The LA Fox Develo per Newsletter

September 1994

Three From Landmark (Con't from page 8)

iniExpert, to quote the user’s manual, “. . . is a powerful Windows utility that allows you to examine and modify your Windows environment. iniExpert is designed to make editing Windows initialization files easy. iniExpert takes the mystery out of initialization files by providing detailed information right where you need it - on the screen. Each entry is clearly explained, including the entry’s purpose, setting range, and default value.”

It’s a good program and should have value to those people who aren’t that familiar with initializa tion files. One of its more useful utilities is "iniSave", which can be loaded into the Program Manager startup group. Using this utility in this way provides a type of “insurance policy” that makes a backup of all .INI files and allows you to restore the .INI files to a known “good” state should your changes fail to launch Windows successfully.

DafaSafe is a very intriguing program. Elsewhere in this issue of “The Developer”, a brief description of Dr. Watson states that Watson is useful for recording certain aspects of the Windows environment when a GPF occurs. The allure of DataSafe is that it will intercept a GPF, record system variables, allow you to make notes related to what you were doing at the time the GPF occurred, and save/rename the file, etc., all before you get blown out of Windows and lose your work . It comes with a test program called “Crash-O-Matic” that demonstrates DataSafe’s fault recovery and reporting capabilities by artificially generating errors.

Neither Dr. Watson nor DataSafe will prevent GPFs from occurring, but DataSafe offers a very viable alternative to losing an important document or completely scrambling a database system.

Out and About (Con't from page 6) will” basis.

It should be obvious from the previous two paragraphs that LA Fox is going through some changes... ..almost an evolutionary process. Some of us wilt think it is a much-needed one. The members now have, perhaps more than any other time in its history, a chance to point LA Fox in a slightly different direction. LA Fox has given a lot to the local FoxPro Developer’s community. Now it’s time to give a little bit back to LA Fox.

XPro User Group News (Con't from page 8)

.DBF format.

Most notable is that features like Referential Integrity, Validity Checks and Table Lookup are implemented/ enforced at the table level instead requiring coding. Besides the potential time savings, both in creating your app and working out the bugs, this will also make the data in these tables more secure from tampering by someone using a third party tool or even their own copy of dBASE. Along the same lines, another security feature of the .DB table format is password protection, both at the table level and even at the field level. A field such as Salary in your Empllnfo table can have separate levels of password protection, so the Personnel Manager has full read/write access, the payroll clerk has read only access, and the rest of the accounting department has no access at all (the values are hidden). I should note that while dBWin can make

*use* of the above features when using the .DB format, it can’t create any of them. For that, you will need a copy of PDox/Win 5.0 (or 4.5, depending on whether you’ll use any 5.0 specific field types or features).

Also, the index structure for .DB tables is markedly (Con't, back page)

It Can’t Get Any Easier.......

We’ve come up with an easy way to submit articles to the LA Fox Developer Newsletter one that has been overlooked for a long time.

You can submit your articles to either Chuck Williams

(72330,2326) or Barry Lee (72723,3422) on

Compuserve.

These articles can be on any FoxPro-related topic, whether it concerns a new technique you’ve discovered, a certain development technique you may favor over others, book reviews, etc.

The quality of this newsletter really depends on the members that support it, not just read it. And I think we’d all be surprised by the useful information that could be circulated around the membership.

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