The LA Fox Develooer Newsletter

The L.A Fox Developer is the monthly newslet-

ter of the LA Fox User Group. The purpose is

information sharing among application develop-

ers and users working with FoxPro.

LA Fox Address:

LA Fox User Group

Chuck Williams

(310) 539-9439

977Ashbndge Lane

Harbor City, CA 90710

LA Fox Board of Directors

Chuck Williams, President

Barry Lee, Vice President/Newsletter Editor

Allen Garfein, Treasurer/Membership

George Dvorak

Bill Seldon

Mike Cummings

Bill Anderson

LA Fox is the oldest FoxPro developer’s

group in Southern Califomia.The newsletter

contains regular columns and articles from

other user groups.

XPro User Group

Randy Unruh

(310) 399-9159

2210 Wilshire Blvd. - #161

Santa Monica, CA 90403

OC FoxPro Developers Group

Larry McQuerrey (714)639-3318

Subscriptions

The annual membership fee for the LA Fox

User Group, including subscription to The LA

Fox Developer Newsletter, is $45.

Disclaimer

Neither the LA Fox User Group, the XPro User

Group, the OC MS FoxPro Developers Group,

their officers or board of directors or their

members make any express or implied warran-

ties of any kind with regard to any information

disseminated, including, but not limited to,

warranties of merchantability and/or fitness for a

particular purpose.

Opinions provided by newsletter articles, or by

speakers, members, or guests who address the

meetings, are individual opinions only, and do

not necessarily represent the opinions of the

group. All opinions and information should be

carefully considered, and the group is not liable

for any incident or consequential damages in

connection with, or arising out of, the furnishing

or use of any information or opinions. Brand

names and product names may be trademarks

or registered trademarks of their respective

owners.

LA Fox President’s Column

and managing test data and viewing the results.

Alan Griver

A special treat at the August meeting was a visit by Alan Griver

and Savannah Brentnall, who came to the meeting after teach-

ing at the Flash Creative Management Visual FoxPro training

session in downtown LA. Alan’s discussion of the imminent new

version of Codebook was nothing short of visionary - it sounds

like he and his co-authors at Flash have taken the earlier book

to a higher plane. This will not be just another FoxPro book filled

with programming tips and tricks, this is a book about methodol-

ogy \emdash object oriented methodology in particular - and

about cooperating applications built with Ole Automation, about

client/server applications, and about analysis and design tech-

niques. I’m sure the book will include many interesting tools and

programming gems that will fill in cracks and provide useful

extensions to the Microsoft product, but its real value is in

providing a framework for development. The objective is to

guide you through the development process, submerge the

mundane mechanics of the language, and clear the interference

of the programming environment so you can focus your creative

energies on design to meet the particular business requirements

for your application. Flash is closely aligned with Microsoft’s

direction and with the Neon FoxExpress and MicroMega FoxFire

folks in a way that should make a major contribidion to the way

we develop applications. Codebook should appear around the

end of September - and if we can catch him in town we can

probably get Ken to talk more about it at some future meeting.

An Interesting Book

One of the classic books on software engineering has just been

reissued and I recommend it as a thought provoking and enter-

taining exercise. “The Mythical Man-Month” was written by Fred

Brooks to reflect his experiences in developing the OS/360

operating system, one of the largest software projects ever

undertaken at the time. The title refers to his warning about

trying to schedule software projects as if man-months were a

completely flexible parameter, which leads to the famous Brooks

Law - adding more manpower to a late project will always make

it later.

The just published version is an anniversary edition containing

the original material and four additional chapters of related

material, including the authors evaluation of his earlier ideas in

light of today’s technology. Your first reaction is probably

something like - why would I want to read about a 25 year old

mainframe operating system written by some old IBM guy. I

think the answer is that this man had remarkable insights about

the process and problems of software development which are

still largely valid today and which can be applied to our own

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