J.D. Was Here

Ken Levy "Advantage with VFP" Screencast

Ken has recorded a screencast that covers the following topics:

• Advantage Database Server (ADS) Components
• ADS Overview
• ADS Scenarios with Visual FoxPro
• Demo: ADS for VFP and .NET
• Resources

The screencast can be found here: http://video.sybase.com/products/advantage/Sybase_ADS_VFP.wmv

Encrypting Visual FoxPro Tables

This screencast (just over 10 minutes) is a continuation of my series explaining how to extend the life of your Visual FoxPro DBF tables using Advantage. In this screencast I show unencrypted data from DBF tables being transferred over the wire. I then create a data dictionary, reference the tables from that dictionary, and encrypt the tables and all database communications. The only change necessary for the client application is the need to provide credentials when connecting to the database.

Additional notes about Advantage encryption can be found in the online help file topics Advantage Encryption and The Advantage Data Dictionary.

If you have not watched the initial screencasts in this series, I've included the viewing order below. The topics stand on their own fairly well, but may be more meaningful if watched in order.

1. Getting Started With Visual FoxPro and Advantage
2. Use Visual FoxPro and Visual Studio - and Share Your Existing DBF Tables 
3. Using Tables Over 2GB in Visual FoxPro
4. Hiding DBF Tables

Watch the screencast directly

Download the screencast (open fox_encryption.html after unzipping): 40MB

Screencast Load Times Fixed

Thanks to Boudewijn for pointing out how slow my screencasts were loading. Turns out the default buffer before the flash video would start was set to 50 percent, which was WAY too high. I've lowered it to 2 percent and now the videos start up right away.

Hiding DBF Tables

In this screencast (10 minutes) I follow up on my previous screencast where I converted a Visual FoxPro application to use Advantage in order to access DBF tables over 2GB.

This time around we will modify OS file permissions and hide the DBF tables from all users. In addition, we will configure a server-side alias, which allows us to hide the path to the physical data files.

One important point I failed to mention in the screencast is that a server-side alias also allows us to close all file shares on the server machine. This is extremely important for security purposes. With this setup, you don't have any file shares exposed on your server, but can still access your tables via your Advantage connection from the client. In the case of a Visual FoxPro application, you would just put the DBC files on the client, and hide the data tables on the server.

We're not finished securing our tables, however. In my next screencast, I will show how easy it is to encrypt our tables, indexes and memo files.

Watch the screencast directly or download it (open the html file after unzipping).

Legacy Applications vs New Development: Share your DBFs

I put together a short screencast (10 minutes) showing how Advantage can share Visual FoxPro DBF tables with Visual Studio. This provides a variety of alternatives when migrating existing applications to client/server, or when you want to leave existing applications alone but develop new applications that share the same tables.

In the screencast I demo a Visual FoxPro application using Advantage sharing data with a Visual Studio application using Advantage (not earth shattering news, I know). I then move on to show something I do think is worth some consideration; A Visual FoxPro application using DBF tables WITHOUT Advantage (standard DBF access, no ODBC or OLE DB) sharing data with a new application written using the Advantage .NET Data Provider.

The second portion of the screencast calls out a major benefit to Visual FoxPro developers. You can continue to support your existing applications while doing new development using Visual Studio and all applications can share the exact same database. This means your new development can benefit from the features of a client/server product including data integrity, performance improvements, online backups, secure internet access to your tables, etc., whithout modifying existing applications that are using the same DBF tables.

If you find that interesting, be certain to also check out my previous post explaining some of the ISAM-specific functionality Advantage brings to .NET development via our direct table access.

While I call out Visual Studio in this screencast, the same approach can be taken with any of the development environments Advantage supports. Delphi, Servoy, Visual Objects, JDBC, PHP, etc. Any of the clients listed on the downloads page of the DevZone can share data with an existing Visual FoxPro application.

You can watch the screencast directly or download it (open the html file after unzipping).

Using Tables Over 2GB in Visual FoxPro

I have posted a 15 minute screencast showing how to support DBF tables over 2GB in Visual FoxPro using Advantage.

You can watch the screencast directly or download it (open the html file after unzipping).