DevBlog

I'm sitting in the Microsoft Conference Center in Redmond, waiting for this morning's sessions to get started. It has been a whirlwind of information...and lots of fun here...as expected. Most of the Visual FoxPro MVPs are here and we were with the Fox team last night at the Prodcut Team dinner.

So...catching up a bit...

Things started Friday night with dinner at Qwest Field with an America's dinner. The MVPs from the US, Canada, and Latin America were all together for one big shindig. Ricardo Wenger, dressed in a tux (there were some jokes about Linux), sang a couple of songs with the band. It probably won't surprise you to know that things continued afterwards at the hotel bar.

Yesterday was executive day. Steve Ballmer, Kevin Johnson, Jim Allchin spoke and then we split up into groups. All the developer MVPs then heard from Soma. Don Box followed with a presentation on WinFx. Then it was time for dinner with Product Groups.

Nothing really big was announced, but it was interesting to get some information on how Microsoft will be taking on Google, Yahoo!, and others. I can't give out too much because of NDA, but I really think I was right on last week when I blogged, Don't Count Out Boys from Redmond.

We're meeting with the Fox team this afternoon to hear about Sedna. As WinFx is big time on my radar right now, I'm really interested to hear how the plans have been shaping up since DevCon in June. I'll report what I can.

As I write this, I'm about two hours away from leaving for the MVP Summit in Redmond...a trip some MVPs call "going to Mecca". We're expecting to hear from Steve Ballmer, Jim Allchin, and other Microsoft VPs. According to Mary Jo Foley, we'll also get pre-beta bits for Office 12 (which Andrew and I spoke about on The Fox Show). I'll blog about what I can, but in years past, we've been under NDA, so the details may be thin.

If you haven't heard The Fox Show, you're missing out. For some time now, Andrew MacNeill has been podcasting The Fox Show and includes tips and tricks, news, Andrew's comments, and interviews with Fox developers. Last night, I was the interviewee. We talked about my upcoming session, "Coder to Developer", at Southwest Fox, my recent trip to the PDC, Avalon, and more. My Fox Show interview will be available later this week.

Update: My interview is now available on The Fox Show #23

The Fox team at Microsoft has released a public beta for Visual FoxPro 9.0, Service Pack 1. Get yours today for the low, low price of absolutely free at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=1C06E35D-10A2-4A05-84FC-495B3A73ECF7&displaylang=en.

The Internet news and blog sites are all abuzz over the latest round of corporate reorganization at Microsoft. Predictions are running amok that this could be the last stand for Bill and Steve and that if this reorg doesn't work, look for Google to be the new king of the roost. Sorry...I don't buy it. I've heard it all before. Novell, WordImperfect, Netescape, AOHell, and others have all been touted as Microsoft killers. None have survived the Microsoft might.

This doesn't mean that Google will go away any time soon. I think it will give Microsoft a tough run as the tech landscape is different than it was five or even ten years ago. The Internet has become the platform for applications. OpenSores is growing and many OpenSores proponents will jump in with Google. But, watch for Microsoft to make some major moves, especially with its new Expression suite of products and making MSN a serious contender to Google. In the end, Microsoft will come out again as the winner.

Markus has posted on his blog that EPS is shutting down due to hurricane Rita. I'll be keeping an eye on the storm and thinking of my friends at EPS.

Hurricane Rita Downtime
EPS and CoDe Magazine offices will be closed for the rest of the week due to Hurricane Rita. Most likely, our servers will be down for the next few days, so none of our sites will be operational, and we will most likely not have any email access either.

There was so much I wanted to blog about while at the PDC, but with the problems I had getting Blogger to post to my site, I didn’t do it. For some strange reason, things are working fine now. So, here’s some of the stuff I missed….

There were several former Fox people there: Markus Egger, Ellen Whitney, Rod Paddock, Kevin McNeish, Jim Duffy, Maurice de Beijer…and of course yag and Ken.

Tuesday night was the “Influencer’s Party” at the posh White Lotus in Hollywood. It featured acrobats hanging from the ceiling, a chocolate fountain (yummy), lots of good food, and a Microsoft ice sculpture for serving up “Microsoft-tinis” and “PDC-tinis”. Put your glass inside the ice sculpture and the alcohol was poured into the top, ran through a tube embedded in the ice, and filled your glass. I’ll have pictures up once I can find my camera cable.

Wednesday was an MVP lunch with Developer Division Vice-Presidents Soma and Craig Symonds. We had a Q&A session with them…but it was just great to meet them.

The PDC party was at Universal Studios. I was psyched to go as I’ve never been there. However, I attended an ISV session and got out later than I expected. The lines waiting for buses were quite long and I was VERY tired…so I decided to skip it. LA isn’t that far from here (about 10 hours by car) so I could get there sometime in the future.

Wednesday morning, Eric Rudder (another former Fox guy) announced the Expression suite of products. These look very, very interesting. There are some way cool things that you can do with them. I not a graphics guy, but there are some development uses for the products.

Steven Sinofsky showed some of the Sharepoint technologies. I bailed out as I doubt I’ll ever use Sharepoint…and Sinofsky is not the best of presenters. His voice is quite nasal and it tends to annoy after a short time.

Thursday’s keynote was Bob Muglia. He announced some new things with Windows Server, including improvements in IIS 7 and Windows Longhorn Server. Two quotes worth noting, “Windows server will move very, very aggressively to 64 bit” and “I really think of 32 bit as legacy”. I’m already on record saying that Windows Vista will be the last 32 bit Operating System from Microsoft.

I did attend some sessions:
- Raymond Chen, “Five Things Every Win32 Developer Should Know”. Raymond is the king of the Win32 API. What a great presenter! Very funny…and he presents complicated topics in a way that non-C++ people can understand. I hope to hear him again.

- “Building Apps that Look Great in Vista” This was all about the new Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). I’m really impressed by what can be done with WPF, but still unsure how difficult it is to do these very cool things. I’m hoping to play some more with it in the next few months.

- Ken Levy on the new XML editors in Visual Studio 2005. If you have to do anything with XML, these tools will help you out.

- “Using Data in WPF Apps” showed how you build a UI using XAML and then link data to that. Very useful stuff as I start playing with WPF.

- “LINQ with Relational Data”. The presenter was Luca Bolognese…and he was quite humorous. This was basically a DLINQ session…and I could definitely see the Fox influence in LINQ and chuckled when he started showing off how to call Stored Procedures, then said this stuff is called “SQL Pass Through”.

- “What We Learned Building a WPF Designer Tool in WinFx”. One of the products in the Express suite is built using WPF. This was somewhat of a best practices session. The presenter, John Gossman, discussed problems they ran into while trying to learn WinFx and create a real product. This is a session I’ll review again.

- “WPF Under the Hood”. This was one of the last sessions of the conference. Initially I was going to skip it, thinking that I needed to understand the outside before going in deep. However, I was not disappointed. Chris Anderson talked about the major areas inside WPF and how it works. Really fascinating stuff.

As you might have guessed, there was LOTS of food, with Microsoft feeding us every meal and all the snacks and soda we could eat and drink. All the Microsoft people we really great and approachable. The dozens of vendors hawking things were fun…I got some goodies. I got the typical stuff, an MP3 player and even won a Play Station Portable….after all… in the end, isn’t it all about the swag???

The PDC was definitely worth it. It isn’t a conference that is held every year, but one I hope to attend again.

// posted by Craig Berntson @ 9:55:00 AM
//  0 Comments // Links to this post   

The FoxPro community was shocked over the weekend to hear about the tragic death of well known Fox guru Drew Speedie and his son Brent (details here). As Drew, his wife Irene, and Brent were at just about every Fox conference, they were all well known and loved.

I got the news yesterday afternoon. I was at LAX waiting for my flight home from the PDC. Bill Anderson called me and said, "I hope you're sitting down". Good thing I was. Evan Pauly later called with the same news.

I remember first meeting Drew in 1994. I was pretty much an unknown then. I had been hanging out on the FoxForum on Compuserv and knew some people from there. I lived in Kalispell, Montana and Drew and his family were passing through. I arranged for him to speak at my Fox User Group (membership 3). Drew gave one of his famous Tips and Tricks presentations. I remember that I actually taught him something, to my great surprise.

Years later, I had become and MVP and was giving my first conference presentation at Great Lakes in Milwaukee. It was a precon session on COM+. Things were going fine for the first 15-30 minutes. Then Drew walked in. I thought, "Uh oh. Here's one of the big guns." It made me nervous to have him there at the back of the room. He was there about an hour and asked a few questions, then left. Afterwards I asked him for an honest critique. He gave me some pointers and told me where things were done right.

Drew was always a gentleman. His presentations were some of the best. Well prepared, presented, always dead on technically....and practically. His articles in FoxPro Advisor the same way.

Brent was nothing short of a genius. It was not uncommon to see him sitting next to Drew, debugging his dad's code...and even helping out in afterhours sessions.

My thoughts and prayers go out to Irene and the entire Speedie family. Drew, you will be missed, but not forgotten.

Anders Hjelsberg, Don Box, Chris Anderson, and Scott Guthry created a sample app that pulled everything together.

Anders and Don started by using LINQ to query the OS and get a list of running processes. They then used LINQ to query a database, and used LINQ to combine to two queries.

Don and Chris then converted the query results to XML and piped them into Windows Communications Foundation and into a web service.

Scott, Chris, and Don then created a web page to consume the web service.

Chis and Don then changed the web service to a service call and used Windows Presentation Foundation and XAML to create a WinForm that consumed the service.

Jim Allchin, VP of Platforms (he's the guy in charge of Windows) was up after Bill. He's one of my favorite speakers. He started off showing some amazing clips for a game coming out that's targeting Windows Vista. The graphics were just amazing. VERY realistic.

There are four architectural principles in Vista
- Presentation
- Data
- Communications
- Base OS Services

Jim talked about how each of these priniciples makes things better.

For the Base OS Services:
- Reboot manager decreases the number of reboots required when updating. For example, if you install an application that needs to replace a DLL that is running, Windows may be able to shutdown that DLL, install the new one, then start it again.
- There will be transacted storage in a number of areas, including the registry
- A level of standard user is new and is what out applications should target
- Superfetch is an upgrade to prefetch. It will cache applications that are frequently used and make them faster to load. Another cool feature is if you plug in a USB RAM disk, Superfetch can use that and treat the device like regular RAM
- "Atlas" will be big for web apps

Presentation
- UI is separated into a framework and an engine. This makes it possible to separate the UI from how the UI works. Think if it as moving all the guts of how the UI works out of what the user sees.
- A lite version of Windows Presentation Framework (WPF) called WPF/E (WPF Everywhere) was announced.

Data
- There will be multiple data stores
- LINQ is the uniform programming model for data. This is the Fox stuff that we've been hearing about. More coming in another blog. It's VERY cool

Communication
- Support for federated identification called InfoCards. It won't matter how you authenticate a user.

Jim also announced "Digital Locker". This is a way to buy and download software from the Internet. It keeps track of what you buy and the software keys needed to make them work. It keeps all this for you. If you upgrade your PC, just go to Digital Locker and download everything thing from there. It's integrated into Vista and Windows Updates. Digital River and Ecellerate are participating.

The PDC kicked off yesterday morning with a keynote from Bill Gates. He showed one of his famous videos, this time it was a dream sequence where his roommate is Napolean Dynamite. It was very funny, with Bill wearing a "Vote for SteveO" t-shirt, rollerblading with Napolean pulled him on a bike, wearing an old, brown suit that matched Napolean's, and dancing on stage with Napolean. Very funny stuff. I doubt it will ever be public as these videos rarely are.

Bill's theme was "The Next Step". He got some help from Chris Caposella, a Microsoft VP, who showed off several features in Windows Vista:

- Alt-tab is now called the "flip feature". There is a new flip 3D to switch through running apps
- Virutal folders are cool. You can have a Word file show up under My Documents, but it can really be anywhre on the disk. Virtual folders are defined in XML.
- The sidebar is available...think of it as a toolbar that sits on the right-hand side of the screen. You can add "gadgets" to do different things. A clock, a video player, calendar, etc are some gadgets you can have on the sidebar.
- Parental controls are big. For example, you can set the game ratings that your kids are allowed to play.
- IE 7 will include tabs. You can save the tabs and recall them all at once. A feature called Quick Tabs.
- A big feature for me is fit to print for any page displayed in IE.


Office 12 was shown publically for the first time. Be prepared...it is WAY different, but much easier to use and some really great features.

Bill's next steps:
- Build on the foundation
- Focus on user experience
- Build connected systems
- Ride the 2006 PC wave
- Software is the key

My hotel here in LA, the Wilshire Grand is not so grand. It probably was in it's day, but that day is long past. I would not recommend this hotel. When power came back on here in LA, something in the hotel failed and half the hotel was without power, including my room.

After roaming around the Convention Center for a while, I went back to the hotel. It was still light out, so I sat near the window and highlighted my conference schedule with the sessions I want to attend. Then I went out and found some dinner. Still no power when I got back, so I sat in the hotel bar, which did have lights, watched the first half of Monday Night Football. Since I was getting tired, I decided to go up to bed. I flipped the light switch to on, setup my battery-powered clock, opened the drapes, and went to sleep. About two hours later, the lights came on....flickered a bit...and stayed on. It did wake me up. I stayed up another couple of hours getting some work done, but the wireless in the room wasn't working. I hope it's just a result of the power outage and that it's working later today.

This morning I've had breakfast. It's a fairly common continental breakfast...eggs, potatoes, bacon, sausage, fruit, danish, bagels, etc. There is a three hour keynote set for this morning featuring Bill G and Jim Allchin, who is one of my favorite Microsoft execs. Stay tuned for more...

Hopefully it isn't am omen. LA was in the middle of a major power outage as I arrived at LAX. My hotel is only partly working. One elevator, no power in the rooms. They got the escalator working just as I checked in.

I'm now at the convention center. There is power here. I got checked in...meaning I have my "geek badge" and required t-shirt and bag. There are thousands of PCs setup in various areas. Not much activity going on right now as the conference doesn't officially start until tomorrow morning at 8:30 with Bill's keynote.

I'll be taking pictures throughout the week, but as I forgot the cable to hook the camera to the PC, I'm not sure when I can upload them. I'll try to track one down and get some up in the next day or two.

I haven't yet poked through the bag to see what propaganda is included. There is a nice pen on the geek badge.

There is a large bookstore here selling Microsoft related books from several publishers as well as Microsoft logo merchandise. I don't think I'll get a book here, but note titles and order when I get home. I don't want to haul a book back on the plane...and I don't know what else I'll be getting during the week to take back.

Ken Levy is supposed to arrive tomorrow and will be giving a session on Thursday morning on XML/XSLT support in Visual Studio 2005. Rod Paddock is here...hopefully we can meet up later.

More info during the week as the conference kicks into full gear.

I'm off to the PDC this afternoon. I'll be blogging from the conference as often as I can and have something to say. I've read some of the blogs from Microsoft employees about how busy they are getting ready. It will be a busy week for me too. From the regular sessions to networking to the Influencer party to lunch with Soma to the ISV roundtable...and the PDC party at Universal Studios. If you're at the PDC, hopefully we can meet. If you're a Fox developer in the LA area, I have some time Friday night for dinner or Saturday for lunch. Drop me an email.

At a recent seminar on credit cards and fraud, Visa said that brick and mortar stores are more popular targets for criminals than online databases. The story, reported by CNet, says,

Majka had a chilling message for the operators of traditional brick-and-mortar businesses. The perception may be that criminals target online stores to steal credit card data, but the reality is that traditional retailers are more popular targets, he said. That's because sellers in offline transactions usually swipe the actual credit card.

For years, when talking to people that have concerns about using their credit card online I've said, "Do you eat out?" Everyone has always said, "Yes." My next question is, "So, let me understand this...you'll go to a restaurant, eat a nice meal, and then hand your credit card to the waiter, who takes the card away to a back room to run it through and pay your bill, but you won't use the card online." Again, the response has always been, "I never thought about that." So, be careful how you use your card and always...always review your credit card statements.

Kevin McNeish always said, "What's easy in VFP is difficult in .Net and what's difficult in .Net is easy in VFP". I've found a perfect example of this...writing to the Windows Event Log. I have an Event Log session that I've presented at several conferences and will do it again in November in Germany. It takes the entire session to show how to write to and read from the log in VFP. Well, in .Net, it's a couple of lines of code. Yep...that's it.

using System.Diagnostics;

if (!EventLog.SourceExisists("MyApp")
EventLog.CreateEventSource("MyApp", "Application");
EventLog.WriteEntry("MyApp", "An event occurred");

That's it. There are some optional parameters for the WriteEntry method where you can specify the event type and an event number. Oh that it were this easy with VFP.

Craig Boyd finally pushed me over the edge this afternoon and I fixed the permalinks. There has been a problem with them since I changed my blog template a couple of months ago. I fiddled with things a couple of times, but couldn't nail down the problem and I'd been too busy to look into the problem further. Well, technically I'm still too busy, but Craig's email caused me to do something about it. One thing I had been not been looking forward to was finger pointing between Blogger and Brinkster, my host. Turns out there was no finger pointing as I had a bad configuration setting on both ends. Adjusting those two settings fixed the problem.

There is an old credo that is frequently used for the mailman. It goes something like, "Neither wind, nor rain, nor sleet of storms will stop me from completing my appointed rounds." Apparently, that doesn't extend to hurricanes. The Post Office has stopped all delivery to affected areas. But, I can't say I blame them. How are they supposed to get the mail there? Where are they supposed to deliver it? Homes and businesses no longer exist or are under several feet of water.

Another long time member of the Fox team at Microsoft has announced he's leaving. This one is a real long timer...10 years...and probably comes as a shock to many. The forums were full of doom and gloom when Mike Stewart and John Koziol left the team within the past year. Surely those rumors will be there again, even more so now that Randy Brown has announced his retirement. Here's Randy's announcement from the Universal Thread.

Summer in Seattle can be a beautiful time of the year to spend with friends. The joy of watching a spectacular splintered sunset of cosmic filled colors with Mt. Rainier looming over your shoulder is hard to put into words (as Jerry Garcia would sing “the sky was yellow and the sun was blue”). So it is on such an occasion that I bring some bittersweet news … I will be departing this happy nest of ours shortly – yes, it is time for this bird to fly.

While it is a sad time for me, it is also one that is refreshing and quite spiritual. I was just reflecting the other day how wonderful it is to have an opportunity to start over (maybe some of you have thought the same). Although most of the details might be lacking for that next adventure of mine, I know it is out there for me to discover. The unknown is often more exciting than the known – albeit somewhat more frightening looking into that abyss. For me, the chance to begin anew and take that path a little less trodden is hard to pass up.

As Neil Young once wrote “It's better to burn out, than to fade away”. After the last release, I had a chance to ponder the state of our product, my involvement and where things might be heading down the horizon. I have often believed and still do that it is better to do something right than not do it at all. And if you’re going to do it right, you might as well go all the way. Certainly, it is tempting to consider what might have been, but that would not be in the cards as dealt by the friendly droids upstairs. Things are how they are, life goes on, time to move along.

Sometimes I think it’s all a dream one time long ago that this misfit from Berkeley and his good buddy from Hawaii joined the journey with a team of visionaries transplanted from a small town in Ohio to the great Pacific Northwest. For the past 10 years, he and I have seen the good, the bad, and even the hereafter. I will certainly miss steering that ship with my good friend. But what really kept us afloat all these years were those unbroken chains of support from you, our special community. Each time we saw that light in the tunnel starting to dim, your encouragement gave us the incentive to open up our Pandora’s Box just one more time. This has been and will always be your product. Many have come and gone, but somehow things seem to end up just fine and will continue to do so.

I can’t recall a day when starting up this great product of ours has not inspired me in one way or another. So while you may be able to take the person out of the Fox, you can’t take the Fox out of the person. I am sure many of us will stay in touch, maybe in another time’s forgotten space, but just remember one thing -- if you get confused just listen to the music play.

Peace and love…..Randy

Randy has been the Program Manager on the Fox team for as long as I knew what the Fox team was. His insights and guidance will be missed. I have enjoyed conversations with him at DevCon and other events. Randy, I wish you same thing...peace and love.