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 re-

engineering. 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 intro-

duces 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 men-

tioned 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).

4.

If the .EXE and related files are too large to fit on

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)

Page 6