The LA Fox Developer Newsletter

April 1994

Hot Off the Wire (Con't from page 5)

Posted on FoxForum, Harvey Johnson to all, 4/

7/94 (#639599)

This notice pertains to the upcoming FoxPro Users

Conference:

Mohsen Moazami - Stanford Business Systems Rapid Application Development

American and international organizations around the world are in the process of downsizing and reengineering. An essential component of this downsizing revolution is the concept of Rapid Application Development (RAD). This theory is the basis upon which the new more powerful business applications are being built. RAD completely negates the methodologies of the past and introduces new and more effective ways of software development. This session covers the essential concepts of RAD, and concentrates on the most practical aspects of this revolutionary concept which is invading corporate America. Join the revolution!

The 1994 FoxPro Users Conference Minneapolis Convention Center

June 19-21, 1994

(800) 486-8028 (612) 941-6224

Message posted by Karen Higgins April 12 on the FoxUser Forum (#22023)

re: Next Devcon

Per Chris Cap yesterday: the 3 sites now under consideration are Austin, Nashville and someplace in CA and the 3 times are in November, the 1St week in December and January. He says it is doubtful that DevCon will be in October. They want DevCon to be on FoxPro 3.0 and are wanting it to be available at that time.

Karen

“Being hard-core and forward-looking about what you do is a necessary element of doing it well.”

“My success just proves that life is chaotic.. .some butterfly did the right thing for me.”

Books and Toys...... Toys and Books

by Barry R. Lee

[This article is the third in a series featuring add-on products and books supporting FoxPro.]

The final step in developing any FoxPro application is building the “.EXE”, right? Not necessarily. If you’re going to distribute the program, you’ll need to include an install routine to guide the end-user through the installation. Now, the question is... Do you write one (could take quite a few extra days), do you “zip” the files up and hope the end-user knows what to do (good luck), or do you use a commercial installation program?

There are any number of commercial installation programs available including Install Boss, EZ-lnstall, lnstaiit, etc. I’ve worked with quite a few of these products and they work very well. The cost of these programs range from $79 to over $200. But one day, decided to strike out for adventure and check out some of the local BBS’s to see what they had.

The first place I checked (Chips+ Connection, 714/ 556-3208, 8-N-i, Newport Beach) had an abundance, so I downloaded a few.

These programs had to meet certain criteria that I had found to be useful in the commercial products mentioned above:

1. Ability to modify the CONFIG.SYS. Some end- users never look at how their computers are set up. If the files/buffers are too low, the program may not run.

2. Ability to modify the AUTOEXEC.BAT. The directory in which your program resides might need to be in the path after installation, which leads us to point

3.

3. Ability to make the directory where your program files will live, or to give the user an option to place them in another directory (which the program will also make).

one disk, the program must be capable of generating to multiple disk sets.

5. Ability to check base memory, video adapter, and free disk space.

(Con't, page 7, Books and Toys)

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