 
Visual FoxExpress Developers Conference
2K2
F1 Technologies is pleased to host the 8th,
almost annual, Visual FoxExpress Developers Conference at Treasure Island in
Las Vegas. The conference will be held from September 17th - 20th, with optional
pre-conference training starting on the 15th. Visual FoxExpress DevCon is the premier event
for Visual FoxPro developers working with an application framework. It's the
event that applies most directly to Visual FoxExpress developers and the
work you do day in and day out. This year's conference will be tightly
focused on Visual FoxExpress and related technologies such as Crystal VFE, the VFE INTL Toolkit and others. Sessions will cover new
features in Visual FoxExpress, techniques
for working with Visual FoxExpress, Internet and Client-Server
development with Visual FoxExpress and other topics closely related to Visual
FoxExpress.
This year speakers are Bill Anderson, Bob Archer, Mike Feltman, Toni
Feltman, Dan Goodwin and Charles Hankey..
Back by popular demand, this year's conference will also include a special
"Show Your Asspp" series of sessions in which Visual FoxExpress
Developers attending the conference will demonstrate applications they have created with Visual
FoxExpress. If you're interested in participating in the Show Your Asspp
sessions, please click here. These
sessions will be held on Friday 5/18.
Conference attendance includes the right to
attend all sessions, session material, special discounts on F1 Technologies
products, continental breakfast each day, lunch Tuesday - Thursday, cool F1
Technologies swag, an informal dinner party on Wednesday evening and the
opportunity to hob knob with the creators of Visual FoxExpress and other
Visual FoxExpress developers.
Visual FoxPro with .NET
Ken Levy
Ken Levy is the Visual FoxPro Product Manager
at Microsoft. Ken will go over recent announcements and news around
Visual FoxPro 7.0 and various community related topics. This session
also introduces the new free Visual FoxPro Toolkit for .NET library that
provides Visual FoxPro developers the ability to leverage their knowledge
and skills of VFP and use them in any .NET compatible language.
In addition, Ken will go over the direction of the upcoming version of
Visual FoxPro (VFP 8.0) code named Toledo and also give a sneak preview
of some of the exciting new features.
Creating Web Services with Visual
FoxExpress
Mike Feltman
Visual FoxExpress has powerful XML features
that make Visual FoxExpress applications easily accessible from non-Visual
FoxExpress or Visual FoxPro front-ends. In this session Mike will cover
the XML features in the Visual FoxExpress framework and how those features
can be used to provide access to your Visual FoxExpress applications via
Web Services.
New Client-Server Features in Visual
FoxExpress
Mike Feltman
Recent additions to Visual FoxExpress have
focused on client-server enhancements. In this session Mike will explain
the new transaction, connection management, dynamic SQL generation and
other new client-server features added to the framework and demonstrate
how you can put them to use in your applications. While this session
focuses on client-server features, the majority of the new features added
to the framework also apply to local data.
Creating Internet Applications with the Visual FoxExpress
Voodoo Toolkit
Mike Feltman
Mike has been hard at work making it easy
for you to take advantage of EPS-Software's Voodoo Web Controls with
Visual FoxExpress. In this session Mike will demonstrate the new Visual
FoxExpress Voodoo Toolkit and show how to create Voodoo Web Pages that
interact with Visual FoxExpress applications.
Go International with the Visual
FoxExpress INTL Toolkit
Toni Feltman
The Visual FoxExpress INTL Toolkit makes it
a breeze to create multi-lingual applications with Visual FoxExpress. In
this session Toni will demonstrate how to use the VFE INTL Toolkit to
create a multi-lingual Visual FoxExpress application.
Visual FoxExpress Lookup
Techniques
Toni Feltman
Visual FoxExpress includes very powerful
features for implementing lookups. In this session Toni will cover the
various features related to lookups, explain how to customize them,
demonstrate how to create lookups for optimal performance and more. This
session will focus heavily on new features added to the framework designed
to deal with lookups against large tables.
Team Development with Visual
FoxExpress
Toni Feltman
At some point in each
developer's career they will need to work with at least one other
developer/programmer on a project. In this session Toni will investigate
ways to effectively design and implement a VFE application in a team
environment. Topics will include modular design, delegation of
responsibilities, source control and more.
Debugging Visual FoxExpress
Applications
Charles Hankey
Visual FoxExpress' applications can
sometimes be difficult to debug due to the frameworks' n-tier
architecture. In this session Charles will demonstrate how to effectively
use the Visual FoxPro Debugging tools with Visual FoxExpress and share
debugging tips and tricks he's learned from years of Visual FoxExpress
development. Charles will also demonstrate a new tool that makes it easier
for you to examine and understand your applications' object models.
Introducing CrystalVFE!
Charles Hankey
CrystalVFE!
is a new tool from F1 Technologies that provides complete integration of
Crystal Reports with the Visual FoxExpress framework. In this session
Charles will give you the down low on CrystalVFE!. Specifically, Charles
will cover:
-
How to add CrystalVFE to
your applications,
-
How to take advantage of
Crystals many output such as output to Word, PDF, HTML and other
document formats..
-
How to create sub reports with
CrystalVFE and more!
Can You Relate?
Bob Archer
One of the most important aspects of
programming with Visual FoxExpress is having an understanding of how the
framework deals with related data. In this session we will take a look at
the methods in the business objects that deal with related cursors. Once we
understand the business layer we will explore the many user interface
choices you have for related data and how to build each type. This will
included the dreaded Parent-Child-Grandchild scenario.
Mind Your Own Business Rules
Bob Archer
Perhaps one of the most underused of all
Visual FoxExpress classes is the BizRule class. This session will take you
on a tour of that class. We will learn how to create and apply a BizRule to
a BizObj and when and how the BizObj applies those rules. We will also take
a look at some example BizRule implementations. Finally we will take a look
at using the BizRule as a class to build an ‘Event’ object to perform a
certain processing task.
What’s On The Menu?
Bob Archer
At first glance the Visual FoxExpress menus
look complicated. OK, they are a bit complicated. This is only due to the
many ways you can set up the menus. In this session we will take a look at
the menu classes, and break down how GenMenuX uses the information in the .MPR
file to create the class based menus. We’ll also look at creating shortcut
menus, form specific menus, and hooking into the frameworks default shortcut
menus.
Using the Business Object
Bill Anderson
The business object is the
"workhorse" of an n-Tier application. This session will highlight
the use of the business object within a VFE application. We will cover the
most commonly used business object methods and properties as well as
practical examples of their usage.
The Ins and Outs of Context Menus
Bill Anderson
VFE provides excellent support for shortcut
menus and menu pads. Discover how to use these hidden gems to provide an
extra sparkle to your custom applications.
In this session I'll explain the development
process for custom menu pads and shortcut menus. We'll see how other parts
of the framework operate while we walk through the process.
Optimizing Views
Dan Goodwin
Everyone needs their applications to run
quickly. Unfortunately, the biggest bottleneck for most applications
is the views. Until F1 creates a wizard that will automatically create
optimized views for you, hacking views will remain an essential skill for
creating fast and robust applications. Optimizing Views will cover the
basics of Rushmore optimization and then extensively examine optimizing
JOINs, sub-queries, UNIONs, WHERE clauses and view parameters. Through
real-world examples, Dan will explain how to test views in your application
and demonstrate tricks to significantly accelerate views and work
successfully with the most complex views. While this session will
focus on and use examples with local views, much of the material will also
apply to remote views.
Extending VFE Security
Dan Goodwin
Out of the box Visual FoxExpress security
provides solid, basic application security.
Additionally, with VFE’s security framework and OOP, a developer
can easily integrate far more sophisticated security into their application.
In this session Dan will briefly review how VFE security works and
then explain several ways to extend VFE’s security.
Dan will demonstrate how to add record or cell level security, tricks
to easily secure output and report data and other ways to leverage VFE’s
built-in security. Additionally,
Dan will show how to build extensions to the VFE framework to give the user
control over the security names assigned to objects, fields, reports and
menus, and an addition which allows an administrator to track who’s in the
system, kick users out or limit logins. If there’s time, Dan will also
demonstrate his new shareware, VFE Security Manager – a utility which
allows you to easily view and set all of an applications security settings
from one simple place.
Making Reports & Output Work for You
Dan Goodwin
Reports and output are usually what interest
developers least and, unfortunately, users most. This session will
demonstrate tricks for getting VFP’s anemic report writer to do your
bidding. You will learn how to easily produce the output you want by
pre-processing cursors, using references to the goReportObject to leverage
the bizobj and with stupid report tricks. This session will also cover the
methods and properties of the output object and how to customize VFE’s
report and output wizard to prompt the user for whatever you might want.
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