The LA Fox DeveloDer Newsletter

August 1995

The Latest on VFP Books

by Barry R. Lee

Not too long ago, I sent out a question on CompuServe, to some of the more famous authors within our community, inquiring as to the status of any books they might be authoring. They were all extremely quick to respond and here are their answers:

Savannah Brentnall - “Yes, I do have a book in progress. It’s with Ellen Sander and John Gunn, and is titled The Visual Guide to Visual FoxPro . The publisher is Ventana, and it should be out around September.”

Les Pinter -. “My book is in final edit, and will be printed about 60 days from now. So October is the likely date for gethng into bookstores.”

George Goley - “Thanks for asking. I intend to start the book in September, leading to a Dec/Jan pub date.”

Lisa Slater Nicholls - “Thanks for checking in'

“With a bunch of other good people, I’m working on a book for Ventana Press called Visual FoxPro Power ToolKit: A Master C/ass for Fox Developers — but it’s not nearly ready <s> Its not a beginners book — its more like MAChete (my FPMac book for Hayden) than my Que DOS and Windows books.

“I don’t have an estimated date of publication yet, and I don’t think this book belongs in the “first wave” anyway <s>.

“It will come with a CD and I’m hoping that a second edition/printing will have both the VFP Mac and Windows material on the CD.”

Tamar Granor - “Thanks for asking. Our book is still in progress (that is, we’re still writing it). I’d expect it to be out mid-to-late fall. The title is “The Hackers Guide to Visual FoxPro” and the publisher is Addison-Wesley. Ted Roche is my co-author.”

Y. Alan Griver (“yag”) - “The book should be out by early September. Here is a message put together by Ken Levy that describes the book - use whatever you’d like...”

“There are currently two versions of the Codebook by

Y. Alan Gnver (yag), the first was for FoxPro 2.0 and the second for FoxPro 2.6. Basically those books supplied a solution (via source code) for creating event-driven applications around the FoxPro READ, a design and coding methodology, and also including standard utilities for application development in FoxPro.

“The upcoming Codebook for Visual FoxPro 3.0 should be available in late Aug. or early Sept. by Sybex books. In this version, the book and source code are separated in more specific areas. The book text, written by yag, will continue to cover issues about FoxPro standards and methodology, but will also focus heavily on the topics of object-oriented technology, client-server, and BPR (business process reengineenng). This will also include the concept of 3-tier (3 layer) client-server modeling where you isolate GUI, data store (DBFs, SQL data, etc.), and the business rules. You may think of the Codebook text book as an analysis and design handbook for Visual FoxPro as well as the Codebook souróe code.

“The source code for the new Codebook is primarily written by Flasher Paul Bienick while some compo nents were written and/or designed by yag, Menachem, (and some utilities by me), etc. It is basically an application framework for VFP application development. What does that mean? Its mostly a set of common class libraries along with a few supporting program files. What kind of class librares? The Codebook class library architecture uses the same naming standards as MFC (Microsoft Foundation Classes in C++), and uses some of the same techniques found in MFC and some Smalltalk class libraries, and also the Visual FoxPro containership model. The Codebook class libraries take full advantage of object-orientation by implementing abstract classes and collection classes which properly support delegation.

“There exists a concept in 00 called manager classes in which objects of these classes are used to manage multiple instances of other classes such as forms, toobars, etc. The Codebook model takes this concept to the next level by using collection classes. Just like a form can contain child controls, collection classes (non-visual) can contain and manage object instances such as forms, toolbars, business objects, menu pads, etc. The Codebook also contains collec (Con't, page 9)

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