What's New in Visual FoxPro 8. 0

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.

Tamar E. Granor, is the owner of Tomorrow's Solutions, LLC, a software development and consulting firm. She is a Microsoft Certified Professional and a Microsoft Support Most Valuable Professional, served as technical content manager for the 1997–1999 Visual FoxPro DevCons, and was part of the coordination team for the Visual FoxPro excellence awards. She has served as the editor of FoxPro Advisor magazine and is currently the magazine's technical editor and coauthor of the popular “Advisor Answers” column. She is coauthor of Hacker's Guide to Visual FoxPro 7.0, What's New in Visual FoxPro 7.0, and Microsoft Office Automation with Visual FoxPro. Doug Hennig is a partner with Stonefield Systems Group Inc., a software consulting group, and the author of the award-winning Stonefield Database Toolkit. He is the coauthor of What's New in Visual FoxPro 7 and the author of The Visual FoxPro Data Dictionary. He writes the monthly “Reusable Tools” column in FoxTalk and is a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional and Certified Professional. He lives in Regina, Saskatchewan.

Our Contract with You, The Reader	p. iii
Acknowledgements	p. xxi
About the Authors	p. xxiii
How to Download the Files	p. xxv
Introduction	p. 1
Organization	p. 1
Get the picture	p. 2
What about the code?	p. 2
Thrill ride	p. 2
Interactive Development Environment	p. 3
Window Docking	p. 3
Docking windows programmatically	p. 3
Determining what's docked	p. 8
Better keyboard support	p. 11
IntelliSense enhancements	p. 12
Summary	p. 13
The Toolbox	p. 15
Opening the Toolbox	p. 16
Working with the Toolbox	p. 16
Working with categories	p. 17
Working with items	p. 21
Adding items to the Toolbox	p. 21
Setting item properties	p. 24
Using items	p. 26
Setting instance properties	p. 27
Customizing the Toolbox	p. 28
Configuring the Toolbox	p. 29
Determining the behavior of class items	p. 30
Filtering the Toolbox	p. 32
Managing categories	p. 33
Working with the source code	p. 34
Summary	p. 36
Code References	p. 37
Running the Code References tool	p. 37
Searching for strings	p. 39
Examining search results	p. 41
The list of searches	p. 41
The list of matches	p. 43
The description pane	p. 44
Replacing matches	p. 45
Generating output	p. 47
Looking for definitions	p. 50
Code References Options	p. 50
Code References data	p. 53
Customizing Code References	p. 53
The RefAddin table	p. 53
Working with the source code	p. 56
Replacing the supplied application	p. 56
Running the Code References directly	p. 56
Summary	p. 57
The Task Pane Manager	p. 59
Running the Task Pane Manager	p. 59
The Start pane	p. 60
Start pane options	p. 64
The Community pane	p. 65
Community pane options	p. 66
The Environment Manager pane	p. 67
The Solution Samples pane	p. 70
Solution Samples pane options	p. 72
The XML Web Services pane	p. 72
XML Web Services pane options	p. 73
The Filer pane	p. 73
The Minesweeper pane	p. 74
Errors Happen	p. 75
Customizing the Task Pane Manager	p. 76
Working with the source code	p. 78
Extending the Task Pane Manager	p. 79
Adding third-party panes	p. 79
Creating and modifying panes	p. 79
Publishing panes	p. 89
Panes and files	p. 90
Summary	p. 91
Better Tools	p. 93
A working Query/View Designer	p. 93
Getting joins right	p. 93
Two-way editing	p. 96
Specifying local aliases and field names	p. 97
Specifying expressions	p. 98
Where do the results go?	p. 100
Odds and ends	p. 100
Improved reporting	p. 102
Setting report options	p. 102
More control over header and footer	p. 102
Adding captions	p. 103
Page x of y	p. 104
Output issues	p. 104
More data choices	p. 105
More keyboard support	p. 105
Improved Form Designer and Class Designer	p. 105
Support for non-visual classes	p. 105
Method editor changes	p. 106
Property sheet improvements	p. 107
Odds and ends	p. 108
Moving menu items	p. 109
Working with source code	p. 109
Projects and source control	p. 109
Distributing applications	p. 110
Summary	p. 110
Improved Data Access	p. 111
Cursor Adapter PEMs	p. 112
DataSource Type	p. 112
DataSource	p. 112
Alias	p. 112
UseDEDataSource	p. 112
SelectCmd	p. 112
CursorSchema	p. 113
AllowDelete, AllowInsert, AllowUpdate, and SendUpdates	p. 113
KeyFieldList, Tables, UpdateFieldList, and UpdateNameList	p. 113
Cmd, CmdDataSource, *CmdDataSourceType	p. 113
ConversionFunc	p. 113
Other properties	p. 114
CursorFill(IUseCursorSchema, INoData, nOptions, oSource)	p. 114
CursorRefresh()	p. 114
CursorAttach(cAlias, IlnheritCursorProperties) and CursorDetach()	p. 115
Before() and After()	p. 115
Putting CursorAdapter to work	p. 116
DataEnvironment, Form, and other changes	p. 116
Builders	p. 117
Data source specifics	p. 124
Using native data	p. 125
Using ODBC	p. 125
Using ADO	p. 126
Using XML	p. 128
Update Issue	p. 131
Reusable data classes	p. 132
Summary	p. 134
XML Classes	p. 135
XMLAdapter	p. 136
Updategrams versus diffgrams	p. 140
XML Table	p. 141
XML Field	p. 145
Tying it all together	p. 146
XML ToCursor changes	p. 150
Summary	p. 150
Other Data-Related Changes	p. 153
Automatically incrementing field values	p. 153
Improved Table Designer	p. 156
SQL changes	p. 157
Enhanced language elements	p. 160
Caption expressions	p. 160
Data objects	p. 161
Better support for collate sequences	p. 163
Odds and ends	p. 164
OLE DB provider changes	p. 164
ODBC changes	p. 165
Detecting table corruption	p. 169
Other changes	p. 170
Summary	p. 170
OOP Enhancements	p. 173
Defining member classes	p. 173
New base classes	p. 174
A built-in collection class	p. 174
An ultra-lightweight base class	p. 179
Adding and removing properties on the fly	p. 180
Fewer errors with DoDefault	p. 180
Delayed binding	p. 181
Improved performance with objects	p. 182
Support for Windows XP	p. 182
Improved image support	p. 184
Better tooltips and status information	p. 185
Grid enhancements	p. 186
Locking columns	p. 186
Sizing columns to fit	p. 187
A real row highlight	p. 187
Other grid changes	p. 189
Controlling picture position	p. 190
Control tab orientation	p. 190
Odds and ends	p. 191
Keep output off of forms	p. 191
Hyperlinks in controls	p. 192
Combo box improvements	p. 192
Button coloring	p. 192
Refresh methods for static objects	p. 192
More control over moverbar actions	p. 193
One more mouse pointer	p. 193
Summary	p. 194
COM and Web Services Enhancements	p. 195
COM Enhancements	p. 195
Default instancing for EXE servers	p. 195
Type library improvements	p. 195
Byte array support	p. 196
Web services enhancements	p. 196
Registering Web services	p. 197
Exploring Web services	p. 199
Using Web services	p. 202
Publishing Web services	p. 210
Summary	p. 211
Event Binding	p. 213
Binding events	p. 213
Turning off event binding	p. 216
Finding out what's bound	p. 216
Firing events	p. 218
Using event binding	p. 219
Summary	p. 220
Error Handling	p. 221
Structured error handling	p. 222
TRY ... ENDTRY	p. 222
Less is more	p. 225
You can't go back	p. 226
Try, try again	p. 226
Exception object	p. 227
THROW	p. 227
The FINALLY clause	p. 229
Errors within errors	p. 230
Wrap your app	p. 234
Other error-related changes	p. 234
Summary	p. 235
Language Improvements	p. 237
Files and directories	p. 237
Where is it?	p. 237
Working with hidden files	p. 237
Displaying paths	p. 238
Using system dialogs	p. 238
Improved management of text merge	p. 238
Checking for empty values	p. 240
Better output at design time and run time	p. 240
Font control	p. 241
Forcing event processing	p. 243
SYS() function changes	p. 243
Odds and Ends	p. 246
Summary	p. 247
Bits and Pieces	p. 249
What's out	p. 249
What's in	p. 250
Configuration changes	p. 251
Improved error reporting	p. 251
Other changes	p. 252
Summary	p. 253
Setting up SQL Server 2000 XML Access	p. 255
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What's New in Visual FoxPro 8. 0

Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials