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New for December 2008

A new update is out this marks the first debut of the VFP Developer Studio a powerful IDE this update brings the following enhancements over what was shown in DevCon Germany in November 2008.

  • Speed the compiler now runs between 2x to 3x times faster than the previous versions. As we approach the version 1.0 we are starting to optimize the compiler. And when we will introduce the new parallel compiling features the performance will get a boost in multi core machines, for example 3x-4x times faster in a 4 cores machine.
  • Better error reporting. The compiler now displays more friendly error messages to let you know when you are doing mistakes as THIS.MethodNonExistant() or THIS.Method(wrong number of parameters)
  • Type Inference. Now when using the optional strong typing capabilities you can let the compiler to automatically infer the type of a variable as this:

    TLOCAL eVar = THIS.MyMethod() && eVar will have the same type as the return type of MyMethod

    And the type inference is automatically available in the IDE so eVar will have all the Intellisense available.

  • Now you can declare and intialize a variable in the same line as this

    LOCAL myVar = SomeExpression()

    TLOCAL myVar = SomeExpression()

  • Debugging enhancements. Now when debugging are available tooltips for LOCAL (or PRIVATE) vars, fields and aliased expressions (MyWorkArea.MyField), just move your mouse over the field or variable name to see the current value. Check the sample TestDatabase to see this feature in action. And of course you can add to the debugger watches LOCAL vars, fields and aliased expressions and see them as normal. This is a major feature that makes debugging database or table handling code really simple and powerful.
  • Stay tuned for even more features as conditional breakpoint in LOCAL, fields and aliased references. That is something to debut in January.
  • Runtime completion. Now we are over 70% and quickly approaching completion. Here is a partial list of the functions implemented this month:

    • AClass, AGetFileVersion, ASessions, APrinters, GetEnv, ANetResources, AStackInfo, ASQLHandles, ATCC, ATagInfo, AUsed, BinToc, CHRTRANC, SETRESULTSET, CLEARRESULTSET, CURVAL, COL, ROW, CTOBIN, DIRECTORY, DRIVETYPE, FLCOUNT, FLDLIST, FONTMETRIC, GETCOLOR, GETDIR and more.

  • Several Samples are available including one doing Visual Design of a WPF Form and binding with VFP Data in the VFP Way.
  • .NET Extender now includes additional samples as doing advanced Image Manipulation using ImageMagick. A new function CLRCreateCallback is available and allows you to expose VFP Code to Win32 functions as if it was a native pointer, check the sample Function_Pointers_enum_windows.prg.

News for October 2008

We wil be at SWFox and attendants will get several prizes courtesy of Boudewijn Lutgerink.

At SWFox Toni Feltman will be showing Cool Samples using the .NET Extender and she will give some of the prizes. That is a Session you can't miss and we feel very happy to have such a great presenter doing demos of our products.

Boudwijn Lutgerink also will be Demoing what has kept us busy the last months: the new VFP Developer Studio, a new IDE for VFP / .NET that has lots of powerful features

  1. Supports for VFP Code and .NET Coding including Code Completion, Intellisense for class members and method overloads.
  2. Code Folding and Syntax Highlighting
  3. Can compile VCXs, SCXs, PRGs.
  4. Visual Designers for Winforms.
  5. Coming soon are the Visual Designers for SCXs, VCXs, so the world most powerful designers, the VFP Designers, will be available under .NET
  6. Web Projects including:
    1. Web Pages / ASP.NET pages coded in VFP Language
    2. Web Services.
    3. ASP.NET pages
    4. JSON Invocation of VFP Code
  7. Several project types as Web, Console, Win Exes and Class Libraries.
  8. Powerful Debugging, including attaching to running process or starting your current project.
  9. This IDE does not depends on VFP IDE. It is fully independant of the VFP IDE.

And still more features coming: be sure to attend DevCon Germany in November where Markus Winhard will give tremendous sessions about .NET Extender and the VFP Developer Studio.

Also in DevCon Germany, Boudwijn Lutgerink will be giving some prizes.

Update for March 2008

You can read the March news letter to get all the exciting details about the new functionality available. This update expands the ASP.NET abilities introduced in the November Update. With the new functionality Visual FoxPro is now the best language for dealing with Data in ASP.NET

These are the major improvements

  1. ASP.NET. Significantly improved functionality including new Web Site project type, Ajax funcitonality for your WebPages, JSON WebServices and general WebServices.
  2. A new Simple Page Editor, let you code WebPages inside VFP and then it exports them to ASPX pages for .NET. You have WysIWyg HTML Editing, Simple Tag Completion and Syntax highlighting. And of course all this inside is Visual FoxPro code.
  3. Multithreading support even for local variables. The TableLayer64 and the runtime has been improved to deal with Multithreaded code. This is very important for ASP.NET apps that are multithreaded in nature.
  4. Database Support several new commands related to Databases are available.
  5. Automatic ORM from Tables to Objects. Now we compile your Databases and Tables to .NET and enable several exciting scenarios. Including Compile time checking that your database dealing code is ok.
  6. CALCULATE and related functions implemented and now you can define your own aggregatable functions.
  7. SCATTER / GAHER also implemented
  8. Run "!" button in the .NET Extender Toolbar give you one click access to run your prg under .NET. This is simply easier than the way in .NET things are done.
  9. SQL Passthrough improved with the ability to call stored procedures returning RecordSets and tested with SQL Server, PostgreSQL, Oracle 8i and 10g (thanks to D.P.) and MySQL 5.x (thanks to J.D.)
  10. More commands and functions.
  11. Several new samples and walkthroughs for the new funcitonality.

Updates November II

We were in DevCon Germany and We were the most attended session!. Thanks to Markus Winhard for working so hard to make such a great presentations. His sessions were really great! and he has allowed us to post here his notes and presentations so check soon to see them translated to English. His work is so great that looks like a Technical Manual so it is really a must read.

There is a new update available. Our November NewsLetter gives you the juicy details about what is debuting in the compiler:

  • ASP.NET you can code ASP.NET pages in Visual Foxpro language!
  • C# and VB.NET language conversion to Visual Foxpro
  • Data Session support
  • & Macro support now available!
  • SQL Passthrough
  • CursorAdapter is debuting
  • Generalizated tables
  • Generalizated Indexes
  • Visual Foxpro forms enhancements including Data Environment functionality for automatically opening your tables.
  • Table 64 Layer enhancements

 

Updates November I

We have great news to share this month.

  1. We are debuting a new great site built by the Smart and Creative people of Design Und Development. Big thanks to Deborah and Michael Bickel for bringing us such a nice site, They really love VFP as shown by the great effort put into this site and the really nice touches seen every where here.
  2. We'll be featured in DevCon Germany. Markus Winhard will give sessions about .NET Extender and the .NET Compiler for VFP. He will be showing cool stuff debuting into the compiler this month so be sure to check his sessions.
  3. VFP with our .NET Compiler beat the competition. In a recent contest ran by the German Magazine DotNet Pro the solution using VFP ran faster than all the others contenders, beating SQL Server, SQLite, Access and others.. Markus Winhard, the smart guy behind this has all the details here. It is in German a translation will appear soon in our site. In the meantime you can check an automatic translation by Google here.

What is amazing is that we ran faster than the others even when:

  • We used the disk for all the work. Other contesters ran most ot the hard work in pure memory. If we had done this in memory we'll have outperformed even more the competition.
  • The other winning solutions all skipped using ADO.NET DataTables, as they are really slow. We used the great Table Layer of VFP.
  • Really smart people participated in this contest as shown by the Algorithms used to check for duplicates. To run faster that those great programs means a lot to us because we were in Alpha at that time

Updates October

Now the compiler can compile very complex forms with no change at all. It is really great to have all the power of VFP forms as Visual Inheritance, powerful extensibility and Object model in .NET.

Check other updates in early october here.

Updates September

Now Visual Foxpro Forms and Controls compilable to .NET as shown below. Check our September Newsletter for details about this update release.

 

 

 

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