FoxPro Programming
New User
Gravatar is a globally recognized avatar based on your email address. New User
  Shakeel Akhter
  All
  Nov 12, 2019 @ 07:11am

Hi there, I am new to this west wind connection thing. I have a lot of projects in Visual Foxpro 9 SP2 ... Each project contain including Forms, reports and Prgs files .. Please help me how can I use these project over Internet. I will appreciate your help. I may be contacted through +92-321-235-0004 (Islamabad, Pakistan). or shak58@hotmail.com ... Please advice... thanks in advance ...

Gravatar is a globally recognized avatar based on your email address. re: New User
  Tore Bleken
  Shakeel Akhter
  Nov 12, 2019 @ 09:40am

First of all I suggest that you read the Walk Through Tutorials sections in Help.
You will also find links to a few video tutorials. Unfortunately some of that material is dated, but it will still provide a lot of helpful information.

Play with it, and feel free to ask questions here when problems arise.

Gravatar is a globally recognized avatar based on your email address. re: New User
  Shakeel Akhter
  Tore Bleken
  Nov 12, 2019 @ 12:11pm

Hi, Tore I really appreciate your quickest response. Infact, I had already gone through the video message (link you provided) but its mostly on coding things. I already have forms and reports builtin in my application. I need to understand how will I transform my current or existing application into this. Really confused.

Hope I have clarified my query.

Thanks in advance

Gravatar is a globally recognized avatar based on your email address. re: New User
  Tore Bleken
  Shakeel Akhter
  Nov 12, 2019 @ 12:26pm

A web application is very different from a desktop application, so in practice you have only two options with WWC:

  1. Create a separate version of your application from scratch with WWC while utilizing non visual classes and procedures from your desktop version. Disadvantage: A lot of extra work plus new technology to learn.
  2. Use FoxInCloud (FiC) to convert your desktop application to work in their framework which uses WWC "under the hood". Disadvantage: A converted application is rarely perfect, so manual changes must also be done. Plus FiC is not free, you are charged according to the internet traffic.
Gravatar is a globally recognized avatar based on your email address. re: New User
  Rick Strahl
  Shakeel Akhter
  Nov 12, 2019 @ 12:40pm

Shakeel,

You can't really take an 'as-is' application and run it as a Web application. While FoxInCloud can help with re-using existing forms and UI code, even with it you have to make sure you follow certain guidelines and adjust in order to make it work on the Web. But it's as close as you will get to re-using existing forms.

Web applications are inherently different than desktop applications, so rarely does an existing desktop application move to the web properly even if it were possible to re-use your existing UI. In almost all situations it's a good idea to rebuild your user interface specifically with the Web in mind using proper Web based display and navigation semantics. It's also a good time to re-think user interface in terms of simpler usage scenarios (like phones, tablets) and simplifying user interactions for those platforms.

+++ Rick ---

Gravatar is a globally recognized avatar based on your email address. re: New User
  FoxInCloud Support - Thierry N.
  Tore Bleken
  Nov 12, 2019 @ 01:40pm

Hi Tore,

Thanks for mentioning FoxInCloud; however, some points need a clarification:

  1. FoxInCloud requires a code adaptation rather than a conversion: the same adapted code runs on the desktop as usual, and on the Web through the browser.
  2. FoxInCloud uses WWWC only for connecting VFP/FoxInCloud to the Web server: by far most of the code executed originates from FoxInCloud.
  3. Manual adaptation are needed only where Automated Adaptations by FAA could possibly introduce bugs that would affect the application robustness (eg. ambiguity between variables and table fields). Only in these cases the developer's attention is needed. Given the high level of FoxInCloud support, especially its ability to render fixed layout into a responsive layout using Bootstrap, the adapted application is far more 'perfect' than the original desktop application.
  4. FoxInCloud license pricing is based on the number of concurrent users (users working simultaneously on the app.), not named users (eg. Windows or Office) nor Internet traffic. As Foxincloud fully relies on AJAX, Internet traffic is far below 'classic' Web applications (average server response is 30 kb, about the size of an image)
Gravatar is a globally recognized avatar based on your email address. re: New User
  FoxInCloud Support - Thierry N.
  Rick Strahl
  Nov 12, 2019 @ 02:17pm

Hi Rick,

Thanks for mentioning FoxInCloud!

Web applications are inherently different than desktop applications

This may have been true a long time ago… before AJAX, HTML DOM event, client frameworks and fast Internet connections existed…

However, I can't see any reason why using a browser window rather than a desktop window makes anything different in the way a user wants to interact with business data.

All FoxInCloud customers are very, very happy in providing their users a Web Application behaving exactly the same as the desktop application they've used for years, and still use. And very happy to develop their web application using the 'regular' VFP IDE rather than 5 stacks of independent technologies (HTTP, HTML, CSS, JS, Server) that no-one is able to really integrate.

Any business application is modelled and designed from a data structure and this is exactly the same whether it's exposed through a Desktop device or a Web device: the logical structure is inherently the same whatever the physical, technological implementation may be.

Given the limitations and complexity imposed by the current Web technologies (Angular, React, Vue, etc.) with which it's almost impossible to provide the same level of interaction as a desktop applications can provide, I understand most Web Developers have convinced themselves that 'Web Applications are a different beast' and 'must inherently be different'.

IMO, that's just self fulfilling prophecy, because people have followed the tech route as opposed to the functional/business route. Instead of asking themselves how they could implement a functional design using the Web technologies, they've played with the web component they knew until they could assemble something vaguely similar to a very simple business functionality.

WWWC has once attempted to render business forms into Web pages (wwForm renderer) and abandoned this option because of the incompatibilies between IE and the other (standard) browsers that made web development a nightmare until 2010.
We at FoxInCloud have continued in this direction and patiently we have found a way to render each and every feature of a VFP application (forms, menus, etc.) using standard HTML technologies.

FoxInCloud can provide an unprecedented number of Web Objects and Events (over 1,500 in a single application), and dazzling response times (below 1 second total, including Internet and Browser) just by adding value to the value already built in existing applications (decades of development) rather than breaking everything out and starting from a blank page with clumsy and immature tools (client-side f/w that attempt to link client to server).

Gravatar is a globally recognized avatar based on your email address. re: New User
  Arcadio Bianco
  Shakeel Akhter
  Nov 12, 2019 @ 03:10pm

Hello,

I am a FIC user for 2 years and I can say that the tool is fantastic. It really does what it propose, put your VFP product running in a browser. In our company we are developing products with other technologies but our main product is writing in VFP and it will take a long time to migrate to another tool. At which point the FiC is perfect. I can help if you have any questions in the beginning of use of it.

Gravatar is a globally recognized avatar based on your email address. re: New User
  Gilles Lajot-Sarthou
  Shakeel Akhter
  Nov 13, 2019 @ 12:27am

Hi Shakeel Akhter

I have in production since 1998 an application of management of production of analyzes of medical biology entirely written with Visual Foxpro. In 2009, I needed to adapt my application to the WEB world to find a new international clientele. (a new international businness customers) Without FoxInCloud, it's the whole of my application that I will have to re-write in new programming languages. New language that I did not master.

Thanks to Visual Foxpro 9, wConnect and FoxInCloud, I was able to:

  1. in three months, transfer the data from the DBF tables to PostGreSql tables to free myself from the constraints of the DBF tables (limit to 2GO, index losses and breaks tables on unstable machines, etc.)
  2. in 6 months adapt all the forms, reports etc .. to WEB mode keeping all the features of the desktop version of my application, while adding in web mode new visual uses ..

Since then, there are three production applications with more than 35000 requests per 8 hours per application and several dozen simultaneous users for each application that run with the full satisfaction of my clients.

One of them, is used simultaneously in desktop mode and in web mode with a database that exceeds 22GO. The desktop mode allows the application:

  1. control PLCs that can not be controlled over an IP link
  2. to generate and exploit the emission of email and fax afloat

The third, developed directly under VFP9 / wConnect / PostGresql / FoxInCloud to be used exclusively in WEB mode, has been with the support of Bootstrap / Jquery for an ergonomics dedicated to the uses with smartphones and tablets

Balance sheet:

My customers have been freed from the cost of deploying applications on their workstations, have pursued their business with the same quality and the same uses. For my company (except for PostGreSql), heavy investments in the development of commercialized applications have been preserved, while providing support and web use that has modernized the look of all our applications.

What happiness!

Gravatar is a globally recognized avatar based on your email address. re: New User
  Michele
  Arcadio Bianco
  Nov 13, 2019 @ 12:36am

Hi, i am a Foxincloud user and i can only says the this product solved many many problems to me and my company. We have an ERP fully Foxpro based and now we have also a web module for use it on Mobile devices and in the browser.....We can still use foxpro ide to develop our application and we started without web experience.... Ok you have to respect some rules to use Foxincloud, but after few time it will be natural to program using these rules... They are not difficult.... Foxincloud is growing every update. I have no limits in using foxpro options (classes, object, code). Support is very good and fast, you find help here on West Wind Message board or on Levelextreme (i normally use the first).... We have also developed some applications using Java, Javascript, Html, CSS projects, with West Wind Web Connection for REST (also WC is a great product), but it seems more complex and i am not sure that the complexity is at the same level of results....

The problem is that you have to see from where you are starting and which are your capacities. If you are a foxpro programmer and you have not experience in web applications development and you want to start almost immediately to have a web application, Foxincloud is the solution to your problems..... If you have a project with almost a couple of years to be deploied you can thinks to something different, but you need to have competence on developing web application. With Foxincloud you can start without these competences and find them while working with it...

Bye and thanks to Thierry and Rick for their work...

Gravatar is a globally recognized avatar based on your email address. re: New User
  Vincent H.
  Shakeel Akhter
  Nov 13, 2019 @ 01:16am

Hello,

I share without reservation the compliments of all.

User for 3 years, I was able to migrate - in bootstrap mode - two legal applications including a very heavy management of notary firm.

FiC not only allows porting of the existing desktop application, it allows integration to exploit all the richness of the HTML interface, especially with the integration of jQuery.

What a pity that such a productive tool is so misunderstood or poorly known.

Vincent

Gravatar is a globally recognized avatar based on your email address. re: New User
  Shakeel Akhter
  Rick Strahl
  Nov 13, 2019 @ 07:40am

Thanks alot for all of your reply and suggestions. I would really love to learn and wish to transform all my application to web enabled things.

Will surely need help 😃 .. Please suggest how to start with FiC. I have installed it on my laptop and got evaluation of my application but don't know what next.

Shakeel

Gravatar is a globally recognized avatar based on your email address. re: New User
  FoxInCloud Support - Thierry N.
  Shakeel Akhter
  Nov 13, 2019 @ 12:18pm

Hi Shakeel,

You’ll find a bunch of free learning material on the FoxinCloud site: http://foxincloud.com/how-to.php

The FoxinCloud live tutorial helps you understand the code adaptations: http://foxincloud.com/tutotest/bs/

To get efficient support from this forum, please favor specific questions and provide relevant screenshots.

We can also provide private personal support; if you’re interested please send a mail to support at foxInCloud dot com to get the conditions.

I wish you a nice journey with FoxinCloud.

© 1996-2024