Monday, June 13, 2005
Keynoted
I amd here at DevCon...for a few more hours...heading back home this afternoon. Last night was the Keynote. David Stevenson and Alex Feldstein have already blogged about it. I didn't see much new from what's already been announced in the Roadmap.
We were welcomed to DevCon by YAG, who then turned things over to Ken and Randy Brown. Other Fox team members who are here are John Koziol and Richard Stanton. Too bad Calvin and Alexy couldn't make it. YAG did say that two new people are joining the team this week, but didn't say what their jobs will be.
Ken had a slide with lots of statistics from the recent VFP survey. He said the total number of people taking the survey was up significantly from previous surveys. The one number I noted was that 35% of VFP developers are using COM. I noted this because I will be doing two sessions on COM+ next week at DevTeach.
Service Pack 1 for VFP 9.0 is currently scheduled to be shipped in December, but that date can change. It should be in beta in late July or early August. However, VFP 9.0 is the most stable yet, with fewer reported bugs than any previous version.
Ken then went over some upcoming and currently .Net technologies such as Indigo, Smart Clients, Avalon, SQL Server 2005, Visual Source Safe 2005, Orcas, WinFS, XAML, Office 12 XML, and others.
The thing that most people wanted to hear about was Sedna. Ken had one slide that say, "Sedna = SP2 + Addons". While the team has not ruled out calling it VFP 10, it's pretty unlikely. Specific pricing, packaging, naming, etc. has not been decided and probably won't be for a year. However, you can be pretty sure it will only be available via a download.
Sedna will be limited product updates. VFP is a mature product and very stable. The Fox team doesn't want to do things to make it less stable. There will be new and improved xBase components. We may see changes to the license that let us modify and ship changes to the xBase components (think anything in XSource). Sedna will also include .Net wrapper classes for use with VFP and product DLLs for extensibility. The team is still VERY early in their planning phases. The specs haven't been written yet, so much of what was discussed is things the team will be looking at and see if they can do them. However, the budget has been approved and is set. Once a beta is ready, it will be available to everyone and be updated every two to three months until release.
Randy Brown then showed some demos of things the Calvin Hsia has been working on. One was integrating with the Windows shell. He was able to extend Windows Explorer. Imagine double-clicking on a DBC and then seeing the DBFs in it. Or even more so...double click on the DBF and get a list of fields...all without leaving Windows Explorer.
Another example as something called FoxFeeds. It is basically a RSS reader that hooks into Outlook, much like NewsGator. The difference is that it is written entirely in VFP. You can get more information on both these demos from Calvin's blog. Calvin...sorry you couldn't make it to DevCon this year.
Ken then showed some things in Fox that called out to .Net code to use the WebServices stuff in .Net. This is pretty big as the SOAP Toolkit, which is what Fox uses to publish web services is being depricated. He also had some .Net code that called a Fox business object.
Ken also showed an Avalon form that was been generated and called from Fox and showed how the new Click Once technology in Visual Studion 2005 can benefit Fox developers. For example, we currently need to register Fox components to make them work in Windows, but with OneClick, you don't need to do that. The .Net app uses a "virtual" registry and keeps track of this stuff for you.
An Intellisense script and new Fox class that Mimics the "My" object in VB.Net was shown. I'm NOT thrilled with this. I've blogged previously about my dislike of My and was happy to hear it is disappearing in Longhorn. I hope to discuss this further with the Fox team today before I head home.
In discussions with the Fox team, YAG pointed out that nothing has been determined regarding Fox after Sedna. That means that there could or could not be anything after that. John Koziol said my previous blog End of the Road was dead wrong.
However, I have heard nothing that tells me otherwise. In fact, one thing that convinces me even more is one thing that was said. During a discussion with the Fox team, it was said that Intellisense really opened up Office programming and got them to learn how to program Office. The Fox team wants to have Intellisense to .Net objects so that Fox developers can learn it.
So, what's the take away from the Keynote? Sedna, while very early in the planning stages will allow us to so cool things and take advantage of upcoming technologies such as Indigo, WinFS, XAML, and Avalon that are coming out with Longhorn. I'm excited by that. I started asking the Fox team about Longhorn support a couple of years ago. I'm excited that we'll have it.
We were welcomed to DevCon by YAG, who then turned things over to Ken and Randy Brown. Other Fox team members who are here are John Koziol and Richard Stanton. Too bad Calvin and Alexy couldn't make it. YAG did say that two new people are joining the team this week, but didn't say what their jobs will be.
Ken had a slide with lots of statistics from the recent VFP survey. He said the total number of people taking the survey was up significantly from previous surveys. The one number I noted was that 35% of VFP developers are using COM. I noted this because I will be doing two sessions on COM+ next week at DevTeach.
Service Pack 1 for VFP 9.0 is currently scheduled to be shipped in December, but that date can change. It should be in beta in late July or early August. However, VFP 9.0 is the most stable yet, with fewer reported bugs than any previous version.
Ken then went over some upcoming and currently .Net technologies such as Indigo, Smart Clients, Avalon, SQL Server 2005, Visual Source Safe 2005, Orcas, WinFS, XAML, Office 12 XML, and others.
The thing that most people wanted to hear about was Sedna. Ken had one slide that say, "Sedna = SP2 + Addons". While the team has not ruled out calling it VFP 10, it's pretty unlikely. Specific pricing, packaging, naming, etc. has not been decided and probably won't be for a year. However, you can be pretty sure it will only be available via a download.
Sedna will be limited product updates. VFP is a mature product and very stable. The Fox team doesn't want to do things to make it less stable. There will be new and improved xBase components. We may see changes to the license that let us modify and ship changes to the xBase components (think anything in XSource). Sedna will also include .Net wrapper classes for use with VFP and product DLLs for extensibility. The team is still VERY early in their planning phases. The specs haven't been written yet, so much of what was discussed is things the team will be looking at and see if they can do them. However, the budget has been approved and is set. Once a beta is ready, it will be available to everyone and be updated every two to three months until release.
Randy Brown then showed some demos of things the Calvin Hsia has been working on. One was integrating with the Windows shell. He was able to extend Windows Explorer. Imagine double-clicking on a DBC and then seeing the DBFs in it. Or even more so...double click on the DBF and get a list of fields...all without leaving Windows Explorer.
Another example as something called FoxFeeds. It is basically a RSS reader that hooks into Outlook, much like NewsGator. The difference is that it is written entirely in VFP. You can get more information on both these demos from Calvin's blog. Calvin...sorry you couldn't make it to DevCon this year.
Ken then showed some things in Fox that called out to .Net code to use the WebServices stuff in .Net. This is pretty big as the SOAP Toolkit, which is what Fox uses to publish web services is being depricated. He also had some .Net code that called a Fox business object.
Ken also showed an Avalon form that was been generated and called from Fox and showed how the new Click Once technology in Visual Studion 2005 can benefit Fox developers. For example, we currently need to register Fox components to make them work in Windows, but with OneClick, you don't need to do that. The .Net app uses a "virtual" registry and keeps track of this stuff for you.
An Intellisense script and new Fox class that Mimics the "My" object in VB.Net was shown. I'm NOT thrilled with this. I've blogged previously about my dislike of My and was happy to hear it is disappearing in Longhorn. I hope to discuss this further with the Fox team today before I head home.
In discussions with the Fox team, YAG pointed out that nothing has been determined regarding Fox after Sedna. That means that there could or could not be anything after that. John Koziol said my previous blog End of the Road was dead wrong.
However, I have heard nothing that tells me otherwise. In fact, one thing that convinces me even more is one thing that was said. During a discussion with the Fox team, it was said that Intellisense really opened up Office programming and got them to learn how to program Office. The Fox team wants to have Intellisense to .Net objects so that Fox developers can learn it.
So, what's the take away from the Keynote? Sedna, while very early in the planning stages will allow us to so cool things and take advantage of upcoming technologies such as Indigo, WinFS, XAML, and Avalon that are coming out with Longhorn. I'm excited by that. I started asking the Fox team about Longhorn support a couple of years ago. I'm excited that we'll have it.
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