My Lunch with Joe Celko

(updated 2/27/04, 7:06am) Anyone that has been doing databases for any length of time knows who Joe Celko is. Last Tuesday night, I was looking at the web site for the local .NET user group, then clicked over to Northface University, their meeting location. I was shocked to see that Joe was a member of the faculty and living right here in Salt Lake City. WOW! What a great speaker for the Fox user group. So, I emailed him. Today, Joe and I had lunch.

We met at Joe's work, Northface University. He wore a black, three-piece suit with a white shirt and black tie. I later learned that the shirt pocket held a plastic pocket protector. Nice to learn he's a true geek. He took me back to his office and showed me his slide rule collection (more evidence of geekness) mounted on the wall and the abacuses from different parts of the world that he has yet to frame and hang. The windowless office was jammed with books and with the desk in one corner there was barely room to walk.

At lunch, I learned much about Joe's life, the work he does and how he ended up in Utah. I told him about my life and work and how I returned to Utah. We talked about people that post stupid questions on newgroups. He asked me about the state of VFP at Microsoft and about Crystal Reports. After all, he's a data guy and rarely peeks over the wall to see what happens with the data. Joe will be presenting at the Fox user group in April.

For those of you who may have never heard about Joe, here's a blurb from his web site,

"Joe Celko joined the ANSI X3H2 Database Standards Committee in 1987 and helped write the ANSI/ISO SQL-89 and SQL-92 standards. He is one of the top SQL experts in the world, writing over 700 articles primarily on SQL and database topics in the computer trade and academic press.

The author of five books on databases and SQL, Joe also contributes his time as a speaker and instructor at universities, trade conferences and local user groups."

When I dropped him off back at his office, he said, "Thanks for a great afternoon." I should thank Joe.

Linker to the Facts

Recently, Joel Spolsky (Joel On Sofware) has been bemoaning the fact that .NET does not include a linker. Last week he said,

Look, I used to be a program manager at Microsoft, and there's a really strong tendency in that culture to treat customer requests as fun intellectual challenges to be fended off like exercises in debating class. But I've been talking to customers since the days of the Visual Basic 1.0 runtime in 1991 -- thirteen years ago! who have been begging for this problem to be addressed. Jason, why don't you go talk to somebody on the FoxPro team. In the late 80s FoxPro clobbered dBase in the market mainly on the strength of the fact that it compiled standalone executables. FoxPro had a linker. xBase developers pleaded with Ashton-Tate, makers of dBase, to develop or acquire a linker, but Ed Esber, reviled CEO of Ashton-Tate, refused to give them one. Learn from your own history. (Thanks to Rick Chapman for reminding me of history repeating itself.)

If you're going to state facts, then state them correctly. No Windows version of FoxPro has ever had a linker. The linker was available in FoxPro DOS and it create a HUGE executable.

Southwest Fox

I've known about this for a few weeks, but now it's official. A new Fox conference has been born to help replace Whilfest. Southwest Fox is scheduled for October in Tempe, Arizona.

VFP 9 Public Beta

In a message to the ProFox mail list, Ken Levy announced that the public beta for VFP 9 (Europa) will be released in June

What is Indigo?

When Windows Longhorn finally ships, it will include a new way for applications to communicate. Gone will be all the COM communications stuff. But, there is more to Indigo than just this. Application Development Trends has a very brief, but excellent overview of Indigo.

Where in the US is, Craig Berntson?

This is kinda cool. You can make a map of what states you've visited. [Garrett Fitzgerald]



create your own visited states map
or write about it on the open travel guide

FoxTalk to Stop Publication

For many years, Whil Hentzen has been the editor of FoxTalk. Today, he posted the following on the Universal Thread:

I resigned as editor of FoxTalk last September, but agreed to stay on as editor until they found someone to replace me. On February 2, I received a letter from Pinnacle, stating "Pinnacle has decided to stop publishing FoxTalk. The final issue will be the April 2004 issue."

I can't say I'm surprised by this. The number of pages in each issue has been decreasing while the price has been going up. Last year, Pinnacle Publishing was purchased by Ragan Communications and I just had a feeling they would stop publication.

As a FoxTalk subscriber, I have not seen anything from the publisher nor is there any mention on the web site. I'll probably see something once they've sortout my transition to another publication.

What is a Program Manager

At Microsoft, there are two important people that drive products. One is the Product Manager, who is mainly in charge of marketing. On the Fox team, that's Ken Levy. The other is the Program Manager. That's Randy Brown for Fox. But, what a Program Manager does is somewhat of a mystery outside Redmond. Chris Pratley gives some insights.

Open Source is Fertile Ground for Foul Play

I've said this for years. Now, DevX has said it too.

This One's Nasty, Folks

Microsoft has released a new patch for Windows 2000, 2003, and XP. This one is a MUST install as you ARE vulnerable without this patch. According to CERT, there is a buffer overflow in the ASN.1 library. Firewalls and anti-virus will not protect you on this one. Patch now.

We're Doomed, Doomed!

With all respects to Dr. Smith on Lost In Space, the MyDoom worm has caused some problems. It brought down the web servers at SCO, just south of here. Microsoft appears to have survived the attack. Today, Microsoft posted a utility that will search for and kill MyDoom from your PC, brining MyDoom to it's doom. Note the fix only works for Win2K and XP.

The Return of Net Meeting?

Last year, it seemed that Microsoft killed off Net Meeting. In fact, almost all links to download the application disappeared. Could it be back? This download link appeared in the list of new Microsoft downloads.

Apache or IIS?

Let the debate begin! Is Apache or IIS the number one web server? Netcraft has for sometime released statistics that show Apache is used by more web sites than any other web server. But now Port80 Software has released some statistics that show IIS is used on a higher percentage of the 1000 most high-traffic sites than Apache, causing Port80 to state that IIS is number one. Port80 also states that Microsoft did not fund their research. [TechNewsWorld]

Paging Doctor Watson

Those dialogs that popup once in a while that ask you to report an error to Microsoft are generated from a program called Doctor Watson. You should report every error that occurs as Microsoft tracks this information and uses it to improve their products. Chris Pratley, the father of OneNote, has a blog (subscribed) and talks about using Dr. Watson.

It's amazing how much information you can get from reading blogs. I've learned tons about how Microsoft products work and how the company itself functions by reading blogs by MS employees. For example, from reading about Dr. Watson in Chris's blog, I learned that if you are a software vendor, you can get Dr. Watson information about your products for free.

Zip Codes from Space

Ever wonder where a particular zip code is? Want to know from space? This very cool site will highlight any zip code in the 48 lower states.

Book of the Month

The book of the month for February is FoxTales: Behind the Scenes at Fox Software by Kerry Nietz (ISBN 1-930919-50-6, Hentzenwerke Publishing). This is a great look inside Fox Software before the merger with Microsoft. Kerry created the report writer for FoxPro 1.0, a tool that has remained basically unchanged today.

Atomic Fixes

I've finally gotten around to fixing some problems with my blog. Permalinks and the archives now work.

Also, Blogger now supports Atom for its feeds and I have changed from RSS to Atom.

Because of both of these changes, I have republished the entire site.