The LA Fox Developer

A Newsletter for FoxPro Application Developers in Southern California

January 1997

Microsoft Position Paper

Choosing the Appropriate

Database Development Tool

by Barry R. Lee

(Ed. Note: The following article is only a summary and, since

I’m a FP developer, “weighted” at that. You can find the article in

its entirety on http://www.microsoft.com/msdn/Iibrary/ or visit

the LA Fox Website (at http://www.mesllc.com/Iafox.html) to

retreive the full TXT file. If you don’t have Internet access, you

can also obtain the file by writing me at 72723,3422 on

CompuServe.)

After reading this paper in its entirety (40+ pages), I came away

with a renewed feeling of comfort with MS. In the past, MS was

atways ready to distribute performance and design advantages

of FoxPro dBase vs Paradox (remember that one?) vs

DataEase FoxPro vs any other product on the market except,

that is, for other MS products. This paper represents, at least

for me, a vast departure from previous MS stances in that MS is

finally willing to compare their own products. In this paper,

authored by Robert Green (Product Manager for Desktop

Databases at Microsoft), MS offers product overviews of Visual

FoxPro, Access 97, Visual Basic, and SQL Server. Brief

mentions are also made of Visual C++ and Visual J++.

Is this just another attempt by MS to show they’re “behind the

[FoxPro] product”? I don’t think so. Although there are any

number of valid hypotheses at this time, I tend to think MS is

preparing us for the next major step in database system

development, namely the much-touted Developer’s Studio,

where there will be a convergence of the aforementioned Visual

Tools.

You, as a MS developer, really owe itto yourself to obtain a

copy of this paper and give it a careful read. You’ll be able to

distill any number of useful facts from it

The following are excerpts from the position paper:

Microsoft® Solution Providers and management information

systems (MIS) developers often ask the question: “Which

Microsoft tool should I use to build this database solution?” In

most situations, virtually all of the Microsoft tools can be used

(Con’t, page 5)

At LA Fox

january 20, 1997, 7:30 PM - ken Levy. Wnat Detter way to

start off the New Year than with Ken? This is going to be a

“must see” event with Ken promising to deliver “ Instead of

choosing one topic, we’ll have several and mix it all into one fun

night of stuff

February 17, 1997, 7:30 PM - Dennis Topo, Citrix. Dennis is

Southern California Regional Sales for Citrix Corporation and will

be speaking on WinFrame. WinFrame multi-user application

server software is an authorized extension to Windows NT

Server under license from Microsoft. WinFrame helps organiza-

tions deploy Windows applications quickly, easily and cost-

effectively, while maximizing return on technology investment

WinFrame extends the reach of enterprise applications to users

over dial-up, LAN, WAN, Intranet and Internet connections,

regardless of client hardware, operating system or available

bandwidth. Product Description : Citrix WinFrame is the first

complete Telecomputing platform for enterprise application

deployment based on Microsoft Windows NT. WinFrame allows

mobile professionals, branch office workers and telecommuters

to access 16 and 32 bit Windows applications at LAN speeds

over dial-up, WAN, ISDN and Internet connections.

March 17, 1997, 7:30 PM - John Miller. John is a Visual

FoxPro developer, author, trainer and speaker. He is the owner

of Perpetual Data Systems, where he architects solutions that

utilize VFP in traditional, Intranet, Internet and Client-Server

applications. He conducts training seminars on Visual FoxPro

for Application Developers Training Company. He is the author of

several articles on Visual FoxPro for Databased Advisor and

In this issue

Determining Data Changes

Page 3

NT Disk Fragmentation

Page 3

Year in Review

Page 7

Spring Conference Reg. Form

Page 9 and much more

Out and About

by Barry R. Lee

The January meeting of LA Fox will be held

on Jan. 20,1997, at 7:30 PM at our regular

meeting place (the Torrance Airport, 3301

Airport Drive, in Torrance). For details on

how to get there, see the map on the back

page.