April 2006

A great show from Andrew MacNeill with an interview of Rod Miller from dbi-Tech.

There are a couple of points that grabbed my attention:

1. dbi-Tech are not after a quick bit of marketing, and Rod is no dummy. He is obviously a considered businessman, so a decision to embrace the VFP community (or to continue to) is not to be dismissed as some off-hand thing - they have sensed the building interest in VFP and are taking it seriously.

2. Rod notes in the show how the sales of VFP 9 have outstripped VFP8 already - ie sales are increasing markedly (he refers, for example, to a 3rd party reseller in the US who has seen a 40% increase in sales).

3. And there is an announcement from dbi-Tech in the show (which I won't spoil)...

This is just further evidence of the surge that VFP is experiencing. Like Andrew, I liked wOOdy's comments over at Tucows, and agree that many VB devs are now turning to VFP as a viable alternative. And with the .Net interop and Office 12 support coming in Sedna it is easy to see why VFP appeals.

Download the show here

http://www.thefoxproshow.com/

Incidently, Andrew 'apologizes' for having not podcast for 2.5 months - yikes, if Scott and I could get a show together that often we'd be very happy. We know how much work goes into a show Andrew, so thanks for your continued efforts. 37 shows and counting - awesome work!

Another informative day at CodeCampOz.

The day kicked off with a chat from Paul Glavich about Atlas and some general discussion of Ajax functionality. This was an excellent introduction for me about the details under the covers (my understanding of Atlas had been sketchy at best up until then). Paul is an extremely likeable speaker and yes, I will be buying 3 or 4 copies of your book Glav...

Susan Entwistle presented on Future directions in modelling tools, and I have to admit I was really struggling here. It didn't help that we had a few web servers down back at the office, and I was trying to connect via a 53Kbps Vodafone card (anyone remember what dial-up is like? no, I didn't think so - well it really sucks). Everything is sooo slow it drives you nuts. And no, I couldn't use the CSU wireless because it was open and potentially everything I was sending would have been available - not a chance I was willing to take. So, my apologies Susan, I wasn't really paying attention.

The pick of the day was definately Rocky Heckman's talk on Hacking Applications. Rocky would have sent cold chills up the spines of most developers as he demonstrated the ease with which he could hack into web sites. Sure, he only had time to focus on SQL Injection as the easiest line in, but what struck me after eas the discussion amongst people. 'I don't allow SQL injection on my sites, so we are fine...' and similar comments. Hello! I'm not worried about the sites we develop (well, I am ofcourse), I'm worried about all the sites I've used in the last 12 months that have taken my credit card. My guess is that most are easily susceptible to attack... so the question is not if, but when. My personal approach has been to have a backup credit card (which to date we haven't used), because we know sooner or later our main card is gonna be hijacked.

And ofcourse I am have fallen into the trap of just focussing on the minor things like credit cards (which after all are mostly covered by insurance nowadays anyway). The major things are your entire identity and sensitive company information. I won't go on, we all know the risks. Rocky's talk was a much needed reminder on how easy it all is. Top marks.

After lunch, Joseph Cooney and Deepak Kapoor guided us through some Advanced Concepts in WPF. This followed on from Joseph's session with Chuck the day before and filled in some of the coding details to be used with WPF. A good presentation and one that will be interesting to follow as Microsoft releases further updates.

Mitch Denny was impressive with his coverage of TFS branching and Quality Gates. This is a topic every software manager needs to think through carefully and Mitch's overview was a helpful thought provoker. He also explained how Microsoft manages to re-release bugs that had been fixed in earlier patches... it all comes down to how well your configuration manager merge the branches. Stuff that up and you are in trouble.

The final session of the day for us was Greg Low's analysis of how to Avoid Recompiles in SQL Server. This was my number 2 pick for the day. Greg is ofcourse a master presenter and there are always a number of gems in his sessions. I wasn't aware of this, but did you realise that just having something like a SET DATE statement in your SP will ensure it is always recompiled - there is never any cacheing? No, I didn't, and there countless other moments that had me groaning about code I've been writing for years. Hopefully Greg will post his presentation notes because I have already forgotten countless other gotchas. I'll link to it here if it becomes available.

So, that was our day. Sadly an early flight meant we couldn't stay for Paul Glavich's advanced session on Atlas, which would have been excellent no doubt. Overall an extremely fruitfull weekend away. My head is chockas with knowledge (and worried about how I can possibly process it all).

CodeCampOZ is an excellent event and should be on every developer's calendar. Greg Low and Mitch Denny have again organised a superb event. Congratulations guys, and thanks also to Microsoft who picked up the tab for the pizza and broadband usage.

A reminder about the Sydney Visual FoxPro User Group this Wednesday. The site seems to be down at the moment (I am investigating)) so I have repeated the details here:

Wednesday 26 April 2006
6:30 - 8:30pm

Microsoft Headquarters at North Ryde
1 Epping Road
North Ryde

Adam Cogan will be presenting on Rules to Successful Projects
This is a continuation of his talk at OzFox Lite.

A very rewarding day at CodeCampOz today.

Castro, Eka, Rahul, Scott and I are all here in Wagga getting our fill of WinFS, Windows Workflow Foundation, Windows Presentation Framework, LINQ, SharePoint v3, .Net and more.

Greg Low and Mitch Denny have done extremely well yet again. The venue is ideal, the sessions are nicely organised, the speakers are good, the pizza for lunch was hot, and the weather has been very pleasant. Full marks so far guys.

The morning started with Dan Green discussing Windows Workflow Foundation. Dan was an impressive presenter and his session was obviously well rehearsed, well timed and imformative.

Next I joined one of the break out sessions discussing how to run User Groups. This was a helpful pointer to me of some ideas for improving the Sydney VFP User Group. Main points from Greg and Chuck were about how the user groups are not about the technology, they are about the people. Much of the time was spent discussing how we can get to know developers better (as opposed to how we we can improve presentations or venues etc). I will blog about this topic in a later post, because I think there is much to be considered in this regard.

An introduction to WinFS by Chris Hewitt was very interesting. WinFS is, as you may know, the intended eventual replacement for NTFS and aims to provide a relational file system. Lots of potential ofcourse, but as Chris points out, don't hold your breath. I especially liked Chris's Call to Inaction once it is released. He reckons there are going to be so many cool killer apps to be developed he just wants to maximise his time to develop them (ie by convincing us to be inactive for a while) - nice one Chris!

Joseph Cooney and Charles Sterling took us through Windows Presentation Framework. A few technical issues hampered this session unfortunately, however there was still enough to make the time worthwhile - fortunately Chuck's personality is so positive and put-a-smile-on-your-face that he could have been talking about fishing for all I care and I still would have liked it (fishing is in an in-joke - he's a mad fisherman). The gist of WPF is ofcourse XAML and the tools coming with it. Microsoft's Expression looks to be a great product. However, we couldn't help comparing the functionaity (although not the underlying technology ofcourse) to what we've been able to do with Macromedia (ahem Adobe) Flash for years now. OK, don't start with the comments about differences, I know, I know...

The pick of the day for me was Angus Logan, a Microsoft Technical Specialist in SharePoint. Angus was a stunning presenter, taking us through the new features coming in SharePoint X (slated for release at the end of the year...). This is really impressive. The features it packs in are awesome. Even some of the minor points Angus mentioned are big in their own right eg having an InfoPath renderer within SharePoint - no need for clients to have InfoPath installed in order to use InfoPath forms (about time I hear you say). As far as technology glue goes, SharePoint has to be most exciting integration engine around in my opinion. The market for SharePoint developers is going to be really big in about 3 years time (that's my prediction anyway).

A close second place for excellence in presenting goes to Adam Cogan with an enjoyable, well reasoned and technically reliable coverage of his top 10 tools for ASP.Net development. He covered controls such as grids, calendar popups, menus, rich text boxes, and tools like Resharper, Team Plains, and a bunch of others. You can check out all of Adam's sessions on his web site at SSW.

Troy Magennis and Nick Randolph took us through some of the details of LINQ. I guess I have been a bit out of touch with the whole LINQ strategy, and this session brought me up to speed, which was great. Being a Fox developer though I just have to shake my head in despair again. Why is it taking so long to get this functionality into .Net? I know I must be extremely ignorant here, but I just can't understand it. It is obvious that developers want all the functionality and have done so for a long time. Why is it still way off (ie in C# 3.0 and VB9)?

Finally the day finished with a non-technical session from the infectious Dave Lemphers (a Microsoft DE). He discussed being a Consultant, dispelling common stereotypes and providing useful approaches to meeting client requirements. A nice, positive talk on how to concentrate on providing solutions to client problems (which is a good definition of what a consultant should do really).

CodeCampOz continues tomorrow.

Christ Sainty blasts onto the blogosphere with some impressive posts:

http://csainty.blogspot.com

Chris works at Quids, the company who developed the web site and back end systems powering Harris Technology (Australia's biggest consumer IT site). All written in FoxPro ofcourse.

That's right, Australia's biggest online IT consumer webstore is all running on FoxPro.

Rahul has a nice little piece on some of his previous work experience with Visual FoxPro

http://nationalcom.com/serendipity/

Yes, VFP is amazing...

(And if you caught my earlier post pointing to Rahul's blog - since removed - then my apologies. He was still testing it for format handling and I announced it too soon.)

Good to see that the Fox community is not the only one noticing the surge in VFP

http://farm.tucows.com/blog/_archives/2006/4/17/1892314.html

I use Crazy Browser as my browser (it is an IE wrapper). A few people have asked about it, so here's the link:

http://www.crazybrowser.com/

It is freeware and pretty good in my opinion.

I haven't done any comparison of browsers, nor am I am actually recommending it. However I have used it for years and have had no problems.

(And thanks to Eka who put me onto it years ago)

Great to see a few more Australian companies have added their details to the Fox Wiki page:

http://fox.wikis.com/wc.dll?Wiki~AustralianVFPNetwork~VFP

In case you missed it, at OzFox Lite we were trying to get a list of Australian FoxPro development companies compiled. And I'm hoping someone will take the lead in New Zealand as well.

So, please add your details if you haven't already.

I'm pleased to remind you that we will have Adam Cogan speaking at the Sydney VFP User Group this month.

Adam was one of our top scorers in the evals from OzFox Lite with his excellent session on Rules for Successful Projects Part 1.

In his session at UG he will be taking us through the second half of his session ie Rules to Successful Projects Part 2.

See you there in 2 weeks time. Mark it in your diaries now.

www.svfpug.com.au

Craig Bailey on Microsoft

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Blog archive

VFP: FoxShow #37 - Rod Miller interview

NET: Code Camp Day 2

VFP: Sydney Visual FoxPro User Group reminder

NET: Code Camp Day 1

VFP: Chris Sainty is blogging about Visual FoxPro

VFP: Rahul Desai is blogging about Visual FoxPro

VFP: TIOBE, Tucows Farm and FoxPro

BROWSER: Crazy Browser

VFP: Australian FoxPro Developer Network

VFP: Adam Cogan speaking at Sydney Visual FoxPro User Group on 26 April