====================================== FoxPro Developers Network of San Diego ====================================== FoxDev TipsLetter #00-07 June 29, 2000 Website: Editor: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- CONTENTS: * Calendar * The WebSite is Up! * Newsletter News * Tech Tips: More On OLE Automation Barbara Peisch All the File Formats in the World Thad V'Soske ToolTips May Not Appear Steve Settimi Where Do I Find...? * Service Pack 4 Released Barbara Peisch * Speaker Exchange * Other Stuff: VFP's Status at Microsoft Ed Leafe Oracle - Licensing Made Easy Does Your System Play Beethoven? The Client's Creed Consulting Solutions Group * Administrivia ====================================================================== CALENDAR: We alternate meetings between Escondido and Sorrento Mesa. All meetings are at 7:00 pm. (We were hoping we would be able to meet in Solutions Consulting Group's new conference facilities this month, but construction isn't complete yet. We're aiming for August.) July 5 - Escondido ------------------ Mike Vincent, from the Orange Country group, will be speaking on n-tier development. (Eric and Barbara will be visiting the Orange County group on July 12. If you're interested in going along, contact Barbara. For more details, see the "Speaker Exchange" topic of this newsletter.) August 2 - Sorrento Mesa ------------------------ Board member Dan Covill will be presenting ways to package your code, to reduce the number of files in your apps and make them easier to document and maintain. Sept 6 - Escondido ------------------ Board member Barbara Peisch will be talking about using Steven Black's INTL toolkit for creating multi-lingual apps, with a special emphasis on his Message Service. Oct 4 - Sorrento Mesa --------------------- Duke Lotherington and Peter Stephens will be showing us their vertical market product, written in VFP, which focuses on medical record keeping. Nov 1 - Escondido --------------------- Board member Art Bergquist will show us how to use dynamic controls in a grid. Escondido meetings are at Bergelectric, 2222 Meyers Avenue. Take the Nordahl exit from Highway 78 (west of I-15). Head South. Right on Meyers Ave, first right past Mission. It's a one-story building on the right (there's no sign). Sorrento Mesa meetings are in the PS Business Center, 6450 Lusk Blvd. From the Lusk Blvd driveway, go straight back to the furthest corner of the rear bldg and park. The conference room is upstairs over the Fitness Center. ====================================================================== HOT NEWS ====================================================================== NEWSLETTER NEWS At our May meeting, the Board decided that the (this) Newsletter would serve us better by not being restricted to members. By allowing anyone to subscribe, it can be both a public service to the FoxPro community and a general publicity vehicle for our organization. In the near future it will be possible for anyone to subscribe (or unsubscribe) through the website. We'll let you know. The individual listings on the website are still for members only. [DC] ====================================================================== TIPS ====================================================================== MORE ON OLE AUTOMATION Barbara Peisch [This message was posted by Tamar Granor on CIS.] "Rick Strahl has a tool that extracts constants from type libraries and creates a VFP .H file with the definitions. It's called GetConstants.EXE and you can find it on his website at www.west-wind.com. (It's also in the downloads for my new book. )" BP: One extra note. There is a bug in GETCONSTANTS that truncates the names of very long constants. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- EVERY FILE FORMAT IN THE WORLD by Thad V'Soske Here's my first newsletter offering : Still scratching your head over a file extension you've never heard and/or don't know what the file might contain? Well, just go to www.whatis.com and click on "Every File Format in the World" to find the answer. The file extensions are listed alphabetically, (broken down into four alphabet groups) and include a brief description of each file type. They lack a search feature that actually works here but you can use Ctrl-F in your browser and enter a keyword like "fox" to find file extensions related to Foxpro. When I find "Every File Format in the Universe" I'll let you know as well. -Thad V'Soske tvsoske@hanoverdirect.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- TOOLTIPS MAY NOT APPEAR by Stephen Settimi ToolTipText will not show if the form is marked as AlwaysOnTop. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- WHERE CAN I FIND...? A (semi) permanent list of places to look for technical help when you get blind-sided by the latest urgent requirement. We don't give specific URLs for MSDN articles because (a) they're too long and (b) they change too often! ------------------------------- MSDN ON LINE: There's a ton of stuff here, look at the Magazines tab, and read some of the regular columns. MSDN Library Look in Technical Articles | Visual Studio | Visual FoxPro 3-Tier Apps: MSDN Library: "Building Three-Tier Client/Server Applications with Visual FoxPro" ADO MSDN Library: ADO Jumpstart for Microsoft Visual FoxPro Developers John V. Petersen, April 1999 DNA (Distributed interNet Architecture): MSDN On-line: "Top Windows DNA Performance Mistakes and How to Prevent Them" MTS: Microsoft Transaction Server MSDN Library: "Microsoft Transaction Server for Visual FoxPro Developers" ODBC: MSDN Library: "Using Visual FoxPro to Access Remote Data" VS Installer: MSDN Library: a. "Using Visual Studio Installer for VFP 6.0 Applications" b. "VFP 6.0 and VS Installer Tutorial" Windows General XML - What's New in XML for Microsoft Windows 2000 [Contributions solicited. DC] ====================================================================== Service Pack 4 Changes for Visual FoxPro 6 ====================================================================== by Barbara Peisch Service Pack 4 was officially released on 6/27/00. You can get it by ordering it on CD or you can download it (it's 129 megs, so you better have a high-speed connection). Go to http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/sp/vs6sp4/default.asp for either. I got all of the information below from the VFUG June Newsletter. First, the documentation tells us that "The Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0 Service Pack 4 includes all of the fixes in Service Packs 1, 2, and 3." To upgrade your VS Enterprise, you "Run SetupSP4.exe from your download extraction folder." Also, be aware that "Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC) 2.5 is required for Visual Studio 6.0 Service Pack 4. If you do not have MDAC 2.5 installed, you must install it before installing the service pack. The Service Pack Setup will inform you if you must install MDAC 2.5." MDAC 2.5 is included with the Enterprise Version files, but I don't know what will appear when there is a VFP6-specific Service Pack. Thirdly, Service Pack 4 changes directly affecting Visual FoxPro fall into six categories. Enhanced and New Language Elements CONFIG.FPW A new setting has been added to CONFIG.FPW to control off-screen bitmaps for use with Windows Terminal Server applications: BITMAP=OFF SYS(2339) – Internal Global function This function allows Visual FoxPro 6.0 SP4 DLL and MTDLL COM servers to clean up references to unused libraries as they release other COM servers. If you call SYS(2339,0) in your COM server, then Visual FoxPro does not make a call to the Windows API CoFreeUnusedLibraries when it releases another COM server. SYS(2800) Accessibility Support function This function disables or enables ActiveX Accessibility support and sets certain options to track the keyboard focus of the currently selected control in a Visual FoxPro form. The default is set to 3. Server Issues Q258737: Datasession Property Cannot be Set in Session Subclass Q258736: Multi-Threaded DLL Slow to Release Connection under MTS Logo Issues Q258428: Printer Name Longer than 64 Characters Causes Error (69222) Q262789: SYS() Function Improves Magnifier Accessibility Tool. Bidirectional Issues Q258532: Random Characters in Report Do Not Print under Localized Windows Q258533: Cannot Resize Grid Column Widths under Localized Windows Q258536: UpArrow Key Not Working in Code Editor under Hebrew Windows Windows Terminal Server Issues Q258537: New CONFIG.FPW Setting for Terminal Server Environments Miscellaneous Issues Q258530: Multiple References to File Object of Project Causes OLE error Q250059: Accessing Print Drivers When Issuing SYS(1037) Causes Error Q238945: Repeatedly Manipulating Data in Editbox Causes Error Msg Q217174: APPEND FROM TYPE XL8 Makes VFP 6 Disappear Q221745: C0000005 Fatal Error Using GETPEM() in Loop with Debugger Q262878: Name Table Entries May Be Incorrectly Addressed When > 32,000 These are welcome fixes and enhancements. It is curious though that the numbers of bugs fixed as posted in the MS KnowledgeBase were larger than what is shown in the SP4 documentation concerning Visual FoxPro 6. Also, we have no idea whether or not any enhancements or tweaks were made to the VFP ODBC driver. ====================================================================== SPEAKER EXCHANGE ====================================================================== The Orange County user group has approached us with the idea of a speaker exchange. We're trying this concept out for July. Orange Count is sending Mike Vincent to talk about N-tier development. On July 12, Eric Lendvai and Barbara Peisch will be going to Orange County. Barbara will be speaking about what it takes to become a consultant. Eric will be speaking about how to develop and deploy Active Web Site only using VFP and FrontPage - a real case example, the 'FoxPro Developers Network of San Diego' Web Site. If you're interested in joining a car pool to go to the Orange County meeting on July 12, please contact Barbara Peisch at 760-729-9607 or barbara@peisch.com. ====================================================================== OTHER STUFF ====================================================================== VFP'S CURRENT STATUS by Ed Leafe [The following is from Ed's ProFox forum. ] On 5/20/2000 12:33 AM, Bill Arnold supposedly said: >I know we've seen the VFP 7 features list announcement, but can >someone comment on the overall sense of commitment they saw/felt from >MS re VFP 7 and beyond? > >Was there a sense that VFP is gaining ... or losing ... ground in >importance within MS? There was no sense whatsoever that VFP is doing anything other than becoming more integrated than ever into Visual Studio. >Did Robert Green present? What impression of VFP did you feel he >projected? Yes, but mostly it was Randy Brown and Calvin Hsia who showed the cool new stuff. The absolutely coolest thing about the keynote is that they didn't present it as a "VFP" keynote, but rather just part of the overall keynote. For those of you who weren't familiar with this event, there were actually three conferences going on at once: VFP, SQL Server and Office. We shared the keynote, and when they started hiliting VFP, hardly anyone left. I did hear a few of the SQL folks comment that it didn't look anything like they thought VFP would look like; rather, it seemed very familiar and powerful to them. I think a lot of the SQL and Office people left that conference with a much improved opinion of VFP! >Did anyone talk about improved VFP doc? Nope. E. Leafe ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ORACLE - LICENSING MADE EASY [Somebody sent this to Jerry Pournelle's web site. It's from an Oracle document describing their new, "easier to use" licensing policy! DC] Example 1: You are licensing the Oracle8iEE for a computer which has 2 - 400MHz RISC processors. How many Universal Power Units do you need? (1 computer x 2 processors * 400MHz * 1.5 (RISC Factor) = 1,200 Universal Power Units for each program that you license for this computer. Example: For three computers each with two 400 MHz processors: 1. Number of MHz on each server = 800. (2 processors x 400 MHz processors = 800 MHz or UPUs per server) 2. Total number of UPUs = 2400. (3 computers x 800 MHz = 2400 UPUs) 3. Divide the total number of UPUs by 30 - the required minimum is 1 Named User for every 30 UPUs. (2400 UPUs / 30 = 80 named users) 4. For this hardware configuration containing 2400 UPUs/MHz, the minimum number of Named User licenses required is 80. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DOES YOUR SYSTEM PLAY BEETHOVEN? "During normal operation or in Safe mode, your computer may play 'Fur Elise' or 'It's a Small, Small World' seemingly at random. This is an indication sent to the PC speaker from the computer's BIOS that the CPU fan is failing or has failed, or that the power supply voltages have drifted out of tolerance. This is a design feature of a detection circuit and system BIOSes developed by Award/Unicore from 1997 on." http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q261/1/86.ASP [Is there somewhere in the Registry I can enter a different tune? DC] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- THE CLIENT'S CREED by Bruce Allen Sometimes it helps to remember the client's unique perspective: . I want it my way. . I want it right now. . I shouldn't have to pay for it. . You should be willing to make sacrifices so I can have it. All else is merely compromise. from "The LA Fox Developer" Bruce Allen; Left Brain Incorporated ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SOLUTIONS CONSULTING GROUP Solutions Consulting Group, at 6540 Lusk Blvd, is the host for our Sorrento Mesa meetings. But who are they, and what do they do? "Since its inception in 1993, Solutions Consulting Group has grown to more than 40 employees with over 65 active clients throughout Southern California. We are a Microsoft Certified Solution Provider Partner and a member of the Oracle Business Alliance Program." They do: Corporate Application Development Data Warehousing Network Services They work in FoxPro, VFP, VB, Access, SQL, and Oracle. They are looking for more employees and they do use contractors as well; contact Armando Andrade at if you're interested. For More Information... --------------------------Administrivia------------------------------- This newsletter is a service to members of the FoxPro Developers Network of San Diego (FPDN). The editor (Dan Covill) is solely responsible for the content, Barbara Peisch does the distribution. E-mail the editor YOUR tips, comments, complaints, and rebuttals. Editor: Dan Covill 858-272-2448 Board of Directors: Eric Lendvai - President 760-734-4929 Art Bergquist - Vice Pres 760-740-0428 Claude Nikula - Secretary 619-615-6318 Barbara Peisch - Treasurer 760-729-9607 Dan Covill - Director 858-272-2448 Thad V'Soske - Director 619-544-9900 ----------------------------------------------------------------------