This chapter has introduced you to the Microsoft Foundation Class Library by building a data model for a name and phone number program. You have seen how to derive a data class from CObject and to override functions for serialization and debugging output. You have also seen how to derive a collection class to manage a list of CPerson objects.
This chapter also showed how to write a simple program to test the features of the data model classes. This test program showed how to use the Microsoft Foundation file and archive classes.
Because CPerson and CPersonList are data model classes, they cannot display themselves or interact with the user. CPerson and CPersonList are designed to be used by a user-interface class that can get input from a user and send output back to the user. How this interaction is implemented depends on the target operating environment of the final program. For example, the user-interface implementations will be very different for a program designed to run in a text-only environment versus a program designed to run under Microsoft Windows.
After a chapter devoted to the fundamentals of Windows programming with the Microsoft Foundation Class Library, the tutorial continues with three chapters that show you how to put a Windows user interface on the data model.