October 14: Toni Feltman double-header

Note the change of room beginning this month. From now on, we'll meet in room 104.

We continue our Southwest Fox previews this month. Toni Feltman will (remotely) present both of her Southwest Fox 2014 sessions.

Title: I Need a REST!
Abstract: Web APIs are one way to enable distributed systems to interact with each other over HTTP. In the past, SOAP-based Web Services were the Web API of choice. Today developers prefer to use RESTful Web APIs to enable system to communicate. Our Visual FoxPro applications are just one of the types of systems that may need to communicate with others over the web. It is very possible, and pretty easy, to do so using RESTful APIs. In order to take advantage of all that is available using the web you must first
understand Web APIs, know how to find them (or write them) and then plug them into your applications.

Title: Should I be Concerned?
Abstract: I remember way back around 1994 when people started talking about the concept of business objects and application layers. I know that when I spoke on the topic, many people looked at me like I was completely nuts. Why would anyone want to add such layers of complexity to an application? Fast forward a couple of years (or decades) and we have complex business applications that are screaming for features that FoxPro can't provide such as Metro interfaces, offline databases, interactions with specialized hardware such as cameras and GPS. I am really glad that I added that layer of complexity back then because moving portions of my applications to other platforms is significantly easier than it could have been. But what about you? How can you retrofit monolithic FoxPro applications into an n-tier model in an efficient manner that does not require extensive rewrite or testing?

Toni Feltman, a Microsoft Certified Professional, is an experienced software developer, project manager, instructor and speaker. Currently Toni serves as the Application Development Manager for CoreLogis, LLC, a Westerville, OH company that specializes in Inventory and Asset management software for local to international government entities. She is also Vice President and a Partner at F1 Technologies and is still an integral part of the company. During her 15 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 over the last several years. 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. In 2011, Toni was honored by the FoxPro community with a lifetime achievement award in recognition of her contributions to the community throughout her career.

Toni has penned several articles for Advisor Guide to Microsoft Visual FoxPro and is co-author of What's New in Visual FoxPro 9.0 (Hentzenwerke Publishing). Toni also designed and developed Project HookX, a public domain 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.