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COM Interop Over Easy
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Focus Magazine: 2007 - Vol. 4 - Issue 1 - Sedna: Beyond Visual FoxPro 9, VFP Conversion Papers
This article highlights some of the new toolkits and components coming out of Redmond for COM Interop.The Interop Forms Toolkit, the Interop UserControl Prototype, and the techniques used in Sedna’s NET4COM allow Visual FoxPro developers to incorporate .NET components into their applications.
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From VFP to .NET
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: VFP Conversion Papers, CODE Focus Magazine: 2007 - Vol. 4 - Issue 1 - Sedna: Beyond Visual FoxPro 9
A practical look at what’s involved in converting your Visual FoxPro (VFP) applications to Visual Studio and SQL Server. Let me say up front that I am a long-time FoxPro developer and that I love VFP. I also love .NET and SQL Server and I’ve headed up and participated in many conversions. Most of the conversions I’ve worked on were not driven by technical necessity, but by customer demand that software be built with .NET and SQL Server. Whatever the reason, conversion from VFP to .NET is a significant undertaking.
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Integrating VFP into VSTS Team Projects
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Focus Magazine: 2007 - Vol. 4 - Issue 1 - Sedna: Beyond Visual FoxPro 9, VFP Conversion Papers
Whenever more than one person works on a software development project, introducing some process to coordinate the activities of the team members is a priority.The larger the team, the harder it is to manage. To meet this need, Microsoft created Visual Studio Team System (VSTS). VSTS is a state-of-the-art Software Development Life Cycle tool suite that is tightly integrated into Microsoft Visual Studio 2005. VSTS provides deep support for .NET projects; however, whenever a software solution includes components developed on a platform other than .NET, such as Microsoft Visual FoxPro (VFP), VSTS loses some of its value because the projects aren’t integrated into VSTS. Leveraging the extensibility features of VSTS and VFP, this article will help you integrate VFP projects into VSTS team projects enabling your team to apply a comprehensive process to your entire software development effort.
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The Baker’s Dozen: 13 Productivity Tips for Moving from VFP to .NET
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Focus Magazine: 2007 - Vol. 4 - Issue 1 - Sedna: Beyond Visual FoxPro 9, VFP Conversion Papers
When Visual FoxPro developers take the plunge to learn .NET, the most common reaction is, “I could do such-and-such, this-and-that in VFP-how can I do it in .NET?” This special edition of The Baker’s Dozen will offer solutions for many of the typical challenges that VFP developers face when tackling .NET. I’ll start by covering .NET solution and project structures and an overview of the .NET Framework, and I’ll spend time showing how to use .NET reflection to do some of the things that VFP developers could accomplish with macro-expansion. Then I’ll cover different .NET features such as Generics, ASP.NET 2.0, and I’ll show how to create a reusable data access component. Finally, I’ll build the architecture for a set of reusable data maintenance classes in .NET.
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The Missing LINQ
Last updated: Wednesday, August 10, 2022
Published in: CODE Focus Magazine: 2007 - Vol. 4 - Issue 1 - Sedna: Beyond Visual FoxPro 9, VFP Conversion Papers, Markus Egger Talks Tech
Visual FoxPro’s (VFP) Data Manipulation Language (DML) is one of VFP’s most compelling features. It is also the most obvious feature VFP developers miss in .NET languages such as C# and Visual Basic. However, Language Integrated Query (LINQ), a new query language for .NET developers is a new feature in the upcoming releases of C# 3.and Visual Basic 9.0 that addresses these shortcomings.
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The My Namespace in Sedna
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Focus Magazine: 2007 - Vol. 4 - Issue 1 - Sedna: Beyond Visual FoxPro 9, VFP Conversion Papers
New to Sedna, Visual FoxPro emulates the My namespace first introduced in Visual Basic 2005.The My namespace makes .NET Framework classes more discoverable and allows you to write less code. Sedna, the next version of Visual FoxPro (VFP), includes a My namespace as well, for the same reasons. In this article, I’ll look at how Sedna implements My.
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The New and Improved Data Explorer
Last updated: Wednesday, February 20, 2019
Published in: CODE Focus Magazine: 2007 - Vol. 4 - Issue 1 - Sedna: Beyond Visual FoxPro 9, VFP Conversion Papers
The Data Explorer introduced in VFP 9.0 allows developers to work with different types of data from diverse data sources independent of specific projects.The Sedna update extends this already powerful and productive tool.
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Visual FoxPro Web Services Revisited
Last updated: Wednesday, August 10, 2022
Published in: CODE Focus Magazine: 2007 - Vol. 4 - Issue 1 - Sedna: Beyond Visual FoxPro 9, VFP Conversion Papers
Web services with Visual FoxPro (VFP) have never been easy. The most common Web service tool for FoxPro is the SOAP Toolkit, which has been discontinued and which had a host of problems when dealing with complex types passed over Web Services. In this article I’ll show how you can leverage the powerful Web service features of .NET and the new Windows Communication Foundation in your FoxPro application through COM Interop.
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Welcome to the Future of Deployment
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Focus Magazine: 2007 - Vol. 4 - Issue 1 - Sedna: Beyond Visual FoxPro 9, VFP Conversion Papers
You can use ClickOnce to revolutionize how you install and update Visual FoxPro (VFP) applications. A dream come true, ClickOnce can put a stop to many of the deployment nightmares associated with distributing applications.
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.NET Data Access with LINQ: A VFP Perspective
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: VFP Conversion Papers, Markus Egger Talks Tech, LINQExperts.com Papers
For Visual FoxPro developers, data access represents the daily bread and butter. Data access is a core feature of Visual FoxPro (which after all is an xBase descendent) and nobody gives much thought to the ability to run a select-statement right within a VFP program.Most languages however (including .NET languages such as C# or Visual Basic .NET) are not as data centric and thus do not support data manipulation as a core language concept. At least until now. But all this is about to change with the introduction of LINQ.
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LINQ
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2006 - March/April, Markus Egger Talks Tech, VFP Conversion Papers
At PDC 2005, Microsoft introduced brand new technology known as LINQ, which stands for “Language Integrated Query.”The feature-set hiding behind this acronym is truly mind-boggling and worthy of a lot of attention. In short, LINQ introduces a query language similar to SQL Server’s T-SQL, in C# and VB.NET. Imagine that you could issue something like a “select * from customers” statement within C# or VB.NET. This sounds somewhat intriguing, but it doesn’t begin to communicate the power of LINQ.
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.NET Interop for Visual FoxPro Applications
Last updated: Wednesday, February 20, 2019
Published in: VFP Conversion Papers
Now that .NET is here you've undoubtedly had the urge to use or at least play with the new functionality that the platform provides. Unfortunately migrating to .NET from Visual FoxPro (or most other development languages) is a big step that requires a steep learning curve. Integration between the old and the new will be crucial as a first step to provide for the ramp up time that's needed to get up to speed on the new platform as well as providing vital links between old and new applications. In this article Rick looks at the most common ways that you can use to integrate logic and data between Visual FoxPro and .NET.
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Calling VFP COM components from .Net and ASP.Net
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: VFP Conversion Papers
Now that .NET is here you've undoubtedly have the urge to use or at least play with the new functionality that the platform provides. Unfortunately migrating to .NET from Visual FoxPro (or most other development languages) is a big step that requires a steep learning curve. Integration between the old and the new will be crucial as a first step to provide for the ramp up time that's needed to get up to speed on the new platform as well as providing vital links between old and new applications. In this article, which is part of a series of .Net Interop articles, Rick looks at how to integrate Visual FoxPro COM components from .Net, specifically ASP.Net.
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COM Interop and Strong Typing
Last updated: Wednesday, February 20, 2019
Published in: VFP Conversion Papers
The basics of using a VFP COM component from .NET are relatively simple, but the more objects we use, the harder it gets. In order to make one's life easier from the .NET side, the component must be built a certain way from the VFP side. For instance, it's very common to create objects on-the-fly in VFP, given the ease of doing so. However, these objects cannot be consumed from .NET without writing extra code. This article covers some aspects of how the developer can improve the COM Interop experience when consuming VFP COM components from .NET.
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Compare Constructors and Destructors in VFP and .NET
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: VFP Conversion Papers, Markus Egger Talks Tech
Unlike VFP, .NET forces you to give up control over the destruction of objects, but you get some benefits in return.
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Compare Events and Delegates in VFP and .NET
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: VFP Conversion Papers, Markus Egger Talks Tech
Events play a larger role in .NET than they do in Visual FoxPro. Learn how events work in the .NET world to write powerful applications.
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Compare Inheritance in VFP and VS.NET
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: VFP Conversion Papers, Markus Egger Talks Tech
If you're starting to work with Visual Studio .NET, you'll find you have a head start when it comes to inheritance.Here are some of the differences.
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Compare Interfaces and Polymorphism in VFP and VS.NET
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: VFP Conversion Papers, Markus Egger Talks Tech
Polymorphism is the use of multiple objects with the same methods that do different things.Interfaces let you create flexible architecture in your application. Find out how these concepts differ in Visual FoxPro and Visual Studio .NET.
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Compare Methods, Properties, and Fields in VS.NET and VFP
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: VFP Conversion Papers, Markus Egger Talks Tech
Discover the differences and similarities between Visual Studio .NET and Visual FoxPro.
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Compare Static Members in VFP and .NET
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: VFP Conversion Papers, Markus Egger Talks Tech
You're familiar with instance members in Visual FoxPro. Now find out how you can benefit from static members in Visual Studio .NET.
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Compare Variables in VFP and VS.NET
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: VFP Conversion Papers, Markus Egger Talks Tech
Learn about different types of variables, and what it means to perform boxing, unboxing, and casting operations.
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Compare Visual Inheritance in VFP and .NET
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: VFP Conversion Papers, Markus Egger Talks Tech
Find out how your knowledge of visual inheritance in Visual FoxPro can help you take advantage of Visual Studio .NET's slightly different model.
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Comparing VFP String Performance to .NET String Performance
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: VFP Conversion Papers, Markus Egger Talks Tech, CODE Magazine: 2000 - Spring
The series of test conducted here are based on the "String Processing with VFP" article published in the Spring 2000 issue of CoDe Magazine.
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Creating Multi-threaded .NET componentsfor COM Interop with Visual FoxPro
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: VFP Conversion Papers
Multithreading is a powerful feature that allows you to asynchronously execute code while continuing to work or provide a responsive user interface to your application..NET makes multithreading very easy and in this installment you’ll see how to create and execute multithreaded components and communicate with them via events.Multithreading is a powerful feature that allows you to asynchronously execute code while continuing to work or provide a responsive user interface to your application..NET makes multithreading very easy and in this installment you’ll see how to create and execute multithreaded components and communicate with them via events.
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Handling .NET Events in Visual FoxPro via COM Interop
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: VFP Conversion Papers
Last month I started a series of articles that are looking at a few advanced topics in using .NET COM Interop with Visual FoxPro. This month, I look at handling .NET events through COM Interop and briefly introduce creating and interacting with multi-threaded .NET components from your Visual FoxPro applicationsEvent Handling is an important feature both in Visual FoxPro and .NET.But both .NET COM objects and Visual FoxPro require special handling in order to deal with hooking up to COM events. In this article, Rick takes a close look at how events work in Visual FoxPro and .NET and how they can be used together across the COM Interop boundary.
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Improve Code with Enums
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: VFP Conversion Papers, Markus Egger Talks Tech
To help you understand .NET development from a Visual FoxPro perspective, this article introduces you to the concept of enums and shows you how to use them to improve code quality.
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Modern Application Development: Visual FoxPro and .NET
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: VFP Conversion Papers, Markus Egger Talks Tech
Markus Egger discusses the current state of development (2004) and how Visual Studio .NET and Visual FoxPro fit in.
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OOP: VFP vs. VS.NET
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: VFP Conversion Papers, Markus Egger Talks Tech
And discover why and when you should use .NET.
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Operator Overloading
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: VFP Conversion Papers, Markus Egger Talks Tech
To help you understand .NET development from a VFP perspective, this article introduces you to operator overloading and shows you how to apply it for powerful programming in .NET.
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Passing objects between FoxPro and .NET COM Components
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: VFP Conversion Papers
COM Interop between Visual FoxPro and .NET seems trivial at first, but the devil is in the details.Simple COM calls using methods and properties with simple parameters are easily accomplished. However, once you start dealing with complex objects - objects with hierarchies or specific object types required by .NET as parameters or properties, you start running into problems. This article looks at some of the issues that you need to look out for when dealing with objects in applications that call .NET COM objects from Visual FoxPro.COM Interop between Visual FoxPro and .NET seems trivial at first, but the devil is in the details.Simple COM calls using methods and properties with simple parameters are easily accomplished. However, once you start dealing with complex objects - objects with hierarchies or specific object types required by .NET as parameters or properties, you start running into problems. This article looks at some of the issues that you need to look out for when dealing with objects in applications that call .NET COM objects from Visual FoxPro.
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The Importance of the Managed Platform
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: Publisher's Point, VFP Conversion Papers, Markus Egger Talks Tech
.Net is a maturing platform. The first .NET alphas and betas went to a selected group of people years and years ago. At this point, we are approaching the third major installment of Visual Studio .NET (now called "Visual Studio 2005"). Surely at this point, nobody has to explain what .NET and the Managed Platform is. Or do we?
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The State of VFP Conversions
Last updated: Wednesday, February 20, 2019
Published in: VFP Conversion Papers, Newsletters
We have been helping customers convert Visual FoxPro systems to different platforms (mainly .NET and SQL Server, but there are others) for the better part of two decades. During that time, we have provided numerous articles, presentations, and training classes. Articles range from high-level road maps to in-depth, detailed technical articles. As time has passed, VFP conversion techniques and options have evolved. With that, we feel it is time to take a look at the big picture once again.
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The Visual FoxPro Toolkit for .NET
Last updated: Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2002 - September/October, VFP Conversion Papers
Visual Studio .NET offers a rich tool set, but anyone who has ever used Visual FoxPro will soon notice that many of their favorite features are not available. However, a new set of public domain classes can add these functions to both Visual Basic .NET and C#.
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Using Visual FoxPro to call.Net Web Services for Data Access
Last updated: Wednesday, February 20, 2019
Published in: VFP Conversion Papers
Using Web Services from Visual FoxPro is not difficult, but dealing with Data or Complex objects is not quite as straightforward as it could be.In this article, I'll describe how you can work with .Net Web Services and pass complex data between VFP and .Net and handle updating scenarios for Data between the two.
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VFP and .NET: The Best of Both Worlds
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: VFP Conversion Papers
Several years have passed since the first beta version of Visual Studio .NET and Microsoft is now looking toward their 3rd release of the product. Visual FoxPro (VFP) has also been around for several years with a new version (VFP 9) due late this year. Both tools have great features that can make our lives as developers much easier. So why shouldn't we use both tools? There are features in .NET that can greatly benefit VFP applications. On the other hand, VFP provides developers with great features that are not available in .NET. The features in VFP can be of great help when you are writing code in .NET and are looking for common features. This article demonstrates how you can have the best of both worlds.
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VFP Conversion Roadmap Whitepaper
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: VFP Conversion Papers, Markus Egger Talks Tech
This whitepaper discusses strategies for managers converting Visual FoxPro (VFP) applications to .NET, and lays a foundation for producing an implementation plan.
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Windows Presentation Foundation - an Introduction for VFP Developers
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: Markus Egger Talks Tech, VFP Conversion Papers
The Windows Presentation Foundation (short WPF) is coming, and it will replace all Windows UIs as we know them today.This means that no developer can ignore this technology. This article provides an introduction to WPF both from a general point of view as well as from a Visual FoxPro specific angle.
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ACME Insurance - Building a .NET Application
Last updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2002 - January/February
Part 3, The User Interface and the Rating Web ServiceWe are finally going to get our feet wet in Visual Studio .NET and start writing some real code! In this article, we're going to focus on two areas of the ACME application. First, we will talk about the user interface and how it's implemented in ASP.NET ? along with a few problems we overcame by utilizing the powerful object-oriented features of .NET. Next, we'll write a web service in Visual Basic .NET to rate policies based on their class codes. To demonstrate that web services can be used in a variety of ways, we'll consume the web service in both .NET and Visual FoxPro 7.
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Double Impact Mega Event 2000 Waikiki, Honolulu, Hawaii
Last updated: Thursday, December 9, 2021
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2000 - Summer
How we spent our family winter vacation: at a Visual FoxPro Conference in Hawaii!
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String Processing With VFP
Last updated: Thursday, December 9, 2021
Published in: CODE Magazine: 2000 - Spring
String processing is an important aspect of today's applications.Web applications in particular, rely heavily on string transformations and special formatting of data, as well as generating strings for output to the Web dynamically in the form of HTML, XML or even binary data. In this article, Steve demonstrates and compares performance of some of the powerful string functions in Visual FoxPro.