Uwe Habermann

Some readers may associate "Visual Extend" with my name. Here's how I came to VFX and what else there is to tell about me.

In the first semester of my computer sciences study at the Technical University of Berlin, I had to punch punch cards. As you can see the knowledge of that doesn’t help very much anymore. During this time I learned dBASE II on an Apple IIe when visiting friends. Shortly thereafter, through my studies I learned dBASE III and dBASE III+. These experiences have shaped my programmer career until today.

During my studies I was able to start working as an independent freelancer and developed custom database applications for small companies. Because more and more customers asked for Windows applications, I came to the first Windows version of FoxPro, version 2.5.

In 1995 I became a member of dFPUG (German speaking FoxPro User Group) and was pleasantly surprised from the extensive offerings and constructive cooperation in the community. In early 1996, I heard about the framework Visual Extend and since then have been an enthusiastic user of this highly successful RAD tool. Very soon the developer of VFX, Arturo Devigus, was convinced of my ideas for further development. As a freelancer for the Devigus Engineering AG, I have worked on the VFX versions 6 and 7, and since November 1998 I do support in the VFX newsgroup.

In 1999 I founded the Uwe Habermann & Kathrin Leu GbR with a partner. This company mainly deals with the development and distribution of software for dental laboratories. Actually, I do not need to mention that this application is developed with VFX.

In addition, I am still working in the project business and develop customized software for various industries. I support other VFP programmers and in particular, VFX developers, through training and coaching.

In 2000, I became a Microsoft Certified Professional for Visual FoxPro 6 and since that year, have been a speaker at the Visual FoxPro Developer conference in Frankfurt. I have also held sessions at numerous regional meetings and conferences, including those in Vienna, Bucharest, Bunnik and Paris as well as many years at the VFP DevCon in Prague.

Since VFX was bought by dFPUG in early 2003, I have been responsible for the development and support of VFX as Visual Extend product manager. Since that time, the development of VFX is done in Varna, Bulgaria, led by Venelina Jordanova as chief developer. Together with Venelina I wrote the developer manuals for Visual Extend 8.0, 9.0 and 10.0.

Since 2008, I have been based in Varna and together with Venelina working as manager of V&U Ltd. In addition to the Visual Extend development, our focus is development of Visual FoxPro applications. Lately, however, we focus on the rich capabilities of Silverlight. We hope to be able to provide a base for future projects of VFP developers, and especially VFX developers.

Sessions:

Executing VFP Code in Silverlight Applications
Using VFP Databases in Silverlight Applications