The LA Fox Developer Newsletter

May 2000

MSDN Presents

E-COMMERCE 2000 SOLUTIONS

Take a look at Microsoft Commerce Server 2000, the fastest

path to building highly scalable, sophisticated e-commerce

solutions based on Windows 2000, and learn how to migrate an

e-commerce site from Site Server Commerce Edition 3.0.

Topic One: Commerce Server 2000 - Building E-Commerce

Solutions

Topic Two: Commerce Server 2000 Migrating from Site Server

3.0

Offered:

May 24, La Jolla Hyatt, event code 30245

June 20, Anaheim Hilton, event code 30231

Complete description and registration available on:

http://www.microsoft.comlsocal/developer/ecomm2000.htm

*please use VIP Code E00 when you register.

SQL SERVER 2000

This event covers the fundamental principles of the all new data

mining capabilities and XML enhancements of SQL Server 2000.

Topic One: SQL Server 2000 Data Mining Enhancements (level

200)

Topic Two: SQL Server 2000 XML (level 300)

Offered:

June 14, San Diego Hyatt, event code 30248

June 28, Irvine Hyatt, event code 30246

Complete description and registration available on:

http:/Iwww.microsoft.com/socal/developer/sqlserver2k.htm

*please use VIP Code E00 when you register.

DEVELOPER BASICS COMMERCE SERVER 2000IBIZTALK

SERVER 2000 ARCHITECTURAL OVERVIEW

MSDN Presents: Developer Basics is filling up fast! We’ve

already sold out 4 events so register quickly before all the seats

are taken.

These events are for those who are new to Microsoft Developer

Technologies. Please join us for these FREE, half-day semi-

nars, and FEED YOUR BRAIN with Developer Basics from

Microsoft. You can choose to attend one event or all six. These

introductory, 100-level sessions were previously offered at

(Con’t, page 9)

Hot Tips

by Barbara Peisch

YOU CAN’T CALL INTO AN EXE

Don Ellis had a problem he couldn’t figure out. One one of his

forms he had an instance of a button class whose click method

called another (SCX based) form. This worked fine, as long as

the program was run in development mode with all the source

files present. When compiled to an EXE, however, VFP re-

ported that it couldn’t find the SCX file.

The SCX was compiled into the EXE, but Don found that he still

had to have it present in the directory to avoid the error. Why?

As it turns out, this problem was caused by the fact that the

VCX library was NOT included in the EXE. (They [Ellis’ client]

do this so they can send updates without having to send out a

whole new EXE.) But the button on his form is executing the

default clickØ, with code that is actually in the VCX. Since the

VCX wasn’t part of the EXE, the click code wasn’t able to

search the EXE to locate the form!

[A more general statement is that an EXE is so tightly wrapped

that you can’t see into it from outside. If you’re going to call

something that’s inside an EXE, you have to be inside it your-

self. Looked at another way, an EXE is an object that exposes

none of its methods.]

DEBUGGING REPORTS

Debugging reports has always been a pain for me, because

when the report has an error, it never tells you which object had

the error. You just get a dialog that says something like

“Syntax error”, and the report doesn’t run.

Well, thanks to Christof Lange and Frank Cabazon, I’ve found a

better way!

Christof told me that if I run the report from within the report

designer, by right-clicking on a section of the report that doesn’t

have any objects and selecting “Preview” from the pop-up menu,

that it will tell me where the error was. Sure enough, I still get

the same dialog with the error message, but after clicking OK

I’m in the properties window for the offending object.

“This is really useful”, I said, “but many of my reports depend

on memory variables and cursors that don’t exist when I’m in the

report designer.”

That’s when Frank jumped in with this simple but elegant

solution: at the point in your program where you call the report,

just comment out that line and add a new one that says

“MODIFY REPORT” instead. That way, you have the environ-

ment you need to run the report, but you’re in design mode, so

you can still right-click and select the Preview option. Once

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