|
|
DevConnections New Orleans Conference Official Report
Overview
by Michel Fournier
The DevConnections Conferences (Visual FoxPro DevCon 2000, SQL Server Connections and DevCon 2000) were being held from May 14 to 18, 2000 in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Taught by the leading experts in the industry, the sessions at the conferences were covering up to date technologies and some interesting previews such as the upcoming version 7 of Visual FoxPro. For the first time, attendees were able to attend sessions from more than one conference at the same time. This offered us the flexbility to network with people from other conferences. It was an overall success. We were told this formula will be used again for upcoming conferences.
Congratulations to Shirley's team for having staged a successful conference.
We worked with the DevConnections team to bring you this report. It offers an overall view of the conferences. From technical aspects, such as the keynotes, sessions and trade show, to special events, such as the House of Blues party, it offers you a good idea of what we were part of during those four days. We hope you will find it interesting. We are already planning more with the DevConnections team for the upcoming conferences.
You can get more information about upcoming conferences at the DevConnections site.
I would like to thank all who worked with us on this report. A special thanks to Eldor Gemst for some photos, to our reporters (David Stevenson, Nick Neklioudov, Craig Berntson, Bill Wood) and to the DevConnections team (Shirley Brothers, Barry Lee, Joan Novino).
 | | |   | | Michel Fournier is the owner of Level Extreme, designer of the renowned Universal Thread. He specializes in providing IT solutions in the .NET world as well as the SQL Server data platform. His expertise has been used in feasibility study, prototyping, analysis, development, training, development team integration, standards implementation and testing. His consulting services have been given to clients in Montreal, Toronto, Quebec, Bathurst, Moncton and the United States. In the last years, he has given various training and consulting related to Internet and Visual FoxPro for user groups and companies while having published various articles for different sources. You will find the biggest Internet product achievement he has done by accessing the Universal Thread. He has been a Microsoft MVP in 1997, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008. |
|
A word from your hosts
by Shirley Brothers
It’s been an exciting time in New Orleans for DevConnections Conferences. Just over 1,000 attendees from all over the owrld attended sessions on Visual FoxPro, SQL Server, and Microsoft
Office VBA. the conference kicked off with a combined Microsoft keynote with Barry Goffe presenting the new version of SQL Server, and Robert Green and Ricardo Wenger’s unveiling of VFP 7.0.
From the computer lab
John Koziol, David Stevension and Nick Neklioudov
|
DevConnections concept of providing attendees with concurrently run events in the same place at the same time was very well received. We were proud to have some of the best speakers in the industry presenting sessions on leading edge technology. The comments back from the attendees on content was very positive.
The parade to the House of Blues and the party that followed should go down in Conference Party History... it was a BLAST!!!
The one question on our conference survey, which we really take note of, is, "Will you attend this conference again?" And over 90% of the attendees said "Yes". Now we know we did our job right...
by Barry Lee
The whole conference was a very gratifying experience. Overall it was a tremendous outflowing experience, ideas, techniques. The cross-polynation aspect of the conference was something that's never been tried before and it prooved to be a really fruitful experience for any of the attendees that took advantage of it. And, yes, it's gonna happen again about the same time next year.
Shirley Brothers, Joan Novino and Barry Lee teamed up to stage this conference.
VFP 7.0 Revealed
by Craig Berntson
At the Keynote at the New Orleans DevCon, members of the Fox team at Microsoft announced several new significant features for VFP 7.0. These include:
- Database Events. You can now capture things like TableOpen, TableClose, etc.
- Document Viewer that lets you jump to any method in a form/class or procedure/function in the open form/class/prg
- Bookmarks in editor
- Persistant bookmarks are saved to the new Tasklist. You can jump right to the bookmark even if the file isn't open
- Intellisense to COM and even Constants in the COM objects
- Intellisense to VFP commands/objects
- Intellisense to ActiveX controls
- Flat toolbars and menus
- Menus have icons
- Personalized menus like in Windows 2000 and Office 2000
- Code Completion. You can define things like "DC" to mean "DEFINE CLASS" and have the complete structure built for you. This is fully data driven
- Timeout parameter in MESSAGEBOX
- Desktop properties can now be set from a Property Sheet
- You can place URLs in comments and have them hyperlinked
- Docking windows
- Link Docking. The example shown was Command window, Property Sheet, and several debugger windows docked together
- MouseEnter and MouseLeave events on UI objects
- New "HotTracking" property for UI objects that lets them become "raised" when the mouse is over them
- Ctrl+Click to drill down to objects in the Form/Class designer (no more Right-Click/Edit)
- WordWrap on grid headers
- UI objects are COM enabled and support the new iAccessable interface
- OLE-DB Provider that even supports stored procedures
- Implementation Inheritance. This is necessary for many COM+ services
- You can click in the right-hand margin of the editor to set a break point
- New Object Browser that can view COM Objects and Type Libraries. You can drag a COM object to the editor and a shell application will be created so that you an bind code to all the methods of the COM object
- Support in the new Visual Studio shell. You can create VFP Middle-tier components right inside VS. Then, you can debug them! The VS debugger will step right into the code in the VFP DLL.
- Strong Data Typing
 | | | | | Craig Berntson is an independent consultant, based in Salt Lake City. He is a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer (MCSD), Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP), and President of the Salt Lake City Fox User Group. He is the author of Crysdev: A Developer's Guide to Integrating Crystal Reports. He has been using xBase since dBase II on CP/M, Clipper, FoxBASE, FoxPro since 2.0. He has worked on custom as well as commercial, vertical market applications and multi-tier applications using SQL Server, MTS, IIS, ASP, and COM+, and Crystal Reports. He has spoken at several Microsoft events in Salt Lake City, Code Camps, user groups, and VFP conferences (Essential Fox, GLGDW, Advisor DevCon, DevEssentials, Southwest Fox, DevTeach, German FoxPro DevCon, Prague DevCon) and has written for FoxTalk. |
|
Impressions of DevCon opening night
by David Stevenson
The VFP DEVCON Connections conference kicked off tonight with a keynote event attended by an estimated (by me) crowd of 750 - 800. This included a large number of Foxers plus those attending the SQL Server and Devcon 2000 conferences, which run simultaneously.
After enduring a presentation of animated Agents (Merlin and Genie) and hearing how they will make our applications "better and easier to use," we moved into the first keynote on SQL Server 2000.
In a nutshell: XML, Query via URL over HTTP with SQL commands embedded in the URL, cascading updates and deletes, codepage and collation sequence different on a column by column basis, and massive scalability are the big items. Oh yeah, you can do multiple installations on the same machine, so you can have a live server and a test server side by side. This probably means that we will be able to have SQL Server and MSDE on the same machine, although that was not mentioned.
We all received SQL 2000 Beta 2 with which to corrupt our systems when we get home. (I hope no one is dumb enough to try installing it on their laptop during the conference!)
Foxpro Rocks!
After a short break for slurping partially frozen ice cream bars, the Webcast presentation of VFP7 and DNA began. Craig's document covers the list of new items pretty well, so I'll mostly comment on the overall event and highlight a few features that seemed particularly important.
Presentations of new features were given by Robert Green, Calvin Hsia, Randy Brown, Gene Goldhammer, and VFP Group Manager Ricardo Wenger, and they all "earned their beads" by revealing various parts of VFP7.
Rod Paddock at the trade show
|
As Calvin quickly blew through several dozen new developer interface features, including Intellisense everywhere you look, and of every shape you can imagine (I expected it to pop up his family history and bank account info), the room came alive with cheers, oohs and ahhs.
I couldn't see whether it was the Foxers cheering for the new features, or the non-Foxers just getting a good look at what you can do in the Command Window! There was so much to show that some of the very major changes were almost glossed over and mentioned in passing (like strong typing).
Database Events are a major new feature and include such events as "AfterOpenTable", "BeforeModifyTable", "BeforeUpdateTable", etc. For example, during one of the demos a double-click on a table brought up a browse window and also opened two other windows for viewing contents of memo fields. Let your imagination run wild with new security-checking possibilities triggered by these events.
The OLE-DB Provider announcement (can you say oComm.Provider="VFPOLEDB" ?) got a good cheer, but I don't think everyone caught the significance of its promised performance, scalability and stored procedure support.
The IMPLEMENTS keyword added to DEFINE CLASS brings us to "event subscribing", and the skeletal DEFINE statements for all the methods can be created with a drag and drop, ready for filling in the code.
We all received the BizTalk Server 2000 Technology Preview, and learned that the Web Services toolkit is to be released very soon on the MSDN site for downloading.
The new integration of VFP into the Visual Studio IDE is way cool, and the debugging into COM object calls will make life much better on the planet. It's obvious that Visual Studio's project interface has much of what once was Visual Interdev, but with the capability to mix and match VFP projects and other language projects in the same "solution".
All in all, the non-Fox crowd got a great dose of reality (with repeated "Foxpro Rocks!" messages in the demos) to balance out the usual "Fox is Dead" line that they are accustomed to hearing. It was kinda cool to hear Robert using lines like "You can do this in Visual Foxpro and also in the other languages" :-)
New and Old Friends
A group picture
Among others, Menachem Bazian, Doug Hennig, Tom Piper, Jürgen Wondzinski, Drew Speedie, Ed Leafe, Ceil Silver, Steven Black, Eldor Gemst, Jim Booth, Barbara Peisch, Ted Roche, Tamar Granor, Calvin Hsia
|
At the dessert reception, we heard some authentic blues by a couple of seasoned artists -- one on electric guitar, and one on harmonica. This was genuine down-home blues, and well-worth the trip.
Several UT'ers could be seen hanging out together before and after the event. In fact, there was a pretty good group of us sitting close together during the keynote. I managed to identify a few of them without looking at name badges, although most don't *really* look like the UT pics.
I guess it's time for a bit of sleep. We'll get a closer look at the new stuff Monday night in the bonus session, so I may post more then. A member of the Fox team commented that there are many more new features that have not been shown so far, so it looks like this is shaping up to be a great release.
Gee, I love this product and this community. It's good to be here.
 | | | | | David Stevenson, Editor of FoxTalk 2.0, is an "old" Fox developer, having started with Foxbase and progressing up through Foxpro 2-2.6 (DOS and UNIX) and VFP 5-9. He is a MCSD, a regular contributor to the VFP forum on the Universal Thread and currently working as a contractor on several Visual FoxPro projects. He was for several years the Editor and Associate Publisher of Code Magazine and Marketing Representative for EPS Software Corp. |
|
VFP 7.0 language enhancements
by Nick Neklioudov and David Stevenson
NOTE: This article was written by your humble reporters based on information bouncing around in their feeble brains and from hastily scribbled (and often unintelligible) notes. Maybe we got most of it right. :-) --DaveS
How about a cheer for this exciting new keyword added to SELECT: SELECT * FROM MyTable INTO CURSOR MyCursor READWRITE to create an updatable cursor!!!!!!
You can override an existing connection string defined for a remote view with a new "CONNSTRING" clause on the USE MyRemoteView CONNSTRING "Driver=... blah, blah"
A new array function ATAGINFO(MyArrayName, "MyTable.cdx") will give you an array with all index tag information for a table.
BROWSE NOCAPTION will show actual field names instead of captions defined in the DBC.
SYS(3054) now shows filter optimization, join optimization and rushmore optimization.
ASCAN(...) now supports a parameter to indicate the array column to be scanned, and also has added "flags" for turning on or off Case Sensitivity and SET EXACT.
ASORT(...) also has the added flag for Case Sensitivity.
Stolen from the parameterized view prompt, we now get a function called INPUTBOX(...) to get user input and return text, with a timeout.
GETDIR() now can have an option for adding a new folder, also can have a right-click context menu, and is resizable.
DISKSPACE() has been fixed and works on large drives and NTFS, and reports more information.
OS() can now report version major and minor numbers, service pack information, whether running on Win 2000 Professional, Server, Advanced Server, Terminal Server, etc.
Many new ways of creating programs, HTML or XML output strings, or foxscript are made possible by several new clauses added to TEXT/ENDTEXT:TEXT TO cMyString NOSHOW TEXTMERGE
.... HTML here ....
ENDTEXT This will enhance our abilities to dynamically create web pages or XML into string variables to be passed back to a calling process. We will not need to +CHR(13)+CHR(10) to get CRLF's.
Similar to this enhancement is SET TEXTMERGE TO MEMVAR cMyString NOSHOW.
Related to both of these, a new function EXECSCRIPT(cMyString) will run the code inside the character string. It is the same functionality as selecting lines in the Command Window, right-click and Execute -- but available for use programmatically.
APROCINFO(aMyArray, "genmenu.prg") will create an array with 4 columns, two of which are Procedure Name and Line Number.
EDITSOURCE(nShortcutID | cFileName [,nLine] [,cClassName] [,cProcName]) will bring up the editor with the program opened to a particular line, by line number, class name, or procedure name.
Anyone who has struggled with a grid's AfterRowColChange event will be overjoyed to find a new grid property called RowColChange which will contain a numeric value indicating just what really changed:0 - nothing
1 - row
2 - column
3 - both row and column All forms, including "_screen", now have a new hWnd property.
ADLLS(aMyArray) will build an array with information on all dll's currently declared.
ALANGUAGE(aMyArray, nOption) will load the array with lists of information, according to the nOption specified:1 - commands
2 - functions, with number of parameters
3 - base classes
4 - DBC events Speaking of DBC events, we were able to catch a rushmore-optimized glimpse (Calvin was typing) of a few more of the database events that will fire when various actions are taken. It's a very long list. In addition to those already mentioned in the other reports, we saw:BeforeModifyProc (and AfterModifyProc)
BeforeDropRelation (and After..., etc)
BeforeRemoveTable
DBC_Closedata
DBC_Deactivate There is a new Splash Screen feature with timeout.
DBC Events are also supported in the new OLE-DB provider, which also will work much more closely with ADO, and will support table creation and the "iopenrowset" interface.
The new strong-typing syntax is not enforced at run-time, but is added to enhance type library compatibility, enable Intellisense, and provide necessary features for participation in COM+. We will have statements like the following:LOCAL oExcel AS excel.application
oExcel.visible=.t.
PROCEDURE MyProc(cParam1 AS String, nParam2 AS Number @) AS Boolean
The return value of the procedure could be Boolean, String, or any of several other types, but we also can specify it AS VOID to indicate that a NULL return value is OK. The VOID type is necessary for the component to be a COM+ Queued Component.
Several of the Fox team have commented that they have been paying attention to the many requests that have come in from the community, resulting in many of the new features. It is likely, however, that priority first goes to new language enhancements and architecture changes necessary to participate as fully as possible in COM+ or to implement new directives from Microsoft such as "You will support IACCESSIBLE". As various changes are made, the need arises for new functions and commands or enhancements to the old, so Calvin just takes a minute or two and adds them. :-)
A lot has been said here about the changes being made to support Active Accessibility, which are quite extensive. Every UI element -- form, textbox, button, grid, cell in grid, etc., has a COM-addressable identity through the "IACCESSIBLE" interface, and can be queried by outside programs for that information.
Outside programs can receive events triggered by user actions, and can keep up with where the focus is on a form. Outside programs can talk to the current window that has focus, and to that window's UI elements and set properties or tell them what to do, such as telling a command button something like "DoDefaultAction", which would be a click.
All of the IACCESSIBLE stuff is there to support a major Microsoft initiative related to people with disabilities, but there are many other interesting and innovative uses for it, such as automated testing. And in usual fashion the Fox team and Fox developers will find some very interesting other uses for it, too. :-)
It's hard to tell from the very fast demos which of the new items are for Accessibility and which are for COM+. For example, we saw a new array property that is added to each property, similar to the way ACCESS and ASSIGN are named. This was seen inside a CLASS definition: MyProp=0
DIMENSION MyProp_comattrib(4)
MyProp_comattrib(1)=COMATTRIB_READONLY
(MyProp is now readonly)
MyProp_comattrib(2)="MyProp Help String Text"
(that text shows tooltip-style in the new Object Browser)
MyProp_comattrib(3)="MyProp"
(this allows capitalization of property name to be preserved)
MyProp_comattrib(4)="String"
(property type) We saw the result of these settings in the Object Browser, but were they added for IACCESSIBLE or COM+? It seems that Microsoft's directives for their products to support new standards has given the Fox team plenty of ammunition for other features.
The team also promises that there will be further announcements of new capabilities from now until eventual release sometime next year. This will be a MAJOR release, and not just a minor upgrade.
Wow!
 | | | | | Nick Neklioudov, M.Sc., CNA, works as Senior Analyst with CGI Group Inc. in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Programming in all versions of FoxPro/VFP since 1987, in .Net since 2003, not counting some other developer tools and environments. Nick received Microsoft Most Valuable Professional award three times. Nick Neklioudov has over 20 years experience with computers and information technologies, especially in database-oriented programming, object-oriented programming and information systems development. |
|
| | | | | David Stevenson, Editor of FoxTalk 2.0, is an "old" Fox developer, having started with Foxbase and progressing up through Foxpro 2-2.6 (DOS and UNIX) and VFP 5-9. He is a MCSD, a regular contributor to the VFP forum on the Universal Thread and currently working as a contractor on several Visual FoxPro projects. He was for several years the Editor and Associate Publisher of Code Magazine and Marketing Representative for EPS Software Corp. |
|
VFP Developers Choice Awards
Here are the winners of the VFP Developers Choice Awards in NOLA:
| Category
| Winner
|
| VFP Framework | Visual Maxframe Professional (Drew Speedie)
|
| VFP Reporting Tool | Stonefield Reports (Stonefield Systems Group - Doug
Hennig)
|
| VFP Add-On | Web Connect (West-Wind Technologies - Rick Strahl)
|
| VFP Book | The Hackers Guide to VFP6 (Tamar Granor/Ted Roche)
|
| VFP Forum | Universal Thread (Michel Fournier)
|
| VFP Utility | Stonefield Database Toolkit (Doug Hennig)
|
| VFP Training | TakeNote (Jim Duffy)
|
At the trade show
by Bill Wood
Monday night on Bourbon Street
Among others, Roxanne Seibert, Michel Fournier, Barbara Peisch, Georges Mamunes
|
Markus Egger at the trade show
|
It's Monday night, and the first full day of the New Orleans Devcon is
over. It's been a very busy day that started at 8:00 am with the opening of
the trade show floor. This year's trade show seems bigger than normal and
that's probably due to the inclusion of the Sql Server conference that's
coinciding with the Visual FoxPro conference. Every DevCon is fun because
we have the chance to meet customers face-to-face. Some people I may have
spoken to or conversed through e-mail for years before finally getting a
chance to meet. It's always a surprise to put names and faces together for
the first time.
So far the conference has been very busy with lots of new faces and the
energy has been very high. We've met a lot of new users new to Visual
FoxPro and have had a chance to meet and discuss application development
with non-VFP attendees for the first time. I think it's been a interesting
mix. The VB/Access developers have been very curious to learn about Visual
FoxPro's capabilities, and I've enjoyed learning new things from a VB
perspective. Plus, there's many new vendors offering other products and
services besides the regular FoxPro group.
This conference has also been more enjoyable for us because this is the
first conference in a long time that we've had a new version with many new
cool features in our Foxfire! product to demonstrate. We don't have to
discuss vaporware anymore <g>. We can now talk about the support for ODBC
datasources, XML-based import/export capabilities, and other new
technologies that have been incorporated into the Foxfire! product.
After the trade show closed Microsoft held a special session to furthur
elaborate on the topics discussed in Sunday's opening keynote address. They
demonstrated more of the new intellisense and developer productivity
features that are coming with Visual FoxPro 7.0. The additions and
improvements to the Visual FoxPro IDE are extensive. You will be a much
more productive developer in Visual FoxPro 7.0.
After the special session, I figured 12 solid hours of computer talk was
enough. I finally got outside the Sheraton hotel and headed for Bourbon
Street. Bourbon street is like one gigantic block party. It's a great way
to unwind and put life into perspective again after a day of 1's an 0's.
 | | | | | Bill Wood works at MicroMega Systems in Corte Madera, CA. He is the product manager of Foxfire!, an add-hoc report query tool for Visual FoxPro. |
|
Marva Wright rocks DEVCON at House of Blues!
by David Stevenson
In New Orleans Tuesday night a marching band led a parade of several hundred DEVCON attendees down Canal Street and into the French Quarter to House of Blues for the official DEVCON party.
A sumptuous meal of salad, rice, chicken, crawdads (also known as mudbugs), barbeque, pasta and bread pudding was served during a relaxed time of mingling with friends.
Attendees going to the House of Blues party
|
On hearing mention of crawdads, UT'er Bill Armbrecht said, "Those were crawdads? I thought they were shrimp! But they were really good!"
After a good set by the warm-up band, the stage was suddenly filled with the ample presence of the legendary Marva Wright ("Hi, I'm Marva Wright!" ...backup band hits a note... crowd cheers... "I said I'm Marva Wright!" ...another note... another cheer... "I'm not Margaret Wright... I'm not Martha White (she lives in Cleveland)... I'm M - A - R - V - A Right with a W in front! ... another note...
You get the idea. It was an electifying performance that had the House of Geeks rocking out. She was backed up by piano, bass, guitar, drums, sax and trumpet.
At the House of Blues Party
Jim Booth, Gary Brothers, Barry Lee, Val Matison, Shirley Brothers, John Petersen
|
We heard "Ain't Got No Drawers On", "Last Dance (Last Chance for Love)", and a medley with "Stand By Me", "Dock of the Bay", "Mr. Postman" and "Soldier Boy". Then she began her story of working in the local school system for 10 years, getting a chance to start singing on Bourbon Street 6 nights a week, getting hardly any sleep, working hard both night and day... leading into "Left a good job in the city..." (Proud Mary). What an entertainer! Check it out for yourself at www.marvawright.com.
UT Technical Advisor Jim Booth enthusiastically said, "Awesome! She's the first female singer I've ever heard who is in the same class with Billie Holliday."
Who said Val Matison was not able to dance the Blues!
|
After she left the stage, the backup band finished with a creative and dramatic musical description of "Let Me Tell You About My Baby". Then the House was emptied and the party moved out onto Bourbon Street, where it was rumored that the same UT Technical Advisor took the stage (with JVP on drums) at the "Funky Pirate" club and amazed the crowd with his rendition of "House of the Rising Sun".
All in all, it was a night to remember. A good time was had by all!
| | | | | David Stevenson, Editor of FoxTalk 2.0, is an "old" Fox developer, having started with Foxbase and progressing up through Foxpro 2-2.6 (DOS and UNIX) and VFP 5-9. He is a MCSD, a regular contributor to the VFP forum on the Universal Thread and currently working as a contractor on several Visual FoxPro projects. He was for several years the Editor and Associate Publisher of Code Magazine and Marketing Representative for EPS Software Corp. |
|
Comments
I guess the conferences are good for me because it allows to reestablish the connections with people I met over the years.
Rod Paddock, Red Matrix, Raleigh, NC
It's fun to have a location where you can enjoy the city at the same time. I wish the conference sessions would have been more advanced technically but the flexibility to attend the SQL Server conference sessions at the same time was a big plus.
Randy Pearson, Cycla Corporation, Pittsburg, PA
It's nice to have multiple products at the same event. It's good to see old friends I haven't seen for a while.
Val Matison, Thornhill, ON
A phenomenal experience!
Roxanne Seibert, Roxworld Solutions, Highspire, PA
I think this is a great event. The fact that they combined VFP and SQL Server together was a added benefit.
Randy Brown, Microsoft
Copyright © 1993-2008, Level Extreme Inc., All Rights Reserved
62 Rue Doucet, Petit-Rocher, New Brunswick, E8J 1L3
Telephone: 1-506-783-9007 Email: mfournier@levelextreme.com
 |
