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March 2004 - Posts

Thanks a lot, Roy (by yag)

Roy Osherove just posted a blog entry about database projects. He ends his entry with “Very nice.” Just wanted to thank you, Roy - I passed on your entry to the team here. Always nice to get the occasional kudos. <g> D'oh! Jackie just Read More...
Posted Wednesday, March 31, 2004 6:41 PM by vsdata | 1 Comments
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Word games with phone numbers: 1-800-RESULTS (by CalvinH)

My boss forwarded me this blog which is a programming puzzle challenge: given a phone number, try to create a mnemonic, like 800-776-4726 is 800-PROGRAM He knows that I’ve been writing word games on computers for years: I decoded a spelling dictionary Read More...
Posted Wednesday, March 31, 2004 5:19 PM by vsdata | 16 Comments
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Having problems with your VS 2005 Community Tech Preview? (by yag)

Rick Strahl had some problems with his Tech Preview - it killed ASP.NET and the IIS Management Console. Now, this hasn't happened to everyone (in the blogs I've been checking, most people have been fine), but if it happens to you, we've worked out the Read More...
Posted Tuesday, March 30, 2004 11:37 PM by vsdata | 5 Comments
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Too much time on his hands... (by yag)

I just came across this - and had to post it. Some things just tickle that geek funny bone - y'know? Anyway, it's a SQL Script for an analog clock . <g> Here are the results on my machine: AnalogClock ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Read More...
Posted Tuesday, March 30, 2004 11:26 PM by vsdata | 0 Comments
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Consulting in Hell (by John Koziol)

Sometime sitting around with experienced consultants and developers you hear some interesting stories on less-than-optimal situations they were placed in when coding or implementing a solution. An associate of mine years ago told me about racing to complete Read More...
Posted Monday, March 29, 2004 6:35 PM by vsdata | 2 Comments

Experience-rated development (by John Koziol)

Before Microsoft made the mistake of actually hiring me (heh), I worked as a vendor to the company for the VFP 6 certification tests. The test teams always debated what could reasonably be expected knowledge of a developer. You see, at that time the concept Read More...
Posted Monday, March 29, 2004 1:39 AM by vsdata | 9 Comments

Late night thoughts on customer care (by yag)

Before I came to Microsoft, I ran a consulting firm called Flash Creative Management with my partner, David Blumenthal. One of our first projects was to find software for a department of a large publishing company. The person in charge of the department Read More...
Posted Sunday, March 28, 2004 1:47 AM by vsdata | 0 Comments
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VS 2005 Community Tech Preview (by yag)

As Robert Green notes on his blog , the first Tech Preview for VS 2005 was given out this week at VSLive . I'm really psyched about these previews because I think that they'll help to make our software better and our beta cycle shorter. Why? One purpose Read More...
Posted Wednesday, March 24, 2004 3:03 PM by vsdata | 0 Comments

VFP user group follow up (by yag)

Just wanted to say thanks to the great folks at BAADD and the South Bay Visual Foxpro User Group for hosting me last Thursday night in Mountain View, CA. It was a lot of fun – I “threw away” my powerpoint slides and did a couple of hours Read More...
Posted Saturday, March 20, 2004 11:57 AM by vsdata | 2 Comments
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Solving a customer problem (by Calvinh)

VFP hosting ActiveX control made with Visual Studio 2003 on Win98 The other day, one of our support engineers, Brad Peterson, came into my office and described a problem to me and asked for my help. A customer has an ActiveX control that had been working Read More...
Posted Thursday, March 18, 2004 4:07 PM by vsdata | 12 Comments
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A volcanic community eruption (by Ken Levy)

To add to what yag says in his entry below about community. Ricardo Wenger can also be listed among those names for contributing significantly to the improved community activity at Microsoft (internally and externally). Ricardo is the former group manager Read More...
Posted Wednesday, March 17, 2004 4:57 PM by vsdata | 2 Comments
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Community, community, community - or one reason I love working here (by yag)

Just wanted to point to an awesome post by Josh (yo, Josh – it’s Alan or Yair or yag, not Alen <g>). Ken Levy and I were interviewed today for Scoble’s “Channel 9” – and we got into a bit of a discussion of community Read More...
Posted Tuesday, March 16, 2004 10:34 PM by vsdata | 7 Comments
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Preparing SQL Statements (by yag)

I was involved in an email thread this week about optimization and a discussion of the ability to prepare SQL statements (as ADO, ADO.NET and Fox all let you do) before running them came up. There is an on going misconception about prepare. There are Read More...
Posted Tuesday, March 16, 2004 6:23 PM by vsdata | 4 Comments

More On VFP and Windows XP XP2 NX ... Samples and What-not (by John Koziol)

For background information, please refer to my prior post on this topic. Also, there's an excellent paper on advanced COM and VFP in particular, located at http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnfoxgen7/html/vfpandcom.asp As Read More...
Posted Monday, March 15, 2004 4:16 PM by vsdata | 3 Comments

Creating Tablet PC Applications with Visual FoxPro (by Mike Stewart)

Learn how to use the Tablet PC Platform SDK to capture digital ink, recognize handwriting in Visual FoxPro applications, handle events raised by Tablet PC controls, and persist ink to files. We've tested extensively with VFP 8.0 and Tablet PCs to make Read More...
Posted Friday, March 12, 2004 8:57 AM by vsdata | 2 Comments
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"Getting Things Done" blog (by yag)

A while ago, I wrote about the David Allen seminar “Getting Things Done” that I took here at Microsoft. Well, after some prompting by Scoble , Jason Womack now has a blog. Subscribed. Read More...
Posted Thursday, March 11, 2004 10:19 PM by vsdata | 1 Comments
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API usability (by yag)

Earlier I mentioned that Paul Vick is on a Roll . I’ve gotta say that Steven Clarke rocks. He’s been doing a killer set of blog entries on the cognitive dimensions framework used to help determine API usability. He posted another today . The Read More...
Posted Wednesday, March 10, 2004 7:10 PM by vsdata | 0 Comments
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Explaining the MSDE Workload Governor (by yag)

Here's another useful thing for you MSDE users. People are often confused by the workload governor in MSDE - they think that MSDE is limited in number of users. This whitepaper explains how the governor actually works - and shows how things scale in MSDE Read More...
Posted Wednesday, March 10, 2004 12:13 AM by vsdata | 5 Comments
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Working on the VFP 9.0 product box (by Ken Levy)

I've been in meetings and on email threads this past week kicking off the process within Microsoft to create the new product (branding, packaging, rebates, etc) for Visual FoxPro 9.0. We are thinking of including a screen shot on the back of the box this Read More...
Posted Tuesday, March 09, 2004 7:21 PM by vsdata | 8 Comments
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Visual FoxPro and Windows XP SP2 (by John Koziol)

There have been some questions in the VFP community about what issues there are with Visual FoxPro applications under Windows XP SP2. At this time, we're still testing but we do know some basic information. Basically, the vast majority of applications Read More...
Posted Tuesday, March 09, 2004 3:28 PM by vsdata | 9 Comments

March letter on MSDN VFP web site (by Ken Levy)

OK, here is my first blog entry on the new VS Data weblog. Entering my first blog entry reminds me of a line from a movie called What About Bob with Bill Murray, but instead of saying “I'm sailing“, I'll now say “Hey, I'm blogging! I'm Read More...
Posted Monday, March 08, 2004 6:03 PM by vsdata | 6 Comments
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Newsgator addons rock! (by yag)

Like many others, I use Newsgator as my news aggregator – allowing me to use Outlook for all my reading. Thanks to a post by KC Lemson, I went to Greg Reinacker’s blog and found how to move some of the posts to my smartphone. One Newsgator Read More...
Posted Monday, March 08, 2004 5:42 PM by vsdata | 1 Comments
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VFP9 SQL Enhancements (by yag)

I was reading the Universal Thread (one of the many great 3 rd party sites I go through every week) and came across a question by Kevin Goff who wanted to know more about the SQL enhancements coming in Visual FoxPro 9. In addition to the information that Read More...
Posted Sunday, March 07, 2004 12:25 PM by vsdata | 2 Comments
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Light weight SQL Server/MSDE administrator (by yag)

I realized I forgot to post this when we started the blog... The SQL Server Web Data Administrator is available for free download. It's a light weight, web-based administration tool for SQL Server or MSDE databases. I've heard from many of you over the Read More...
Posted Sunday, March 07, 2004 12:00 PM by vsdata | 11 Comments
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Paul Vick's book is here! (by yag)

Paul Vick's book The Visual Basic .NET Programming Language is available from online sources, and should be in your local store soon. Paul's one of the key language designers on the VB team here, and I've had the pleasure of working with him on a number Read More...
Posted Sunday, March 07, 2004 11:47 AM by vsdata | 0 Comments
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Keeping your inbox empty (by yag)

Scoble asks “how do you deal with a huge amount of mail”? Like him, I took David Allen's course at Microsoft around 18 months ago. It spread like wildfire around the VB team (I was a Lead PM there at the time) and Chris Dias (I think it was Read More...
Posted Friday, March 05, 2004 12:09 AM by vsdata | 3 Comments
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The Future of Data Modeling in VS & SQL Server! (by Tim Laverty)

Michael Raheem (from the SQL Server Group) and I just posted a survey in regards to data modeling to public newsgroups. If you're interested in the future of data modeling in VS and the SQL Server tools, please read on... Are you using a Data Modeling Read More...
Posted Thursday, March 04, 2004 12:55 PM by vsdata | 2 Comments
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ASP.NET Security (by yag)

Julia Lerman is posting a bunch of messages on security . She's an old friend, and yes, Julia, I promise to make it out there one day... <g> Read More...
Posted Thursday, March 04, 2004 6:17 AM by vsdata | 1 Comments
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Douglas Adams (by yag)

Darien posted an article about Douglas Adams and his Hitchhiker’s Guide series today and it got me thinking about the time I was lucky enough to be invited over to his house in Santa Barbara for dinner. It was one of the most enjoyable dinners of Read More...
Posted Wednesday, March 03, 2004 4:38 PM by vsdata | 2 Comments
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Calvin, Monkeys, Tolstoy and Shakespeare (by yag)

Calvin Hsia is the lead developer on Visual FoxPro and is always coming up with interesting bits of example code. It usually starts with the two of us together and him saying “back when I was in college…” <g> Anyway, today we were Read More...
Posted Wednesday, March 03, 2004 4:26 PM by vsdata | 1 Comments
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Paul Vick is on a roll... (by yag)

Paul has another great post that discusses the decision making process when designing a language. In this one, he talks about the VB Is operator . Read More...
Posted Monday, March 01, 2004 6:43 PM by vsdata | 1 Comments
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