A fast-paced practical course covering the advanced features of VFP.
Designed for experienced VFP developers, this course will help
you create sophisticated applications which take full advantage of
VFP's advanced features. The focus is on integration within the
Windows environment. Client/server, Internet, OOP and user
interface issues are also fully covered.
What you will achieve
At the end of the course, delegates who meet the pre-requisites
will be able to develop sophisticated applications which fully
exploit Visual Foxpro's advanced features. You will also learn how
to work with back-end databases, and how to approach the
development of Internet-based applications.
Pre-Requisites
To benefit from the course, you should have at least six months
experience of developing VFP applications. You should also be
familiar with the topics covered in our Stage 2 course, especially
VFP's OOP features.
Course Contents
Developing client-server applications
- Introduction to client-server concepts and
terminology.
- Using ODBC to connect to back-end databases.
- Remote views vs. SQL pass-through.
- Design issues; optimizing data access.
- The development process: prototyping with local
views.
Extending VFP with the Windows API
- Overview of API functions, calling sequences and data
types.
- Using API calls to extend your application's
functionality.
- Getting information about the Windows
environment.
- Accessing and updating the Windows Registry.
Integrating and communicating with other applications
- Understanding ActiveX Automation, COM and
DCOM.
- Using ActiveX Automation to integrate with Microsoft
Office: the Office object model.
- Sharing documents with Word; using Word for
spell-checking and mail-merge.
- Passing data to and from Excel; calling Excel's workbook
functions.
- Working with registered document types; using
ShellExecute().
- Working with Outlook folders.
- Exploiting the Windows Scripting Host.
- Calling VFP functions from other applications and
languages.
Exploiting ActiveX controls
- Overview of available controls.
- How to acquire, deploy and register controls; dealing
with common problems.
- Some examples of ActiveX controls: date-picker,
tree-view, list-view.
Internet-related features
- Adding a browser to the application.
- Publishing VFP data as static web pages.
- Sending and receiving e-mail from within the
application.
- Using the Internet Transfer Control for FTP and HTTP
transfers.
- Developing web-based VFP applications with
FOXISAPI.
Going further with OOP
- Planning, designing and building a sound class library;
communicating between classes.
- Using polymorphism to simplify class design.
Microsoft Certification
Between them, our Stage 2 and Stage 3 courses cover 80 percent
of the requirements for Exam 70-156 (Visual Foxpro Desktop) and 70
percent of those for Exam 70-155 (Visual Foxpro Distributed). As a
matter of policy, we do no not use official Microsoft course
material. All courses are taught by a Microsoft Certified
Professional, qualified in Visual Foxpro.
