The LA Fox Developer Newsletter

March 1999

FoxPro Q&A (Con't from page 4)

DH - That’s sort of the way to do it. One problem that arises is when you nuke the backlink, VFP doesn’t think there are any long names in the table any more, so indexes based on those long names can’t be recreated using this scheme. Also, although it’s not common, if any index expression uses a UDF from the stored procedures, that won’t work either. I’m not sure I’d agree with “pretty easy” and “simply” — most folks get kind of nervous when accessing tables at this low-level.

GD - That’s a good point. Its something I don’t do (long field names), so I haven’t run across the problem before. Another way I’ve done it is to remove the backlink and the CDX flag from the header, rename the table, recreate the table from my GENDBC - generated program, and then append from the renamed table. I like the way I described here better, though the GENDBC way gets around the problem you mentioned. Generally, it’s easier to let VFP handle all that stuff and work with records and fields in tables, rather than bytes in binary files. But working with bytes in a file is no more difficult than records in a table. Yes, you have to bone up before trying it the first time, but that’s true of everything else we do too, isn’t it?

DH - If the CDX file doesn’t match its definition in the DBC (which can happen under a variety of conditions), VFP may not allow you to open the table to recreate the indexes.

GD - Remove the DBC pointer before indexing, and then putting it back will temporarily disable the rules. If you’re interested in saving yourself about 100 hours of effort, you might want to take a look at Stonefield Database Toolkit (SDT). In addition to providing a completely automated way of recreating indexes, SDT does a whole lot of other things updating table structures at client sites, repairing corrupted table headers, allowing you to define extended properties for database objects (such as field- level security), etc. There’s a demo of SDT called SDT.EXE in the Helpful Utilities library here in VFOX on Compuserve. If you have any questions, please call me at 1-800-563-1119 or drop me a line here.

(Doug Hennig, CIS ID: 75156,2326) & Gary DeWitt, C/S ID:

73512,57)

MS Announcements (Con't from page 5)

1999, you will receive a free* upgrade to Office 2000 when it’s available. *Cost of shipping, handling and sales tax will apply. For details visit us on the website at http://www.microsoft.com/ socal.

“Just think how much deeper the ocean would be if sponges didn’t live there.”

Relations (Con’t from page 3)

SELECT QUESTIONS

GO TOP

DO WHILE .NOT. EOFO

Ialtems(1 ,ImCount) = ImCount

Ialtems(2,ImCount) = QUESTION

ImCount = ImCount + I

IF ImCount> 22 EXIT

ELSE

SKIP

ENDIF

ENDOO

GO TOP

SELECT SURVEY

laltems is the array variable. It has two columns, one for the number of the question and the other for the text of question. Note that there are 22 rows in this array. Because there will be 22 question printed on side one of the answer sheet. ImCount keeps track of the question number. The last line is to leave the parent database selected when the DO WHILE is done.

The rest is easy. Just use Ialtems in the report generator to print the question number and the text for the questions.

[Ed. Note: Joe Pecukonis is an independent consultant and member of the Rocky Mountain FoxPro user group. He specializes in manufacturing MRP systems and scientific uses for Fox Pro. His email address is JoePec@aol.com and his home page is http://members.aol.com/joepec/index.htm.]

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 Barry Lee at CIS# 72723,3422 on Compuserve, or brlee©earthlink.net.

These articles can be on any FoxPro-related topic, whether it concerns a new technique you’ve discovered, a certain development technique you may favor over others, book reviews, etc. Editor reserves the right to edit or offer constructive comments concerning submitted articles and accepted articles shall be considered to be in the public domain.

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.

Page 8