TOPIC: Visual FoxPro forum

We have added a Visual FoxPro forum in the Subscribers section.
Some existing topics have been moved to this new forum.

Robert

Hi all,
I am Johan Nel from South Africa. My Xbase career started off in Dbase III+ way back in 1986. In 1987 I discovered Clipper Summer 87, and here I am due to that root. Clipper 5.0 came along and we were happy with the implemented crude version of "OpenSource". The XBase commands were demystified and we all knew exactly what was called under the hood to make USE (DbCloseArea), USE <dbf> (DbUseArea), etc. happen, and the first Classes was part of the language e.g. TBrowse and we all oTB:Skip[ping]() happily through our DBF data interface implementations. The Class implementation details was published and soon we were quite Class(y) with our OOP Clipper programs. Life was good...

During the the last NT-Clipper DevCon (1992) in SA, we saw the first of Aspen, codename for Clipper for Windows. Then a bombshell was dropped... MicroSoft purchases FoxPro... We should not be worried, Nantucket will keep on supporting Clipper and ensure it stays ahead of the Xbase pack... Computer Associates CA-Clipper 5.3 TechniCon was held the following year... It seems we safe... Then the industry started changing, Delphi came along, Visual-Basic, MS-Access and CA-Visual Objects were a nightmare to work with. I stuck it out with Clipper till 2000 when I finally moved to VO 2.3, the newsgroups indicated it is stable. Robert came along on the Development team when CA licensed VO maintenance to Grafx, it became almost like the Clipper days, except we did not had any conferences anymore... Only a few Clipper heads left in SA. I kept my loyalty, went onto Vulcan.NET (2009) and here I am, a X# developer with reasonable knowledge of Xbase programming in .NET.

When the announcement was made that X# will start working on support for the FoxPro language syntax, I started a "self" initiated project browsing the VFP forums and tell them there is hope... It worked, I have a community "DevTeam" going, we transfer our knowledge (VFP<->X#), write small applications to hopefully assist VFP users to make a transition as smooth as possible. A small team dedicated to make X# work with first hand knowledge of VFP and X#.

So when you reach this forum and read these messages. Know we are here to support you with our knowledge base of VFP and X#. Make use of it, and soon you will be able to provide support in the X# Core (general) forums.

A warm and happy welcome to all VFP members joining, I am sure you will feel the warmth we always had.

Happy X#ing the XBase.NET wave!

Hi there,
Dave Crozier here, long time developer and thank you Johan for making the Profox group aware of this project's existence and advances.

My XBase experience dates back to DBASE II around 1980 on Apple and IBM PC's from where I moved on to Foxplus, Foxbase+, Clipper (all versions) as well as a very brief but not impressed period with Visual Objects before moving on to Foxpro V3 and all the subsequent versions.

I did monitor the Alaska software Xbase projects but have concentrated most of my time on Visual Foxpro 9 which is still a great product and runs quick and fast ... like a fox as well as development in C# using Microsoft Studio products.

My, how your project seems to be progressing and in the right direction I may say so I am very interested on all fronts as the amount of legacy code we have here is immense (in excess of 5 million lines).

Thanks for the invite and best of luck to you all and the project!
Dave Crozier

Hi Dave,

dcrozier wrote: Hi there,
Dave Crozier here, long time developer and thank you Johan for making the Profox group aware of this project's existence and advances. Thanks for the invite and best of luck to you all and the project!

Welcome and thank you for the nice words.
I am sure we will talk a lot in the future on the forums. Please do not hesitate to ask if you unsure about anything. Hope to see you "testing" some X# code!

I'll try and introduce more of the Profox group members and hopefully build a thriving community.

Dave

dcrozier wrote: I'll try and introduce more of the Profox group members and hopefully build a thriving community.

Thank you, I can't wait! And I suspect Matt Slay too... He feels a bit lonely here

If you have some time, you welcome to request permission to join our little community project assisting the DevTeam to speed up the VFP language support.

Johan,
I'd love too. how do I do that?

Dave

Hello, and I'm very pleased to be here ....

I came here via Foxite with a prety similar story - Late 80's DBase - Foxbase - FoxPro DOS - VFP 9 , and still developing daily using VFP 9 with MS-SQL Data, yes, even today in 2019 !
Having little to no experience with anythng else I'm unsure how this journey will unfold/end - The time has now come for me to move some apps forward in a bigish way and I've been looking at Lianja and Alaska - My problem (I Think) is not only the App side , but I use the command window everyday to manipulate data and have done for 30 years and I'm not at all sure if I'm going to be able to do that with anything other than VFP - then there is the APP develolpment journey too. (I'm as worried there)
I strip data appart with small programs on the fly, I can do this with a vast array of VFP functions, this is all very much a changing dynamic and I have to expect the unexpected. It's so quick and simple with VFP

Given that I can't evaluate this at the moment, I can't work out if XSharp is my best option - I really want it to be - that's the issue - I can't find anything else for sure

I would be only to glad to contribute via the FOX Program but I think I need a dialogue as to what I can expect in terms of my command window work, I mean am I barking up the wrong tree?

If anybody can help me with this I would be most grateful

Many Thanks

Phillip

Hi Phillip,

CharlieDenver wrote: Hello, and I'm very pleased to be here ....

Welcome, I am sure just been here already mean something. We will gladly assist.

I came here via Foxite with a prety similar story - Late 80's DBase - Foxbase - FoxPro DOS - VFP 9 , and still developing daily using VFP 9 with MS-SQL Data, yes, even today in 2019 !

A lot of us are using SqlServer as backend, so please feel free to share some of your code and we will assist in making the migration.

Having little to no experience with anything else I'm unsure how this journey will unfold/end - The time has now come for me to move some apps forward in a bigish way and I've been looking at Lianja and Alaska - My problem (I Think) is not only the App side , but I use the command window everyday to manipulate data and have done for 30 years and I'm not at all sure if I'm going to be able to do that with anything other than VFP - then there is the APP development journey too. (I'm as worried there)

We here to help. If we as community cannot help, we have the DevTeam backing us up. You will see a lot of messages of Robert/Chris jumping in (they are people just like us and are really helpful. You have an almost direct line to the developers themselves).

I strip data apart with small programs on the fly, I can do this with a vast array of VFP functions, this is all very much a changing dynamic and I have to expect the unexpected. It's so quick and simple with VFP

I am quite comfortable that you will see those same dynamics in X#.

Given that I can't evaluate this at the moment, I can't work out if XSharp is my best option - I really want it to be - that's the issue - I can't find anything else for sure. I would be only to glad to contribute via the FOX Program but I think I need a dialogue as to what I can expect in terms of my command window work, I mean am I barking up the wrong tree?

No you not barking up the wrong tree, we will assist where we can. Just give us some examples and we will give you the necessary guidance.

If anybody can help me with this I would be most grateful

Give us your scenario and I am sure we will come up with a plan.
Welcome aboard and happy X#ing the XBase.NET world!

Welcome!
FTR, you don't need FOX to evaluate anything. The subscription gives you access to compiler source, (no humble human never will need that ) and direct support from dev. All else is open.
So, go ahead!
And, if it feels right, you certainly might join FOX to help raising the money dev needs to continue and improve X#!

Karl

Hello again and many thanks for replying

The reason I wasn't sure about the evaluation was I'm not sure how far along the developers are with the VFP implementation. I guess the issue for me in the short term is the command line

Not sure if this is the best place for the following post but I'd be glad to start a new thread if it's appropriate

As a scenario, I receive data and I need to do a quick assesment of it, it's usually a mess. I'll use some functions to import it into DBF's then I'll browse the data and quickly clean it up a bit, then we'll do a quick match with other data and then if it checks out we'll run it through the system to bring it in to SQL, but it's that initial stage that I can't do without - and I'm concerned that one day VFP will no longer work ? and I use it a lot because it's quick and easy.

This is just an example of my last hour typing and I call 2 functios which I've also detailed - I don't need to know detail, but I would like to know if I could still work in this way to get a quick job done using x# , in a command line way and if so a leg up into that environment so I can start to work with x# in that way (I hope that makes sense)

I've attached a txt file with this information for reference
Look forward to some views about this and maybe help with an initial direction to take

Phillip

Hi Phillip,

CharlieDenver wrote: Hello again and many thanks for replying
The reason I wasn't sure about the evaluation was I'm not sure how far along the developers are with the VFP implementation. I guess the issue for me in the short term is the command line
Not sure if this is the best place for the following post but I'd be glad to start a new thread if it's appropriate

Can you maybe just tell us in what format do you receive the data? CSV/ etc.?

Hi Johan
Usually XLSX, but can be SDF, CSV any format really, and never a defined structure for these add hoc files
If it's data we get regulary from one source we write procedures, (that's all ok), it's these one off data files that I need to work with in the command line - I won't get away from that need - Once I get get that data I assess it and work with it ad hoc, then I format it if we need to load it into our system routines - this is very much about understanding if I can work ad hoc as per the sample.txt, - I can develop these elements but first off I need to know if I can manipulate data like I can in the VFP command window - there I am at home and can control data quickly - once I establish if I can do this as effectivley with say x# I can really get my teeth into it.

Hi Phillip,
Have a look at xsi.exe.
I am not really an expert on it, but this might be something to look at. It is found in the XSharp\bin folder

Here is a link to at least give you some background information as a start.

If you just do a xsi search from the top of the page, you will find some forum messages regarding xsi.

This one probably a good first read

Thanks very much that was really helpful