What's New in Visual FoxExpress

Visual FoxExpress 2008 is primarily a maintenance release. It includes all of the framework changes that have been made over the past few month as well as an updated sample application. The updated sample application is a revised version of the original Visual FoxExpress application that makes use of newer features, such as Dynamic SQL and linked forms.

New to the framework is the cBizScenario class. The cBizScenario class is provided to make it easier to create an environment for non-visual processes. cBizScenario is a subclass of the cCommand class. Just set the cBizObjs property to a comma delimited list of the business objects needed for a process and the code the process in the execute method.

There are also several new functions in the utility.prg procedure file, listed in the table below.

Function	Description
BP	A debug aware breakpoint.
NullOrEmpty	Determines if an expression is NULL or EMPTY.
ValidateEmailAddress	Determines if a string is a valid email address
GetPersonalFolder	Returns the current user's "My Documents" folder.
FDOM	Returns the first day of the month based on the passed date.
LDOM	Returns the last day of the month based on the passed date.
GMTDateTime	Returns the current GMT DateTime.
GMTToLocal	Converts a GMT Time to local time.
LocalToGMT	Converts a local time to its GMT equivalent.
GMTTimeDifference	Returns the difference between machine time (local time) and GMT Time.

The Visual FoxExpress Sample Application has been updated to illustrate some of the newer features in Visual FoxExpress. Below are some of the changes that were made to the sample application:

The Customer Form - data access was changed to make use of Dynamic SQL. The vp_cLast_Name view parameter makes use of a custom behavior class to implement a custom "sounds like" operator.

The Orders form makes use of "linked forms" to launch the View Customer Form and the Employee Form. Check out the Init method of each of these forms to see how they were customized to work as "Linked forms."

Places where images were displayed now use an instance of the cSelectFile control. There are also a number of other miscellaneous interface changes.

Please note, this sample application is not "the new sample application" we've referred to from time to time at F1 Technologies, that application is still in the works, but proved to be a bit too ambitious for this release.