Visual FoxPro DevCon Praha (Prague)

Looks like Igor has announced the Prague DevCon for July 1-3, 2008. I can't say from personal experience, but from talking to others who have attended this conference, it is terrific. This is the conference that hits the big numbers with respect to FoxPro developers every year.

You can get all the details in April, but definitely add this to your calendar if you are near the Czech Republic, and seriously consider attending even if you live half a world away. You will not be disappointed.

Business of Software

The Business of Software Conference was held October 29th and 30th, 2007. It was a conference I really was interested in attending, but because it fell right between Southwest Fox and German DevCon I could not squeeze it in. The speaker list has some of my favorite bloggers.

The cool thing is there is the Business of Software Blog. This blog has interesting posts and some of the posts have videos from the conference. I just finished listening to Eric Sink from SourceGear talk about Marketing for Geeks. Great talk, even if he did disrespect Detroit {g}. It was something I could listen to while working on some code. This would make a great session for the business track at Southwest Fox.

They are planning a conference this year. I am hoping they move it to a different date so I have a better chance of going.

Southwest Fox: New blog

While in Germany someone made a comment to me how they are looking forward to my blog returning to a FoxPro theme, instead of it being hijacked by Southwest Fox announcements. This is a really good point. So yesterday I created a Southwest Fox Blog so the three organizers can blog about our experiences organizing the conference, and things we are considering doing for the next Southwest Fox to open up a discussion on some new ideas. I hope you take time to subscribe.

Hopefully I will be blogging soon about the whole Southwest Fox Conference 2007 experience. I have so many great memories even though the conference was truly a blur.

Only 332 days until we all return to Mesa! {g}

Software Developer Network: Day One & Only

On Sunday Doug Hennig and I took a train to Holland so we could present sessions at the Software Developer Network FoxPro (SDN) Software Developer Event. The train is one of the high speed trains that travels at 300kph/188mph. Fast and smooth. Once we arrived we were picked up by Gerben Kessen at the train station and taken to the hotel. At the hotel we met up with the Visual Objects and Vulcan speakers for dinner. The other track at the conference had session on these two technologies. It was interesting to hear about the world of Visual Objects and Vulcan (a XBase language on the .NET framework currently in development). Naturally we had some fun in the VFP is better vs. your tool of choice discussion {g}. I went back to my room and battled the wireless Internet connection before falling asleep.

The next morning I woke up late! I requested a wake-up call for 7:00 so I could get breakfast and make sure my computer works with the beamer. I woke up at 8:00, which still gave me enough time to get to the conference room to test out the beamer, but not enough time to eat breakfast. I was happy to do the first session on the last (and only) day. Traditions are important. I also had the first session after lunch and the last session of the day. All three slots are the least preferred by most speakers, but I don't mind presenting during any of the slots.

I presented three sessions:

1. VFPX Tools and Components – Live
2. Creating Help - Made Easy!
3. SQL Server Toolkit for the VFP Developer

The first session did worry me as there were only 3 or 4 developers in the room when the session was suppose to start. I expected a few more since there were 25 people signed up for the conference. A couple minutes into the session the rest of the crowd filed in. I asked how many people had heard of VFPX and not a single hand was raised. By the end of the session people were real excited by this project. We are already working to come up with some plans to get the word out about VFPX, but we are going to need your help in doing so. Make sure to spread the word about this important project, and a significant part of the future of Visual FoxPro.

My other sessions went well. During Doug's sessions I caught up on some work I needed to have done before I returned to the states. After the conference we had dinner with the organizers and then headed to Amsterdam. Tuesday Doug and I toured Amsterdam. I felt like I was a zombie. Amsterdam is definitely everything I have heard about it. It is different than any place I have visited on the planet.

I think SDN has a really good idea with the one day event. This is something I have been considering doing in North America for a couple of years. I have attended a number of "mini-conferences" over the years put on by Microsoft, and other organizations and individuals. What do you think? Would you attend a one or two-day "mini-conference" with five or six sessions in a day? If so, how much would you be willing to pay for this? Please let me know either on this blog, or even send me a private email.

German DevCon - Day 3

Today is Saturday, the last day of the conference. Interesting, Rainer did not follow my tradition of speaking at the first session, but since my first session today is at 11:30, I will be presenting during my body clock time of 5:30AM. {g}

First this morning is Armin Neudert's "Vorschau SQL Server 2008", which is a German session revealing some of the new stuff in SQL Server 2008. I barely understood Armin's discussion and could not read most of the slides, but I got the examples he showed and found the session very beneficial. One thing I noted is the addition of some new date/time formats. I was also working on reviewing my "Creating Help - Made Easy" material in preparation for my session after lunch.

I presented my "SQL Server Developer Toolkit for the VFP Developer" during the third slot of the day. I really enjoy this session because it shows developers tools to increase productivity. This session is designed to be interactive with the people who come to the session and this session did not disappoint. Lots of questions and experiences. I normally worry about a session like this at the German DevCon, but this year it seems developers are willing to contribute, which makes the session go better. It was exciting for me.

Lunch - more smoked salmon despite Marcia's attempt to plate it all before I got to the buffet.

Next up was my "Creating Help - Made Easy" session. It is a session I developed for WhilFest 2003. I feel pretty passionate about creating Help for applications when it is required. I also know many developers who are nervous about Help because they think it is complicated. The reality is, when using the HTML Help Workshop it is hard. In fact, it is really painful. Miserable. This is why I step through the process in my session. I want to show the developers the pain and why you want to purchase a tool for a couple hundred dollars (Euros, etc.). I show you how to integrate the Help file into your application. Finally I show you a couple of HTML Help authoring tools (West Wind's HTML Help Builder and Help and Manual) to show you how easy it really can be. I realized after the session I forgot to mention you need to ship a couple of VFP HTML Help DLLs with your app to get the integration to work in production. Fortunately all this information is in the session white paper, so if you attended the sessions or the conference you can read all about it.

Andy's "Get the Most Out of Intellisense" session is in the official last slot of the conference. I have seen this session a couple of times before, but as usual I relearned several things. Couple of my favorites are:

1. Command Tip Window (replacement for the Quick Info tooltips) which allows you to copy the text.
2. Adding common variables you use in your code such as "loObj" and have it expand to "loObj = " and then have it drop down a list of object references such as "this", "thisform", and "this.parent".

Sweet refresher and packed with good examples, and literally a hundred items to use in our own Intellisense table. Not only do you get the code, but you get inspiration to create your own based on needs you have in development. Andy is one of, if not the authority on Intellisense. His knowledge on this topic is top-gun. I also appreciated his endorsement of using spaces instead of tabs in my code {bg}.

Based on some bugs discovered and some other quirks Andy has found over the years, I am hopeful the IntelliSense Manager becomes a project on CodePlex in VFPX once Microsoft releases the Sedna components and the XSource ZIP file. Alan Griver noted in the keynote that Sedna and XSource should be released in the next few weeks. Another session I can rate a six out of five stars.

Tonight is the speaker dinner which is something I always look forward to since Rainer brings out some of the most exotic food I have ever seen. In the past we have seen zebra, rattlesnake, fish I am sure is from another planet, and various other interesting food I cannot pronounce or spell. I am hopeful we will not see Monkey brains.

Tomorrow Doug Hennig and I head to Holland for the Software Developer Network conference on Monday. If I have time and a decent Internet connection I will make a report. I will be presenting three sessions and ignoring Doug's (especially his Vertical Market session {g}).

Thanks for the great time Germany! Rainer: you run a terrific conference. Good news to the rest of the world as he has announced German DevCon dates through 2014. Check out the Fox Wiki for absolute details.

German DevCon - Day 2

I am thankful that the sessions at German DevCon start at 8:30. I woke up with wake-up call and proceeded to fall back to sleep for 30 minutes. I still was able to get to Steven Black's "Niche Marketing for VFP" session. I learned several important points during this session. Steven pointed out a new marketing term to me called SERP (Search Engine Results Page). What Steven talked about is owning your name property. Where does your web site come up in the results when you type in your company name or your name in Google? I am happy to say mine shows up at the very top via Google Germany. Steve provided several tips to include in the HTML and tweaks you can do using Google Analytics. This session also covered what a niche is and a number of niches available for VFP developers. I found this session to be very beneficial and glad I did not oversleep a minute more. Five of five stars.

Marcia Akins was up next with her "The 26 Hour Day" session. I saw this session earlier this year as she was starting to develop it. In this session Marcia shows a number of productivity tips and tricks and talks about how much time she thinks it will save you. I told her that her time estimates are conservative. This session covered a couple of my personal favorites: DeclareLocals.PRG (from MegaFox: 1002 Things You Want to Know About Extending VFP) and the new Edit Property/Method replacement dialog (soon to be added to VFPX). These two tools save me time. Marcia also showed her form and class hacking tool and pointed out how my HackCX Professional is like her tool on steroids. Her plug was very nice (and unnecessary), but she incorrectly pointed out that HackCX will even clean your kitchen. This is not true in the current version. Doug Hennig mentioned that I need to finish the MenuDesigner before I add the kitchen cleaning feature into HackCX {g}. Another five of five stars.

Craig Berntson followed Marcia's session with "Continuous Integration." This is a fairly new term (well new to me at least) that encompasses the automation of the build process and testing. This really is about development processes with respect to using source code control, building, and testing the build in tight iterative loops. Make small changes to the code, unit test, check it in, build, review the build results, use automated testing, and check the status of the tests. Better quality software based on a repeatable and proven process. Craig showed a number of free tools and talked about some very expensive tools to implement this process. He did this from the perspective of the .NET developer. .NET developers are evidentally ahead of the curve on automating the process. Craig did have one slide to show some of the tools that work with VFP like FoxUnit (automated testing), Code Analyst from VFPX to help with refactoring, and mentioned Rick Borup's paper on FinalBuilder with VFP for "Automating the Build." Four of five stars (would have been even better if this was presented from a VFP perspective).

Lunch - more good food, and of course more good smoked salmon.

I had ti get sine more work done in the afternoon along with some interesting discussions with Christof Wollenhaupt and Igor Vit (from Prague). I wanted to go to Michael Niethammer's session "VFP - Tools und Assistenten." I reviewed his materials a couple of days ago and figured I had a thing or two I could learn. Instead I ran through my demos for the VFPX session I was about to give.

I did give my session "VFPX Tools and Components - Live." There was a big crowd in the room and you could feel the excitement as I revealed each of the tools and components. A quick poll at the beginning of the session revealed very few developers have heard of VFPX. It was consistent with the findings at Southwest Fox (15-20%). Looks like we need a "Tell a friend about VFPX" campaign. As I went through each section of the session I asked if anyone was using what I just showed and a few hands would go up. Then I followed up with the question asking how many developers might use it in the future and most of the room raised their hands. The session was definitely more interactive than any session I have given in Frankfurt the last three years. There definitely was a buzz in the room. I was very fun for me, I just hope everyone else was having a good time too.

One more day to go - conferences sure seem to fly by.

German DevCon - Day 1

My day started out with Doug Hennig's "Developing VFP Apps for Vista." I first saw this at OzFox 2007 and have recommended every VFP developer should see this session. This session was very popular at Southwest Fox and Advisor DevCon too. I am also getting closer to purchasing my first Vista computer so the session has more relevance this time around. Doug has real world practical experience on the topic and is considered the authority. I think there are two key take-aways from this session. The first important ideas is security and not working around it, but rather work with it. The second is that even if you do not want to use Vista for development, note your customers eventual will be so you need to develop this expertise. Doug has lots of useful code to help make your applications compatible too. Still a six out of five stars.

Next up is the keynote. Alan Griver started the session by presenting Rainer with the VFP Lifetime Achievement Award as I posted yesterday. Alan also talked about "the announcement" from last March. Unfortunately Alan's machine was suffering from a serious hard drive problem. He was able to boot in Vista safe mode, but none of his demos were working because they have registry dependencies. This was a bummer since I have seen his keynote material at the Advisor conference and it was very interesting, and showed some key technologies VFP developers will use for years to come. Doug Hennig stepped in with some Vista demos, and Steven Black made some compelling points on why VFP developers will be successful for many years to come. Stability is reliability. I have enjoyed Steven's sessions over the years, but today I realized during this session that Steven could become a religious evangalist if his software career wanes. Steven basically whet the attendee appetite for his all evening session "FoxPro is dead! Now What? The Case for VFP."

After lunch I had to work on some projects so I skipped the first two afternoon sessions. My "Fishing with a ProjectHook" session was the last afternoon session. It was not attended by a lot of developers because it was against Christof's "Cross Platform with VFP and Guineu" and Andy Kramek's "SQL Server for VFP Developers Part 2." Personally I would have read the white paper for the ProjectHook session, and attended Christof's session (which I heard was top gun). My session went okay, but definitely was not the best I have delivered it. It could be the fact I am still suffering a bit from jet lag, or it could be that I thrive off more energy from more attendees. I really appreciated the attendees who selected my session. Thanks for coming.

Dinner was very good. The only disappointment is they did not serve smoked salmon. This broke my streak of smoked salmon at every meal. Marcia Akins and I hunted for it for a while, but there was none to be had.

I also skipped the evening sessions to catch up with several clients. Skype is a lifesaver.

More Conferences Next Week!

I am now able to focus on the next two conferences I am speaking at, and realized this morning I might not be blogging enough about the German DevCon in Frankfurt (8-Nov-2007 to 10-Nov-2007) and Software Developer Network in the Netherlands (12-Nov-2007).

Rainer Becker is working on his 14th German DevCon. Having done one-third of the work to put on one conference I personally would like to nominate Rainer for "Visual FoxPro Sainthood" {g}. I know it is one of the finest FoxPro conferences put on planet Earth. Rainer has a fantastic set of sessions lined up again, at a great conference center, and the food... none better anywhere at any conference. If you have even a remote chance to get to this conference you owe it to yourself to get there. You can read any of the many blog posts I have done live during the German DevCons by hitting the index on this page for November 2006 and November 2005. I will be presenting the following sessions:

• Fishing with a Projecthook
• VFPX Tools and Components – Live
• Creating Help - Made Easy!
• SQL Server Toolkit for the VFP Developer

Many of the same sessions heard at Southwest Fox will be presented in Germany, so if you read the buzz on Southwest Fox and wished you had not missed it, you have a chance to hear some great sessions plus some more great content presented in German and English from some of the finest presenters around. You can register here.

Quick on the heals of German DevCon is a train ride to the Netherlands for SDN and the one-day Visual FoxPro track the Monday after Frankfurt. I have heard from other speakers how fun this one-day event is and feel blessed to be asked to present three sessions:

• VFPX Tools and Components – Live
• Creating Help - Made Easy!
• SQL Server Toolkit for the VFP Developer

Doug Hennig is presenting the other VFP sessions:

• Best Practices for Vertical Application Development
• Developing Visual FoxPro Applications for Windows Vista

I can recommend both of Doug's sessions. I have listened in on his vertical market session almost a half dozen times, and learned or re-learned something each time. His Vista session is a must for every VFP developer, and is a session I think will be popular for years to come.

More details about SDN can be found here.

One thing I learned at Southwest Fox (more blogs to come, promise) is the number of people who have not heard about VFPX. I am really looking forward to showing off the VFPX tools and components and hope to get the European VFP developers excited like what happened in Mesa a couple weeks ago.

After SDN I am headed up to Amsterdam for a day of touring and then back to work. The trip will go by fast and I am sure by the time I get to Amsterdam I will be fully adjusted to the new time zone just in time to head back to Michigan. That is the tough part of these short trips a quarter of the way around the world. Fortunately I am energized by the crowd and by the FoxPro enthusiasm. I look forward to seeing everyone at these two conferences and making some new friends.

Southwest Fox: T-minus 3.25 days and counting...

I can hardly believe after a year in the planning, and months of getting the details ironed out that we are only days away from Southwest Fox 2007!

Last Friday we took in three more registrations for a total of 144 people so far. There are a couple more people who have told me they want to register so there might be more. Yes, there is still time to register if you want, but do not wait much longer. With speakers and vendors we are close to 175 people. WOW!

Last night Therese and I assembled all the badges for the attendees, speakers, vendors, staff and volunteers. It took most of the afternoon to print out the badge names for the top, the SWF nameplate for the bottom, and the schedule for the back. Lots of cutting and assembling. It was not too bad except for the fact my laser printer and card stock apparently don't get along well. Babysitting a printer is not my idea of fun, but you already know my love of hardware. Going through the list of people coming was fun. Therese kept saying "I know this person, they have been to Southwest Fox before", or "I have heard you talk about {name here}, where do you know them from?" Several of them are White Light Computing customers {s}.

The conference booklet with all the specifics about the conference, maps, local restaurants, schedules, session abstracts, download details, and the like are off to the printer and with any luck will be ready for us when we get to Mesa on Tuesday afternoon. Kinko's confirmed everything as I was typing this blog entry up.

We have lots to do in Mesa. I was documenting all the stops Therese and I have on Tuesday to pick up printed material from Kinko's, items I mailed to Bob Kocher, door prizes, pick up a couple of speakers from the airport, get some food, and get some sleep. We have to leave our house at 2:30AM Arizona time to take two of our kids back to college before our flight out. So I might be a bit of a zombie if you see me walking around the conference center on Wednesday.

Oh, there are a few surprises we have not even revealed yet. {bg}

One thing that will not be a surprise is the weather: 85-90F during the day (30-32C for our metric friends) and around 60F at night (16C which sounds a whole lot colder {g}).

We will have one more email to everyone registered with some final details including the ability to download the session materials, white papers, and examples in advance of your arrival in Mesa. This way you can do some homework on the sessions before you arrive in Mesa, and print out some notes to bring to the conference.

I am hoping to blog during the conference, but we will see if there is any time. I know several other bloggers are coming to the conference and hope they have a chance to let you know how it is going as the conference proceeds. If you are coming and plan on blogging let me know so we can get the word out.

I am really psyched we are in the home stretch. The nightmares are increasing in frequency and intensity so it is definitely getting close. Last night's was the fact that every speaker, plus Doug and Tamar called me while I was in the airport to say they were delayed for a few days. I started to figure out how I could give all the sessions myself without any preparation. Ugh. I am also looking forward to taking in some R&R after the conference during our annual company retreat in Sedona next week to let go of the stress.

See everyone soon. Only 3.25 days until Southwest Fox begins!

Southwest Fox: Speaker Switcheroo

Today was another busy day here at the three offices of Southwest Fox. A flurry of activity is going on behind the scenes as we are preparing the Conference CD with all the whitepapers and examples, the conference booklet, session signs, and badge holder schedules. But hold the presses, we have to make things interesting and perform a speaker switcheroo.

So from our news page (and RSS feed):

Unfortunately, Kevin Goff will not be able to speak at Southwest Fox. Fortunately, Mike Feltman has agreed to step in and give a session on error handling in Kevin's time slots. Attendees who were registered for Kevin's preconference session on Crystal Reports will be given the opportunity to choose another precon or get a refund (assuming it wasn't the free precon from registering early).

So as the saying goes: make lemonade out of lemons.

I am really glad we have Mike stepping in and pinch hitting this late in the game (heh, it is baseball playoff time here in the USA). Mike is a true geek, and an experienced VFP professional, and probably one of the smartest people I know. He is also half the reason each and every Southwest Fox attendee is going to walk away with the opportunity to get a new license to Visual Fox Express, or an extension on their VFE subscription.

So if you are a K.O.K.O.P.E.L.L.I. fan, head out and get the latest version. The schedule is already current too.

Thanks Mike! OK, please return back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Only 15 days until Southwest Fox starts in Mesa!

Southwest Fox: Schedule Ch-Changes

Just in case you have not subscribed to our new RSS feed (recently created for us by Rick Borup), we have a change in the schedule for Saturday. The Arizona Golf Resort and Conference Center notified us of a change in the venue that really helps us and triggered a slew of changes I want to make sure you hear about. Previously we had the pre-conference sessions and keynote in another building, but now all sessions will be in Fairway 1-4. Another conflicting event in the same building Saturday night has been moved too.

What this means is:

1. The vendor sessions on Saturday will be full 75 minute sessions.
2. Lunch has been extended to a full hour (previously we had to crunch it to 45 minutes).
3. A new version of Dave Aring's Kokopelli scheduling app has been updated this morning (so if you previously downloaded it please get a fresh copy). There are no changes to the regular sessions, but we did include the new Visual MaxFrame and Stonefield Query user group meetings on the printed schedule.
   
4. You will have more opportunities to visit the vendors (more to be announced soon on this topic soon).

Behind the scenes things are nuts. Over the last three days I probably have 250 emails on various aspects of Southwest Fox. We are close to 140 registered attendees and more than 160 people including speakers and vendors coming to the conference.

Only three weeks to go until we meet in Mesa.

Southwest Fox: New Sponsor (again!)

So are you looking at getting a book from Hentzenwerke Publishing (our newest Bronze sponsor), but want to chat in person with the publisher or one of the many authors in person before picking it up, or ordering it? No problem, just be in Mesa between October 18th and 21st and stop by the registration desk.

Whil (who is presenting a couple of sessions at the conference) is selling his entire line of Visual FoxPro books between sessions at Southwest Fox. Just in case you did not know, Hentzenwerke is the biggest publisher of VFP books on the planet.

As one of the many Hentzenwerke authors and tech editors I know the books sell best at conferences so this is very exciting news. The conference just keeps getting better.

Only a month to go before we all gather in Mesa.

Southwest Fox: Registration Record

Honestly, I never thought this was something I was going to announce when we decided to work on Southwest Fox 2007, but we are setting new registration records almost daily! We still have more than a month to go and we have close to 150 people set to come to Mesa in October. Unbelievable.

So THANKS!

Only 37 days to get registered! See everyone in Mesa.

Southwest Fox: New Sponsor

Yep, we are getting close to the conference, but more companies are getting on board the already crowded Southwest Fox Conference sponsor bus. I want to introduce you to xSQL Software. These guys have some cool SQL Server tools and have become our newest Bronze sponsor.

One tool in particular is a tool I have been looking for for more time than I care to admit. I think their xSQL Builder tool is as close to the Stonefield Database Toolkit Update feature for SQL Server as any product I have looked at. I am hoping to cover this tool during my SQL Server Developer Toolkit session.

xSQL Software is providing several doorprizes to be given away during the conference. Very cool stuff.

FoxForward: Reading the blogs

I am glad to see there are some live bloggers at FoxForward so I can hear about sessions and things going on at the conference. I am occasionally getting an instant messages from people at the conference too, which makes me want to be there even more than I did before the conference started.

Sounds like things are going well and some fun is being had by all.

I even had something added to my DAFUG to-do list {g}. Tod, interested in coming to Detroit in the near future?

Looking for the inside story? Check here:
Dave Crozier (all the way from England)
Kevin Cully (how the heck does the organizer guy have time??)
Steve Bodnar (speaking at the conference)
Tod McKenna (speaking at the conference)

There are a couple of other bloggers hanging out and speaking too so I am looking forward to reading their observations and thoughts too.

Southwest Fox: K.O.K.O.P.E.L.L.I.

Today I get to leak the cat out of the bag for a new "feature" of Southwest Fox: K.O.K.O.P.E.L.L.I.

What the heck is K.O.K.O.P.E.L.L.I.??

One Web description is:

"Kokopelli is one of the most intriguing and widespread images surviving from ancient Anasazi Indian mythology, and is a prominent figure in Hopi legends. The figure represents a mischievous trickster or the Minstrel, spirit of music. Kokopelli is considered a symbol of fertility who brought well-being to the people, assuring success in hunting, planting and growing crops, and human conception."

Another description:

"Magical flute player, humpback or hump-backed flute player"

You see three Kokopelli characters on the Southwest Fox logo. But today I bring a different definition to you...

Knock Out Konference Orientation - Produce Elective Lecture Layout Interactively.

What?!?

Dave Aring (from Visionpace - owners of the VFP framework MaxFrame Professional) has created a new Visual FoxPro applet that assists you in selecting a schedule customized for you based on the choices and preferences you have for the session slots. The app is quite simple: pick your favorite three sessions in any one slot for the entire conference. The application then uses a magical algorithm to determine the best fit so you get as many of your favorite sessions as possible.

You pick your priorities for the slots, click on the Create Schedule button, and then the Print Schedule button to preview the results. The output can be printed and brought with you to Mesa. The printed schedule when folded on the lines provided should fit nicely in the badge holder we will provide when you register Thursday.

The applet comes complete with text Help, and an interesting approach with truly graphical Help. Dave even included a block out feature so you can schedule session blocks you plan on skipping. Maybe the boss wants you to attend a conference call or staff meeting, or you have a session to give in that slot (can you tell what three organizers asked for this enhancement request {g}), or you just want to play hooky and attend one of the less formal offline sessions that happen in the hallway.

You can try out different session priorities to get different results. If you already know the sessions you want to attend you can just make them your number one sessions and not pick the 2nd and 3rd, and your schedule can be printed out.

In the user acceptance testing phase of this app I found it picked 50% of the sessions I had slotted with the "Rick Schummer Method" to picking sessions. I think this is pretty good. I hope you download it and give it a try, if not to help pick some sessions, but just to see how Visual FoxPro applications can be created and not look like your typical VFP app.

For more details on the new tool, see Dave's blog entry on the Visionpace blog.

Thanks Dave for putting this together in your spare time and for contributing it to Southwest Fox!

Only 43 days until we all meet in Mesa!

Southwest Fox: Session Schedule Posted

The initial session schedule for Southwest Fox is posted! Please note that the organizers have reviewed it and passed it by the speakers, but it is still subject to change if we discover a flaw. This will be finalized over the next couple of weeks.

You may be wondering how did I get two 8:00am sessions?!? You think I would have some pull being one of the organizers, but no, Tamar thinks I am good enough to keep people awake on Saturday and Sunday morning (at least this is what I am telling myself {g}). Seriously, I am not really complaining because I don't mind the first session of the day.

I went through the schedule a few weeks back and picked the sessions I would like to attend (knowing darn well I might not get to any of them) and I only had one I could not schedule. There are definitely some tough choices, but that is the idea. We packed this conference with lots of great sessions presented by some of the best minds available.

I have two recommendations to those who cannot see all the sessions they really have to see. One thing I am doing is seeing sessions in advance of the conference. Check out the Fox user groups around the country kind enough to let speakers test-drive the sessions before they might be ready for prime-time at the conference. I see the Detroit Area Fox User Group (my local group) and the Chicago FUDG already have presentations scheduled. I am sure other groups will be scheduling some soon. You can find some of the user group meetings on the Fox Wiki Upcoming Events page.

The other option is to bring a teammate or friend to the conference (yes there is still time to register and we are not sold out yet {g}). You can each see different sessions and later go over the material you learned to help the other person as you review the white papers from the session together.

Only 50 days until we meet in Mesa!

FoxForward: Schedule posted

Kevin posted the tentative schedule for the FoxForward conference. Looks like a good schedule with three simultaneous sessions and several repeated sessions. No time better than today to tell Kevin you want to go to this conference and get registered.

Only 24 days until the conference kicks off in Hotlanta!

Southwest Fox: New sponsor and very exciting news

I am very happy to announce F1 Technologies is officially a Gold sponsor of Southwest Fox 2007, and is making a very generous offer to each and every registered attendee of Southwest Fox. Here is the official deal:

1. All registered attendees of the SW Fox Conference that are not registered Visual FoxExpress users will receive a free copy of Visual FoxExpress including a 6 month subscription.
2. All registered attendees of the SW Fox Conference that are registered Visual FoxExpress users will receive a 50% discount on a renewal of their Visual FoxExpress subscription.
3. This offer is non-transferable and expires on 11/20/2007.

Wow. Mike and Toni have always been big supporters of the conference, and this is another fine example of F1 Technologies commitment to the Fox Community.

There is still some time and space available if you want to get registered. Only 66 days until we meet in Mesa!

Thanks Mike and Toni!

Southwest Fox: more new sponsors

Catching up on the sponsors front... I want to announce two new sponsors recently signed up:

1) The Intellection Group, Inc. is a bronze sponsor. Dave Bernard is one of the leaders of this company and speaks at VFP conferences, and has been a friend of Southwest Fox at past conferences by writing up coverage on the UniversalThread. Dave's company does some really cool stuff with Visual FoxPro on the Web, and is well know for his mantra: "There are no technical problems, only business problems."

2) Servoy USA Inc is a gold sponsor. Servoy is making a serious push to FoxPro developers with their Java application development and deployment tools. I really do not know much about this company, but figure this is one of the reasons they are coming to Southwest Fox - to get their message out to the Fox Community.

More details about all the Southwest Fox Sponsors can be found here: http://swfox.net/sponsors.aspx

German DevCon 2007

I am happy to announce I will be returning to Germany again this November to present at the 14th Microsoft Visual FoxPro Developer Conference 2007. This is a fantastic conference put on by Rainer Becker and his team. Rainer has an excellent collection of presenters presenting 60 VFP sessions:

English speaking: Marcia Akins, Craig Berntson, Steven Black, Jim Booth, Alan Griver, Doug Hennig, Venelina Jordanova, Andy Kramek, and Rick Schummer.

German speaking: Marcus Alt, Rainer Becker, Joachim Durr, Sebastian Flucke, Uwe Habermann, Jochim Hilgers, Kirsten Hinrichs, Armin Neudert, Michael Niethammer, Patrick Scharer, Markus Winhard, Christof Wollenhaupt, and Jurgen "wOOdy" Wondzinski.

I will be presenting four sessions:

• SQL Server Toolkit for the VFP Developer
• Fishing with a ProjectHook
• VFPX Tools and Components – Live
• Creating Help - Made Easy!

The conference is held at a terrific conference center that serves the best food you could ask for. There are lots of opportunities to network and vendors to visit as well. If you want to learn more about this popular conference you can read some of my blog entries in November 2006 and 2005 (see the index on my blog). I really recommend this conference!

White Light Computing Southwest Fox Scholarship

I am please to announce Mike Roof is the lucky winner of the White Light Computing $300 Scholarship for the Southwest Fox 2007 conference. Mike's company is sending four people to the conference so they increased their odds of winning {g}. I talked to Mike yesterday and he is very psyched about not only attending Southwest Fox, but he is also attending the West Wind Technologies Double Impact training the two days before Southwest Fox. We laughed how much his head will hurt after listening to Rick Strahl for two days, followed by two and a half more days of intense conference sessions. A fantastic training opportunity for any developer. It sounds like a lot of developers are taking advantage of this year.

Sorry for the delay in the announcement, but I ran out of time before my vacation and forgot to hold the drawing. Mike's name was drawn by the lead marketing advisor here at White Light Computing out of the 85 names registered by July 1, 2007.

Congratulations Mike! Only 76 days until we meet in Mesa!

Southwest Fox Registrations Keep Pouring In

I really thought the month of July would be really slow at the Southwest Fox registration headquarters because the deadline for early-bird registrations ended, but they keep on coming and today we registered our 100th person to attend the conference. Doug will be updating the Who's Coming list soon, which now stands at 116 people including the presenters. Note: not all the people are on the list because each person has to opt-in.

Most of my expectations have been exceeded, and we are well on our way to breaking all records for Southwest Fox attendance. Only 78 days until Southwest Fox!

I am looking forward to seeing you in Mesa!

Southwest Fox - Registration News

I can only start this post out by saying THANKS!

I am overwhelmed by the response to Southwest Fox 2007 and the number of registrations we have taken for the conference. When I talked to Bob about taking over the conference he cautioned me to not be concerned if the registrations were not hot and heavy until a month before the conference. He said I probably would be worried when less than half would register for the early bird. This puts a lot of pressure on the organizer when planning the budget and determining where money can be spent on things like food for attendees, travel for the speakers, and things like meeting the number of room nights we have committed to before hitting financial penalties. He told me to stock up on Tums (and I do have a Costco membership so I can purchase in bulk {g}).

Southwest Fox is in terrific shape for 2007. We have 88 paid registrations so far, which is more than were at the conference last year, and are on a pace to break all attendance records for this conference. I guess it is even possible to sell-out the conference (something we really did not think about when putting this together).

The Who's Going page is going to be generated and posted in the next few days.

So thanks from the bottom of my heart for the great response and making the planning much easier. For those who still plan on registering, no need to wait until the last minute. Only 98 days before we meet in Mesa!

Southwest Fox: Another new sponsor

I am pleased to announce ProLib Software GmbH is the newest Bronze sponsor for Southwest Fox.

ProLib is located in Germany and has a terrific product called Active FoxPro Pages (offered in the USA by F1 Technologies) helping you put VFP Web applications on the Internet. ProLib has provided two licenses to Active FoxPro Pages to give-away during the conference to some lucky attendees. Thanks wOOdy!

Southwest Fox: Early-bird Extension

We've been inundated with registrations this past week and I haven't had a chance to process them all. So, we've decided to extend the early-bird registration until midnight (EDT) Friday, July 6th so you won't miss your chance to take advantages of the early-bird savings just because of us.

Honestly, I have been overwhelmed by the number of registrations and they have exceeded my wildest expectations. A big thank you to everyone who has registered and to those who plan to register this week and beyond. Friday and Saturday my daughters were giggling every time the fax line rang because they knew I was getting way behind on the processing.

So keep them coming. Heck, as I am writing this blog entry I got a call from a company in Arizona who wants to send four people to the conference. Sweet.

I am so psyched by how great Southwest Fox 2007 is going to be, and cannot wait to start planning Southwest Fox 2008.

Southwest Fox: Another sponsor

I am very excited to announce Sybase iAnywhere is now a Gold sponsor of Southwest Fox 2007!

I was curious why a company like Sybase would like to sponsor our small and humble conference, but the folks at Sybase are very excited about coming and showing what they have to offer Visual FoxPro developers. They are expecting to make some big announcements at the conference. Cool.

You can check out the complete list of sponsors on the Southwest Fox 2007 sponsors page. Please help us show appreciation for all their support of the conference and Fox Community by visiting their pages, and checking out their offerings.

Two more days to get in on the early-bird registration, and 111 days until we meet in Mesa.

FoxForward: Normal Registration Deadline Looming

For those planning on going to FoxForward this year, you should consider registering by Saturday June 30th so you can save yourself a cool US$100. The price is only US$450 and is a terrific price considering the value you will get out of the conference. The clock is ticking...

Southwest Fox: Early-bird deadline 6.5 days away

The fax line is taking a beating (compared to the usual one or two a month I get) and the emails are coming in quite often with the registrations for Southwest Fox 2007, the best Visual FoxPro conference being held in October this year! You can sense the early-bird deadline is approaching when we took in 5 registrations one day last week.

Just in case you have not heard, the early-bird discount is scheduled to expire on July 1st (this coming Sunday). Now is the time to save yourself US$75, get that freebie pre-conference session (US$99 savings and way more value considering the sessions available), AND possibly get a US$300 tuition scholarship for the conference from White Light Computing. Definitely a great deal. There are more surprises on the way too!

Your humble registration taker (me) appreciates all the attendees who already registered and did not wait until the last week because I really need to get *some* development done for my clients. Still, I am willing to work at all hours of the day to process the registrations as they arrive, so keep on sending them!

Doug, Tamar, and I are happy with the registrations so far, but we are expecting this to be a busy week with those who like to wait until the deadline to push the credit card process out as far as possible. We understand, but the clock is ticking and we hope you get in on the great deal we have on the table at the moment. We know VFP developers are familiar with deadlines and how to manage them. Mark your calendar, post the reminder in your calendar software, stick a note on the monitor, or even write on your hand if necessary, but get the registration form filled out and sent in.

While you are at it, invite a friend to come along. The more the merrier.

Don't forget, if you need me to help you with the boss and getting her/him to send you to Southwest Fox, or any of the other VFP conferences - give me a call or send me an email. I will be happy to help you out.

I hope to see you in Mesa in 115 days!

VFP DevCon Prague Sessions

I see Igor Vit has the session schedule posted for the Prague DevCon. This conference is the most attended conference year after year and there is no doubt why, great sessions and inexpensive registration fees. If you are in Europe (or anywhere else for that matter) and you have room in your schedule next week (June 19th to 21st), head on over and get registered for this great conference.

Southwest Fox: Craig Boyd is speaking!!!

The biggest questions I got about the Southwest Fox speaker list was:

1. Where is Craig Boyd's name?
2. How could we freeze out Craig Boyd from speaking at your conference since he is one of the more popular speakers in the community?
3. Do you and Craig have a problem since you replaced him at OzFox?

(OK, I made up the last one, but heck, there is not enough turmoil and friction in the Fox Community at the moment {g})

I was considering creating a FAQ page on the site just so I could point people to it. If I had a dime for every time I had to say: we would have loved to pick Craig Boyd, but he did not submit sessions, I think I could be closing in on fully funding two kids in college.

So now that Craig has officially let the cat out of the bag on the real reason he was not on the initial list of speakers (and why his blog has been quiet - leading to a huge drop of VFP on the Tiobe index), it is my great pleasure to announce he is speaking at Southwest Fox 2007! Even if you don't want to read the details of the real reason, you have to check out the cute picture of Scarlett Elizabeth Boyd.

I will keep you in suspense a little longer about the sessions (Doug will get the Web site updated with the new sessions when he gets a moment on Monday or Tuesday) to help get some traffic to the SWF Web site, but I can guarantee you will find them very Boyd-esk.

I cannot wait until October!

Southwest Fox - More Sponsors

I am very excited to announce SweetPotato Software Inc. (owned by VFP MVP and Fox Guru Craig Boyd), and Cully Technologies, LLC (owned by Kevin Cully who runs the FoxForward conference) are Bronze sponsors added today for Southwest Fox 2007!

Craig has been helping the organizers by hosting the Southwest Fox Web site and handing administrative details concerning the email accounts we have. This has been a huge help behind the scenes here at SWF, and is one of those things we flat out have not had to worry about.

Both of these gentlemen are huge supporters of the Fox Community and we are very excited to have them aboard as sponsors. You can check out the complete list of sponsors on the Southwest Fox 2007 sponsors page. Please help us show appreciation for their support of the conference and Fox Community by visiting their pages, and checking out their offerings.

Thanks again guys.

FoxForward - Hours left for early bird...

There is no time like the present to get signed up for FoxForward, with the early bird deadline approaching in a few hours. You can register with a simple four step process so head over to the FoxForward.net and get going. Clocks are ticking...

White Light Field Trip - Day of .NET

A day of .NET for Rick? I can here the rumors already - Rick has completely moved his operations to .NET. Nope, but I took the opportunity to get a day of free seminars on some topics I was interested in in Grand Rapids last Saturday. You will see by the sessions I picked that they are Web related and something I think .NET is very strong and well suited for in today's projects. All the sessions were scheduled for 60 minutes, most ran over, and some of the sessions did not have any break time between them. It was almost as if the original schedule had less sessions for 75 minutes each and they had to be crammed in to fit the one day conference.

The day was organized by the West Michigan .NET User Group, sponsored by several local companies and one very large national company with a vested interest in spreading the word about .NET. I also got a chance to take my son with me so he could get a little taste of the Microsoft vision. He is a Web developer and he gets the LAMP vision at school. He sees how .NET could be in his future, but has not seen it much at the University of Michigan. He also understands how school is way different from the real world.

The keynote was very interesting. It was about the Future of Development. The speaker talked about how data will be accessible on all platforms (server, desktops, laptops, PDA, phones, toasters (okay, I added the last one)). It was not a discussion of the paperless office promised by so many years ago. Rather it was a discussion on how our users will want to get their data in non-traditional ways. The speaker sort of reminded me of Tom Rettig. This made me wonder what Tom might be blogging about today if he were alive.

Next up was the "Building a .NET Startup." I think this session would have been better titled "How to Design and Build an ASP.NET Application." What Brian Anderson showed is how he designed, architected, and developed a Web site that allows someone to invoice people for money and allow the people to pay via cash or through a PayPal account. This is designed for people who run a soccer team and need to collect money from the parents to run the team, or a scout leader who needs to collect dues for the child's participation (or similar scenario). The Web site charges a little fee for each transaction. It gives you the ability to manage the people and what each owes. Nice little site. Brian built the site using the Microsoft AJAX Toolkit, .NET Tiers and Codesmith frameworks/code generators, and the PayPal Payment Pro Web service integration to process the PayPal transactions. His basic premise with respect to the frameworks and code generation tools is to never write CRUD code. I talked to him after the session about the lack of optimization code generators are famous for. He said I might be surprised on how far tools like this have come. Lots of links and lots ideas on how one can rapidly put together a .NET site. Very good session.

Daniel Woolston presented the "AJAX Controls" session. This session went through some of the 32 controls in the Microsoft AJAX Toolkit. Dan started out the session with a comment that I will paraphrase as "I really have no idea how this session is going to go because I have not rehearsed it." With this in mind, I was pleasantly surprised how smooth the presentation went. Some of the controls in this toolkit are extremely cool. The AJAX Control Toolkit is from Microsoft and is open source, and is free. The project is hosted on CodePlex like VFPX is and is community driven. The controls also play nice with other frameworks and look easy to implement. I am most interested in the Accordion, the Calendar, the Always Visible, and Resizable controls for a project I have coming up. He also gave away Nerf toy guns at the end of his session (not technically important, but I think as a bribe to get better evals {g}). Excellent session.

The next session was called Command Patterns by Martin Shoemaker. I have seen Martin present before and his session was on the Command design pattern, While I was interested in what he had to say, I have seen some great design pattern sessions by VFP speakers who cover several design patterns in one session. So I bailed early and visited with the different vendors. I actually learned a lot from the vendors with respect to the Michigan economy and how .NET developers are seeing a growing market again here in Michigan. One of the companies described how they lived through a down turn in the software industry after Y2K, but how in the last year it really is rebounding. This is exactly what I have experienced, only my rebound has been going for the last three years. They did mention how their consulting practice and head hunting is seeing a real drive for C# developers as opposed to VB.NET developers. It is only one company's perspective, but interesting nonetheless. They are also seeing a lot more VB6 to VB.NET conversions than they have in the last few years.

Jim Holmes kicked off my afternoon with his "Real World MOSS" session. Jim shared his real world experience working with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server and the tools he uses to make development and deployment easier. This really is my kind of session as Jim detailed shortcomings and workarounds to increase productivity. One of the cooler tools he showed is Watir Recorder. This tool records clicks and keystrokes in Internet Explorer so you can rerun unit and system tests for a Web application. In this particular case Jim uses this tool to deploy SharePoint features. There are a number of steps you need to process to unregister (for lack of the exact term) and re-register the SharePoint feature. He automated all of it using the Watir Recorder. Very cool session. I learned more about SharePoint in this one hour than I did at the entire Advisor Summit.

Dan Hibbitts presented the "Mobile Software Factory" which covered the .NET Compact framework and SQL Server CE. I am sure I cannot deploy an application on my Treo anytime soon, but this informative session did get me geeked to try something on this platform down the road. So much to learn, so little time to do it all. This is one of the things that has me interested in Christof's Guineu project. As a VFP developer I have little to no capabilities to develop for this platform. I have one customer who is thinking this platform might be the next big thing for him so I am trying to expand my skill to possibly meet his needs. Another good session.

The last session of the day was "Vista Gadgets" by Microsoft Developer Evangelist Drew Robbins. I have seen Drew present a few times before and there is no mistaken that he loves his job and feels like he is one of the luckiest guys in the world. Drew showed us some of the available Vista Gadgets and then built a practical one. Now I will admit when I first saw these gadgets a couple if years ago I was not impressed by them. I found them more than a little distracting. I like a clean desktop for the most part and these gadgets are anti-organizing from my perspective. My view on this has been changing more and more as I see some real and practical implementations. I really don't need a fancy clock or the weather in my face. Drew put together a fairly simple gadget that read your tasks in Outlook and presented them on the desktop outside of Outlook. Even better, you could complete them and create detailed fly outs with very simple and easy to understand javascript code with a little HTML. I see some advantages to some dashboard type of applications where this might have some practical implementations for business. Thanks Drew.

One other general observation: most of laptops at the seminar were running Vista. This is completely different from the laptops I have seen at Fox events. Interesting. I talked to several attendees about this and they are "struggling" to adopt Vista, but overall they are liking it.

Overall it was a day well spent. Sure it was a Saturday and I had to cross the state to attend, but I would have traveled much further for this kind of value. I wanted to attend the one in Ann Arbor put on by the AA .NET group because it was closer to home, but it was held during the Advisor Summit. Sounds like the two groups are helping each other and are planning several of these a year. Looks like I might be scheduling a couple more Saturdays a year to career development.

Advisor Summit - Day 3

Traditions are important and Advisor was able to keep my streak alive by scheduling me for the first session on the last day. As I have mentioned in this blog before, for some reason (guarantee that I will be sober) the organizers always pick me to present first in the morning. I talked about VFPX in my session "Learn How to Use VFPX Tools and Components for Visual FoxPro." I felt this session went well and the feedback was very positive. Doug Hennig mentioned it might have been the most attended session of the conference. It is always nice to hear people are interested in your presentation, but more importantly, people are interested in VFPX and the future of Visual FoxPro.

The rest of the morning was consumed with email and following up on customer issues as I listened to Doug's always good session on Integrating RSS and VFP. It was unfortunate, but I had to skip Tamar's Solve Common Problems with VFP SQL. I will catch up by doing some homework and reading her white paper.

After lunch I attended Kevin's session on the "COM Cookbook: Five Tasty Recipes for COM Automation with VFP." Kevin went through five examples:

1. Desktop Alerts
2. Wrapper for VFP Encryption DLL by Craig Boyd
3. Wrapper for VFP compression DLL by Craig Boyd
4. VFP mail using Blat.DLL
5. VFP Application Updater

Kevin showed the feared "Catastrophic failure" error message he had when he demoed the Desktop Alerts at the Detroit Area Fox User Group in the "Why not COM" section. He covered the fundamentals and some of the complicated things like debugging.

My last session ("Expand Your SQL Server Toolkit for the VFP Developer") kicked off the VFP Track "overtime." You see the rest of the conference was over after the desert reception, but the VFP track had two extra sessions for the attendees. Not bad since I was getting paid time and a half (1.5 * $0.00) {g}. This session covers a number of different categories of developer tools developers should consider to make their SQL Server experience better. I demo tools like SQL Compare, SQL Doc, MSDE Admin, and SQL Prompt. I have purchased and use these tools on a regular basis to increase my productivity and improve my profitability.

Doug Hennig wrapped up the conference with his really good session "Best Practices for Vertical Market Applications." I have seen this session at GLGDW and OzFox in the last year, but I listened because Doug tweaks it and attendees participate with their own thoughts on the various topics. This time around I took a couple of notes for a project I am working on right now for another developer.

After the conference wrapped up we went out to dinner at Ruth's Chris Steak House. Dinner was excellent, conversation was enjoyable and surprise-surprise we were the 1000th customer of the newly opened restaurant. What a hoot, dinner was on the manager! Later, Jeanine (who attended the VFP track) admitted she worked with the manager to set the whole thing up and bought us all dinner. After dinner we headed back to the hotel where we chatted some more.

I got to bed around 1:30 and was up at 3:30 for my early flight home. My flight from LA to Minneapolis was horrible as the guy next to me was sleeping and kept invading my personal space. From the airport I drove directly to the Detroit Area Fox User Group meeting where we held a meeting of open discussion and I ended up not having to present. It is good to be home.

Advisor Summit - Day 2

Tuesday is a busy and very long day here in Anaheim. Lots of news from LA area with the fires, but it is northwest from where we are.

The first session of the day is Kevin Ragsdale's "Best Practices for Deploying Visual FoxPro Applications." You should be aware of my passion for the topic since I helped write the book Kevin used as part of his research on the topic. He formally recognized the work Rick Borup and I did on the Deploying Visual FoxPro Solutions book he considers essential reading (I agree {g}). He also recognized the work Rick Borup did at GLGDW 2006 on the same topic. Kevin then went through several best practices and shared his deployment successes and failures. One of the things I like to do is learn from other people's mistakes so I can avoid them, especially with deployment. Kevin made several excellent points during the session and I thought he did a good job. Several people talked to me about our book after the session. It is nice to get the word out about it.

The next session I attended was suppose to be "Simple SharePoint Solutions", but it was replaced with "Customized SharePoint Sites with 'Features'." The two presenters got together a decided the timing should be switched. I was curious more about the solutions, so I bailed out after a short time and went to get some work done. I have already seen Tamar's session called "Practical Tips for Working with Existing Visual FoxPro Code" before, but I am going to read her white paper because I am living this with a new customer and their FoxPro DOS code. I hope they will move to VFP and SQL Server some day.

After lunch (which several people did not like, but I enjoyed because there were lots of veggies) I skipped Doug's session on Inno Setup because I have seen it a couple of times already. It is a great session. You can read some of the material in the last couple issues of Advisor Guide to Microsoft Visual FoxPro. It is a fantastic session. The first time I attended I was making changes to my scripts in the session.

Up next was my session "Microsoft VFP Debugging Essentials." I was not happy with the delivery of this session at all and it was reflected in a couple of the evals. I did not have the energy I normally like to deliver because I had a headache that made me feel dizzy while I was presenting. I was able to communicate, but as one eval correctly stated: "This was not one of Rick's best sessions."

The last session of the regular day was Tamar's "The Why and How of Test Data." This was another session I was really looking forward to before the conference and is one we selected for Southwest Fox 2007. Tamar shows you why and how to auto generate test data using third-party tools, and her own framework. I have a real need to generate some test data for a couple of projects I am working on so I can use this session as soon as I return home. Highly recommended session.

Right after Tamar's session we were picked up and attended the LA Fox meeting out by LAX. This was fun. We listened to an interesting presentation by a couple of guys from GeneXus. GeneXus is a suite of development tools that generate applications from it own IDE into source code in VFP, .NET, Java, and several other platforms I cannot recall. At the same time it generates the application it generates the database in VFP, SQL Server, MySQL, and many other popular database backends. It definitely looks like an interesting product. The thing I like about it is the one source (they call the source code a KnowledgeBase) and many different "buzzword compli