Juan Calcagno 's Blog

VFP Studio 2009 (...?)

jlc@jlcconsulting.com (Juan Calcagno) — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 22:42:46 GMT

I stumbled upon this link recently:

http://netcave.org/SpeakingAtMemphisDayOfNet2007.aspx

which took me to:
http://www.vfpstudio.com

People's going to start wondering what is this very soon.

Or not.

IE7 Rc1 Rss Api and VFP: IT'S ALIVE!

jlc@jlcconsulting.com (Juan Calcagno) — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 18:48:54 GMT

I should've posted this earlier, but I’ve been running into some health issues lately that precluded me from doing it.

I was wrong when I said before that the RSS API (events interface) was not working with VFP; as a matter of fact, Alan Griver indicated in my previous post that he had it working and was about to do a presentation with it, so to me that was the confirmation of my previous suspicions, i.e., that I was not using the right code.

Using the correct events interface invocation “made the trick” to make it work.

There is still an outstanding issue that I have to figure out: I get the same error described in previous posts that pops up after I try to download several feeds individually, I have a couple of things in mind that I am going to try.

Here’s a sample of the code that will allow you to see on the VFP screen the RSS activity and also record it to a csv file for later review in a table format (for example you could use these 2 lines of code

CREATE TABLE feedslog (Occurred t,EventMess c(150),FeedPath c(200),FeedOldpat c(200),ItemCount n(9),ErrorNo n(9))

APPEND FROM FeedEventsLog.CSV TYPE csv):

* RSS Events

CLEAR

#DEFINE FES_ALL 0

#DEFINE FES_SELF_ONLY 1

#DEFINE FES_SELF_AND_CHILDREN_ONLY 2

#DEFINE FEM_FOLDEREVENTS 0x00000001

#DEFINE FEM_FEEDEVENTS 0x00000002

PUBLIC FeedErrors

DIMENSION FeedErrors(13,2)

FeedErrors(1,1)= 0

FeedErrors(1,2)= "OK"

FeedErrors(2,1)= 1

FeedErrors(2,2)= "DOWNLOAD FAILED"

FeedErrors(3,1)= 2

FeedErrors(3,2)= "INVALID FEED FORMAT"

FeedErrors(4,1)= 3

FeedErrors(4,2)= "NORMALIZATION FAILED"

FeedErrors(5,1)= 4

FeedErrors(5,2)= "PERSISTENCE FAILED"

FeedErrors(6,1)= 5

FeedErrors(6,2)= "DOWNLOAD BLOCKED"

FeedErrors(7,1)= 6

FeedErrors(7,2)= "CANCELED"

FeedErrors(8,1)= 7

FeedErrors(8,2)= "UNSUPPORTED AUTHENTICATION"

FeedErrors(9,1)= 8

FeedErrors(9,2)= "BACKGROUND DOWNLOAD DISABLED"

FeedErrors(10,1)= 9

FeedErrors(10,2)= "Feed Does NOT EXIST"

FeedErrors(11,1)= 10

FeedErrors(11,2)= "UNSUPPORTED MSXML"

FeedErrors(12,1)= 11

FeedErrors(12,2)= "UNSUPPORTED DTD"

FeedErrors(13,1)= 12

FeedErrors(13,2)= "DOWNLOAD SIZE LIMIT EXCEEDED"

oFeedMgr = NEWOBJECT("Microsoft.FeedsManager")

oRootFolder = oFeedMgr.RootFolder

oFeeds=oRootFolder.Feeds

x=NEWOBJECT("myFolderEvents")

IF EVENTHANDLER(oRootFolder.GetWatcher(FES_SELF_AND_CHILDREN_ONLY ,FEM_FEEDEVENTS ),x)

Wait window nowait "Feeds Interface Instantiated!"

ELSE

Wait window nowait "Feeds Interface Instantiation FAILED!"

ENDIF

RETURN

DEFINE CLASS myFolderEvents AS session OLEPUBLIC

IMPLEMENTS IFeedFolderEvents IN "c:\windows\system32\msfeeds.dll"

PROCEDURE IFeedFolderEvents_Error() AS VOID;

HELPSTRING "Occurs when a feed folder event error occurs."

* add user code here

EventsLogger("Folder Event Error","")

ENDPROC

PROCEDURE IFeedFolderEvents_FolderAdded( Path AS STRING) AS VOID;

HELPSTRING "Occurs when a folder or subfolder is added."

* add user code here

EventsLogger("Folder "+PATH+" Added",PATH)

ENDPROC

PROCEDURE IFeedFolderEvents_FolderDeleted( Path AS STRING) AS VOID;

HELPSTRING "Occurs when a folder or subfolder is removed."

* add user code here

EventsLogger("Folder/subfolder "+PATH+"removed.",PATH)

ENDPROC

PROCEDURE IFeedFolderEvents_FolderRenamed(Path AS STRING, oldPath AS STRING) AS VOID;

HELPSTRING "Occurs when a folder or subfolder is renamed."

* add user code here

EventsLogger("Folder/subfolder "+oldPath+ " RENAMED to "+PATH,PATH,oldPath)

ENDPROC

PROCEDURE IFeedFolderEvents_FolderMovedFrom(Path AS STRING, oldPath AS STRING) AS VOID;

HELPSTRING "Occurs when a folder or subfolder is moved from this folder."

* add user code here

EventsLogger("Folder/subfolder MOVED FROM "+oldPath+" to "+PATH,PATH,oldPAth)

ENDPROC

PROCEDURE IFeedFolderEvents_FolderMovedTo(Path AS STRING, oldPath AS STRING) AS VOID;

HELPSTRING "Occurs when a folder or subfolder is moved to this folder."

* add user code here

EventsLogger("Folder/subfolder "+oldPath+" MOVED TO "+PATH,PATH,oldPAth)

ENDPROC

PROCEDURE IFeedFolderEvents_FolderItemCountChanged(Path AS STRING, itemCountType AS Number) AS VOID;

HELPSTRING "Occurs when the aggregated item count of a feed folder changes."

* add user code here

EventsLogger("Folder ITEM COUNT for Folder "+PATH+" Changed to "+ALLTRIM(STR(itemCountType)),PATH,,itemCountType)

ENDPROC

PROCEDURE IFeedFolderEvents_FeedAdded( Path AS STRING) AS VOID;

HELPSTRING "Occurs when a feed is added to the folder."

* add user code here

EventsLogger("Feed "+PATH+" Added",PATH)

ENDPROC

PROCEDURE IFeedFolderEvents_FeedDeleted( Path AS STRING) AS VOID;

HELPSTRING "Occurs when a feed is deleted from the folder."

* add user code here

EventsLogger("Feed "+PATH+" Deleted",PATH)

ENDPROC

PROCEDURE IFeedFolderEvents_FeedRenamed(Path AS STRING, oldPath AS STRING) AS VOID;

HELPSTRING "Occurs when a feed is renamed."

* add user code here

EventsLogger("Feed "+PATH+" Renamed",PATH)

ENDPROC

PROCEDURE IFeedFolderEvents_FeedUrlChanged( Path AS STRING) AS VOID;

HELPSTRING "Occurs when the URL of a feed is changed."

* add user code here

EventsLogger("Feed "+PATH+" URL Changed",PATH)

ENDPROC

PROCEDURE IFeedFolderEvents_FeedMovedFrom(Path AS STRING, oldPath AS STRING) AS VOID;

HELPSTRING "Occurs when a feed is moved from this folder."

* add user code here

EventsLogger("Feed MOVED FROM "+oldPath+" TO "+PATH, PATH, oldpath )

ENDPROC

PROCEDURE IFeedFolderEvents_FeedMovedTo(Path AS STRING, oldPath AS STRING) AS VOID;

HELPSTRING "Occurs when a feed is moved to this folder."

* add user code here

EventsLogger("Feed MOVED TO "+oldPath+" FROM "+PATH, PATH, oldpath )

ENDPROC

PROCEDURE IFeedFolderEvents_FeedDownloading( Path AS STRING) AS VOID;

HELPSTRING "Occurs when a feed starts to download."

* add user code here

EventsLogger("Feed Download "+PATH+" STARTS",PATH)

ENDPROC

PROCEDURE IFeedFolderEvents_FeedDownloadCompleted( Path AS STRING, Error AS VARIANT) AS VOID;

HELPSTRING "Occurs when a feed has finished or failed downloading."

* add user code here

lcErrorMessage=FeedErrors(ASCAN(FeedErrors,Error)+1)

EventsLogger("Feed "+PATH+" Download "+IIF(error=0,"FINISHED ","FAILED "+lcErrorMessage),PATH,,,Error)

ENDPROC

PROCEDURE IFeedFolderEvents_FeedItemCountChanged(Path AS STRING, itemCountType AS Number) AS VOID;

HELPSTRING "Occurs when the item count of a feed changed."

* add user code here

EventsLogger("Feed "+PATH+" ITEM COUNT Changed to "+ALLTRIM(STR(itemCountType)),PATH,,itemCountType)

ENDPROC

ENDDEFINE

**********************

PROCEDURE eventslogger

**********************

LPARAMETERS tcEventMEssage, tcPAth,tcOldPath,tnItemCountType, tErr

lcLogMessage=TTOC(DATETIME())+[,]+;

tcEventMEssage+[,]+;

tcPath+[,]+;

IIF(VARTYPE(tcOldPath)=[L],[],tcOldPath)+[,]+;

IIF(VARTYPE(tnItemCountType)=[L],[],ALLTRIM(STR(tnItemCountType)))+[,]+;

IIF(VARTYPE(tErr)=[L],[],ALLTRIM(STR(tErr)))

?lcLogMessage

STRTOFILE(lcLogMessage+CHR(13),"FeedEventsLog.CSV",1)

RETURN .t.

[UPDATED 10-02-06] I've added 2 flash videos of about 3 mins each showing this code working on XP SP2 and Vista RC1.

IE7 RC1: RSS API still not working with Visual Foxpro.

jlc@jlcconsulting.com (Juan Calcagno) — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 19:22:02 GMT

Despite what has been said before, nothing has changed, the same issues are still there.

Just to be on the safe side, I will continue to investigate whether I am using the correct code which, except for a property name that changed, it is pretty much the same as published before.

Great News: IE7 RSS API now supports events within Visual Foxpro

jlc@jlcconsulting.com (Juan Calcagno) — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 22:27:10 GMT

Here's a follow up responding to the overwhelming demand of my previous posts <g>:

I've just received the following notice from msconn

Entered by Microsoft on 7/26/2006 at 11:24 AM

We have fixed the problem of events in Visual FoxPro in a build post Beta 3. You should be seeing this fix in a future public release.
-Walter [MSFT]

Cheers.

Juan Calcagno
Certified MS Believer

Woohoo, my issues report to IE7 beta 2 was responded!!!

jlc@jlcconsulting.com (Juan Calcagno) — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 18:10:19 GMT

I am a non-believer, let me tell ya.

Yes, I don't know when, but I became one at some point.

Not related to religion (or the lack of one) though and not a genetics issue either I think; the way I was raised, my mom and dad gave me the best education a son could have, I was given everything that's needed to be a double Nobel prizewinner in Physics and Peace just to give you an example.

Who knows, maybe the software world I am in made me the way I am these days.

If you've read my latest posts, you know I've been trying to use the RSS COM platform in IE 7 to create an RSS reader in Visual Foxpro, but haven't been succesful because, among other issues, it is not possible to bind RSS events from VFP.

Calvin Hsia found a solution, but his example is for cases that EVENTHANDLER can already address fine. He left as an exercise for the reader to figure out how to bind events for other COM platforms that don't quite work with EVENTHANDLER, indicating that following his example shouldn't be hard to figure it out.
Calvin, please believe me, IT IS.

OK, it's not that bad if you are good at C++, Assembly, x86 machine code and VFP.
But I'm not planning to learn 3 of those 4 languages at least in my next 7 lives.

Craig Boyd thanked Calvin because based on his example he found a solution to make RSS COM platform work with VFP. But Craig never posted his solution, although Calvin ceded him the honor to do so.

See? This is the kind of attitude that made me a non-believer. <g>

(read the thread at http://blogs.msdn.com/calvin_hsia/archive/2006/06/14/631604.aspx#634605)

A while back Andrew MacNeill suggested me to post the issues at the IE7 beta feedback MS web site, which I did with the same hope one buys a ticket for the big jackpot of the state lottery.

For the reasons exposed, I was in shock when I've got a response from the IE7 team that I'd like to share below.

Here's an excerpt from the email I received from the MS Connect Team,

There are 4 issues:

1. unable to bind to RSS events: We have repro'ed it and are investigating the cause.

2. Download/update/refresh issue: We are unable to repro the hang after 4 downloads. Would it be possible to provide download logs created with http://fiddlertool.com ? It will create a snapshot of http traffic and will hopefully help us understand the issue better.

3. The feed view doesn't update when the feed is refreshed in the background. This is by design since there are cases where users would "loose" their read/unread state and the scroll position on the page if the page would automatically refresh.

4. Unable to delete feeds: This issue should be fixed in IE7 Beta 3. In previous releases an application could hold on to the Feed COM object and thereby preventing another application from deleting the feed. In Beta 3 we changed to an optimistic locking model allowing applications to delete feeds even if another app has the feed open.

Not bad for a non-believer huh?
Cheers from yours truly,

JLC.
Certified Non Believer

Ah! one more thing, Craig Boyd, if you are planning to conquer the world with VFP, in addition to need loyal soldiers, you will have to feed them as well...<g>

*This is the file MS feedback requested in item 2 testingie7.zip (355.88 KB)

Windows RSS Platform + VFP not quite possible (yet?).

jlc@jlcconsulting.com (Juan Calcagno) — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 22:37:37 GMT

Code-wise speaking, I haven’t done big improvements since my previous post on this matter. But I’ve spent a considerable amount of time to figure out that this technology is not ready for Foxpro, if it will ever be.

I’ll go directly to the point:

With the new Internet Explorer 7 (Beta 2) we also get the RSS Platform (in ways of a DLL file @ c:\windows\system32\msfeeds.dll).

Yes, you need to install this Beta if you want to test the code posted here.

If you have concerns about replacing your beloved IE 6 installation, shall I say then that you can always uninstall?

Once you’ve got IE7 Beta2 installed, all you need to do from the command window:

The Feeds ‘property’, holds all of your subscribed feeds collection, following the example from the picture above, the following code will print all those feeds names:

oFeedManager=NEWOBJECT("Microsoft.FeedsManager")

oRootFolder=oFeedManager.RootFolder

oAllMyFeeds=oRootFolder.Feeds

FOR EACH oCurrFeed in oAllMyFeeds

?oCurrFeed.name

The RSS API has been well documented at http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/feedsapi/rss/overviews/msfeeds_ovw.asp , take a look at it to learn more about how this API is structured and the usage for the different methods, properties and events that are available.

Sorry, did I say ‘events’? Well ignore that for the Foxpro scenario, as you’ll read in the “Issues, issues....” section of this post, RSS events don’t work in VFP.

My approach: a goodwill attempt.

Here’s a very simple form rssreader.zip (8.24 KB), don't expect it to be bullet proof, but it will allow you to add feeds and see their contents, as well as to get an idea of the potential.

This example uses a Treeview control to populate the feeds, a microsoft web browser control to show the Feed entries in html format, and eventually if you are connected to the internet, click on 'show web' checkbox to see the blog entry directly from the original.

Remember the 'download issue' I referred to in this post "ISSUES ", so you don't get frustrated on me, I am just the messenger.

My design is far from what I would like, but from a VFP perspective, this API’s state-of-the-art does not deserve more efforts from my side until I get a clear sign that it will work seamlessly.

For the reasons exposed, I can’t justify building a wrapper class for the API to make all the functionality reusable with other controls than the Treeview, but for the most part, the code (form) I built is a good sample of the potential for a good part of what the API allows FoxPro to do.

It is a pity indeed because, being able to see from VFP the same RSS info that our current IE7 installation sees, it would open a great potential for our FoxPro applications.

You may think why bother building another news aggregator, but I am thinking more about interchanging information between different systems rather than anything else, if you know what I mean.

Maybe for RSS functionality from VFP we will have to implement it ourselves via NET4COM or like YAG commented in my previous post, SEDNA’s MY will take care of it.

ISSUES, ISSUES ….

Implementing Interfaces: I wasn’t able to implement interfaces (read the details below), this is a huge constraint. Not being able to listen and respond to folder or feed events makes it a nonstarter to use this API for serious development from VFP.

Download/Update/Refresh: There’s something wrong with either the API implementation of the Feed Download Engine, or the Engine itself.

I haven’t been able to download more than 4 Feeds in a row without the API becoming non responsive and stalling Foxpro, to finally get an ole error message. In order to see this behavior you may have to leave the Foxpro session alone for several minutes, i.e., 20 or more.

Want to try this? If you use my example form, you’ll notice that whenever you click on the Feed (parent treeview element) it will ask you to perform a download.

In case you answer YES, the download should be a quick process, 1 or 2 seconds, and you should have inmediate access to the item, i.e., you click on a entry and you see the html page.

If this isn't the case, it mens that VFP is still waiting a response from the API, in the meantime, you will be able to click on other areas of the form except for the rest of the foxpro development environment, until an ole error pops up:

Internet Explorer 7 (Beta2) does not update automatically:

IE7 itself does not refresh its screen automatically when new feed items are created unless you F5 or click on the Feed Entry. In some cases, even doing so would not update items on a feed until you manually refresh it (right click-context menu option), try subscribing to any feed from Craigslist.org to see the results in 5 minutes.

Delete Feeds: Deleting a feed programmatically is available as a method but not possible, an error pops up claiming that the feed is in use by another process and can’t be accessed:

You have to use IE 7 Feed Manager to delete a feed instead.

Deleting a feed item does work though.

ADDENDUM

Implementing Interfaces Issues Detailed.

Please, bear with me on these 3 steps:

1. Open Object Browser and ‘browse’ for c:\windows\system32\msfeeds.dll.

2. Expand the Interfaces branch,

3. Drag and drop the IFeedFolder interface inside an empty .prg.

This is the message I’ve got invariably when dragging and dropping from the object browser

By ignoring the error a couple of times, finally you’ll get the code, but still it will error when you run it.

This line (automatically generated by the previously described process),

IMPLEMENTS IFeedFolder IN "Feeds.FeedWatcher"

, needs to be replaced manually by this other line

IMPLEMENTS IFeedFolder IN "msfeeds.dll"

(To me this is one more clue indicating there’s something wrong.)

So, with these modifications, at least the class code runs, but it fails when trying to establish the link between the two classes, event and Feed, as shown in the following code:

oFeedMgr = NEWOBJECT("Microsoft.FeedsManager")

oRootFolder = oFeedMgr.RootFolder

oFeeds=oRootFolder.Feeds

oFeed1=oFeeds.Item(1)

x=NEWOBJECT("myclass")

IF !VARTYPE(x)=="O"

MESSAGEBOX("Couldn't create class x")

ENDIF

WAIT WINDOW IIF(EVENTHANDLER(oFeed1,x),"Event Handler succesful","Event Handler Failed")

DEFINE CLASS myclass AS session OLEPUBLIC

IMPLEMENTS IFeedFolder IN "msfeeds.dll"

PROCEDURE IFeedFolder_get_Feeds() AS VARIANT;

HELPSTRING "Retrieves the collection of feeds in this folder."

* add user code here

ENDPROC

PROCEDURE IFeedFolder_get_Subfolders() AS VARIANT;

HELPSTRING "Retrieves the collection of subfolders in this folder."

* add user code here

ENDPROC

PROCEDURE IFeedFolder_CreateFeed(name AS STRING, url AS STRING) AS VARIANT;

HELPSTRING "Creates a new RSS feed, and subscribes to it."

* add user code here

ENDPROC

PROCEDURE IFeedFolder_CreateSubfolder(name AS STRING) AS VARIANT;

HELPSTRING "Creates a new subfolder in the folder."

* add user code here

ENDPROC

PROCEDURE IFeedFolder_ExistsFeed(name AS STRING) AS LOGICAL;

HELPSTRING "Checks if a feed exists."

* add user code here

ENDPROC

PROCEDURE IFeedFolder_GetFeed(name AS STRING) AS VARIANT;

HELPSTRING "Retrieves a feed by its name."

* add user code here

ENDPROC

PROCEDURE IFeedFolder_ExistsSubfolder(name AS STRING) AS LOGICAL;

HELPSTRING "Checks if a subfolder exists."

* add user code here

ENDPROC

PROCEDURE IFeedFolder_GetSubfolder(name AS STRING) AS VARIANT;

HELPSTRING "Retrieves a subfolder by its name."

* add user code here

ENDPROC

PROCEDURE IFeedFolder_Delete() AS VOID;

HELPSTRING "Deletes this folder and all of its contents."

* add user code here

ENDPROC

PROCEDURE IFeedFolder_get_name() AS STRING;

HELPSTRING "Retrieves the name of the current folder."

* add user code here

ENDPROC

PROCEDURE IFeedFolder_Rename(name AS STRING) AS VOID;

HELPSTRING "Renames the folder."

* add user code here

ENDPROC

PROCEDURE IFeedFolder_get_path() AS STRING;

HELPSTRING "Retrieves the path of the current folder."

* add user code here

ENDPROC

PROCEDURE IFeedFolder_Move(newParentPath AS STRING) AS VOID;

HELPSTRING "Moves the feed folder to a new location."

* add user code here

ENDPROC

PROCEDURE IFeedFolder_get_Parent() AS VARIANT;

HELPSTRING "Retrieves the parent of the current feed folder."

* add user code here

ENDPROC

PROCEDURE IFeedFolder_get_IsRoot() AS LOGICAL;

HELPSTRING "Checks to see whether the current folder is the root folder."

* add user code here

ENDPROC

PROCEDURE IFeedFolder_get_TotalUnreadItemCount() AS Number;

HELPSTRING "Retrieves the total (aggregated) number of unread items."

* add user code here

ENDPROC

PROCEDURE IFeedFolder_get_TotalItemCount() AS Number;

HELPSTRING "Retrieves the total (aggregated) number of items."

* add user code here

ENDPROC

PROCEDURE IFeedFolder_GetWatcher(scope AS VARIANT, mask AS VARIANT) AS VARIANT;

HELPSTRING "Retrieves the appropriate interface for events."

* add user code here

ENDPROC

ENDDEFINE

Getwatcher

Interesting to remark, there is a method FOLDER/FEED .GETWATCHER(par1,par2) that is supposed to return an object reference of an interface for events, despite it executes without errors and returns a vartype reference “O”, in reality is an empty object.

Visual Foxpro RSS Reader ?

jlc@jlcconsulting.com (Juan Calcagno) — Fri, 12 May 2006 15:59:52 GMT

I used to think that blogs were the most idiotic thing in the world. That was not so long ago.

Nowadays I'd rather read blogs that surf web sites. Yes, I am the real idiot.

Who would've thought then, that I would be having fun building a VFP RSS Reader.
I will be posting more as I make progress, but here are a few pictures.

You may want to know from what I've done so far it took me less lines of code with Visual foxpro than with our, ahem rich cousin, .NET.

[Update: forgot to mention that Calvin Hsia has built one also, using a different approach though]

NULL Values And Indexes

jlc@jlcconsulting.com (Juan Calcagno) — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 17:01:10 GMT

I recently run into the problem of not getting the right order for records on a temporary table. This is how data looked when using and index created as follows:

INDEX ON UPPER(company_name)+UPPER(dept_name)+UPPER(EMPLOYEE_LASTNAME)+UPPER(EMPLOYEE_FIRSTNAME) TAG ciadeptemp

COMPANY_NAME,DEPT_NAME,LAST_NAME,FIRST_NAME
Company 1, null,j,c
Company 2, Sales,f,c
Company 1,Tech Support,g,c

What happened? Shouldn't I get all the 'Company 1' records before seeing 'Company 2'? Of course, but that is in case there were not null values in any of the fields that are part of the index key.

In my case, field "dept_name" accepted .null. values so the index key for that record evaluates to .NULL., therefore, appears at the top. This new index key solved it:

INDEX ON UPPER(company_name)+UPPER(IIF(ISNULL(dept_name),space(40),dept_name))+UPPER(EMPLOYEE_LASTNAME)+UPPER(EMPLOYEE_FIRSTNAME) TAG ciadeptemp

Never run into this before, so many years working with VFP but how much I've got to learn yet. Did anybody resolve this in a different way?

Look who's talking...

jlc@jlcconsulting.com (Juan Calcagno) — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 23:15:13 GMT

I remember, a while ago, two famous FoxPro gurus were fighting on what Visual FoxPro was going to be able to do running (if ever possible) on Longhorn and Avalon (now WPF). One of them claimed that the impact of these new technologies was going to be of such magnitude that would leave VFP totally out of the game. The second guru, needles to say, denied this. It was a colorful discussion, both got carried on to a point guru #1 proposed to bet money to show how serious he was.

As guru #2, but for different reasons, I thought #1 was wrong.

These pictures speak by themselves. In case you didn't notice, it's FoxPro 2.6 DOS and VFP 9 running on Windows VISTA (formerly Longhorn) PDC 2005 build. In addition, I was able to run a FoxPro DOS program (built back in 1993) flawlessly without touching a single line of code.

But this means nothing compared to what can be seen in Ken Levy’s Channel9 video, (I recommend the whole video but, for what is worth, the fun starts at minute 21).

Now, is it me or one of these 2 persons proved to be soooo... wrong? I am also wondering what they may think now...

InstallShield Express for Visual Foxpro Woes

jlc@jlcconsulting.com (Juan Calcagno) — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 19:34:50 GMT

A colleague on the UniversalThread reported getting this error when building his setup using InstallShield for Visual Foxpro

Resolving strings...
ISEXP : error -6264: A record in the Property table is using string ID 'ID_STRING1' for column 'Value' but this string is blank and the column is not nullable

I believe this problem is either a bug or corrupted ism file.

Although IS does not store data in SQL database, trying to apply similar concepts, you would agree with me that the program is trying to save a .null. value into a field who does not accept such values; since you can't modify that in IS Express for VFP, the only solution seems to be to fill that entry with some string value.

Open your ism project
Click on plus sign to open "Organize your setup” option branch
Look for every single entry that requires a text entry and make sure there’s a string entered for each one, if not, enter some text, example being, “Publisher/Product URL” needs a string value, and so on.
Rebuild your project, be happy again. If still did not work look into the rest of the project where a string entry is required and do your thing.

It is difficult, if not impossible, with this limited version of IS to determine the offending field by using the description given in the error message 'ID_STRING1'.

You could easily know this however. That is in the case you had the full version of IS Express:

Use the menu option "Project-Export String Table” to create a text file with your project info. Do this at least once before you build the project the first time.
When you get an error, open this text file and look the value reported in the error message to which project option refers
Go back to your ise file and correct only the offending field.

This is how the txt file looks like: