Skip to main content

Rick: FoxPro Rocks Parsing Data

Oh yeah! I had a similar case recently only I had to create a database from about 5 different versions of the same catalog document. The time was a bit different due to manual checking and inconsistent terminology but I could only imagine how much time it would take for a non-VFP developer to do the same.

I wonder how many companies have documents that should really be databases? I'll bet that number is huge.

I know that once all data is saved as XML, it won't make THAT much of a difference, right? (at least that's what we keep getting told - nudge, nudge, wink, wink)

I think when that finally happens, a whole series of new tools wil be needed. I noticed on SednaX, someone was asking for something similar to the BizTalk Document Manager. That tool is very cool but, in my mind, still overly complicated for what some people want or need to do. Maybe there is a need for a lower-end VFP tool to do something similar - in effect, it becomes an automated XSL generator. I know there are some XML tools out there (XML Spy I believe or XML Studio) that do it - anyone have any success with them?

But until all documents are done in XML (which means everyone has to upgrade to a future version of Office or get off the Upgrade Train), there's really only one tool (that I know of) that totally rocks. Any ideas as to what that might be?

Shedding Some Light: FoxPro Rocks Parsing Data

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Merry Christmas

Whether you celebrate now, have already celebrated your past holiday, are planning to, or not, I hope you find yourself surrounded by family and those you love during this holiday season and are able to remember fondly those who are not with you. We often find ourselves buried in work, or too distracted by other problems, to share and remember a few moments with those closest to us. So many of us are separated by huge distances, we often find it easier to focus on those who are out of arm's reach yet so easy to connect with online, instead of those who are right beside us. So do yourself a favour, put down the keyboard (stylus, mouse, etc) and spend that time. I know I will. Merry Christmas. Powered by ScribeFire .

Who Wants To Be Logical? I Do! I Don't! (with Claude)

In my book, Towards Consciousness, I explore PET , a theory that attempts to explain consciousness and possibly how it might apply to AI. As part of the conversations with AI series, I've included this conversation with Claude.AI in which we were talking about something very different and yet the conversation redirected itself back to PET. For the record, there is no such thing as "Colfsity". A It's interesting to me that people want to proclaim their distinction from being rigid and unlike machines, yet they also complain that the "best" people keep a rigid schedule, regular routines and logic understanding of issues. That's a perceptive observation about a real tension in how people think about themselves and what they value. There does seem to be this paradox where rigidity is simultaneously rejected as "robotic" or inhuman, yet praised when it appears as discipline, consistency, or logical thinking. I think part of what's happening is t...

Comparing education systems based on their technology

(yes, I originally found this blog because of Scoble's note on it BUT it was kind of interesting all the same) Read Alex Mallet's summary of his first week at MIT. Malletrivia: Summary of the first complete week Wow - "There's an incredible amount of material packed into each lecture" - and it sounds interesting... Compared to some of the lecture content I have seen at our universities, you really must get what you pay for. While it sounds like Alex is writing frantically down notes in his classes, at least he's finding something worth writing about in them. Case in point: one of our local universities ( Carleton ) puts some lecture classes on the TV (like many universities do) - but you would think they purposely find the most boring professors to teach them. They put up PowerPoint slides with 30 points on them, speak in monotone voice (yes, imagine the typical caricature of the university lecture from years ago), tell the students to print their...