October1999

The LA Fox Developer Newsletter

The LA Fox Developer is the monthly newsletter of the LA Fox Developers Group. The purpose is information sharing among application developers and users working with FoxPro.

Huntington Beach, CA 92615-6624

LA Fox Board of Directors

Barry R. Lee, President/Newsletter Editor

Bill Anderson, Vice President/Programs

Twila Miller, Treasurer/Membership

LA Fox is the oldest FoxPro developer’s group in Southern California. The newsletter contains regular columns as well as articles from other user groups.

2210 Wilshire Blvd. -#161

Santa Monica, CA 90403

OC FoxPro Developers Group

Membership/Subscription

The annual membership fee for the LA Fox Developers Group, including subscription to The LA Fox Developer Newsletter, is $48.

Neither the LA Fox User Group, the XPro User Group, the OC FoxPro Developers Group, their officers or board of directors or their members make any express or implied warranties 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.

Out and About (Con't from Page 1)

Sheraton, New Orleans, LA. This new event is going to have strong support from Microsoft and will be on the same scale/level as Advisor's DevCon. But it is offering several innovative concepts. Content and direction is going to be determined by an advisory board which will be made up primarily of speakers. People attending this conference will be allowed to “cross-pollinate” with the SQL conference, running concurrently at the same hotel, free of charge. This means that while an attendee may be registered for the VFP conference, he or she will be able to attend any of the SQL conference sessions absolutely free. For more info, visit the website at http://www. vfpdevcon.com.

September 24-28, 2000, Visual FoxPro DevCon, Fountainebleau Resort Hotel and Towers, Miami, FL. Speakers are yet to be announced and no other details are forthcoming as of press time. For more info, visit the website at http://wvw.advisor.com/cmfOOO9p.nsf.

Colt, that venerable firearms manufacturer, is pulling out of the consumer handgun market. Eskimo Pies, that delectable taste treat manufacturer, is up for sale. What is this world coming to?!?

Micro Endeavors, Inc. (MEl) is considering coming out to Southern California with their VF605 hands-on class fora week in December. In an e-mail received from George DeLuca, the “605” class is “...a five day course and is an accelerated version of VF603: Application Development 1 and VF604: Application Development 2. This fast-paced course takes the FoxPru application developer from a single table multi-user form to a multi- page, multi-table form. Given the quick pace, there is less time, fewer exercises, and less discussion of the materials contained within the manual. Prerequisites for the class include “A solid understanding of the Visual FoxPro development environment and basic development syntax or completion of the VF302, VF502 or VF602 self study. Suggested length of Visual FoxPro development experience is a minimum of three months.” Those interested in this class may contact George directly to express their interest, GeorgeD©microendeavors.com, visit MEl’s website at http:/I www.microendeavors.com or phone (800) 331-9434 to register.

The Epistle of Brad...

When you encounter an obstacle, in programming or elsewhere in life (what’s a life?), there are two things you can do. You can go around the obstacle, or you can remove it. I’m here to say that, in programming, removing obstacles pays back in ways you don’t always anticipate.

My day job, which I’m not about to give up, consists of maintaining about 10,000 lines of code that has a long and honored history of avoiding obstacles. Y2K approaches, and Plan B is in effect: I gotta fix the code. One process receives data from the outside world in text format. The next process receives its input from the first, in an old text format. Going around