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Nothing Runs Like the Fox
By Todd Landrum
Recently I was called on to take a look at re-writing a corpora-
tion application. The application dealt with users and demo-
graphic information about them. They were planning to use it for
about 10,000 users (a small subset of the total users) with
about 300,000 demographic responses.

Their first attempt at writing the app had been in Paradox. They
realized they might be in trouble when loading the Paradox
tables from the mainframe text files was taking 24+ hours.

The main part of the application consisted of finding users who
have demographic answers A and B (it was a little more compli-
cated than that but you get the idea). This processing was
taking about 3.5 minutes in Paradox. The application had to do
this processing over and over Waiting 3.5 minutes was not
going to be a very user-friendly application.

This is where I entered the picture. I assured them that FoxPro
could do it much faster and we could easily just run some tests
to see just how much faster. Their paraphrased answer was
“FoxPro? Isn’t that dead? Besides, we’d really like to do it in
Access. We hear that it’s really cool.”l shook my head, calmly
explained that FoxPro wasn’t dead, explained that Fox is faster
than Access, all to no avail. They wanted to try it out in Access.

So I took the Paradox files back to my office. I attached to them
in Access and ran some queries to turn them into Access
tables (something Access does very well). I ran a couple test
queries and lo and behold Access reduced the 3.5 minute
processing down to 29 seconds.

That was quite an improvement and the client was ready to do it
in Access but I knew Fox could do better. I convinced them we
should test it in Fox.

I converted the Access tables over to Fox tables and ran some
sample queries to test it out. Fox could do it in 4 seconds! The
client was duly impressed and we did the project in VFP.

This would be a happy ending in itself but it doesn’t stop there.
The client got the crazy idea (as they are apt to do) that, if Fox
(Con't, page 9)
At LA Fox

September 21, 1998, 6:30 PM, Michael Meer. Michael Meer
will be demonstrating Visual MaxFrame 4.0 Beta. During the
evening, he will show you the new setup wizard, new security
features and how the framework has changed. He will also
demonstrate two systems written with this framework - a
workorder tracking system and a highly modified accounting
system. He will entertain any questions about the framework
as well.

We have also arranged a special developers group discount with
the authors of Visual FoxPro 6 Enterprise Development - Rod
Paddock, John Petersen, and Ron Talmadge - and will be
selling the book for $40 at this meeting. This hardbound book
(CD included), normally retailing for $55, contains over 700
pages of useful information and should be a part of any VFP
developers library. If you’re anticipating the purchase of this
book, we are only accepting cash or check.., no credit cards,
please.

October 19, 1998, 6:30 PM, Peter Butterfield. Peter
Butterfield will present an abstract framework which he calls the
“Mother of all Frameworks.” in the sense that any event han-
dling/state machine could be modeled as a concrete
instantiation of this framework. A central idea to the presenta-
tion is that an application framework is only the topmost of
many useful frameworks required to make a good VFP applica-
tion. Other essential frameworks will be demonstrated, includ-
ing an extensible Wizard framework, a framework for integrating
forms menus and toolbars, a framework for late-binding
(Con't, page 2)

Page 3
Page 4
Page 5
Page 7
and much more
The LA Fox Developer
A Newsletter for FoxPro Application Developers in Southern California
Visit our WebSite at: http://www.mesllc.com/lafox.html September 1998
Out and About
by Barry R. Lee
The September meeting of LA Fox will be
held on Sept. 21, 1998, at 6:30 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.
In this issue
Levy Announces Tapes
VFE DevCon
New KB Articles
FoxPro Q & A

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