Andrew MacNeill - AKSEL Solutions

Tom Brothers pointed me to a new  project  he's working on:  the successor to his LINQ for VFP work: an VFP entity framework 4.0 provider.  This means using the VFP OLEDB driver, you can easily access FoxPro data in VS 2010 Entity Framework solutions. The project is on  Codeplex  but the post noted here gives full details. Great job, Tom!

It isn't surprising that most FoxPro developers think of one primary tool when version/source control is mentioned: Visual SourceSafe. After all, this was the Microsoft tool that was heavily promoted when version control integration was first promoted in VFP. (I recall YAG and Flash introducing their Multi-User Project Manager for FoxPro which was my first introduction to how to let multiple developers work on the same project, absolutely needing some kind of version control) But if you, like many other VFP developers, were geographically remote, you quickly discovered SourceGear's SourceOffSite , a SourceSafe client that made working remotely fast and easy. SourceGear's founder, Eric Sink , has written on version control for years and SourceGear moved from assisting SourceSafe to Vault , a SQL Server based alternative and additional tools, such as bug-tracking. VFP's integration of source control isn't perfect - most of it due to its use of the DBF/FPT format fo...

Yet another great reason to go to Southwest Fox (coming next month) - Steve Black will be speaking. As Doug says, Steve's sessions are always lively, thought-provoking and entertaining. He's speaking on Techniques and Niche Marketing - two topics he certainly knows well. Southwest still has about 70 openings left (25 of which are discounted) so be sure to book now if you plan on going. Doug Hennig: Steven Black Speaking at Southwest Fox 2011

Microsoft Aligning with ODBC - SQL Server Team Blog - Site Home - TechNet Blogs : As the SQL Team notes: "The next release of Microsoft SQL Server, Code Name “Denali,” will be the last release to support OLE DB. OLE DB will be supported for 7 years from launch, the life of SQL Server Code Name “Denali” support, to allow you a large window of opportunity for change before deprecation. We encourage you to adopt ODBC in any future version or new application development. Making this move to ODBC also drives more clarity for our C/C++ programmers who can now focus their efforts on one API." They forgot to mention "and make all of their efforts over the past few years wasted on supporting a technology that we would eventually kill" Microsoft's promotion of OLE DB over ODBC is similar to their enthusiasm behind WPF and Silverlight. WPF's Browser implementation reminds me of the old ActiveX Document technology - it looks like a Browser but it downloads a W...

You see them advertised and they almost seem like a desperate attempt by companies like Parker Bros and Hasbro to recreate an era gone by: that of the family game night and the board game. In some ways, they have returned. Note the popularity of Games with Friends on iPhone - but many of the games espoused are games that SHOULD rightfully still be popular because they are unpredictable. While everyone who has ever played Monopoly always has a favorite game piece and property, the way the game unfolds is almost always a game of chance. Like playing with a deck of cards, each game is unique. Come forward (or back) to the 80s' and the introduction of Trivial Pursuit. While there are some diehards who would play TP using the board and the little pies, the game evolved into more of a "pull out a card and let's see what you know" type of game. Moving further into the 90s, and you see more of these games. SongBurst (one of my favorites) tests your music ability based on...

I've written about the SQL Transaction log before and since some of my clients don't have some of the great logging tools, I often find myself going back to the select * from ::fn_dblog(NULL,NULL) Recently, at one client, I've come across a bizarre problem that defies easy analysis. The VFP application uses cursor adapters to talk to the SQL Server and in one of the processes, updates one table while adding a record to two other tables. In certain circumstances, the two new records were being added but the update of the other table would not. While I'm still tracking down what is actively going on, I wanted to note some of the interesting aspects of the SQL Log and pose some questions A great post in SQLServerCentral broke down the various operation types but it wasn't clear on others:

When asked about the state of Visual FoxPro, I often point developers to the VFPX site on CodePlex. After all, that's where the majority of VFP source code is and where many members of the VFP community place the most of funkalicious work they do (Jim Nelson continues to amaze with his PEM Editor, which should likely be renamed IDE/X, because he's now covering far more than just Projects, Events and Methods.) But there are OTHER places to find great VFP Code. Foxite continues to get posts with very cool samples and there are other codeplex sites as well. But recently, I was looking for ways to work with VFP Data in .Net and came across: LINQ to VFP Yep! Tom Brothers has built an iQueryable toolkit for FoxPro. Started in 2009, the latest version was updated on January 9th, 2011.  FoxPro VFP