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Rating: 
Summary: Must have learning tool
Review: Clearly explains important concepts. Though not updated for V5.0, this is the book to have for rapid understanding of VFP, especially if you're a 2.x developer. It's the kind of book you *wish* was included in the product package.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book! You'll get more treasure with each reading!
Review: This is a book you will not want your employer to buy for you, because you'll want to own this book! Of the 896 pages in this book, there is almost no fluff ! In fact, this book is so good that I readily agree with one of the authors when he says, "it's a really good idea for you to read this report" (book), "more than once." Given the opportunity, I plan to re-read this book at least once. There is simply too much good material to absorb in just one reading. I have finished three of four sections of this book, and I'm partly done with the fourth section. The section I have not finished is Robert Green's report on Developing Client/Server Applications with Visual FoxPro and SQL Server. The only reason I have not finished that section is that it is not immediately relevant to my employer...but it will be relevant later. The three sections I've finished are: Visual FoxPro Data Dictionary by Doug Hennig; Visual FoxPro Form Designer by Stephen A. Sawyer; Object-Oriented Programming with Visual FoxPro by David Frankenbach. Visual FoxPro Data Dictionary by Doug Hennig, covers: An introduction to the Data Dictionary; Databases; Tables and Indexes; Relations; Buffering and Transactions; Referential Integrity, Triggers, and Stored Procedures; Connections and Views; Extending the DBC; and other miscellaneous stuff. Visual FoxPro Form Designer by Stephen A. Sawyer, covers: Visual FoxPro Forms - An Overview; The Form Designer; Common Members; The Form Object; The Form's DataEnvironment Object; Basic Control Objects; The List Controls - ComboBox and ListBox Controls; The Grid Control Object; Special-Purpose Control Objects; Form Coordination and Interaction; and Potpourri. Object-Oriented Programming with Visual FoxPro by David Frankenbach, covers: Object-Oriented Programming Concepts; Techniques and Details; Applying Object-Oriented Programming; The Object Inspector; Advanced Topics; and other miscellaneous stuff. With the advent of Visual FoxPro we now have not only many new capabilities but in some respect a new vocabulary and way of thinking. This book covers each of these all of these. The authors compare and contrast FoxPro 2.x with Visual FoxPro in order to clarify issues and to help FoxPro programmers to rapidly become productive in any version of Visual FoxPro. They explain well the difference between Databases and tables, and the importance of local and remote views. They explain how FoxPro was a graphical, and event driven, relational database management system, and how Visual FoxPro is Trigger sensitive, Wizard enhanced, Object-Oriented, Client/server, relational database management system with OLE controls, Transaction processing, Data buffering and a Data Dictionary enforcing Referential Integrity. On a purely intellectual level the section on Object-Oriented Programming is probably the most important. However, the section on the Data Dictionary, at least in the near term, will be far more practical and useful! Both sections deserve to be read at least twice. The section on Object-Oriented Programming will probably need some concentrated effort, and to fully take advantage of it and Visual FoxPro's new capabilities will require a change of mindset. Object-Oriented Programming is perhaps the greatest advance in software development in 15 years and I'm glad that FoxPro now has its share of the pie.
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