Sessions Alphabetically

Presenter: Doug Hennig
Level: Beginner, Intermediate

One of the coolest projects in VFPX is ThemedControls by Emerson Santon Reed (the 2009 Southwest Fox Ceil Silver Ambassador). The ThemedControls project consists of eight controls—ThemedButton, ThemedContainer, ThemedExplorerBar, ThemedForm, ThemedOutlookNavBar, ThemedTitlePageFrame, ThemedToolbox, and ThemedZoomNavBar—that allow you to provide the modern interface users expect in today's applications. This session looks at these controls in detail and shows how to use them in your own applications.

You will learn:

• What themed controls are
• How the ThemesManager provides consistent theming to all controls
• How the various themed controls work
• How to add these controls to your own applications

Prerequisites: Understanding OOP in VFP

Presenter: Kevin J Cully
Level: Beginner, Intermediate

FoxBase and FoxPro applications have been around for well over 20 years, and many are still in use that contain important business information in FoxPro tables. Visual FoxPro is an excellent tool for accessing and manipulating this data on Windows. Are there options to read, write, update and delete this information using tools that will run natively on the Mac OS X and Linux platforms? We'll be looking at the options that gain you access to the riches of this business information, extending their life if additional and alternative platforms are in your business future.

You will learn:

• How to read, write and query data contained in FoxPro tables natively from the Mac OSX and Linux operating systems
• What the performance numbers are when compared to running from within Visual FoxPro itself, in both local and network environments
• About configuration issues and other "gotchas" when accessing data from Mac and Linux
• About licensing issues when using these technologies in your applications

Prerequisites: Knowledge of FoxPro and database concepts.

Presenter: Kevin J Cully
Level: Beginner, Intermediate

The subject of Artificial Intelligence was huge in the 80s and 90s but what happened? We'll be looking at the current state of artificial intelligence as it applies to business database applications in the modern environment. Using AI techniques we can build expert systems to analyze huge amounts of data, from a greater number of disparate sources, in less time, to make better business decisions that no human could hope to match.

You will learn:

• The fundamental concepts of neural networks compared to expert systems and the benefits to each
• How the lines between Neural Networks and Expert Systems can be blurred with the advance of Deterministically structured databases
• How AI adds knowledge and reasoning to existing applications. to make them friendlier, smarter, more sensitive to user behavior and more adaptive to changes in the business environment
• How the rise of the Internet can be leveraged as a database to build knowledge easily

Prerequisites: A general knowledge of Visual FoxPro programming and database concepts.

Presenter: Rick Schummer
Level: All levels

Code reviews have serious benefits and competitive advantages for those software shops that use them. They uncover bugs, ensure coding standards are enforced, lead to more understandable and maintainable code, mentor teammates on techniques and approaches, and cross-train staff so the company supports their software more efficiently. They provide a competitive advantage. Yet developers shy away from code reviews and often work towards the elimination of them where they work. Why is it that many developers fear code reviews? I believe the reason most developers avoid them is the fear of failure or showing they make mistakes in front of their peers. Other developers will claim there is no time in the project timeline for code reviews. Management will claim this is unbillable time. This session will show you this fear is unnecessary, and when properly approached, code reviews can be a natural part of the development process.

This session should be highly interactive. I will bring lots of ideas and experience as to how code reviews are conducted and how you can derive additional benefits from them, and even make them fun for the development staff. The key should be to understand how code reviews make the software you create better, and over time improve the quality from each developer on the team.

You will learn:

• The benefits are of doing code reviews
• How single developer shops can implement code reviews
• What code should be reviewed
• The Code Review Rules
• What you need to prepare for a code review
• How to conduct a code review
• What is on the code review "can do" and the "don't do" list

Prerequisites: None

Presenter: Tamar E Granor
Level: Beginner, Intermediate

When the collection base class was added to VFP 8, it gave us the opportunity to make our applications look more like those in other object-oriented languages. Collections let us manage groups of related objects through a straightforward interface, and avoid the peculiarities of working with arrays in VFP.

In this session, we'll cover the basics of using collections, the reasons why they're better than arrays, and show how they improve object models. We'll also consider the weaknesses of collections in VFP and talk about workarounds.

You will learn:

• What collections are and how to work with them
• Why they're easier to use than arrays in VFP
• How they fit naturally into object hierarchies
• How to debug collections

Prerequisites: Some familiarity with OOP

Presenter: Doug Hennig
Level: Beginner, Intermediate

This session examines some controls you can add to your applications to provide a cleaner or fresher user interface. Controls discussed include a splitter, a combobox that drops down to a TreeView control, object-oriented Microsoft Office-like menus, a 100% VFP code date picker control, a control for displaying "balloon tips", and a modern-looking progress bar control.

You will learn:

• How to use a splitter control to allow users to resize different parts of a form
• How the combotree control allows your users to select from complex information while taking up little screen real estate
• How to create menus that really "pop" like those in Microsoft Office
• How to use the RCSCalendar date picker control
• How replacing tool tips with balloon tips makes your application more attractive
• How to use the ctl32_ProgressBar for more modern looking progress bars

Prerequisites: Understanding OOP in VFP

Presenter: Steve Ellenoff
Level: Intermediate, Advanced

Imagine if your database application could switch from using FoxPro tables, to Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, or to PostgreSQL, by simply changing one line in a configuration file? Imagine further if this change could occur programmatically at run time, without having to write different code to handle each different back-end separately?

If you've ever worked with more than one SQL back-end, you'll appreciate the complexity and difficulty that comes in wanting to support more than one, especially with the same set of code for your VFP applications. At first blush you might think that Remote Views or the Cursor Adaptor can handle this without any additional steps, but as this session will demonstrate, this is not the case.

In this session we will examine a strategy for creating database abstraction classes which hide all the complexities of working with various different SQL back-ends, including FoxPro local data. By using this approach your applications become decoupled from the back-end and can switch easily without recoding, even on the fly. The session will also cover the advantages and disadvantages of this approach, under what circumstances you may wish to use this technique, and how you can easily extend the classes to handle SQL back-ends that do not even exist yet.

You will learn:

• Why it can be difficult to support multiple SQL back-ends
• Why Remote Views and the Cursor Adaptor are not the solution
• How to create a Database Abstraction Class (DAC) to enable supporting and switching between multiple back-ends easily
• The advantages and disadvantages of using a DAC for your VFP projects
• How to extend the DAC classes to support future SQL database back-ends

Prerequisites: Some familiarity with Business Objects, SQL Pass-Through, and at least one of the following back ends: Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL

Presenter: Rick Borup
Level: Intermediate, Advanced

Design patterns are abstract solutions that can be applied to solve common programming challenges in object-oriented software systems. Although it's been fifteen years since the seminal book Design Patterns was published, many developers are probably still not taking advantage of all that design patterns have to offer. While design patterns may most often be thought of in the context of languages like Java or C#, they are equally applicable and useful in Visual FoxPro. This session explores several common design patterns and shows you how to apply them to your work in Visual FoxPro.

You will learn:

• What design patterns are
• How patterns help solve common object-oriented design problems
• How to recognize opportunities to apply design patterns in your own work
• How common design patterns can be implemented in Visual FoxPro

Prerequisites: Experience developing object-oriented applications in Visual FoxPro

Presenter: Bo Durban
Level: Intermediate, Advanced

Enhancing the user experience has become a necessity for new development. Users are demanding easier ways to navigate and view their data. There is a figurative "world" of GUI elements and libraries out there for enhancing the user experience via the web browser. Why not incorporate some of these into your Windows form applications using the Web Browser control? This session will show you how you can significantly enhance the look and feel of your application by creating custom controls based on the Web Browser control. Learn how to seamlessly display data, accept user input, and respond to events and how to hook into a world of cool visual libraries and services using the Web Browser control. Practical examples will demonstrate the benefits the Web Browser control can offer.

You will learn:

• How to maximize the potential of the Web Browser control
• How to accept user input from the Web browser control
• How to repond to events and call backs to and from the Web Browser control

Prerequisites: None

Presenter: Rick Strahl
Level: Beginner, Intermediate

In this session I'll introduce the concepts behind calling .NET components via COM Interop from Visual FoxPro and demonstrate how to create those components and publish their functionality so they can be accessed by VFP. In addition I'll talk about some helper tools that allow you to access not only COM registered components, but almost all .NET components both in the framework and those from third parties, static members, enumerations, arrays and other types that aren't directly accessible through COM Interop. These tools make it much easier to take advantage of the wealth of functionality of .NET in your FoxPro application. I'll demonstrate several useful examples, including calling Web Services through a .NET Web Service proxy, automating a WinForm application and implementing a multi-threaded application controlled by VFP by using .NET as a thread controller.

You will learn:

• How to call .NET components via COM Interop from Visual FoxPro
• The limitations of plain COM interop
• How to host the .NET runtime inside of Visual FoxPro
• How to work around some of the limitations of FoxPro to .NET COM interop

Prerequisites: Some familiarity with COM object usage and the .NET type system

Presenter: Eric J Selje
Level: All levels

There are many great tools to extend the power of Visual FoxPro, but at the same time Visual FoxPro is a great tool to extend the power of web applications. By taking advantage of a web application's programming interface (API), you can bend and shape these web applications to do your bidding. In this session we'll use VFP, in combination with LibCurl and the VFP2C32 library, to access the FreshBooks API. Along the way there'll be many interesting side discussions about the possibilities this power gives us as VFP developers.

You will learn:

• What are some of the different styles of web APIs (SOAP, REST)
• Alternative ways to access those APIs from Visual FoxPro
• What the LibCurl.vcx library can do
• How to work with XML and JSON within VFP
• How to use the FreshBooks API to manipulate your data however you want

Prerequisites: None

Presenter: Cathy Pountney
Level: Intermediate, Advanced

With the release of SP2, creating reports in VFP 9 became much more powerful. We now have the ability to create custom features that can be used over and over again on numerous reports. For example, would you like the ability to easily add a watermark to reports? How about the ability to dynamically reduce the font on long text so it fits within a narrow column? The possibilities are endless and no one developer can create them all. My new reporting framework and set of utilities allows each of us to create our own custom features as well as share them with the world and lets us all tap into the wealth of ability the FoxPro Community has to offer. This new project will become part of the FoxPro Community effort on VFPX (CodePlex). In this session, we'll walk through the entire concept from both sides. You'll learn how to use features developed by other developers, you'll learn how to create your own features, and you'll also learn how to share those features with other developers.

You will learn:

• About the fxReports project on VFPX (CodePlex)
• How to implement custom report features created by other developers
• How to develop your own custom report features
• How to share your custom report features with other developers

Prerequisites: Familiar with VFP Reports

Presenter: Christof Wollenhaupt
Level: Beginner

You always knew that FoxPro is different from every other programming language! You had a pretty clear idea that the development environment of Visual FoxPro is far superior to the one found in .NET, Java, and PHP. How else is it possible that those languages exists for years or even more than a decade and still lack features that FoxPro sported for eons? Even the simplest task in any of these languages requires an incredible amount of time. It's certainly not surprising that every single .NET project takes a multitude of time of a comparable VFP project to complete.

Ever thought along these lines? Then this session might have a few surprises for you. There will be a few insights in how FoxPro and other languages (primarily .NET) differ. We will see how even minor differences in the languages lead to vastly different application designs. It shouldn't come as surprise that many techniques published in books are aimed at C++, .NET and Java developers. Those techniques are good for those languages, but often a sub-optimal choice for VFP. Nonetheless, they were adopted by the VFP community and naturally failed to deliver the promised value.

If you have years of experience with Visual FoxPro, this session will support you in using .NET more efficiently. Yet, at the same time, it should made clear that "knowing OOP" is by far not enough to master .NET. Becoming proficient in .NET isn't the matter of learning a language; it's a matter of learning an idiom.

If you are one of the poor souls that started as a .NET or Java developer and have been forced to work on a VFP project, you'll learn that VFP isn't as awful as you first thought; just very different.

You will learn:

• How to approach other languages without suffering the "nothing is available" syndrome
• How languages differ despite looking similar at first glance
• How .NET and VFP developers think and what their respective approaches are

Prerequisites: None

Presenter: Steve Ellenoff
Level: All levels

Windows 7 is arguably the best looking version of Windows ever! Although Microsoft's new OS offers many improvements such as improved stability, speed, power management, and support for the latest hardware technologies, most people will notice the User Interface more than anything else. Windows 7's newly designed Taskbar and its many cool features are no doubt the most obvious, and perhaps most praised improvements to the UI. As VFP developers, we have no built-in support to enable us to access most of this great new functionality. In this session we will begin by reviewing all the new functionality offered by the Windows 7 Taskbar such as Jump Lists, Taskbar Toolbars, Custom & Live Thumbnail Previews, Taskbar Progress Meters, and more. We will then explore how to use my recently accepted new VFPX project, the Windows 7 Taskbar Library (Win7TLib), to allow full integration of these features into your VFP applications with minimal effort. By taking advantage of this functionality, you can really enhance your users' experience in Windows 7.

You will learn:

• What are the many cool new features of the Windows 7 Taskbar
• How to use the Win7TLib VFPx project to easily integrate these new features and enhance your applications
• How to make your VFP apps "designed for Windows 7" by incorporating Jump Lists, Taskbar Toolbars, and much more
• How to easily deploy the Win7TLib project with your VFP application

Prerequisites: None

Presenter: Jody L Meyer
Level: Beginner

Have you ever wanted to send a Visual FoxPro report to a PDF file? Well, there are a number of tools out there that can help you do that. There are tools available to allow you to control: the name and location of the PDF, merging with other PDF files, creating watermarks, setting document properties, superimpose documents, protecting the document with a password and much more. What if your customer has a PDF form that needs to have the blanks filled in. There are a number of tools out there to do that as well. In this session Jody will show you how to do all of these things using a variety of tools.

You will learn:

• About PDF tools
• How to send output to a PDF file
• How to design your own PDF form
• How to print data in a PDF form

Prerequisites: No prerequisites required

Presenter: Paul C Mrozowski
Level: Beginner

jQuery is an open source Javascript library that can be used in your web applications and in desktop applications if you are using the Internet Explorer web control. It greatly simplifies multi-browser web development and provides a simple but powerful interface for client-side scripting.

jQuery currently seems to be all the rage in the web development realm. Wondering what all the fuss is about, or just want to learn the basics so you can get started with it? This is the session for you - we'll talk about what problems jQuery solves, how jQuery can help you enhance your web applications, and the basics of what you need to know to take advantage of it.

While this session isn't intended to be an introduction to Javascript, we'll cover some of the basic syntax as it applies to jQuery so even novice web/Javascript developers should be able to follow along. If you're doing (or thinking about doing) any web development and aren't currently using jQuery, you'll benefit from this session.

You will learn:

• What jQuery is
• The basics of the API
• Enough to be dangerous

Prerequisites: Basic HTML and Javascript is helpful

Presenter: Rick Schummer
Level: All levels

In the past I have found that customers like to change their mind about what they want. This normally happens once they see the implementation of what they asked for during the first round of requirements discussion. Developers work hard to put together the user interface using the designers, but it is relatively expensive to the customer base if it gets thrown away. Sure there are times when we hit the nail on the head, but normally I find the real solution does not shine until the customer "spits on it."

Balsamiq Mockups is a designer that lets developers and non-developers alike build wireframes/mockups. These are blueprints for how the application user interface can look or work. Developers and users can sit down and flow through the application before hours of development are completed. Balsamiq Mockups facilitates the creation of the wireframes with lots of controls developers are using from the toolboxes provided in the native application designers.

You will learn:

• What the benefits are when you wireframe with your users
• How you can leverage customers and designers/artists to create mockups
• How easy it is to create mockups
• That wireframing actually leads to more business, and doesn't take away revenues from development
• The different ways Balsamiq Mockups makes you a more agile developer/team

Prerequisites: None

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Presenter: Tamar E Granor
Level: Intermediate, Advanced

Once you get started automating Microsoft Office, you're likely to find more and more uses for Automation. But you also start running into peculiarities of the individual servers, file format issues, and other complications. In this session, we'll look at a number of issues related to automating the Office servers, including exploring why recording a macro can lead you astray. Most of the topics will apply to multiple Office servers, but we'll also look at the so-called Outlook "hell patch" and how you can automate Outlook email with a minimum of fuss.

You will learn:

• How the Office servers are the same and how they differ
• Why recording a macro isn't always the best way to figure out how to automate a process
• How to make your application respond to Office events
• How to work around the Outlook "hell patch"

Prerequisites: None

Presenter: Cathy Pountney
Level: All levels

The PEM Editor, available for free on VFPX, is a utility created by the collaborative efforts of several VFP Community members. Its early roots were started by Doug Hennig and Marcia Akins as a replacement for a few VFP dialogs. Jim Nelson, along with help from Doug Hennig, Matt Slay, Rick Schummer, and many others, has since taken the project over and evolved this utility into a complete replacement for the Edit Property/Method dialog, the New Property dialog, the New Method dialog, the Properties window, and the Document View. Jim suffers from "Scope Creep" and continues to enhance this tool with mind-blowing features on an ongoing basis. Once you start using this utility, you'll find it invaluable. It's become one of my absolute MUST HAVES for my development toolbox.

In this session I'll start by showing you the basics of installing, using, and customizing the PEM Editor. Then we'll get into the cool stuff like copying properties and methods (including code) from one class into another. We'll look at a bunch of cool IDE tools such as Enhanced Beautify, MRUs, and Go To Definition. We'll also explore one of my favorite features; the new design-time event handlers and builders. With this feature you can put code in your classes and the PEM Editor can automatically fire that code at various times. For example, resize a container at design-time and objects inside the container can automatically resize too! Think of the possibilities! Drop a container on a form, resize it, and everything inside resizes without any additional design work!

Come see why I'm so passionate about this development tool. And knowing how many new features Jim keeps adding, I'm sure they'll be even more new features added between now and the start of Southwest Fox. Don't miss this session. Come see what all the buzz is about!

You will learn:

• How to install and customize the PEM Editor to your preferences
• How to use the basic features of the PEM Editor
• How to use the bells and whistles in the PEM Editor
• How to use the PEM Editor to implement design-time features in your classes

Prerequisites: None

Presenter: Venelina Jordanova
Level: Advanced

Silverlight is intended to be a front end for Internet applications. However, Silverlight 4 applications can be "installed" on machines without Internet access. Silverlight 4 applications can communicate with COM servers in the same way VFP applications can. So we have the basis to build Silverlight applications as desktop applications. A Silverlight desktop application can communicate with a COM server build with VFP. This VFP COM server can access a VFP database or a SQL Server database and can contain any business logic.

The Silverlight application will provide only the user interface tier. In this way a VFP application can be equipped with the most modern Silverlight user interface and can run on standalone machines and in local networks.

You will learn:

• How to build a VFP COM server
• How to access databases from COM servers
• How to build a Silverlight front-end application
• How to set up interaction between a Silverlight front-end and a VFP COM server

Prerequisites: None

Presenter: Uwe Habermann
Level: Advanced

Silverlight business applications should communicate with a WCF web service. The web service can connect to a SQL Server database. All needed code can be generated by Visual Studio as long as no business logic is needed. However, the web service can also communicate with a COM server written in VFP. Data access and business logic can be provided by the VFP COM server. Silverlight applications designed in this way can be used over the Internet, or as Intranet applications.

You will learn:

• How to build Silverlight business applications
• How to build a VFP COM server
• How to access databases from COM servers
• How to make a Silverlight frontend and a VFP COM server interact

Prerequisites: None

Presenter: Eric J Selje
Level: All levels

Imagine having the entire Windows32 framework at your disposal, allowing you to do things with your Visual FoxPro application you didn't think were possible. You can, with the VFPC32 library! It slices (your development time)! It dices (your filesystem and registry)! It even purees (I'm not sure what this means)! Watch as it reveals information about your environment you didn't even know about! Written by Christian Ehlscheid, this FLL is guaranteed to save you time and money or you will get a full refund!

You will learn:

• What is the Windows32 framework, vs. .NET
• How to manually take advantage of the Win32 framework
• How to take advantage of VFP2C32.fll
• Samples of existing projects that use VFP2C32, including projects on VFPX

Prerequisites: None

Presenter: Toni M Feltman
Level: Beginner

Most VFP developers wear a number of hats. On many days it feels like we spend more time changing hats than we do getting any real work done. It is often difficult to stay focused on a single task for any amount of time because of both internal and external interruptions. The Pomodoro Technique is a great way to begin: center your energy in 25 minute segments, focus on the task at hand and be more productive. But, the technique is far more than just the timer. It is also a great way to learn to break projects into manageable tasks, sharpen your estimation skills, be more productive and make work more rewarding.

You will learn:

• What the Pomodoro Technique is all about
• What the objectives are for this technique
• How to use the technique
• How to fine tune the task list
• How to build better estimations from historical Pomodoro data
• How to better manage interruptions

Prerequisites: None

Presenter: Bo Durban
Level: Intermediate, Advanced

Direct2D is the latest graphics API for Windows and is designed to offer high-quality and high performance rendering of 2-D graphics. The Direct2D API was designed to interoperate with GDI and GDI+, but because it uses hardware-acceleration, it offers a much faster rendering engine. This makes it ideal for creating controls and libraries for other developers as well as server-side rendering of 2-D graphics. Users have been demanding a richer visual experience from their applications; Direct2D was created to answer this demand as well as provide a scalable API for developers to take advantage of newer, graphics hardware-accelerated computers. Sample code will be provided to help kick-start your Direct2D development experience.

You will learn:

• The advantages of using Direct2D instead of GDI and GDI+
• How to implement Direct2D graphics using the updated GDIPlusX library
• The system requirements for Direct2D and how to install it

Prerequisites: Should have some detailed knowledge and experiece using GDI and/or GDI+ to create 2-D graphics. Works with Windows Vista and later.

Presenter: Rick Strahl
Level: Beginner, Intermediate

Web development is slipping more heavily into client side development and the jQuery JavaScript library is one of the most popular tools that is used to provide that functionality. In this session I'll demonstrate how jQuery can be used effectively to build client-centric Ajax applications that connect to a Visual FoxPro Web Server application using Web Connection, highlighting both the Ajax features of jQuery as well as some of the helpful tools in the Web Connection framework that greatly facilitate making server callbacks and retrieving data into the client and updating the user interface dynamically.

You will learn:

• How to use jQuery's AJAX features
• How to build a reusable service proxy to simplify callbacks
• How to create server callback handler methods with Web Connection
• How to use tools to create and consume JSON data from FoxPro types and cursors

Prerequisites: Some familiarity with HTML and JavaScript

Presenter: Jody L Meyer
Level: Beginner

Have you ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes of your website? Cascading Style Sheets is one of the ways web developers create consistency and a positive user experience for those who visit. Jody will walk you through the basics of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Here you can define how your default attributes for your website should behave and look. She will show you how to link the HTML with CSS and create beautiful consistency throughout the website. Understanding the basics of website development and design will help you to be more productive and savvy for future enhancements.

You will learn:

• What is XHTML/HTML and how to create a basic web page: basic HTML tags, creating tables, lists, formatting texts
• What is CSS and how to create a CSS file and how it works with XHTML/HTML
• How to use CSS and XHTML/HTML together so you can have one source for the content and one source for how the content is displayed

Prerequisites: No prerequisites required