Thursday, October 13

By Craig Boyd

Registration

The day started with a wake up call from the front desk at 6:00 AM. Two short hours later I was on the sprawling ASU Campus on my way to register for the 2nd annual Southwest Fox conference. I was greeted warmly by Craig Berntson and Bob Kocher and ushered into a room where Bob's wife Sharon was handing out packets of conference information and the speaker shirts.

Having registered and retrieved my bag of goodies, I was informed that Craig Berntson's session on COM+ would be starting shortly, so I went on down to the Pinal room and found an unobtrusive seat in the back right of the class. Around 20 attendees filed in within the next 10-15 minutes and then Craig began his presentation.

Using Windows Component Services (COM+)
Craig Berntson

At first I felt that Craig's presentation was not all that different from many of the basic presentations I have seen or read over the years regarding COM, DCOM, and COM+. I took a few pictures of Craig and sat back to enjoy the rest of the presentation, not really expecting to learn much new, but knowing that there were many in the session that were taking notes and indeed benefitting from the basic overviews that Craig was giving on each technology and its use in Visual FoxPro. However, that soon changed... I guess Craig was just warming up and I had read far too much into the unassuming way in which he started his presentation.

Before I knew it Craig had gone from showing how to create basic COM+ components in Visual FoxPro to how they could be managed and an install set (MSI) for them generated using the Component Services MMC snap-in. A small smile broke out on my face. I recall thinking, this is more like it, I wonder what else he has up his sleeve?

Next up was a demonstration how a Visual FoxPro developer can setup Windows role-based security for a COM+ component using the Component Services snap-in again. The Craig began to talk about transactions and some of the issues that many of us have run into with limitations in the implementation of transactions in Visual FoxPro. COM+ provided for improved transactions Craig assured us, and to prove it he showed how a COM+ transaction could be setup that would allow us to reliably commit and rollback transactions within a single Visual FoxPro database, but multiple databases, and not just Visual FoxPro databases. Imagine being able to wrap updates to both a Visual FoxPro backend and a SQL Server backend in a transaction, and if a problem was encountered during the update, being able to easily rollback the changes to both backends. This is possible using COM+ using a Compensating Resource Manager and setting a few properties in the Component Services snap-in.

Just to mention a few of the other things that I got from Craig's session. Did you know that you can create COM+ components that are queued and provide for offline, asyncronous applications? Or that you can create a publisher component that can have multiple subscriber components? The latter provides a mechanism for creating a very effective push (rather than pull) architecture which can prove extremely useful for user alerts, updates, and any other application where you would want more than one destination to receive data based on an event at the source.

All in all, Craig's session was very informative and I learned more than a few things. I think if you polled the other attendees they would agree with me. Great session Craig and thank you.

Lunch and a monitor run

After grabbing a quick bite to eat, I accompanied Bob Kocher and another individual to go get a few extra monitors that were needed, and on the way we picked up Cathy Pountney at the airport. Secretly I think Bob timed it so he could get Cathy to help us carry monitors. Bob even found a way to swing by the motel and get Craig Berntson who was enjoying a relaxing moment after the intense 3 hour session he had just given. Bob strikes me as a master coordinator who knows how to utilize the resources he has to the fullest. He also strikes me as one of the nicest, most unassuming individuals I have met in sometime. I had several very pleasant conversations with Bob today and can tell you first hand that the man genuinely cares about the Visual FoxPro Community. He says his only reason for creating Southwest Fox was because Whilfest had been cancelled, and I believe him. He's created perhaps the best Visual FoxPro conference of the year, and I don't think he did it for money, or for fame, I think he did it out of a true love for Visual FoxPro and the Visual FoxPro Community. In short, Bob is my kind of people.

Monitor run completed

Having delivered the monitors back to ASU, I noticed that a number of other high-profile Visual FoxPro Community members had begun to arrive. I can't recall the exact order in which I ran into the following remarkable individuals, Doug Hennig, Rick Schummer, Andy Kramek, Marcia Akins, Toni Feltman, and Barbara Peisch, but they were all filtering in and I was busy making the rounds and shaking hands. Then it was time for Andy Kramek's session.

Designing and Implementing a Data Access Layer in Visual FoxPro
Andy Kramek

Besides having one of the longest names for a session I have ever seen, Andy's session was jam packed with content about how to create and deploy a nTier application with Visual FoxPro. But before I get into the session's content, I'd like to say that it was a pleasure to attend Andy's session and watch this master presenter in action. His tone was perfect, his movements and demos very fluid and his presentation of the complex subject of nTier architecture was very straight forward and understandable. I stress understandable, because Andy would back up all of the design decisions that had been made in the framework he was presenting with very solid arguments. I found myself nodding in agreement on numerous occasions as I thought, "Well yes, of course it must have been designed that way. It is quite clear from what you have just said that it couldn't be any other way". I can only say that I hope that I am half as good in my own sessions that I will begin presenting tomorrow morning at 8:00 AM as Andy was in his presentation today. Andy definitely knows his stuff and perhaps more importantly, he knows how to impart that knowledge to others with what appears to be little to no effort.

Andy showed how to create a data access layer that could be used to access a variety of backends. In this particular session he provided examples of connecting to a Visual FoxPro database backend or an SQL Server backend, but the concepts and a large amount of the code he showed could easily be adapted to providing access to nearly any backend, or at least those that have ODBC drivers provided for them.

He also provided attendees with a number of custom built Visual FoxPro tools that they could use to produce customized classes and code for their application's own databases, and provided attendees with some very sound advice.

• When providing for multiple backends it is preferrable to work with ODBC
• Always send data through your access layers and resist the temptation to skip layers and access them directly which defeats the purpose of having separate layers and will ultimately lead to problems down the road
• Implementing an nTier application with properly encapsulated layers will provide a very sound foundation, give you increased scalability, portability, and ultimately results in being able to develop highly dynamic applications with very little code
• A number of modification and maintenance headaches slip away when using this proven approach to application design

Now, those aren't Andy's words exactly, but they are a number of points that I took away from Andy's session.

VSS/VFP IDE Integration and What's New in Visual SourceSafe 2005 for the VFP Developer
Bill Fields

OK, so maybe Andy's session title wasn't that long after all? Regrettably I was unable to attend Bill Fields session as I was trying to report on Andy's. No slight on Bill or his session intended, it is just that with so many speakers at this year's Southwest Fox, I cannot possibly make it to all the sessions that are available. I was able to sneak in at one point and get some pictures. When I came in everyone seemed to be contemplating some great problem that was on the verge of solution and Bill Fields was busy answering questions from the attendees. I apologize to all of the speakers in advance that I will no doubt miss over the next two days as I attempt to spread myself between the sessions being presented. Starting tomorrow there will be six sessions going at a time, and there is only one of me, so please try to understand and know that it is not a great situation for me as either as I would like to see every one of these sessions. Bob Kocher had over 100 session ideas submitted and the ones being presented here at Southwest Fox are the hand picked best. If only someone would find an undocumented API call that I could use to clone myself... perhaps I will have to block out some time to speak with Calvin Hsia.

Bob calls together the speakers

At about 5:30, myself and nearly every other speaker met in the Cochise room for a meeting. Words of encouragement and much laughter filled the room. I was humbled to be in a room with so many talented Visual FoxPro developers, consultants, authors, and speakers. I had Barbara Peisch to my left, Craig Berntson was immediately to my right, and behind me was Calvin Hsia, Steven Black, and Rick Borup. I did manage to take a few pictures of this amazing group of individuals all seated together and began to feel like I was becoming part of an extended family or some kind of fraternity that is well equipped to enjoy life and the beautiful moments that it graces us with on occasion.

Meet the speakers

I think that the speakers, including myself, pretty much laughed our way to 6:00 PM. Needless to say the Visual FoxPro Community is not short on individuals with a wonderful sense of humor. In any event, it was now time for the speakers to meet and greet the Southwest Fox attendees, who are the sole reason that great conferences like this still exist.

Microsoft makes its presence known

It was at this point that the rest of the Microsoft Fox Team came in Ken Levy, Milind Lele, and Randy Brown. Now, some may have the urge to point out to me that Randy is no longer a Microsoft or Visual FoxPro representative and perhaps on some level you would be correct, but as far as I'm concerned Randy is one of the best representatives this community has. In addition to his tireless efforts at Microsoft for around 10 years working on and improving Visual FoxPro, Randy has also conducted himself with poise and a great deal of professionalism since leaving Microsoft. He has also showed up at the Southwest Fox without there being a single reason compelling him besides his love for the product and the community that surrounds it. That, my dear readers, is what I call a Class Act and just about the best representative we could hope to have.

I also had a very nice chat with Ken Levy. He was stoked about the conference and some of the things that have been going on for Visual FoxPro and within the Community. You could see that even after all these years, Ken can't help but get excited when he talks about what is and what is to come. I'll have more to say about Ken and report after the keynote session tomorrow.

Rick Strahl

OK, so somewhere during this portion of the Thursday activities Rick Strahl shows up. He's been in town for a few days due to his pre-conference presentations/classes he's been giving. This is my first face-to-face run in with Rick. He exudes confidence and a certain amount of energy which makes me think... should I challenge him to a coding duel, or should I join forces with him so we can try and take over the world? In either event, my impression of Rick was a good one and I certainly respect his talents and abilities.

The very long walk

So after a few more conversations (one with Rick Borup that I thoroughly enjoyed), I notice that Rick Schummer is bolting out the door after Doug Hennig, which reminds me that the speakers were to meet at Monti's, a restaurant uptown, at 8. A quick look at my watch is all that is needed to understand why Rick was leaving in such a hurry; some of us are late for the dinner date.

I'm not sure how it happened, and by it I mean the 8 mile hike to Monti's that I ended up on, but I think the blame rests with either Rick Schummer or Doug Hennig, and whoever had told them that Monti's was just a short jaunt from our present location. All I know is that some 30 minutes and 125 blocks later we arrived at Monti's and I swore off walking for good, I swore on everything I hold dear that I would make good use of taxis from now on, no matter how short a distance I am assured that it is between point A and point Monti's.

In any event, we all had a really good time at Monti's, and I had the absolute pleasure to be seated with Doug Hennig, Bob Kocher, and Calvin Hsia. Funny stories were told about help desk/support misadventures and user errors and I had a wonderful Fillet Mignon. I also had an opportunity to grill Calvin about Visual FoxPro and the future. Though I was unable to get the exclusive scoop I was seeking, I did come to realize that Calvin Hsia is an extremely bright developer. I'm not saying that he is kind of bright or above average, I mean that Calvin is really very bright, and quite gifted at being able to see 11 moves ahead and ferret out the hidden caveat or gem in an idea impressively fast. However, that has only lead to me sitting here thinking... should I challenge him to a coding duel, or should I join forces with him so we can try and take over the world?

The Awakening

Having completed the previous day’s UT report, I decided to catch a couple hours of sleep before my wake-up call. When the phone began to ring two hours later, I had a feeling that was somewhere between complete exhaustion, from only having gotten two hours of sleep, and barely contained excitement about the day’s upcoming sessions and events. I was obviously suffering from a slight case of delirium, but had been told by the conference veterans that “pros play hurt”, so I marshaled what little was left in my reserve tank and promptly arrived at the ASU campus about an hour later.

Conference Sessions

Friday was the first full day of sessions. For those of you that may not be familiar with the term “session”, it means that one of the Southwest Fox speakers goes into one of the provided rooms, hooks up their laptop to a projector and, after the attendees have finished filing in, gives a 75 minute presentation on one of the topics they have prepared for the conference. Each speaker has two chosen topics, and they present them twice during the course of the conference. While not all sessions are an expose of coded examples, they are all related to Visual FoxPro and something of value for the attendees. The sessions are held six at a time here at the Southwest Fox conference in rooms named Pima, Turquoise, Cochise, La Pas, Mohave, and Coconino.

First Block of Sessions

I was a speaker in the first block of sessions that started at 8:00 AM and I presented “VFP Painting 101: GDI+ Techniques and examples” in the Mohave room. I had a fair number of attendees at this session, and while I hadn’t given a session at a Visual FoxPro conference before, I have done public speaking in the past, so I felt relatively comfortable (aside from still being somewhat delirious). Given that my presentation consists of about four hours of content, I feel I did a fairly good job of presenting it in the time allotted. My presentation consists of 23 demonstrations which culminate in two final examples showing how to create dynamic charts on the fly and how to manipulate images. After the session was over the attendees clapped and a few of them came up to me to compliment me on the content of the session. In addition to the making me feel good, it was nice to know that some of the content I had presented was valuable to the attendees, because ultimately without attendees, Visual FoxPro conferences just aren’t possible.

The five other speakers that were presenting at the same time that I was giving my session were:
Craig Berntson – “What’s new in Sql Server 2005”
Andy Kramek – “Accessing Remote Databases”
Cathi Gero – “How to build ASP .NET Web-based UI for VFP applications”
Rick Borup – “Integrating RSS with Visual FoxPro Applications”
Milind Lele – “Integrating Visual FoxPro data sources with Visual Studio 2005”

Unfortunately, I was unable to attend any of these sessions due to the scheduling conflict with my own, but the attendees have said that the content and value of these sessions was very good.

Second Block of Sessions

Cathy Poutney – “Advanced Reporting”
Rick Schummer – “Using and Extending VFP’s Data Explorer”
Marcia Akins – “Event Handling in VFP”
David Stevenson – “Ten Practical Uses for the XML Adapter”
Toni Feltman – “Common Sense Database Design”
Visionpace

As you can imagine, it is not easy to attend and report on six simultaneous sessions, but I did my best, as I will for the entire conference, to at least stop by each of the ongoing sessions, take a few pictures, and get a sense for the content and the way the attendees’ were responding to the content being given.

As most would agree, Cathy is one of the Visual FoxPro Community’s premiere experts on the new reporting engine and features in Visual FoxPro 9.0. She had a rather large attendance and was quite animated in her presentation of the capabilities of the Visual FoxPro 9.0 Report Writer. Her session included tips, examples, and detailed explanations of such complex topics as absolute positioning, working with multiple detail bands, the report listener chaining, text manipulation using directives, multi-page display, charts/graphs, XML/HTML, and tweaking the report preview container.

Rick Schummer’s session gave attendees a wealth of information on the Data Explorer. Among the many things he showed attendees, he showed attendees how connections, database schema information, and queries could be setup, viewed, and run from the Data Explorer. He also showed a number of really cool and ingenious ways to extend the Data Explorer by altering the behavior of drag-n-drop and the menus, as well as creating add-ins for it. Rick made detailed comparisons of the Data Explorer to SQL-Server’s Enterprise Manager and showed how the functionality was similar in many respects.

For a thorough examination of Visual FoxPro’s EventHandler() and BindEvent() functions, Marcia Akins’s session on them was a must see. Marcia helped show many of us the incredible power that could be gleaned from extending Visual FoxPro in a similar fashion in the “MegaFox” (a great Visual FoxPro book her and her husband Andy Kramek wrote together), so it was no surprise that this session was jam packed with great information. After making sure the attendees adequately understood what an event is and how it differed from a method, Marcia launched into examples and detailed explanations on how Visual FoxPro developers could handle COM events by implementing interfaces, and how native VFP events and even Windows message events could be bound to. I felt Marcia did a wonderful job of simplifying a very complex subject and showing attendees how they could benefit from having these abilities in their skill set.

Something that I believe deserves a mention, as they are far too humble to mention it themselves, is that Marcia Akins and Andy Kramek have taken on the extra duty of giving Drew Speedies’s original sessions in addition to their own; a very generous and befitting gesture by two of the classiest individuals in the Visual FoxPro Community.

When I walked into David Stevenson’s session on Visual FoxPro’s XMLAdapter one of the things that I noticed was the large number of attendees that had their laptops open and were trying examples of the information that he was presenting (I hadn’t seen this in any other session up to this point, so there was something in David’s session that peaked the attendees interest enough that they couldn’t wait to try it). David started out his session by telling everyone that the XMLAdapter was not the answer to all of their XML needs, but then proceeded to show ten things that the XMLAdapter is well suited for.

Overall, David was pretty thorough in his presentation of the XMLAdapter including information on its history, abilities, limitations, common gotchas, and how it compares to XMLTOCURSOR() and CURSORTOXML(). He also showed attendees what an XML Schema is and how it is used by or in an XMLAdapter.

If you wanted to know how to create well designed databases, then Toni Feltman’s session was the one to attend. Toni first provided a number of goals and common sense rules that would increase your chances of producing a well designed database, and then presented a step-by-step guide so that attendees could attain and conform to them. This included requirements gathering techniques, database modeling, relationship identification, and database normalization. Near the end of her session she provided attendees with a concrete list of benefits that they could expect if they produced well designed databases. Overall Toni did a great job and the attendees seemed very engaged and tuned in to the concepts and practical processes that Toni was presenting.

That rounded out the second block morning sessions. As I’ve said before, the quantity and quality of the content here at Southwest Fox has been absolutely unbeatable.

Third Block of Sessions

Doug Hennig – “Extending VFP with VFP”
Rick Strahl – “Using Internet Explorer in your FoxPro applications”
David Stevenson – “Subclassing Cursoradaptor for Flexible Data Access”
Cathi Gero – “How to work with data in .NET – Introduction to ADO.NET for VFP Developers”
Barbara Peisch – “Integrating XFRX into your VFP applications”
FoxFire 8

Cathi Gero, an extremely gifted developer whose skills with Visual FoxPro are only eclipsed by her abilities in .NET (specifically C#), gave a session on ASP.NET in which she broke down the differences between ASP and ASP.NET and explained how many of the earlier deficiencies in ASP were addressed in its successor ASP.NET. She showed attendees in great detail how to create a web forms application, including explanations of code-behind files and classes, control event processing, HTML controls, HTML Server controls, web form controls, and the flow of events in ASP.NET. In short, if you were one of the many attendees interested in getting a better understanding of ASP.NET, Cathi Gero delivered.

One of the sessions that was being given at this year’s Southwest Fox that definitely made it onto my “must see” list was Doug Hennig’s session on extending VFP. Not only was it a great session that showed how extensible Visual FoxPro is, it also provided the attendees with information and enhancements that were sure to boost their developer productivity levels. After Doug showed attendees some of the limitations of the current VFP IDE, he launched into an example of an improved New Property/Method dialog box. Next he showed attendees how they could create their own property editors. Then he was on to showing how Visual FoxPro developers could create custom intellisense scripts, as well as a prg designed to automatically declare local variables (courtesy of Andy Kramek and Marcia Akins work in MegaFox). And lastly, Doug showed attendees a little sneak preview of the future, by detailing the features of Sedna’s My which will work very similar to VB.NET’s My feature.

All in all, Doug’s session was great and, as you can see from his photo, Doug has a wonderful sense of humor. As soon as I was about to take his picture he struck that pose, and though I tried to wait him out, he was firmly resolved to keep making faces at me until I eventually gave up and snapped the shot he was giving me. The attendees were still rolling with laughter as I left the room.

More to come…

Saturday, October 15

Southwest Fox is mind blowing

I am resigned to the fact that I am not going to be getting any sleep while I am here. It’s just a fact, there are too many things going on and by the end of the day, though I am completely exhausted, I am either writing reports for the UT, trying out some new thing I learned from one of the sessions I attended, or just staring at the ceiling as ideas and thoughts about the day whirl around like some mad Visual FoxPro Tilt-A-Whirl. I’m not sure what other conferences are like, but Southwest Fox is blowing my mind.

Friendly front desk staff

It occurs to me that it might be of some interest to those of you reading this where I am reporting from when I write these reports. Well, I’ve included a photo of the lobby at the Sheraton so you can see just where I am sitting as I write most of these UT reports. Some may gather from that, that I am a guest at the Sheraton, not so. I rented a room at the Red Roof Inn, which it turns out does not have high-speed internet, so nearly every morning and night I make the 6 block hike to the Sheraton to access their internet. If you look on a map the Sheraton is directly behind the Red Roof Inn and you would think that it would be a one or two block commute at most. However, the problem is the 8 foot fence between the two, so instead I have to go around. I have managed to cut the distance somewhat by cutting through a few parking lots and jumping a bush or two on my way to the Sheraton.

The desk clerks at the Sheraton are quite pleasant and we go through a ritual each time I arrive. It has never deviated and goes like this:

Sheraton Staff: Will you be checking in or checking out sir?
Me: Neither. I’d like to access your internet connection if you don’t mind.
Sheraton Staff: OK, I see sir. Are you a guest here at the Sheraton?
Me: Unfortunately, I am not. I am staying over at the Red Roof, but I’d still like to use your internet connection if you don’t mind.
Sheraton Staff: Ummm… one second please.
(at this point they go find someone that knows how to give out the internet access codes)
Sheraton Staff: That will be $9.99 sir.
Me: Here you go. (I hand them a $10 bill)
Sheraton Staff: Here is your access code. (they hand me a business card with the code written on the back)
Me: Thank you. (as I proceed to the lobby area to get setup)
Sheraton Staff: Sir, you’ve forgotten your change.
Me: You can keep the penny.

It’s perhaps not a very exciting or humorous dialog, but since it happens each and every time I arrive at the Sheraton it is starting to feel very comfortable, somewhat like an old pair of shoes I guess. When I’ve finished checking my emails, uploading a report to the Universal Thread, and put out any fires that have flared up back at SweetPotato Software’s headquarters, I thank the kindly staff at the front desk for the use of their facilities and either proceed back to the Red Roof Inn (jumping bushes as I go) to catch some sleep or call for a cab to ASU depending on what time of day it is. (Note to self: get a motel next year that has high-speed internet, the Sheraton has friendly front desk staff).

First block of sessions

Steven Black – “Application Metadata”
Andy Kramek – “Buffering Demystified”
Rick Schummer – “Creating Help – Made Easy”
Toni Feltman – “Building N-Tier applications with Visual FoxPro”
David Stevenson – “Subclassing the CursorAdapter for Flexible Data Access”
West Wind Web Connection 5.0

The day starts out with a power-packed 75 minutes worth of sessions. I can’t figure out which session I want to go to more, so I float around as I have for most of the conference. It is like sampling tid-bits from a very expansive buffet. I was very glad to see Steven was presenting a session on Metadata, as I’ve always felt that data driven applications were one of the things that Visual FoxPro does best. If you’re a Visual FoxPro developer and you’re not incorporating metadata into your applications you are probably working harder than you need to, and you’re missing out on the power and flexibility it provides.

A game of racquetball with Steven Black

I don’t know if anyone else who met Steven Black felt this way, but I wanted to play a game of racquetball with him. I don’t know if he actually plays, and it’s been so long I doubt I remember all the rules of the game, but Steven just seems like the kind of guy that you would spend the morning playing racquetball with. The game would start out innocently enough, but at some point there would be an argument regarding the solution to some complex problem. As Steven slowly lured you in for the kill (both in the game and the argument) you would be none the wiser. Then as he dove to deliver the kill shot, he would also utter some phrase that would shatter the reasoning your side of the argument was based on. I also see the whole thing happening in slow motion, but I think that might be the sleep deprivation kicking in.

Andy’s session was the one to attend if you had questions or wanted to learn more about buffering, locking, conflict resolution and/or transactions. While there are many of us in attendance that know our way around backends and how to work with them, few have the breadth of knowledge or the intrinsic understanding of them that Andy does. Besides being “Mr. Intellisense”, Andy is also “Mr. Backend” in my book. (I laughed when I reread the sentence I just wrote. It doesn’t sound like the compliment it was intended to be, but if you’ve read some of Andy’s articles or seen some of the data classes that he and Marcia have created, you’ll hopefully understand what I mean).

Rick Schummer took on the task of helping attendees with a too often overlooked portion of application development – Help. The documentation of a system and its features is a very important and necessary evil. How many times have you been desperately searching the sparse help provided with an application only to find that the subject you are looking for has not been documented? The developers probably did what a lot of us do, made the help file an afterthought.

Rick’s session brought the attendees up to speed on how to create HTML help (.CHM) and how to integrate it with their Visual FoxPro applications. He also provided some information regarding Microsoft Help 2.0 which is the next generation help standard coming from Microsoft that developers will begin to use increasingly once Windows Vista ships.

Toni Feltman provided a session on Building N-Tier applications in Visual FoxPro. If you’re familiar with this type of object-oriented architecture then you know the value of it and how scalable and flexible it can be. I think many of the attendees of this year’s conference came away with a new appreciation of N-Tier design, due in no small part to Toni’s session and perhaps an earlier session that Andy gave on implementing data access layers. Toni gave attendees real world examples and provided them with a lot of useful information regarding the advantages and pitfalls of n-tier development.

Toni’s Travel Agency

Toni Feltman is one of those geeks who doesn’t look or act like a geek. She seems innocent and there is a manner about her that seems to fit more with being a travel agent who used to be a teacher. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, travel agent/teacher is as close as I can get. But she is indeed 100% geek. If you had the privilege of attending one of Toni’s sessions or spent a few minutes talking with her, then you know she is right at home in a world of 1’s and 0’s. She knows object-oriented programming, framework design, and metadata like the back of her own hand, and I seriously doubt her ability to book me a trip to the Bahamas.

David Stevenson’s session on the CursorAdapter was many attendees first real exposure to it. The CursorAdapter remains one of the more mysterious classes provided in Visual FoxPro. While many developers have heard of it, I suspect that few actually know what it does and what the benefits and drawbacks are, and even fewer probably know how to use it effectively. David took attendees through an examination of the class, the basics of how to use it and then showed a number of ways to extend it. I saw a few different attendees trying some of the examples he had shown them on their laptops shortly after the session.

John Wayne meets Bill Gates

I had initial impressions of David after having worked with him on some articles for FoxTalk 2.0. In this case my impressions were built around mostly emails and a couple of telephone conversations. David is a tall (not as tall as me, but few are) slender man with silver hair and beard, and that coupled with his accent instantly made me think that he should be running a ranch somewhere, getting up early in the morning and telling the hired hands “We’re burning daylight fellas” and eating his meals depending on when someone rings a triangle that is hanging from his front porch. He also has this little grin on his face most of the time that gives you the distinct impression that he has been up to no good and that when you return to your motel room that evening you are likely to find it filled to the brim with packing peanuts. Here again, nothing could be further from the truth. You’ll find your motel room is just as the maids left it and that David Stevenson is pure geek.

Second block of sessions

Doug Hennig – “Cool Uses for Report Listeners”
Marcia Akins – “Modeling Hierarchies”
Tamar Granor – “Customizing the Property Sheet”
Rick Borup – “Integrating RSS with Visual FoxPro Applications”
Barbara Peisch – “Integrating XFRX into your VFP Applications”
Milind Lele – “Integrating Visual FoxPro data sources with Visual Studio 2005”

Barbara Peisch is one of the nicest people you will ever meet. This diminutive developer is one of the few people that have ever left the Tek-Tips forums that I really missed and wished would come back. I understand her reasons, but I still miss being able to read her excellent posts and interact with her online. So I was really glad to get an opportunity to meet her and talk with her. She’s sharp as a tack and very engaging. I also get the impression that she is very calm when faced with a crisis or under an immense amount of pressure.

I really liked the fact that she was giving her sessions on XFRX. I’ve used this product for years, and feel it is one of the best add-ons for Visual FoxPro’s reporting engine. If you want a wide selection of reporting outputs that reproduce the format very well and are very fast, then XFRX is the way to go. Especially when outputting Word and PDF formats, I just haven’t found an equal to this third party tool.

Rick Borup’s session on RSS gave me an excellent idea for the error reporting that I am putting into some of the applications I develop. His session was on RSS which is of more than a little interest to me (as some of you may know given my blog entries on the subject), but what caught my eye was the example he was using. He showed how to use RSS for an error log. Is that cool or what? Imagine opening up your news aggregator in the morning and being able to see if any of the applications you’ve developed have thrown an error, or being alerted during the day about it. An error message is information that is time sensitive and a perfect fit for RSS if you ask me. Great idea Rick, thanks.

A game of Golf with Rick Borup

OK, I know you are waiting for me to give you my read on Rick. I also hope you know that providing my impressions of these individuals is risky business. If they don’t like the things I’ve said, I am likely to be ganged up on at some point and find myself drinking my meals through a tube. But I like risk, so here goes… Rick reminds me of the president of a bank. He is very methodical, cool, calm and collected. However, when he smiles, it lights up his whole face. I mean it’s a smile that reaches his eyes, and you can’t help but smile back. Unlike Steven Black whom I’d like to play racquetball with, Rick is the kind of gentleman I’d like to play a round of golf with. I suspect that his applications have detailed specs and that he folded his socks when he packed for Southwest Fox. He’s just very methodical, soft spoken, and professional. My initial impressions of Rick were exactly the same as my impressions of him when the conference ended. He’s a good guy, probably a very astute business man, and I would suspect that his clients are with him for a very long time.

The County of Milind

Sunday, October 16

Final Day

The final day's sessions didn't start until 9:00 AM so I actually managed to get 3 hours of sleep before the customary wake up call broke my slumber. I don't drink, but I am quite sure I was doing a very good impersonation of a drunk who had been on one bender too many as I staggered around in my motel room getting ready. It took a bit, but slowly the fog began to lift and it wasn't long before I was at the ASU, excited about the morning's sessions and a little sad that this was the last day of the Southwest Fox conference.

First block of sessions

Steven Black - "Application Metadata"
Andy Kramek - "Buffering Demystified"
Marcia Akins - "Modeling Hierarchies"
Tamar Granor - "Customizing the Property Sheet"
Rick Schummer - "Creating Help - Made Easy!"
Craig Berntson - "Coder to Developer"

Second block of sessions

Doug Hennig - "Cool Uses for Report Listeners"
Cathy Pountney - "Hidden Secrets of the VFP IDE"
Rick Strahl - "Accessing and sharing data with .NET Web services"
Craig Boyd - "VFP Cryptology 101: Encryption, Decryption and Hash Functions"
Toni Feltman - "Building N-Tier applications with Visual FoxPro"
Sofware News and Reviews

What Southwest Fox meant to me

Most of these sessions (if not all of them) were repeats of previous sessions the speakers had already given, and while all of them were excellent (I heard a couple of attendees rave about the Modeling Hierarchies session that Marcia gave) I'd like to spend the remaining keystrokes of my report talking about what the Southwest Fox conference meant to me. It may come as a surprise to some of you that I have never attended a Visual FoxPro conference before. I've never visited a user group, and up until a few years ago I did little more online than lurk. But slowly, after many years of developing in a number of different languages (VB, FP/VFP, VC++, Delphi, and even Java) not to mention platforms (MAC, Linux, and Windows) I began to find that I had an affinity for Visual FoxPro. There was something beautiful about it and the solutions that I could create with it. Unlike most other languages where I was forced to learn nearly everything by rote, with Visual FoxPro I had found a language that was intuitive and allowed me to create data centric applications better and faster than anything else on the planet. The problem was that there were these rumors and reports that the end was near because Microsoft had only purchased FoxPro in order to kill it. Either jump ship and hone your skills with Access or go down with a sinking ship like a fool they said. To be honest, I tried putting away FoxPro a number of times in those early years. I tried to resist the urge to create great solutions with it, to increase my chances of survival and not end up left behind. I really did. But, Visual FoxPro was too fast, too productive, and quite frankly too damn much fun. I just couldn't do it.

As the years wore on I was painfully aware that the end was certainly right around the corner when Visual FoxPro would be put on life support and I would be forced to do most of my future development in one of the other languages I knew. Each new release of Visual FoxPro was a welcome reprieve and I was thankful for the opportunity to be able to develop in a language that I love for yet another few years. I was convinced I was one of the few remaining hold outs, one of the only developers on earth that couldn't buy a clue, because if I had any sense at all I would do the right thing and stop creating solutions with Visual FoxPro for my customers and get out while we all still had a chance. I was wasting my time on something that was a dead end street I'd tell myself.

When Visual Studio 6.0 was released I was convinced that all of the fortune tellers were finally being proven correct and I had simply pressed my luck one version too many. A mass exodus was underway by VFP developers and applications alike to VB. The part of me that loves to create data centric solutions mourned deeply to see this superior product being pushed off a cliff like this. I consoled myself with the knowledge that I had been working in VB off and on since version 4.0 16-bit, so I would still have viable skills, but I knew that I was going to miss all of the things that Visual FoxPro was able to do and the way in which it did them.

Then Microsoft was coming out with VFP 7.0 and finally I began to question the veracity of all the sources that had been telling me for so many years that Visual FoxPro was coming to an end soon. I mean, how many times does something have to be wrong before I would wake up to the fact that Microsoft had no secret plans to kill Visual FoxPro? The chief reason Visual FoxPro was even in this poor state, was because developers like me were willing to let it go softly into that good night. I accepted its fate long before any fatal wound had been struck. I decided there and then that if there was something that could be done, some way that I could help fight for a tool that has supported me and all of the customers I helped create solutions for, then that is exactly what I was going to do. I didn't want to give up Visual FoxPro just because everyone seemed to be saying it was a fool's errand not to. I didn't want to see it decline any further than it already had thanks in no small part to developers like me that had just sat back waiting for the end or jumped ship the minute some whispered "VFP is Dead" in our ears. So started my own personal stand for VFP and the rest is history.

Now I know many of you who are reading this are wondering, what the heck does this have to do with the Southwest Fox conference? Everything. Bob Kocher started the Southwest Fox conference because other conferences had been cancelled or were dwindling away. Bob Kocher wasn't content to just let it all go up in a puff of smoke, because he knew he was going to miss it when it was gone. He knew that if he didn't stand up and make it happen, it probably wasn't going to. A couple years ago Bob Kocher had an idea, some twine and a bubblegum wrapper and this year he put on one of the best Visual FoxPro conferences the world has ever seen (don't take my word for it, ask the conference veterans that were there).

Bob Kocher and the Southwest Fox conference embodies the spirit of Visual FoxPro and the power of the Visual FoxPro Community. This year's attendees were from all over the globe, and they gathered in Tempe Arizona to celebrate and support the greatest development tool on the face of the planet. This year attendees, speakers, bloggers, podcasters, websites, authors and magazines weren't asking, what can Visual FoxPro do for me, they were asking what can we do for Visual FoxPro. This year the MS Fox Team wasn't saying, we are working on some of our ideas we'll tell you when it's ready, they're saying here's the direction that will help Visual FoxPro developers be successful for many years to come and we want to work with you to make this thing better and more powerful than ever. Sedna isn't the last gasp of a dying language that is only used by a few fuddy-duddies who couldn't code their way out of a paper bag, it is a breath of fresh air, a new beginning, a return to the close relationship between user and vendor, a set of goals set so high and so foreign to the concept of business as usual that I still marvel at it. Likewise, Southwest Fox wasn't just some conference where fewer attendees than the year before gathered to bemoan the state of Visual FoxPro and console each other with stories of what might have been, it was a power-packed, Visual FoxPro free-for-all where the potential and the future of this product was shining as bright as the Sun above Phoenix. And in case any of you were wondering, Bob Kocher isn't just a man, he's THE MAN for giving the Visual FoxPro Community a conference worthy of the product it supports.

Visual FoxPro is ALIVE and with all of us pulling as one we can make a significant difference. Get off your butt already, attend some user group meetings, buy a few Visual FoxPro books, get active out in the Visual FoxPro forums and other online resources, sign-up for SednaX, upgrade to Visual FoxPro 9.0, fly a plane over Microsoft, throw Visual FoxPro (or Ken Levy) a birthday party in December and definitely, definitely attend next year's Southwest Fox conference. Thanks to everyone that made this year's conference possible, that includes the attendees, the vendors, the speakers, Bob Kocher and his lovely wife Sharon, and most of all the Fox. This year has been a blast, I hope you enjoyed the coverage, and VISUAL FOXPRO ROCKS!

Craig Boyd, Sweetpotato Software   Craig Boyd is the CEO of SweetPotato Software, Inc. (SPS). Having worked in every version of FoxPro since 2.5, he is an avid and experienced Visual FoxPro developer. He is also the creator and host of the popular SPS Weblog, which contains some great Visual FoxPro related content at www.sweetpotatosoftware.com/spsblog. Craig has developed a number of applications for US and International clients, and he specializes in helping other software companies meet challenging deadlines, solve complex problems, and upgrade their project interfaces. When he's not working on client projects, writing blog entries, or helping members of the Visual FoxPro Community out on the forums, he writes articles geared toward Visual FoxPro developers for IT magazines.