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 exam-

ine 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 environ-

ment when a GPF occurs. The allure of DataSafe

is that it will intercept a GPF, record system vari-

ables, 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 demon-

strates 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 para-

graphs 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 secu-

rity feature of the .DB table format is password protec-

tion, 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 Person-

nel Manager has full read/write access, the payroll

clerk has read only access, and the rest of the ac-

counting 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 discov-

ered, 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.

So.

How 'bout it?

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