SPS Blog - Southwest Fox Speakers

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Yes, I know it's after 4:00 in the morning and I shouldn't still be up. But, as I was sitting here working, I decided to take a quick break to see what I might have missed in my RSS feeds since the last time I checked them and I ran into a post by Rick Schummer about Southwest Fox.

It looks as though Bob Kocher is putting together another great Southwest Fox conference this year. The initial list of speakers reads like a Who's Who of Visual FoxPro heavy-weights. Marcia Akins, Tamar Granor, Cathy Pountney, Toni Feltman, Rick Schummer, Andy Kramek, Jim Booth, Mike Feltman, Doug Hennig, Claudio Lassala, Ken Levy, and Bill Anderson are on the initial list. And, there's also some mysterious guest speaker (yet to be announced). I'll be there as well (doing my best to keep up with all of these heavy hitters). Keep in mind that Southwest Fox is a ways off yet, so there will probably be more speakers added to this already impressive list - though if the list stayed just the way it is, it would still be a great value for the registration fee.

If you're a Visual FoxPro developer this conference is a not-to-be-missed event. If you're a software firm that employs Visual FoxPro developers, then seriously consider sending them to Southwest Fox (this is the kind of investment that will pay big dividends). If you're involved in your local VFP User Group, get 3 or more of your members to attend and Bob will give you a discount to boot.

For those of you that haven't had the pleasure of attending Southwest Fox previously and would like to know what to expect, you can read about last year's Southwest Fox conference out on the Universal Thread. A quick recap... last year there were something like 18 speakers putting on lots of power-packed VFP sessions, vendors were giving away prizes like there was no tomorrow, good food and beverages were in ample supply, and Visual FoxPro Community spirit was everywhere.

If at all possible, get to Southwest Fox 2006. You'll be glad you did, and while you're there you can help me celebrate Ken Levy's birthday.

Visual Foxpro

Wednesday, March 22, 2006 10:18:30 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

Comments [3]

Thursday, March 23, 2006 5:38:35 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

Phoenix features two great back-to-back VFP Conferences, the Advisor DevCon and the Southwest Conference (that was EXCELLENT in 2005)....!

Brownie a-la-mode or Carrot Cake a-la-mode... Tough choices!!!

Kenneth Tamayo

Sunday, March 26, 2006 7:48:10 AM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

1. HOW TO DISPLAY THICK CURSOR TYPE IN VFP FORM INSTEAD OF VERTICLE
LINE CURSOR TYPE.

2. ALL THE PEOPLE SAY FOXPRO IS OUTDATED ....IS IT TRUE ?
IF IT IS TRUE IN WHICH SENCE.

3. VFP IS DEMENDED IN NEAR FUTURE.

4. MOST OF PEOPLE USING VB/ VB.NET

5. VB.NET IS AVAILABLE FOR TRAIL VERSION

HAVE A GOOD DAY

MAHENDRA..MERA BHARAT MAHAN

mahendra pardeshi, india

Sunday, March 26, 2006 9:26:00 AM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

1. I'm assuming that you mean the Change view, also referred to as a flagstaff view. If so, Copy-and-paste the following code into a prg and execute it in VFP (basic trick is to set the Grid's View property to 1).

PUBLIC oform1
oform1=NEWOBJECT("form1")
oform1.Show()
DEFINE CLASS form1 AS form
DoCreate = .T.
Caption = "Form1"
Name = "Form1"
ADD OBJECT grid1 AS grid WITH ;
Anchor = 15, ;
Height = 250, ;
Left = 0, ;
Top = 0, ;
Width = 375, ;
Name = "Grid1"
PROCEDURE Destroy
*!* Close table
USE IN SELECT("Customers")
ENDPROC
PROCEDURE Init
*!* Open table
USE (HOME(2) + "Northwind\Customers.dbf") IN 0
thisform.grid1.RecordSource = "Customers"
*!* set grid view to Change (flagstaff)
thisform.grid1.View = 1
ENDPROC
ENDDEFINE

2. No, not true. Visual FoxPro provides many features for data-centric applications that even the next version of .NET will not include. Visual FoxPro is ahead of its time.

3. I don't know what you mean by this. Is there demand for VFP in the future? Yes.

4. While I would agree that there is still a huge developer community for VB 6.0, I would not concur with your assumption regarding VB.NET. In fact, from what I have seen C# has a much higher adoption rate at this point.

5. Yes, Microsoft offers an Express Edition of VB.NET. It should be noted that the following is noted by MS -

"Express Edition products are designed for hobbyists, students, and novice developers. As such, they lack the full breadth of features found in higher-end Visual Studio and SQL Server Editions."

I'm sure these Express Editions help MS increase the adoption rates, but I guess if I were going to use a free tool I would probably go with Sharp Develop (http://www.icsharpcode.net/OpenSource/SD/Default.aspx). I prefer to use full-blown Visual Studio 2005 for my .NET development.

While it would be cool to see MS offer something similar for Visual FoxPro, most Visual FoxPro developers are creating mission critical data-centric applications, I don't think an express edition of VFP would help much. Also, given that VFP 9.0 costs between $550-$600 and then can be used to create as many royalty free data-centric applications as a developer wants... I think it's an outstanding value.

I appreciate your taking the time to stop by my blog Mahendra. In future posts, please turn your Capslock off. Thanks.

Craig Boyd

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