Articles
We hope you enjoy the following technical articles. Use the
category index on the left to locate the articles of interest.
SQL
LSN, August 2007 updated February 2011 with complete xmlRSDocs 2008 docs
Here are the docs for Lisa's SQL Server Reporting
Services documentation framework concept. There is a general description of
XMLRSDocs and RDLDocumenter, as they originally appeared in 2005,
here, and you can read
their origin story here.
The concept and focus of xmlRSDocs have morphed quite a bit in the 2008 version,
and no doubt additional blog posts will discuss why and how.
These docs are completely reproduced as a
readme.htm file you'll find in the full download for xmlRSDocs, in the Spacefold Downloads section.
Reporting
CMN and (minorly) LSN, September 2007
This whitepaper is the session notes for Colin's third session at the September 2007 LA Fox BootCamp.
It is an integral part of the backstory for VFP-TMM.
The complete source is available in Spacefold downloads.
CMN, February 2007
Based on a whitepaper prepared for OxFox 2007 and refined for LA Fox Bootcamp 2007. Enjoy!
LSN, April 2006
The ability to use image controls in reports is one of the subtler
changes to the VFP 9 Report System, and it's easier than it
may look. It's also ridiculously under-documented. Here is some information that will help.
LSN, October 2005
VFP handles a single REPORT FORM run, or a set of REPORT
FORM commands chained with NOPAGEEJECT, as a single print
job -- but sometimes you’d like to send additional printing
instructions in mid-report-run. Lisa shows you how to use
some of VFP 9.0’s reporting enhancements to tackle this
common task, and others like it, with a print job under your
direct control. Both SQL Server and VFP reporting
people will find
some additional background information here.
LSN, June 2005
PDF document output is one of the most
often-requested enhancements to Visual FoxPro, but
it is not available out-of-the-box. In this article,
originally published in FoxTalk, Lisa shows you how
to generate PDFs in all versions of FoxPro, and
showcases some VFP 9.0 techniques and print-related
features that can make PDFs easier to create now
than in any previous version. She also discusses the
importance of “application transparency” and
provides code to reliably install GhostScript
on-the-fly. The source for this article includes a
pre-VFP 9 class, PDFClass, posted here for the first
time, and discussed in
this additional post. Vista implementation notes added, September 2008,
in
this post. Improvements to CreateInstallDBF.PRG and some other helpful notes added by Adrian H, June 2010, in
this additional blog post.
CMN, August 2005
In this, part one of a series, Colin introduces the Report
Builder API and show you how to construct your own simple
builder applications. He also introduces the default
ReportBuilder application and describes some of its features.
CMN, 10 August 2005
Quite a few of the discussions on the Universal Thread Visual
FoxPro forum recently have been on the subject of the new Report
Preview screen in Visual FoxPro 9.0, and how to control it. A
particular concern is the behavior of the preview toolbar when a
REPORT FORM.. PREVIEW is issued in a topform application. Colin
has strived to show in his sessions that the default preview
application is just that - a default - and that alternative
forms of a preview solution are not only possible, but easy to
implement. In this article Colin shows an alternative user
interface for the report preview window that you can take away
and customize to your heart's content.
CMN, 27 June 2005
This article is based on a session Colin gave at the Advisor
Visual FoxPro DevCon in June 2005, in which he described the new
report previewing abilities of Visual FoxPro 9.0, and
demonstrated the basic techniques that it uses "behind the
scenes". (Updated for SP1).
CMN, 23 April 2006
Alex Sosa asked a question on the Universal Thread recently
about right-aligned text in Visual Foxpro 9.0. After some
back-and-forth email messages, Colin decided to summarise his
findings in a small article.
.NET
Framework
CMN, 5 September 2005
This is the first installment of a series of articles
discussing the development of a console utility written in .NET
C#. In this first article, Colin looks at creating a
multi-project solution in Visual C# 2005, and sketches out the
application requirements.
Web
Development
Coming soon!
Visual
FoxPro
LSN and CMN, beginning November 2007
This is a table of contents page/project plan for what we expect to be an ongoing effort, as time permits. Please read here for details.
LSN, 28 October 2007
This article covers (no pun) some truly timeless topics, even though it is taken
from session notes originally delivered in 1998. Understanding coverage and code
profiling, and creating good test practices, policies, teams, and plans, are requirements
that never go away.
LSN, 23 Sept 2007
Logging is a standard requirement in any development environment.
In this article, originally published in FoxTalk January 2006, Lisa takes a classic logging library, log4j
and applies the architecture to VFP. Extended, with additional examples
and code, December 2008, as discussed in
this blog post.
CMN, 15 May 1996
Based on Colin's session notes from the 1996 FoxTeach
Conference, this article looks at designing a class library to
compensate for the lack of object-oriented menus in Visual
FoxPro.
CMN, 15 November 1998
Based on a real production application, this article looks at
an architecture designed to work transparently with either SQL
Server or Visual FoxPro, with a single code base. The article
was translated into German and published in the journal Fuchs in
1999.
CMN, 23 June 1999
This article is based on Colin's session notes from the
Microsoft VFP DevCon in 1999.
CMN, 15 June 1995
The Windows Registry used to be a hot topic, and FoxPro
programmers found it a mystery like everyone else. Portions of
this article, published in the Inside VFP Journal in May/June
1996, found their way mysteriously into a Visual Basic Journal,
and even MSDN!
CMN, 15 july 1993
This is Colin's first published article, and it's about
trapping keyboard events using the C API in FoxPro, published in
Foxtalk, July 1993.
Java
CMN, 28 July 2000
In hindsight, many things are obvious.
CMN, 20 August 2000
It wasn't until I saw the line of code with the .getRuntime()
call in it that something clicked.
CMN, 17 September 2000
Don't let features cloud your object-oriented design
judgement.
