Deploying Visual Foxpro Solutions

Ship it! Music to your ears or words that cause a cold sweat as you realize you now need to deploy the solution you have worked on for so long? Have you planned the deployment? Do you have the proper language in your contract with your customer? Do you have the proper install package? What media is the package going to be shipped on to the client? How will it be distributed? What happens after Setup.exe finishes? Do you have the support infrastructure in place? How are you going to handle updates and changes? There's a lot to think about, and deploying a solution requires careful planning. These questions and many more are answered based on real world experience within the pages of this book.

Visual FoxPro has long been the perfect front end for client-server applications. Featuring a robust programming language, a full-featured IDE, and a powerful object model, rich client development has always been a joy. Inside, a native local data engine, integrated hooks into binding with remote data, and Rushmore technology make VFP your secret weapon when connecting to SQL back-ends. MySQL is the world's most popular open source SQL database, running on Windows, Linux, and Macintosh platforms. Version 5 incorporates big-iron features like stored procedures and transactions. These features, together with the royalty free runtime model of VFP and the open source licensing of MySQL make client-server applications built with these tools the most powerful and economical combination on the planet. And this book is the only one that shows you specifically how to install, configure, and connect MySQL and VFP, as well as build a variety of client-server user interfaces with VFP. Together with dozens of discussions of real world problems and potential solutions, you won't find a better guide to MySQL and VFP client-server development.

Annotation Acknowledging that getting a handle on the new features of a development environment is difficult, the tips in this guide organize the new features of Visual FoxPro 9 into functional categories, revealing how and why to use each of them. Visual FoxPro 9 features improvements in many areas, for example, the Report Designer, which include multiple detail bands; built-in output to HTML, XML, and image files; object protection; an improved userinterface; extendible Report Designer; extendible run-time features; and GDI+ rendering.

If you're simply curious about what .NET offers, this book provides a strong overview of the .NET Framework and the C# and Visual Basic .NET languages, helping you to assess these new technologies through the lens of Visual FoxPro. If you're already "sold" and are ready to learn specifics about how to use .NET in your software development projects, this book provides plenty of "how to", "step-by-step" and "best practices" information that will help you climb the .NET learning curve and get up and running quickly.

As a new developer, you might think that certification is out of your reach, or not know where to begin your preparation, or how far you have to go to reach your goal. This study guide will assist you in efficient, focused VFP certification exam preparation. Covers both the Desktop and Distributed exams in one book!

So what's new in Visual FoxPro 8.0? Lots of things! New base classes, including CursorAdapter, Collection, and XMLAdapter. Powerful new tools, including the Toolbox, Task Pane Manager, and Code References. Structured error handling featuring the new TRY ... CATCH ... ENDTRY structure. Improvements in the database engine, including SQL enhancements, a View Designer that actually works, and an updated OLE DB provider. The list goes on and on. What's New in Visual FoxPro 8 organizes the new features into functional categories and shows you how and why to use each of them.

This book will therefore serve as both an introductory title and an in-depth reference that will grow with the reader as they begin to create their own Web Services. They will come to understand what Web Services are, where they fit into the 'big picture' and will have many coding examples to choose from within the first five chapters. As they begin to "get serious" about developing enterprise level Web Services, they will be able to refer back to the detailed information about the classes that implement Web Services and come to a deeper understanding of what is happening behind the scenes.