When I started this blog, it was never my intention to allow so much time between posts. My goal was to try and blog at least once per month. Well, things have not quite worked out the way I envisioned. I always seem to find my self starting to write something, never feeling 100% happy with it, and then abandoning it all together.

I guess blogging is something that does not come easy to me, at least not yet. I think the only way to beat this problem is to just accept whatever comes out and post it. If it sucks, well at least I tried. So without further delay, here are some things that I've been meaning to post.

Beyond Compare is one of my favorite developer utilities.  It's a tool for comparing folders, files, and folder like things such as ZIP and CAB files.  It can detect differences using several methods, such as the timestamp, size, CRC, attributes, and more.

Once two files are identified as not identical, you can drill down into the contents and see exactly what is different line by line using Beyond Compare's File Viewer.

This feature is cool, however the native file viewer only supports text files such as HTML, TXT, XML, and so on.  If you try to compare a binary file, you get something that looks like this.

I checked Beyond Compare's web site and found several plug-ins for viewing other binary files like BMP, GIF, JPG, and MP3.  Hmm, not what I was looking for, but could be a handy thing to have in the future.

I looked around a little more and I found some file viewer rules for handling binary files like DOC, XLS, and PDF.  Once again, not what I needed, but I would probably need some day.

So I decided to download a few of these and what I found is that the file viewer rules use Beyond Compare's capability to launch an external conversion program before a file is passed to it's native file viewer.  For example, the DOC rule uses a Visual Basic Script (VBS) to automate Microsoft Word, open the passed DOC file, and then save a copy of it to a temporary text file.  This temporary file is then passed to Beyond Compare's internal File Viewer for the line by line comparison.

Bingo!  If Beyond Compare can call an external conversion program, why not write something that converts FoxPro files to plain text files.  And thus VFP2TEXT was created.

Here's how it works.  I created a file viewer rule in Beyond Compare for all FoxPro related file types (CDX, DBC, DBF, DCT, DCX, FPT, FRT, FRX, FXP, H, LBT, LBX, MNT, MNX, MPR, MPX, PJT, PJX, PRG, QPR, SCT, SCX, VCT, VCX).  This rule calls executes VFP2TEXT.EXE passing both the original file name and a temporary file name.

Based on the file type, the VFP2TEXT.EXE program converts the passed file to a text file using one of the following methods:

• Index (CDX, DCX): retrieve the index tag information only.
• Table (DBF, DBC, FRX, SCX, etc): use the CURSORTOXML() function to generate an XML file.
• Text (H, MPR, PRG, etc): no conversion.
• Visual Class Library (VCX): use the Class Browser View Code feature to generate a PRG file.

If you would like a copy of this utility, you can download the latest version from my web site here.  When using it, there are a couple of things to keep in mind:

• Beyond Compare will execute the conversion program twice, once for the file on the left and once for the file on the right.
• Be careful about doing a Rules-Based Comparison on a large directory.  I prefer to use the Binary Comparison first, and then use a Rules-Based Comparison on the results.

Links:
Beyond Compare http://www.scootersoftware.com/

Last night Paul Mrozowski did a presentation called "Lucene.NET as a Document Search Engine".  He began by explaining that Lucene.NET is an open source indexing and search library written in C#.  It is not a traditional application.  Instead it is a tool developers can use to index and search documents, such as CHM, DOC, HLP, PDF, RTF, and TXT files. 

Paul first demonstrated how easy it is to install Lucene.NET, some of the configuration settings, and how to set it up to run as a background service in Microsoft Windows.  Next he showed us a COM wrapper class that he created in order to use Lucene.NET from Visual FoxPro.

The wrapper class could be used to index the source files and perform some pretty complex searches.  I liked the way it could include the surrounding portions of text with the search results.  For example, if you searched for the phrase "fox" in "Visual FoxPro Rocks", you could include a variable amount of the original characters found before and after the search phrase.

In addition to indexing document files, he also demonstrated how the wrapper class could be used to build your own index entries with meta data.  For example, you could index the contents of a memo field and then store the table name and record identification in the meta data.  Later, this information could be searched the same as document file.

Although the wrapper class did not have the complete functionality of Lucene.NET, it did fill the most basic needs.  He mentioned the idea of either posting the sample code to his web site or better yet making it a VFPX project.  All in all, it was a very cool presentation.

Links:
DAFUG http://dafug.org
Paul Mrozowski http://www.rcs-solutions.com

Earlier this year Google launched a directory assistance service meant to replace the traditional 411.  To use the service, simply dial 1-800-GOOG-411 (800-466-4411) from any telephone.  You tell the system the city and state, followed by either a business name or category, such as pizza or movies.  Once a match is found, you can automatically be connected to the number, get more details such as the address, or receive a SMS with the results.  The best part, it's free!

Personally, I don't use telephone based directory assistance much anymore.  However there are times when I don't have access to a web browser, and then Google's 411 is an excellent alternative.  So, give it a try and if you like it add it to your cell phone's address book.  And don't forget the less than tech savvy people in your lives, such as spouses, parents, and your favorite aunt.

Links: http://www.google.com/goog411/

I started today with Doug Hennig's session Best Practices for Vertical Application Development.  Although I had attended this same session previously at the 2006 Great Lakes Great Database Workshop conference, I still managed to learn some new things.  If you missed this session I have a couple of book recommendations of my own.  Check out "Eric Sink on the Business of Software" by none other than Eric Sink.  And finally "Micro-ISV: From Vision to Reality" by Bob Walsh.

My last session was Marcia Akins QuickBooks Automation.  Marcia did an amazing job of demonstrating of how to get started with the QuickBooks COM component.  I especially liked all of the "gotcha" warnings.

In summary, I had a really good time at Southwest Fox this year.  It was good to see some old friends, make some new ones, and learn new ways to use my favorite development tool - Visual FoxPro.

My first session of the day was Christof Wollenhaupt's Using CVS and Subversion with VFP.  Since I have only used Microsoft's Visual Source Safe and Sourcegear's Fortress, I was curious as to how CVS compared.  It is definitely something I would consider using in the future.  Christof also showed a utility he wrote to convert Visual FoxPro files into XML files before checking them into Source Code Control.  The utility also has the ability to convert the XML files back to binary files - very cool!  For those who are interested, you can download the TwoFox utility from his website at http://foxpert.com.

The next session was Craig Boyd's The Power of Regular Expressions.  I must admit that I never tried Regular Expressions before because they looked so complicated.  However, after Craig's presentation I've come to realize that they really are not that bad once you know the basics.  Of course it helps that Craig did an awesome job of explaining what how to read and write regular expressions, how to use them, and provided plenty of good real world examples.

Following lunch I attended Steve Sawyer's Basic Marketing for Custom Business Software Services session.  Steve had some very interesting ideas on marketing and networking.  He also recommended another book for the reading list - Rain Making: The Professional's Guide to Attracting New Clients by Ford Harding.

After that I went to Whil Hentzen's So You've Inherited an Application. Now What?  A lot of this session was geared towards custom software development shops with some good general programming ideas mixed in.  For example, when you are working on a project - don't end your day by stopping at the end of the module/class you were working on.  Try to stop somewhere in the middle and document what you had left to do.  The next day you'll find that you are able to get into the zone much faster.

Day 2 began with Steve Sawyer presenting a session on Software Project Management.  During the past couple of years I've taken more of an interest in the business side of software development, therefore this session was something I was really looking forward to.  Steve did a good job of explaining what a project manager is, and just as important, is not.  One key point that I got from the session was that project management requires a lot of diplomacy when they take the role of a liaison between customers and technical people.  Steve also recommended a book by Thomas Friedman, "The World is Flat".  I'll have to add that to my reading list.

My next session was Michael Hogan's 254 Fields in that Table?  This presentation addressed the problem where you need to store different fields for each record in a table.  For example, an Items table contains a record for Shoes and a record for Blenders.  Each Shoe item has a Brand, Color, and Size attribute.  Whereas each Blender item has a Brand, Motor Speed, and Watts attribute.  He demonstrated several common solutions such as a single flat table, many related tables, a generic attribute table, and using embedded XML.  Michael discussed the pros and cons of each solution, with last one being the best overall solution.

My third session was Christof Wollenhaupt's Introduction to COM.  This session discussed the history COM, what makes it so cool.  He also offered an excellent rebuttal to the argument that COM is dead and went on to provide evidence to the contrary.  A real highlight of this session is a function he wrote that can be used to load DLLs without registering them first!

After lunch, I attended Whil Hentzen's session Introduction to Client-Server Using VFP and MySQL.  One of the topics he discusses is the problem of loading MySQL on a development machine.  It is easy to be misled by the performance since the data is "local".  I though about this and wondered if running MySQL in a virtual environment, such as VirtualPC or VMWare, would address that issue.  If this topic was something you missed, I would suggest checking out Whil's book "MySQL Client-Server Apps with Visual FoxPro" at Hentzenwerke.  Having read the book and attended the session, I would say that the book covers what he presented and more.

Following that I went to Christof Wollenhaupt's session On the Dark Side of FoxPro.  This session explained a lot about how Visual FoxPro works internally.  He discussed data sessions, object creation, variables, memory management, tables and indexes, Rushmore optimization, and so much more.  This is one of those times when you don't want the presentation to end because you are learning so much.

My last session of the day was Doug Hennig's Developing Visual FoxPro Applications for Windows Vista.  Doug did an excellent job of explaining what has changed in Vista, how it affects application development and deployment, and what we need to do for our applications to run on Vista.  One of Doug's comments was something to the effect that Vista is not going to go away anytime soon - so we might as well get used to it.

Day 1 began with Michael Hogan's pre-conference session No Boundaries: Visual FoxPro Web Applications.  Michael did a great job of explaining the differences between web applications and desktop applications; and the advantages/disadvantages of both.  I especially liked the way he demonstrated "statelessness" using audience participation.  In addition he showed us some of his deployed solutions and took us for a tour behind the scenes.  If you want to get started in web applications, this session was a great way to begin.

After a quick dinner break, it was time for the Keynote.  I'll skip most of the details and jump straight to the cool stuff.

First, Christof Wollenhaupt demonstrated his Guineu project.  Guineu is an alternative runtime that allows a Visual FoxPro application to run on multiple platforms (Windows, Pocket PC, and Linux) without any modifications to the code.  Guineu is currently in development, but it still looks very promising.

Next, Toni Feltman demonstrated a couple of eTechnologia's developer tools.  The first tool was .NET Extender.  It provides the ability to use any of the .NET classes (including controls) in Visual FoxPro.  The second item was VFPCompiler for .NET.  This tool compiles Visual FoxPro forms and classes (SCX, VCX, and PRG) into pure .NET IL Managed Code.  Both of these tools are currently in alpha stage.

Finally, Alan Stevens and Craig Boyd demonstrated something they called "VFP Studio 2008".  It uses something that will be new in Visual Studio called the "isolated shell".  I wish I could explain more, however due to the time constraints they were not able to provide a whole of details.  So, I'm just going to leave it at that for now.  Hopefully Craig will be able to talk more about it on his blog at Sweet Potato Software.