Цитата:

Data Driving Applications (Toni Feltman)
In the past there have been articles and conference sessions that discuss using Metadata for applications development. Most of these sessions focus more on using the metadata in building the application foundation using things like an Abstract Factory. This session is a little different, it will focus on using metadata or template data against a processing engine in order to handle complex business processes. In my day, I have seen a lot of code like:

DO CASE
CASE customer = "CustomerABC"
DO MyApplicationThisWay
CASE customer = 'CustomerDEF"
DO MyApplicationThisOtherWay
…
ENDCASE

While this type of coding does help to insure job security, it can be very complex and extremely difficult to maintain. The biggest problem is that this code requires a developer to constantly maintain the process which can be a roadblock when there are other application components to implement.

Attendees with learn:

1. How to recognize when an application may benefit from data driven techniques.
2. How to build a template engine to fit the requirements of the application.
3. How to use the engine at runtime to create predictable results with flexible inputs.
4. How to building a UI for the templates in order to offload customization to end users.

Level: Intermediate
Prerequisites: Basic understanding of VFP.

Akt:19.5.2008

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FOX22 Collections Iteration and Arrays (Mike Feltman)

Visual FoxPro has great support for collections. Virtually all of the objects that can contain other objects have a native objects collection that can easily be traversed to access their members. Object collections provide a great access point for performing the same or similar actions on groups of objects. They also provide the means necessary to locate and act upon objects in a loosely coupled fashion. In this session Mike will introduce some utility functions and classes that:
1. make it easy to dynamically create and act upon collections,
2. dramatically reduce the amount of redundant code you write in dealing with collections,
3. helps you to eliminate object dependencies and write code that is more adaptable and easier to maintain,
4. eliminate drill down code
Visual FoxPro also has a wealth of functions for dealing with arrays, however; developers often write very redundant code when it comes to dealing with arrays. In this session Mike will also provide a set of utility functions and classes that streamline redundant array operations and add more power and flexibility to arrays.

Attendees will learn...
1. How to easily access objects and groups of objects from anywhere within a containership hierarchy with a single line of code without drilling through the object hierarchy or writing error prone lengthy object references.
2. How to perform operations on groups of objects that are not contained within a single container.
3. How to make single line calls to convert an array to a string, merge 2 arrays, remove specific items from arrays, remove duplicates from arrays and more.
4. How to create loosely coupled object references that won't break when controls are moved or even renamed.

Suggested prerequisites: A basic familiarity with collections and arrays.

Akt:16.5.2008

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FOX20 Introduction to the DBI Controls included with Visual FoxPro SP2 (Toni Feltman)

I've been a fan of DBI Technologies for a long time. They have a well deserved reputation as providing the best VFP support from an ActiveX control vendor. With Sedna, DBI has really outdone themselves. Sedna includes 7 full-blown ActiveX controls from DBI at no additional charge. The controls are:

ctTray - Offers developers direct access to the standard Windows System tray for presentation of application icons for example
ctDEdit - The perfect masked edit control for date and time entry
ctContact - Outlook-style contact list with find and in-line item editing
ctToolBar - Full Windows XP styling of the ToolBar and ToolBar menus
ctListBar - The only multi-column ListBar control outside of Visio
ctDays - A fully modifiable Outlook-style single column DayView control
ctDropMenu - A drop-down, pop-up menu control with individual item image and text/sub-text features.

In this session we'll take a look at each of these controls and how they can be used from within VFP.

Attendees will learn...
1. How to use each of DBI ActiveX Controls
2. The key properties, events and methods of each ActiveX Control
3. Where appropriate, how to bind data to each ActiveX Control

Akt:19.5.2008

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FOX23 Building n-tier applications with VFP, AFP (Active FoxPro Pages), JavaScript, AJAX, (X)HTML and CSS (Mike Feltman)


Akt:28.4.2008

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FOX29 Web 101 for VFP Developers (Mike Feltman)


Akt:28.4.2008

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FOX25 Square Peg, Round Hole – Retrofitting Client Server Data Access into Legacy FoxPro Applications (Toni Feltman)

With the increasing size of tables and changing application requirements, many seasoned FoxPro developers are being forced to move their data out of FoxPro and into a real database server. This would be an easy task if we all had the time to completely rewrite our applications from the ground up. Unfortunately most business cannot just be put on hold while 15 plus years of development is evaluated, refactored and rewritten for client-server. This session will look at ways to easily migrate existing applications into client server architecture without much disruption to the business.

The attendees will learn:

1. The many ways in which remote data can be queried and modified.
2. Methods for integrating the client server data access into existing application code.
3. How to choose the best access method for distinct purposes in the application.
4. How to build a data dictionary and use it to simplify the migration.
5. Pitfalls to watch out for during migration.
6. Tips for making the migration easier and less painful.

Prerequisites: Basic knowledge of SQL programming syntax.


Akt:19.5.2008

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FOX24 Cross platform development with VFP and Guineu (Christof Wollenhaupt)

We're living in a time of change. Even more traditional customers start asking for mobile applications, internet access, Unix availability, 64-bit compatibility, and so forth. And then Microsoft stopped developing VFP, making the situation even more confusing and stressing to us VFP developers. Suddenly questions about migration and future directions creep up.

Guineu is a runtime for FoxPro application that primarily allows VFP developers to create FoxPro applications that run on Windows Mobile PDAs and SmartPhones. As a .NET application Guineu supports even more platforms like Unix or the Web. In this session I'll present one approach of moving FoxPro into the future. We'll see what Guineu is, what it can do, and most importantly what its limits are. We'll see the various platforms and how you can use them with Guineu.
Akt:16.5.2008

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FOX26 Crashing VFP and preventing crashes (Christof Wollenhaupt)

NULL pointer, invalid references, overwriting return addresses on the stack, buffer overrun errors, array index problems and memory leaks... That's the daily job of a C++ developer. VFP with its high abstraction provides a effective shield against low-level development allowing us to focus on business problems. At least most of the time. But if your application crashes, as a VFP developer you often have fewer possibilities to discover and fix these problems.

How do you write applications that allow you to discover bugs as early as possible, maybe even let the application notify you about bugs?
How can you avoid crashes and C0000005 errors?
What can you do if after working for hours without saving changes VFP suddenly crashes?
What can you do if your application needs more and more memory until it halts the entire system?
How do you find information about errors in VFP?
How can you report errors to Microsoft and what happens with the dump files you send to Microsoft?
This session answers these any many more questions.

Akt:16.5.2008

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FOX27 Optimizing and debugging (Christof Wollenhaupt)

Sometimes optimization means to make things faster, sometimes it only means to change what you measure. Before you can optimize an application you need to define what and how to optimize. If you find that you need to take out the slow parts, there are various tools that help you identifying those. We cover monitoring and coverage tools extended by an in-depth explanation of how to make sense of the results.

Attendees will learn:
- how to use monitoring tools
- what makes an application slow
- how to debug more effeciently
- to understand testing results

Level: Intermediate

Akt:16.5.2008

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FOX28 Interprocess Communication (Christof Wollenhaupt)

Interprocess Communication (IPC) is not part of the daily work of most VFP developers. However, IPC is what is used at the core of most technologies
including COM, SQL Server, ASP.NET and many more. Learn about MUTEXes, Semaphores, Named Pipes, Shared Memory, sockets and much more. Even if you never need to write your own named pipe server, you might gain a better understanding of the infrastructure provided by Windows. IPC is a crucial technology for multi-threaded applications.

Attendees will learn...
- what IPC is
- how to use IPC
- when to use IPC
- when not to use IPC

Level: Advanced

JS
Привет Равиль!
Девкон давно прошел (я был там с 30 июня по 4 июля).
Основное направление WEB + подружить VFP c .Net.
Как всегда было интересно пообщаться.
Чуть позже поподробнее раскажу. С книгой еще не закончил
возиться.