 550 Township Line Road, Suite 300, Blue Bell, PA 19422. As usual, you're welcome to arrive as early as 6:30 PM and bring dinner with you.

Our speakers this month are Chris Franz and Jay Wendt of Sybase. They'll introduce Advantage Database Server:

You already know that Visual FoxPro is one of the best tools available for application development, but did you know that Advantage Database Server has better support for Visual FoxPro than any other database engine? Join us as we take you on a tour through the product. We'll introduce you to Sybase and how Advantage fits into the big picture. Then, we'll move on to the technical aspect of the server and why it's different than any other database engine. You'll see getting started tips and demos to view first hand and just how easy it is for FoxPro developers to move to client/server with Advantage. We'll even provide development versions of the software for attendees.

New location starting with June meeting

2010-05-25T11:11:00.000-07:00

We're pleased to announce that, as of the June, 2010 meeting, we'll move into our new location. Thanks to Valley Forge Pension Management, who have been our hosts in Dresher for several years, for allowing us to use their new facilities in Blue Bell. The new location is:

550 Township Line Road
Suite 300
Blue Bell, PA 19422

This is just a few minutes from where the PA Turnpike, Blue Route and Northeast Extension meet in Plymouth Meeting, providing easy access whether you're coming from North, South, East or West.

May meeting--Doug Hennig (live from Saskatchewan) on GDIPlusX

2010-05-08T08:28:00.000-07:00

Our next meeting will take place Tuesday, May 11 at 7:00 PM. For one more month, we'll meet at Granor-Price Office Center, 721 Dresher Road, Horsham, PA. As usual, feel free to come as early as 6:30 and bring some dinner.

We're trying something new for this month's meeting. Doug Hennig will present a session remotely. That is, he'll be in Sasksatchewan and thanks to the Internet, be able to give us a live presentation.

Introduction to GDIPlusX

GDIPlusX is a VFPX project that exposes GDI+ to VFP applications as a set of VFP class libraries. GDIPlusX makes it easy to add new graphical abilities to your applications, allowing you to provide a fresher and more powerful user interface. This session provides an introduction to GDIPlusX, going through the basics of GDI+, looking at the classes in GDIPlusX, and going through various samples of how to use GDIPlusX in VFP applications.

Doug Hennig is a partner with Stonefield Systems Group Inc. and Stonefield Software Inc. He is the author of the award-winning Stonefield Database Toolkit (SDT); the award-winning Stonefield Query; the MemberData Editor, Anchor Editor, and CursorAdapter and DataEnvironment builders that come with Microsoft Visual FoxPro; and the My namespace and updated Upsizing Wizard in Sedna.

Doug is co-author of Making Sense of Sedna and SP2, Visual FoxPro Best Practices For The Next Ten Years, the What's New in Visual FoxPro series (the latest being What's New in Nine), and The Hacker's Guide to Visual FoxPro 7.0. He was the technical editor of The Hacker's Guide to Visual FoxPro 6.0 and The Fundamentals. All of these books are from Hentzenwerke Publishing (http://www.hentzenwerke.com). Doug wrote over 100 articles in 10 years for FoxTalk and has written numerous articles in FoxPro Advisor, Advisor Guide to Visual FoxPro, and CoDe. He currently writes for FoxRockX (http://www.foxrockx.com).

He spoke at every Microsoft FoxPro Developers Conference (DevCon) starting in 1997 and at user groups and developer conferences all over the world. He is one of the organizers of the annual Southwest Fox conference. He is one of the administrators for the VFPX VFP community extensions Web site (http://vfpx.codeplex.com). He has been a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) since 1996. Doug was awarded the 2006 FoxPro Community Lifetime Achievement Award (http://fox.wikis.com/wc.dll?Wiki~FoxProCommunityLifetimeAchievementAward~VFP).

Web: http://www.stonefield.com and http://www.stonefieldquery.com
Blog: http://doughennig.blogspot.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/DougHennig

Mark your calendar for June 8, when we'll get a Mike Hagman from Sybase will present Advantage Database Server.

April 13--Chick Bornheim on FoxFire!

2010-04-05T13:59:00.000-07:00

We will meet next Tuesday, April 13, at 7 PM. Our speaker will be Chick Bornheim, the President and Founder of Micromega Systems, makers of FoxFire! Report Writer. The meeting will be held at the Granor Price Office Center, 721 Dresher Road, Horsham, PA 19044.

The group will provide dinner for this meeting (including homemade pastrami) beginning at 6:30 PM. Please let Tamar Granor (tamar@tamargranor.com) know if you plan to attend, so we have enough food.

Chick Bornheim has spent over 30 years in various app-dev roles including user liason, designer, developer, program manager, marketing, licensing, and executive management. He is a principal member of the Foxfire! design team and two other vertical products, founder of two successful businesses and has advised or assisted in the many other startups.

Foxfire! Report Writer v8+ comprises a family of data mining tools designed for regular business users. Developers can:
* adapt it to almost any FoxPro or ODBC compatible database
* immediately add any features required to create a glove-fit solution to the end user's needs.

Foxfire! is the only set of report writers for the vfp environment that can operate interchangeably on both platforms. Its interactive drag-'n-drop design tools has been praised by usability experts and end users alike for simplicity without sacrificing power.

Micromega Systems offers Foxfire! consulting, integration, and training services. Our growth strategy is partnering, and we are currently seeking other developers who want to partner to create custom or localized versions to address special market opportunities. Go to www.foxfirereporting.com to explore how we might work together.

Andrew MacNeill will join Chick by teleconference to demonstrate how east it is for developers adapt Foxfire! to simplify the user's experience of reporting with a custom database, and how simple it is to port the Windows version to the Foxfire! Web Report Writer.

Advantage Database Server moved to June

2010-03-15T12:15:00.001-07:00

The presentation on the Advantage Database Server, which had been scheduled for May 11, has been moved to June 8, to accommodate Mike Hagman from Sybase, who'll give the presentation.

March meeting--Open Mike! Bring a command!

2010-03-02T13:53:00.000-08:00

The next meeting of the Philadelphia VFP User Group will take place on Tuesday, March 9 at 7:00 PM. For March and April only, we will meet at the Granor Price Office Center, 721 Dresher Road, Horsham, PA. This is just a few minutes from the Willow Grove interchange of the PA Turnpike and is not far from the Virginia Drive slip ramp. Either one is a good choice.

As usual, if you want, bring dinner and arrive as early at 6:30.

We'll pick up last month's cancelled "Open Mike Night." Bring one command or function that you find really useful, but think is not widely used. It could even be a particular way of using a command or function. If you can demo whatever it is from the Command Window, you don't need to bring a laptop; we'll have one available.

Also, feel free to come with a short demo or a question for the group.

One correction from last month's notice. The Advantage Database Server presentation will be on May 11 (not April, as I mistakenly said last month). We're looking for topics for the April meeting. If you have something to present, let Bob Pierce (rpierce@smooth-on.com) know.

February 9 meeting cancelled due to impending snow

2010-02-08T05:25:00.000-08:00

Given a forecast for snow to begin Tuesday afternoon, and for quite a bit of snow to fall, we are cancelling this month's meeting. Mark your calendars for Tuesday, March 9 and, if you have something to share with the group, let Bob Pierce know (rpierce@smooth-on.com).

Tamar

February 9 - Open Mike night! Bring a command

2010-02-04T10:32:00.000-08:00

Our next meeting will take place on February 9 at 7 PM. As usual, feel free to bring dinner and to arrive as early as 6:30 PM.

This month, we'll have an Open Mike night. To kick things off, we ask everyone who's coming to "bring" one command or function that you find really useful, but think is not widely used. It could even be a particular way of using a command or function. If you can demo whatever it is from the Command Window, you don't need to bring a laptop; we'll have one available.

Also, feel free to come with a short demo or a question for the group.

Note that we will be changing our meeting location soon. More info to come as soon as we have the details ironed out.

Also, mark your calendar now for upcoming meetings:

March 9 -- speaker needed
April 13 -- Advantage Database Server

January 12--Tamar Granor on Business Objects

2010-01-06T13:20:00.001-08:00

Our next meeting will take place Tuesday, January 12, 2010. As usual, feel free to bring dinner and arrive as early as 6:30.

Tamar E. Granor will present "Getting Your Head Around Business Objects," previously seen at Southwest Fox 2009.

Abstract: For many years, we've heard that business objects are important, but most of the examples are tied too tightly to the user interface to really make the point. In this session, we use a highly graphical example to show how business objects can really improve your applications. We see how a well-designed set of business objects makes changing an application's behavior easier and keeps your application's functionality separate from its user interface.

Tamar E. Granor, Ph.D., is the owner of Tomorrow's Solutions, LLC. She has developed and enhanced numerous Visual FoxPro applications for businesses and other organizations. She currently focuses on working with other developers through consulting and subcontracting.

Tamar served as Editor of FoxPro Advisor magazine from 1994 to 2000 and was Technical Editor from 2000 to 2008. She served as co-author of the popular Advisor Answers column from 1993 to 2008. She has also written for FoxTalk and CoDe; she currently writes for FoxRockX.

Tamar is author or co-author of ten books including the award winning Hacker's Guide to Visual FoxPro and Microsoft Office Automation with Visual FoxPro. Her most recent books are Making Sense of Sedna and SP2 and Taming Visual FoxPro's SQL. Her books are available from Hentzenwerke Publishing (www.hentzenwerke.com).

In 2007, Tamar received the Visual FoxPro Community Lifetime Achievement Award. She has received Microsoft Support's Most Valuable Professional award annually since the program's inception in 1993. Tamar speaks frequently about Visual FoxPro at conferences and user groups in North America and Europe. You can reach her at tamar@thegranors.com or through www.tomorrowssolutionsllc.com.

November 12--Menachem Bazian on Open Source Tools--NOTE SPECIAL NIGHT

2009-11-02T07:02:00.000-08:00

Our November meeting will be held on a special night--THURSDAY, November 12--at Valley Forge Pension Management, 715 Twining Road, Suite 202, Dresher, PA 19025 at 7 PM. Come as early as 6:30 and bring dinner, if you wish.

http://vfpphilly.blogspot.com/

Menachem Bazian returns fresh from Southwest Fox to present "Open Source Tools."
Abstract: Open Source is a phenomenal resource for high quality software that can easily be integrated into your work and make your life much easier. This session shows several tools you can use to make your business and software development life a pleasure.

The session also demonstrates how some of these tools can be set up and work withiin your organization. Tools discussed include, but are not limited to:

Subversion (and TortoiseSVN)
MantisBT
SugarCRM

Bio: Menachem Bazian, CPA, CITP is 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.

September meeting--Toni Feltman and pizza

2009-09-02T14:14:00.000-07:00

Our summer of Southwest Fox previews continues on Tuesday, September 8 as Toni Feltman practices her pre-conference session "Introduction to Subversion and Tortoise SVN." Because this is a 3-hour session at the conference, we'll begin at 6:30 PM.

We will be providing a pizza dinner at this meeting; we'll eat while Toni talks. The doors will open at 6:15; we'll try to have the pizza ready then. If you plan to attend and eat, please send an email to tamar@thegranors.com, so we get enough.

Abstract: Version control is a must for any application development platform yet many development shops still do not use a version control system. There are all sorts of excuses such as time, money or lack of team support. Once you adopt a version control system, your team will wonder how you ever lived without one. In this session, we take an in-depth, action packed look at using Subversion and Tortoise as a version control repository for FoxPro applications. Most FoxPro developers are cost conscious so how much better can you get than a FREE version control system. Subversion and Tortoise are both free tools that despite the price, work great.

Bio: Toni Feltman, a Microsoft Certified Professional, is an experienced software developer, project manager, instructor and speaker. She is Vice President and a Partner at F1 Technologies and is still an integral part of the company. During her 16 years at F1 Technologies she has served as both a developer and project manager on numerous projects and as Product Manager for the highly successful FoxExpress product line.

Toni is a well known contributor to the Visual FoxPro development community. She has spoken at most major FoxPro conferences in North America and Europe. Although Toni has expertise in a number of areas, she generally focuses her presentations on Team Development, XML, n-Tier Development and new features in Visual FoxPro.

Toni has penned several articles for Advisor Guide to Microsoft Visual FoxPro and is co-author of Making Sense of Sedna and SP2 and What's New in Visual FoxPro 9.0 (Hentzenwerke Publishing). Toni also designed and developed Project HookX, a VFPX utility designed to allow developers to manage and use multiple project hooks on a single Visual FoxPro Project. Toni is one of several co-authors of DBCX, a public domain data dictionary tool used or supported by many notable Visual FoxPro products including the Stonefield Data Dictionary, Visual FoxExpress, FoxFire! and Stonefield Query.

Toni taught for several years at the University of Toledo on a wide variety of technologies including Microsoft Office applications, XML, various Internet development technologies and database design and programming. Toni also enjoyed a stint as an instructor for AppDev.

Toni's introduction to the FoxPro community came while she worked in the technical support department at Fox Software. Toni was a senior level support technician and Sysop of the Fox Software Forum on CompuServe.

Toni graduated from Bowling Green State University in 1989 with a BA in Management Information Systems.

August 11--Tamar Granor: Top 10 (or more) Reasons to Use the Toolbox

2009-08-04T14:04:00.000-07:00

The Southwest Fox rehearsals continue at our next meeting on Tuesday, August 11. As usual, feel free to bring dinner and come as early as 6:30.

Tamar E. Granor will present "Top Ten (or more) Reasons to Use the Toolbox":

The VFP Toolbox is a terrific tool, but many VFP developers have never really used it. In this session, we'll look at why you should use this tool everyday. We will look at built-in capabilities like an easy way to drop controls into grid columns. We'll also see how to customize it for your development environment, including having each control you drop given an appropriate name. Finally, we'll explore some easy extensions that make the Toolbox even more useful, such as making it easy to store web links.

Tamar E. Granor, Ph.D., is the owner of Tomorrow's Solutions, LLC. She has developed and enhanced numerous Visual FoxPro applications for businesses and other organizations. She currently focuses on working with other developers through consulting and subcontracting.

Tamar served as Editor of FoxPro Advisor magazine from 1994 to 2000 and was Technical Editor from 2000 to 2008. She served as co-author of the popular Advisor Answers column from 1993 to 2008. She has also written for FoxTalk and CoDe; she currently writes for FoxRockX.

Tamar is author or co-author of ten books including the award winning Hacker's Guide to Visual FoxPro and Microsoft Office Automation with Visual FoxPro. Her most recent books are Making Sense of Sedna and SP2 and Taming Visual FoxPro's SQL. Her books are available from Hentzenwerke Publishing (www.hentzenwerke.com).

In 2007, Tamar received the Visual FoxPro Community Lifetime Achievement Award. She has received Microsoft Support's Most Valuable Professional award annually since the program's inception in 1993. Tamar speaks frequently about Visual FoxPro at conferences and user groups in North America and Europe.
You can reach her at tamar@thegranors.com or through www.tomorrowssolutionsllc.com.

Also, mark your calendar for Tuesday, September 8, when Toni Feltman will present "Introduction to Subversion and Tortoise SVN."

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

2009-07-14T07:18:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-03T08:49:00.001-07:00

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

2009-06-03T08:48:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-05T13:51:00.001-07:00

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

2009-04-09T13:30:00.000-07:00

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

2009-03-07T04:32:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-06T09:11:00.000-08:00

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.

January Meeting--two members present

2009-01-09T11:02:00.003-08:00

We'll start off the new year with presentations by two of our members on Tuesday, January 13 at 7 PM.

First Bill Fitzgerald will introduce us to another VFPX tool, FoxCharts. Then Craig Benson will talk about "Subclassing - a simple way to create a customizable and patchable application." Here's his abstract:

VFP allows applications to be created with layers of hierarchy. These layers can be used to turn product customization and code patching into managable tasks. This session will show how to use these layers to make custom versions of an application using the VFP screen designer, add features to an application and create patches for distribution without redistribution the entire application.

December meeting--Introduction to VFPX

2008-12-03T14:06:00.000-08:00

Our next meeting will be next Tuesday, December 9 at 7:00 PM. As usual, feel free to bring dinner and come as early as 6:30.

This month, we'll begin an exploration of VFPX. Bob Pierce and Tamar Granor will show some of the VFPX projects, including the Property and Method dialog replacements, FoxCharts, GDIPlusX, and the Outlook Bar control.

VFPX is an Visual FoxPro community open source project dedicated to enhancing and extending Visual FoxPro. It includes developer tools, enhanced controls, the Sedna components, the various Xbase tools that come with VFP, and more. The items to be shown at this meeting range across the spectrum of VFPX projects. They include some items you can use immediately and others to keep in mind for the right project.

November meeting--The Conference Experience

2008-11-05T07:26:00.000-08:00

The next meeting of the Philadelphia VFP User Group will take place next Tuesday, November 11. Bob Pierce will lead a session on "The Conference Experience."

For those of you who couldn't attend the SouthWest Fox conference this year, this is your chance to find out what's new with our favorite tool. We will start off with video of the keynote presentation and cover several topics discussed at the conference. This will include updates on Christof's Guineu project, the eTecnologia Extender/Compiler, and the VFPX project. In addition, Bob will introduce an exciting client/server platform, the Advantage Database Server, which promises to make it much easier for VFP developers to make the move to a server based SQL backend.

There will be some giveaway goodies from the conference, as well.

The meeting will take place at 7 PM at Valley Forge Pension Management, 715 Twining Road, Suite 202, Dresher, PA 19025. (Note: The Oreland offramp from PA 309 Southbound has been permanently closed. The easiest way to reach the meeting location from the PA Turnpike or 309 Southbound is to come through the Fort Washington Industrial Park.)

All are welcome to bring dinner and come as early as 6:30 PM.

Tamar

Tuesday, September 9--Tamar E. Granor

2008-09-04T14:28:00.000-07:00

The September meeting of the Philadelphia VFP User Group will take place Tuesday, September 9 at 7:00 PM at Valley Forge Pension Management, 715 Twining Road, Suite 202, Dresher, PA 19025. (Note: The Oreland offramp from PA 309 Southbound has been permanently closed. The easiest way to reach the meeting location from the PA Turnpike or 309 Southbound is to come through the Fort Washington Industrial Park.)

As usual, you're welcome to bring some dinner and come as early as 6:30.

Tamar E. Granor will be rehearsing her Southwest Fox session "We Used to Do it That Way, But ...".

Each new version of Visual FoxPro has brought new ways to do things, but breaking old habits is hard. Now that the VFP language has stabilized, it's time to hone our skills. This session examines some of the changes in the language over the years and demonstrates that learning to use the newer constructs can result in better, more maintainable, faster code.

Tamar E. Granor, Ph.D., is the owner of Tomorrow's Solutions, LLC. She has developed and enhanced numerous Visual FoxPro applications for businesses and other organizations. She currently focuses on working with other developers through consulting and subcontracting. Tamar served as Editor of FoxPro Advisor magazine from 1994 to 2000 and was Technical Editor from 2000 to 2008. She served as co-author of the popular Advisor Answers column from 1993 to 2008. She has also written for FoxTalk, Code, and FoxRockX.

Tamar is author or co-author of nine books including the award winning Hacker's Guide to Visual FoxPro and Microsoft Office Automation with Visual FoxPro. Her most recent books are Taming Visual FoxPro's SQL and What's New in Nine: Visual FoxPro's Latest Hits. Her books are available from Hentzenwerke Publishing (www.hentzenwerke.com). Her next collaboration, Making Sense of Sedna and SP2, will be published in 2008.

Tamar is a Microsoft Certified Professional and a Microsoft Support Most Valuable Professional. Tamar speaks frequently about Visual FoxPro at conferences and user groups in North America and Europe, including every FoxPro DevCon since 1993.

You can reach her at tamar@thegranors.com or through www.tomorrowssolutionsllc.com.

Note that we will have NO meeting in October, due to Southwest Fox.

Menachem Bazian on setting up a LAMP Server

2008-08-05T13:58:00.000-07:00

Menachem Bazian returns to the Philadelphia VFP User Group next week to continue his discussion about combining VFP with MySQL. This will be the first meeting on our new, seond Tuesday schedule. The meeting begins at 7 PM on August 12, but you're welcome to bring some dinner and arrive as early as 6:30 PM.

We meet at Valley Forge Pension Management, 715 Twining Road, Suite 202, Dresher, PA 19025. (Note that the Oreland offramp from PA 309 Southbound has been permanently closed. The easiest way to reach the meeting location from the PA Turnpike or 309 Southbound is to come through the Fort Washington Industrial Park.)

Menachem Bazian, CPA (NY), CITP is the President of BC Consulting Services, Inc., a business management and technology consulting firm specializing in enhancing client efficiency with intelligent application of technology. He has been a Fox developer for over 20 years and is the author of three books and numerous articles on the topic. He was a featured speaker at DevCons for over a decade.

This session will discuss how to set up a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) server. It's a continuation of his last session on MySQL, but those who missed that meeting can still benefit from this one.

Menachem Bazian to return August 12!

2008-07-28T10:40:00.000-07:00

This summer has been an amazing one for our group. In June, we had a visit from Marcia Akins, who showed us to how to put the Windows API to work. In July, Cathy Pountney demonstrated a clever scheme for maintaining a single code base for a vertical market application, yet allowing customization for individual clients.

We've just confirmed that Menachem Bazian will return for our August 12th meeting. He'll talk about setting up a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, Python) server. Although this is a sequel to his February topic, those who missed that meeting should have no trouble following along.

Note that August is the first month for our new meeting night, the second Tuesday of the month. While you're putting this meeting on your calendar, also mark September 9th. I'll be speaking that night, rehearsing my new session, "We Used to Do it That Way, But ..." for Southwest Fox.

July meeting--Cathy Pountney on Customizing Vertical Market Apps

2008-07-09T13:48:00.000-07:00

Out group's exciting summer continues next Wednesday, July 16, with a visit from Cathy Pountney to present "Customizing Your Vertical Market Application." As usual, dinner begins at 6:30 with the meeting at 7 PM. Once again this month, we'll provide dinner for the group; please send an email to tamar@tamargranor.com if you're planning to come for dinner, so we get enough.

The meeting location is Valley Forge Pension Management, 715 Twining Road, Suite 202, Dresher, PA 19025. Note that the Oreland offramp from PA 309 Southbound has been permanently closed. The easiest way to reach the meeting location from the PA Turnpike or 309 Southbound is to come through the Fort Washington Industrial Park.

Cathy Pountney is a five-time recipient of the Microsoft VFP MVP award and has been developing software for 26 years, many of which were as an independent consultant specializing in FoxPro. In 2001 she had the privilege of spending six months as a contractor onsite in Redmond with the Microsoft Fox Team. She now works for Memorial Business Systems writing software for the cemetery and funeral home industry. Cathy has spoken at many FoxPro conferences and user groups across the U.S. and Canada, written articles for various magazines, and her book, The Visual FoxPro Report Writer: Pushing it to the Limit and Beyond, is available from Hentzenwerke Publishing. You can contact Cathy at cathy@frontier2000.com, view her website at http://www.frontier2000.com, and view MBS’s website at www.mbs-intl.com.

Customizing Your Vertical Market App:

Writing a vertical market application can be very rewarding. You write one application, sell it numerous times, and sit back while the money rolls in. Well, that’s the theory anyway. The reality is that often times, new clients want to buy your software, as long as you can change this one little thing. Managing custom code for various clients within your application can easily turn into a nightmare as your client base expands. This session shows you how to implement a customization methodology in your vertical market application that keeps your standard code independent from your custom code, yet have the two code bases play nice together.

New meeting day--second Tuesday

2008-06-16T11:01:00.000-07:00

To accommodate our hosts at Valley Forge Pension Management, and to try to accommodate more of our members, beginning with the August meeting, we'll meet on the second Tuesday of the month. So, our next few meeting dates are:

Wednesday, June 18 -- Marcia Akins (dinner provided)
Wednesday, July 16 -- Cathy Pountney (dinner provided)
Tuesday, August 12
Tuesday, September 9

The meeting starts at 7 PM, with bring-your-own dinner starting at 6:30 PM. We charge $5 per meeting.

June meeting--Marcia Akins on Using the API

2008-06-12T13:13:00.000-07:00

Next week, we begin an exciting summer for our group. On Wednesday, June 18, Marcia Akins will present "Practical uses for the Windows API". Next month, on July 16, Cathy Pountney will present "Customizing Your Vertical Market App."

We'll provide dinner for both meetings. As usual, the meeting starts at 7, but dinner will begin at 6:30 PM. Please email tamar@tamargranor.com if you're planning to come for dinner for the June meeting, so we make sure to get enough food.

Location: Valley Forge Pension Management, 715 Twining Road, Suite 202, Dresher, PA 19025. (Note: The Oreland offramp from PA 309 Southbound has been permanently closed. The easiest way to reach the meeting location from the PA Turnpike or 309 Southbound is to come through the Fort Washington Industrial Park.)

Marcia's session introduces Windows API programming for Visual FoxPro developers. She begins by reviewing what the API is and how to translates the examples that are often in Visual Basic or Visual C++ into good old Visual FoxPro syntax. She will then present several practical examples using Windows API functions to do things that cannot be accomplished using native Visual FoxPro commands. These examples include code to read the Windows Registry and retrieve user settings from the Control Panel, code to ensure that the screen is really locked when we must manipulate the appearance of ActiveX controls in our VFP forms, and much more.

Bio: Marcia Akins is an independent Consultant and software developer who for the past few years has worked primarily with Visual FoxPro and SQL Server. She and her husband, Andy Kramek own and operate Tightline Computers, Inc. from their home in Akron, Ohio. She has been awarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional since 1999 and also has Microsoft Certified Professional qualifications for both Distributed and Desktop Applications in Visual FoxPro.

Marcia co-authored the Kitbox column in FoxTalk Magazine from November, 2001 through July of 2006. She and her husband, Andy, then wrote a regular column in The Advisor Guide to Microsoft Visual FoxPro database Development until the end of 2007. Their popular Kitbox column is now being published in FoxRockX magazine. Marcia's published work also includes several articles for both FoxPro Advisor and FoxTalk magazines as well as the very successful book "1001 Things You Wanted to Know About VFP" (Hentzenwerke publishing, 2000) and "MegaFox: 1002 Things You Wanted to Know About Extending VFP" (Hentzenwerke publishing, 2002).

Speaking engagements include SouthwestFox(Tempe, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007), OzFox(Sydney, Australia, July 2003), Visual FoxPro Devcon (Prague, Czech Republic, June 2002, 2005, 2007), Essential Fox (Kansas City, 2002, 2003, 2004), Conference to the Max (Holland, May 2000 and May 2002), Great Lakes Great Database Workshop (Milwaukee, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2006), Advisor Devcon (San Diego, September 2001 and Fort Lauderdale, September 2002), German Devcon (Frankfurt, November 2001, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007), as well as user group meetings in Europe and the U.S.

Web site: www.tightlinecomputers.com

Cathy Pountney coming in July

2008-06-05T06:17:00.001-07:00

Summer '08 is going to be an exciting one for our Philly VFUG. Following Marcia Akins' visit on June 18, Cathy Pountney will speak at our July 16 meeting. Her topic is "Customizing Your Vertical Market App." Cathy, the author of "The Visual FoxPro Report Writer: Pushing it to the Limit and Beyond" (Hentzenwerke Publishing), spent six months contracting with the VFP team in Redmond in 2001.

We'll provide dinner at both the June and July meetings. So for $5, you get dinner and a chance to hear one of the leading lights in the VFP community.

Marcia Akins to visit in June

2008-04-09T13:01:00.000-07:00

Mark your calendars now for June 18, when Marcia Akins will speak to our group. Marcia is the co-author of "1001 Things You Wanted to Know about Visual FoxPro" and "MegaFox: 1002 Things You Wanted to Know about Extending Visual FoxPro," as well as the KitBox column. She'll speak on "Practical Uses of the Windows API."

April meeting--Bill Fitzgerald on Scoresheet plus Code Review

2008-04-09T13:00:00.000-07:00

Our next meeting will be next Wednesday, April 16, 2008 at 7 PM at Valley Forge Pension Management, 715 Twining Road, Suite 202, Dresher, PA 19025. (The Oreland offramp from PA 309 Southbound has been permanently closed. The easiest way to reach the meeting location from the PA Turnpike or 309 Southbound is to come through the Fort Washington Industrial Park.)

As always, you can bring dinner and arrive as early as 6:30 for some time to mingle.

We have a double-header this month. First, member Bill Fitzgerald will do a mini-session on Scoresheet, a VFP 9 report generator.

Scoresheet is a tool which allows endusers to customize Financial Statements using data from Accpac Pro Series. The tool uses some of the advanced features of the VFP 9 report writer by allowing the user to create a variable number of columns and formats in a secure setting.

Bill Fitzgerald is founder and president of Woodbury Systems Group, a Long Island based consultancy specializing in using Visual Foxpro to develop and support Financial, Distribution and Manufacturing System for small to mid-sized businesses.

He founded Woodbury Systems Group in 1984 after a long career in corportate MIS and Financial management. Since he moved to Hamilton NJ in 2006, his daughter and long-time partner Deirdre Volpe has assumed the responsibilities of running the business in New York and Bill has concentrated on programming, golf, painting and his family.

Bill saw combat with the United States Air Force. He has a BS from Adelphi University and is a Visual FoxPro MCP.

After Bill's presentation, Bob Pierce will lead an informal code review. All members are encouraged to bring some Visual Foxpro code that they have issues with or would just like to get feedback on from the group. We will examine the code samples as a group to discuss was to improve the codes reliability, reusability, and maintainability. We will discuss some of the issues involved in refactoring the code.

March 19: Bob Pierce on the Guineu Project

2008-03-12T12:13:00.001-07:00

Our next meeting will be Wednesday, March 19 at 7:30 PM. We'll try once again (third time's the charm) to hear Bob Pierce talk about the Guineu Project.

Location: Valley Forge Pension Management, 715 Twining Road, Suite 202, Dresher, PA 19025
Note: The Oreland offramp from PA 309 Southbound has been permanently closed. The easiest way to reach the meeting location from the PA Turnpike or 309 Southbound is to come through the Fort Washington Industrial Park.

Feel free to bring something to eat and arrive as early as 6:30.

Topic: Guineu Project

The Guineu project is one of the most promising solutions to the VFP developer to be able to extend the viability of the language we all love. Being run by Christof Wollenhaupt, one of the brightest minds in the Fox community, the Guineu project is a replacement set of runtime DLL's that run your compiled VFP code in a .NET environment.

So what does that mean for us, for starters your VFP application can now run on most platforms that support .NET. This includes future versions of MicroSoft OS, Linux, PDA's, and web pages.

Currently the project is still very young and is far from being complete, but it already provides usable functionality and is being updated aggressively. I will show how to take a simple existing program, compile it with Guineu, and run it in Windows, Linux, PDA, and a web page.

More information can be found at www.foxpert.com and the beta is available free.

Speaker: Robert Pierce

Robert Pierce is currently the Manager of Information Services and senior developer at Smooth-On Inc., a rubber and plastics manufacturing company located in Easton, PA. With 23 years of custom Fox programming experience; he has been a consultant, a contract programmer, and part of the TIW development team.

February 20--Menachem Bazian on VFP and MySQL

2008-02-13T13:47:00.001-08:00

The Philadelphia VFP User Group will meet on Wednesday, February 20, at 7 PM. We're very pleased to present Menachem Bazian, long-time VFP guru and an extremely engaging speaker.

The group will provide dinner this month, so if you plan to come in time to eat, email tamar@thegranors.com. Dinner begins at 6:30.

Location: Valley Forge Pension Management, 715 Twining Road, Suite 202, Dresher, PA 19025
Note: The Oreland offramp from PA 309 Southbound has been permanently closed. The easiest way to reach the meeting location from the PA Turnpike or 309 Southbound is to come through the Fort Washington Industrial Park.

Speaker: Menachem Bazian

Menachem Bazian is a New York certified CPA and is a Certified Information Technology Professional (CITP). He is President and CEO of BC Consulting Services, Inc., a full services business management and technology consultancy specializing in optimizing business operations through intelligent integration of business processes and technology.

Menachem has been a VFP developer since the early days. He actually started out with Dbase II before moving on to Dbase III, Clipper, FoxBase, FoxPro and then to Visual FoxPro. He has authored three books on Fox, numerous articles in various publications, and spoke at 10 of the first 11 DevCons.

Lately he has been specializing in client-server development using SQL Server and, even more recently, with MySQL.

Topic: VFP and MySQL

Visual FoxPro is the premier tool for developing robust client-server applications using a wide range of database backends. The two most popular are, perhaps, SQL Server and MySQL.

This session will show a method for rapid development of Client Server applications using Visual FoxPro. The goals of this session are

1) To highlite the differences between developing applications based on native Visual FoxPro tables and a Client Server backend,

2) To illustrate the differences between back-end environments,

3) To illustrate that development of a client server application is actually very simple and requires little extra coding knowledge beyond standard Visual Foxpro syntax.

Menachem Bazian to speak at February meeting!

2008-02-05T06:37:00.000-08:00

We're really excited that long-time FoxPro developer Menachem Bazian will speak at our February 20th meeting. Menachem has been part of the Fox community since the 1980's and was part of the team at Flash Creative Management back in the Codebook days. He'll speak on VFP and MySQL.

Sedna ships

2008-01-30T13:46:00.000-08:00

Sedna, the long-awaited extensions to VFP 9, shipped over last weekend. Be aware that despite the stated requirement of VFP 9 SP2, the Sedna extensions work with VFP 9 SP1.

You can get both SP2 and Sedna from the VFP home page: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vfoxpro/default.aspx

VFP Boot Camp in Kansas City

2008-01-21T14:25:00.000-08:00

VisionPace has been one of the leaders in VFP training for some time. I got a notice today that they're running another of their well-regarded boot camps next month. While I haven't been myself, I have heard good things from those who have.

Here's the notice:
The next VFP Boot Camp will be in Kansas City, Missouri, February 25-27, 2008

Registration ends on February 6, 2008 for the highly-acclaimed VFP Boot Camp. This event delivers three jam-packed days of solid, hands-on learning. From the fundamentals of VFP development through the very latest VFP 9.0 features, this boot camp is designed to quickly get your VFP skills up to speed. Attendees will receive a 500 page manual in both print and electronic format.

For more information visit
http://visionpace.com/developereducation.html or email info@visionpace.com. To register call 888-904-7900.

Change of plans for January meeting

2008-01-16T12:02:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately, Bob Pierce is home sick with a bad cold, so he won't be able to present on Guineu tonight. Seems like that topic is cursed, since Bob was previously supposed to give the talk in November. But we will reschedule it.

Instead, based on a vote of members, I will present "Using the VFP Debugger Effectively." Here's the blurb:

Visual FoxPro has a powerful debugger that provides many tools for finding problems with your code. This session will dig into the Debugger, showing how you can make the most of its tools in order to speed development, improve your code, and understand VFP better.

Interestingly, this is the topic I presented at our group's first meeting back in September, 2005. But there's so much wealth in the Debugger that I hope everyone will find something new to learn.

January meeting--Bob Pierce on Guineu

2008-01-09T06:11:00.000-08:00

Our January meeting will take place on Wednesday, January 16, 2008 at 7 PM. Member Bob Pierce will speak about Guineu.

The Guineu project is one of the most promising solutions to the VFP developer to be able to extend the viability of the language we all love. Being run by Christof Wollenhaupt, one of the brightest minds in the Fox community, the Guineu project is a replacement set of runtime DLL's that run your compiled VFP code in a .NET environment.

So what does that mean for us, for starters your VFP application can now run on most platforms that support .NET. This includes future versions of Microsoft OS, Linux, PDA's, and web pages.

Currently the project is still very young and is far from being complete, but it already provides usable functionality and is being updated aggressively. I will show how to take a simple existing program, compile it with Guineu, and run it in Windows, Linux, PDA, and a web page.

More information can be found at www.foxpert.com and the beta is available free.

Robert Pierce is currently the Manager of Information Services and senior developer at Smooth-On Inc., a rubber and plastics manufacturing company located in Easton, PA. With 23 years of custom Fox programming experience; he has been a consultant, a contract programmer, and part of the TIW development team.

As always, feel free to bring dinner and come as early as 6:30

Welcome to the Philadelphia Visual FoxPro User Group's blog!

2008-01-09T06:09:00.001-08:00

Our user group is now about two years old. We've been meaning to set up a website, but haven't quite gotten there yet. Member Bill Fitzgerald pointed out that a blog would provide an easy way to post notices without the overhead of maintaining a website. So Bob Pierce and I, who run the group, decided to give a try.