OzFox 2007 Kicks off in Sydney

I'm sitting in the keynote of OzFox, Australia's FoxPro Conference. Craig's kicking things off and is about to introduce Rick Schummer and Doug Hennig. The keynote's called "The Future of VFP", and here are my raw notes from the session.

The future of VFP

• Service Pack 2
• Sedna
• VFPx
• Other CodePlex Projects

Service Pack 2

• Currently in CTP
• New components in the VFP core
• Bug Fixes
• Vista Compatibility
• Reporting Enhancements

Sedna

• Extensions to functionality (xBase tools)
• Data Explorer Enhancements
  • Bug Fixes
  • Improvements
  • SQL ShowPlan - RunQuery Dialog like SQL Query Analyser, ShowPlan also works with views
  • Options Dialog
  • Integrates with Upsizing Wizard
  • Will ship with source code in XSource
• NET4COM
  • Library of COM classes wrapping some of the .NET FX
  • Includes .NET Source Code and Samples
• DBi Technologies' components
  • Generous donation of commercial controls to all VFP developers who use Sedna
    • ctTray
    • ctDEdit
    • ctContact
    • ctToolBar
    • ctListBar
    • ctDays
    • ctDropMenu
  • https://www.dbi-tech.com/VisualFoxProSednaCommunity.asp
• My
  • Emulates My Namespace in VB2005
  • Provides discoverable, easy-to-use classes
  • Extendible with your own classes using included builder
  • Documentation!
• Upsizing Wizard enhancements
  • Updated UI, streamlined steps
  • More connection choices
  • Performance improvements
  • Better upsizing
    • Handles empty dates
    • Trims characters going to VarChar
  • Can run as engine with no UI
• Vista Toolkit
  • Currently considered for Inclusion (and in the CTP)
    • MSFeeds (RSS store)
    • Desktop Search
      • OLEDB Provider to Windows Desktop Search
      • Great testbed app from Craig Boyd
    • New Common Dialogs
      • Great testbed app from Craig Boyd
  • What about the following?
    • XAML
      • Nice demo of XAML rendering in a VFP form
    • XPS Listenter
• Other Components
• Some of these available now as CTP

VFPx

• Community project to extend VFP
• Available on CodePlex from https://www.codeplex.com/Wiki/View.aspx?ProjectName=VFPX
• Currently 11 projects including
  • GDIPlusX
  • Desktop Alerts
  • Outlook 2003 Bar
  • Code Analyst
  • Ctl32 Status Bar and Scrolling Container

Other CodePlex Projects

• ActiveVFP - Framework for putting VFP on the web
• MTMyVFP - Multi-threading VFP classes
• VFPWebCrawler - Project to crawl and index web sites.