Microsoft Visual FoxPro Version 3.0 High Level Features

• Visual FoxPro for Windows, version 3.0

SUMMARY

Visual FoxPro version 3.0 is the only Xbase product easy enough to be visual and powerful enough to be FoxPro. This article gives you an overview of the benefits and new features in Visual FoxPro.

New Feature Summary

• Rapid Application Development with full object orientation including:

      - Improved event model
      - Data dictionary
  

• Client server capabilities built right into the product.
• Full backwards compatibility.

Professional Edition

The Professional Edition of Visual FoxPro provides the muscle serious developers need to distribute runtime royalty-free executables and to compile Windows-style help systems. In addition, the Professional Edition provides many more development aids to help you build world-class Visual FoxPro solutions.

MORE INFORMATION

Visual FoxPro version 3.0 is a robust, 32-bit Rapid Application Development (RAD) tool with full object orientation and integrated client server capabilities. Visual FoxPro maintains the power synonymous with the FoxPro name and has backwards compatibility with previous versions of FoxPro.

Developer Productivity

Reusing code has never been easier. Visual FoxPro uses the full range of OLE objects and controls and makes it easy to create your own class libraries with inheritance and encapsulation.

Features Summary:

• Full visual object orientation features.
• OLE Automation controller.
• Support for OLE Controls (.OCX files).
• Improved event model, data dictionary.
• Integrated development environment features: Forms Designer, Query Designer, Project Manager.
• Developer oriented Wizards, Builders.
• Visual FoxPro is a mature, stable Windows product with a great third-party community of support, backed by leading PC database vendors.

Although Visual FoxPro lets developers code objects and classes from scratch at the command line, Visual FoxPro is the only Xbase product that allows developers to create classes visually. The Visual Class Designer PowerTool eliminates the need to learn a new development syntax for classes.

With the Visual Class Designer PowerTool, developers can drag and drop controls that are available right from the Controls toolbox such as a table grid control and then attach the Xbase code already familiar to them to drive the control.

Because the object model in Visual FoxPro fully supports inheritance, any changes to the parent class automatically update the class wherever it is reused.

Visual FoxPro also fully supports subclassing, encapsulation and polymorphism.

Visual FoxPro has an Integrated Development Environment (IDE). Visual FoxPro features a Project Manager container interface that graphically allows drag and drop access to the tables, queries, forms, reports, and programs that make up a database or application. It allows you to draw the rules and relationships that make the tables and objects work together.

The Forms Designer allows you to add classes, OLE custom controls, or server objects (for example, Excel) to forms.

Visual FoxPro's new Query Designer interface graphically shows the tables and fields in a query and enables you to use the mouse to add tables, select output fields, and create join conditions.

Visual FoxPro has evolved to a true event-driven model. Now developers can fully access the standard set of Windows-based events such as mouse movements that enable dragging and dropping of objects.

As a result of Customer requests, we added a new data dictionary in Visual FoxPro. In the past, developers spent time writing code to perform basic relational database functions. Visual FoxPro increases productivity by allowing developers to set business rules at the table level. It automatically enforces the rules when the table is used anywhere in the application.

Visual FoxPro is a mature, stable Windows and 32 bit product supported by the PC database industry leader.

Flexibility

Visual FoxPro leverages your investments in code and training while building a solid foundation for the future.

Features Summary:

• Leverages companies' Windows, Windows For Workgroups, and Windows NT systems.
• Will ship in Spring 1995 already fully Windows 95 exploitive.
• Transition from MS-DOS to Windows at your own pace, regardless of whether you're using FoxPro, or dBASE.
• Enables scalability. Visual FoxPro will expand to meet the requirements of the job, from the smallest task to the largest project

Companies can run Visual FoxPro on the Windows, Windows for Workgroups, and Microsoft Windows NT operating systems while preparing for the upcoming Windows 95 operating system. Visual FoxPro is one of the first applications for Windows 95. Solutions developed in Visual FoxPro will be fully 32-bit by default, but will also run on 16-bit Windows-based systems.

Flexible Migration Strategy

Visual FoxPro enables the following three-pronged migration strategy to protect companies' investments in Xbase solutions and training. You can transition to Visual FoxPro at your own pace, regardless of whether you're using FoxPro, or dBASE.

• First, Visual FoxPro runs any legacy application that runs under FoxPro version 2.6. This means that companies can run unchanged existing FoxPro solutions regardless of whether they are written in FoxPro for Windows, FoxPro for MS-DOS, or dBASE for MS-DOS.
• Second, developers can also use the built-in converter to automatically bring FoxPro version 2.x screens and projects to the modeless Visual FoxPro version 3.0 format.
• Third, developers can move gradually to an object oriented programming paradigm if desired by modifying FoxPro version 2.6 code on a property specific basis, thereby learning the new object syntax from the pure coding perspective.

Ease of Data Access

Visual FoxPro helps you integrate all the data in your organization whether it resides in applications, client/server databases, or local data stores.

Features Summary:

• Client/Server capabilities, integration with BackOffice.
• Row and table buffering for improved transaction processing.
• Updatable parameterized views.
• Local and remote views are designed in the same manner, so prototyping locally and upsizing is seamless. Upsizing wizard in Pro Edition.
• Office application integration.

Visual FoxPro will ship with the newest 32-bit ODBC version 2.0 drivers, even in the Standard Edition of the product. These ODBC drivers deliver data to applications from multiple database and file formats, including: Microsoft SQL Server version 4.2; dBASE III and dBASE IV; Microsoft Access versions 1.x and 2.0; Paradox versions 3.x and 4.0; Microsoft Excel versions 3.0, 4.0, and 5.0; and formatted text files. ODBC database drivers are also available today from 140 additional vendors, providing ODBC access for more than 55 database formats. ODBC is available under Windows, Windows for Workgroups and Windows NT.

Visual FoxPro has built-in batch processing capabilities, which are especially beneficial for corporate transaction processing solutions. Visual FoxPro brings snapshots of information from the backend server, allowing users to manipulate it locally. Only when additions or modifications to the data have been made does the user send a snapshot of the updated information back to the server, greatly reducing the network traffic in client server environments. In a multiuser environment where users attempt to make changes to records on the remote server at the same time, Visual FoxPro automatically informs users of incremental changes to the data.

Visual FoxPro also allows users to update live backend data directly from their desktops. Users can create parameterized views, an important factor in building a fast, efficient client server application because these views allow users to minimize the amount of data that is pulled down from the server. Users can, for example, specify guidelines or parameters such as "only customers in the state of California" and then update the live backend data from their Visual FoxPro front end.

Because local views of FoxPro data are designed in the same manner as remote data views with Visual FoxPro's View Designer, developers can easily prototype client server solutions locally, and then upsize them to backend servers. This capability allows developers to fine tune their design efficiently against small sample data stores before adding the additional layer of complexity inherent in working with remote, heterogeneous data.

The upsizing wizard in the Professional Edition automatically adapts data to run on SQL Server backends.

Visual FoxPro integrates well with back-office solutions. Visual FoxPro is 32-bit and has SQL Server for Windows NT connectivity built seamlessly into the product.

Visual FoxPro integrates well with other office applications. FoxPro supports OLE automation and can drive other Windows applications right from FoxPro. OLE support in FoxPro allows in-place editing of an object from another application without leaving FoxPro.

Visual FoxPro uses the same default toolbox used in other Microsoft Office applications such as Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel. Visual FoxPro also uses Microsoft Office features such as full right mouse click support, ToolTips, and menus.

Visual FoxPro also integrates well with Microsoft's other Visual Tools such as Visual C++. For example, OLE controls built into Visual C++ can also be used in Visual FoxPro.

NOTE: Some of the products discussed in this article are manufactured by vendors independent of Microsoft; we make no warranty, implied or otherwise, regarding these products' performance or reliability.