Refactoring: VFP form calls external PRG, uses Publics for shared data

I’ve inherited another legacy VFP application and am updating a routine to use a new format required by my client’s customer. There is a VFP form that eventually calls a program to gather, format, and export relevant data. One of the first things I need to do is change the form and program so their code can be independently tested. Once that’s accomplished, I’ll change the routines to generate the new format.

The question is, as always with this common situation is whether to pull the code into a “blob” method in the form and change all variables to properties, or call the program from the form with parameters. I realized my usual inclination is to use the former because eventually I would be binding the form properties to properties on future business classes that I’d create down the road. It’s odd how I’ll suddenly think of a usual problem in a different light. This is a routine that’s run four times a year, the new format is needed soon, and the client wants to begin planning for a new application to replace this one. Visual FoxPro will probably not be the tool of choice, so there is no reason to build the Queen Mary when a dinghy will get us across the narrow inlet just fine.

Can you tell I’m prone to make everything into A Work Of Art? Maybe I’m changing after all.

Using, or not, Windows File and Folder Encryption

Recently, I found out the easy way, thankfully, that there is a critical reason for not using Windows file and folder encryption. The files and folders will be unavailable if the drive on which they reside is moved to another computer!

I had to revive my previous laptop in order to run an old version of software incompatible with Windows 7. I felt inordinately smug that 1) I hadn’t yet cleaned and dumped the laptop, and 2) I use a removable hard drive for many of the tools my two laptops would need to share.

Luckily I was only stuck slightly when, on-site at a new client’s, I couldn’t get to information I wanted to use from the removable drive. The files had been encrypted on the drive while connected to the other laptop.

I say luckily, because, while searching for a work around (or reality check) I read posts from people who found out only when a computer had died and they installed the old drive in a new system. Yikes.

I expect this may seem obvious to some of you. It wasn’t to me. And it effectively kills any reason whatsoever to use it. Indeed, I’d go so far as to call it a danger.

I haven’t settled on an alternative, so if you have a personal favorite, I’d like to hear about it. And if I’ve just missed the work around, I’d be pleased to hear about that, too.

A plea to bloggers and tutorial authors–especially Microsoft

Please, please, please date your writing and include the versions of the products you’re writing about. Make it very obvious. It’s not helpful to find a tutorial that doesn’t include the version information, only to find that it doesn’t still apply, has been superseded, works differently, or needs, oh, say, updated namespaces and project references. I’m looking at you Visual Studio 2010 Prism and MVVM and MVC.

Visual Studio LightSwitch Beta 2 Training Kit

I’m just now downloading the Microsoft LightSwitch Beta 2 Training Pack. I’m looking forward to checking it out.

Between a rock and a hard place: Visual Studio 2010 service pack and LightSwitch

I wrote the following last week, but had to postpone publishing to work on something else. I’ll leave it intact, but conclude with an update that makes the rant only partially relevant.

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Trying to use Visual Studio 2010 for developing three new projects over the past 6 months has felt like clawing my way out of a peat bog while wearing concrete overshoes: every step is excruciating and unproductive. I expected it to be a steep learning curve since I was jumping straight from VS.NET 1.1 to Visual Studio 2010. I did not expect to have so much pain just sussing out which combination of techniques and frameworks would be stable and productive. A steep learning curve is one thing: finding brick walls suddenly springing up at every third step is another.