Building Visual FoxPro 5 Applications

Sometimes too many details, sometimes not enough, but overall a good balance. And the methodology of walking all the way through one project works.

This is approximately an intermediate book with quite a bit of elementary material on database development that is not specific to FoxPro. I like that it gives the reader a broad overview of the development process, but it does not give enough detail to "construct a marketable database" as the back cover touts. As an application programer moving from FoxPro 2.x to VFP, I had many questions that went unanswered. However, I found a number of the missing answers in the VFP 5.0 documentation. I also liked that the book used the framework application included with VFP 5.0 for illustration, instead of an entirely different framework. Because the book's guidelines are consistent with Microsoft's approach, the VFP 5.0 wizards are far more useable. On the other hand, this book's discussion of VFP's OOP implementation is way too choppy and shallow to allow someone new to VFP to really use OOP effectively.

After the files from the cd are copied to your harddisk, you need to change the file attributes from read only to read/write. All files that are copied from cd rom are always read only!

This is the best book I've found yet on VFP5 since it covers full application development but actually covers each of the topics in detail. My main gripe with most books is that they cover in detail a few areas and then start jumping ahead to where most cannot follow. How to make a simple but complete logon and password form. Eg. multiuser concerns chapter is 60 pages long covering details, not just how many buffering options exist. Details on views, how to test multiuser etc. The classes chapter covers eg. the four ways to use classes from your class library on your form. An included CD has MailMan a FoxPro mail generation & tracking system, PinterFoxPro letter, & demo software for xCase