XSharp "Anjou" General Release available

Congratulations to you all on a great effort. It's nice to know that when I am able to return to using xbase that there will be a modern robust tool for me to use. Keep up the excellent work!

Congrats to X# Team,

I have meeting with dev team here and we voted to give FOX# a boost, sans the X# compatibility runtime. We will use our old Vn 2.0.205.0 which is file dated 2011. Hope this works while X# runtimes is not yet available.

Btw, thanks for extending the deadline for the sweet discount. We will..

Regards,

Rene

PS: ADS compatible RDD is really a must.

Thanks Paul and hope we'll meet again in a conference in the not too far future!

Thanks Rene! About the 205 version of the runtime, this should work as well and in case there's any problem, we will make an adjustment in the compiler, it is easy enough. For ADS, the version of the RDD that was released for that vulcan build should work fine with x#, too. But it should not be difficult to adjust also newer versions of the ADS RDD to work with any runtime version.

Chris

Hi Chris,

I will give it a spin this weekend. I will re-inspire my C# app that convert table to XLS (vice versa). It uses ADS ADO.NET connector with resulting .NET DLL called from my VO app via OLEAutoObject. With ADS RDD (AdvantageRDD.DLL) which I found when I installed ADS VO32 installer. I will discover soon if this is compatible with Vn 205. I also found out that bBrowser both supported Vn 3.0 and 2.0, just have no idea what particular 2.0 version though. Anyway, X# runtime will definitely will erase guesswork on this.

I will let u know my success story... we will be in FOX# within this month. I have fairly large apps to convert to .NET and it is scary and amazing, which depends on which side I will be in the end: success or not so successful...

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Rene

Hi Rene,

Converting the c# code into x# should be easy. You don't even need to reference the vulcan runtime (I guess you didn't do that for the c# app either), so you can just create a "Core" x# app for this and simply add a reference to the same RDD dll.

About bBrowser, do you have the source code version? If yes, then the version of the runtime is not important, you can simply recompile it against the version that you do have.

Finally, about porting (very) large VO apps to x#, I don't see why the end result would not be successful. Small VO apps have already been ported in x#, porting large ones can be done the same way, it's just a matter of time and effort. Of course please don't expect that you will be able to port a million line VO app in one-two days or even a week. Depending on what stuff the code is using, it will take some weeks for sure. But as time goes by, x# becomes even more VO-compatible, so the amount of changes necessary will only decrease in the future...

Chris

Hi Chris,

Thanks for the insights, I budgeted porting to 40 days actually. I am expecting lots of problems but preparation is the key.

1. RightSLE, I used this lots. Let us see if I can port this to X#.
2. Fabtoys (Fab Ctrl, Fab PaintLib, Fab Tools, Fab Twain, Fab PaintLib Control) and lots of code embedded in our own classes that have a name that start Fab.

Soon I will discover that I do not expect.

I will have reporting classes remain in VO with Classmate and RP3, to save cost. Beside, we are moving all reports to Telerik Reporting.

Basically, X# apps will call reporting class. I hope someone can point a starting point, calling a VO DLL from X#. Anyway, I will Ginny's guide on this again if this was covered. I am good already on calling C# code from VO, so this must be easy.

I am excited of the X# runtime due to the interesting ideas of some folks building a way to move ADS to PostgreSQL. I want to see fruits of that idea.

Regards,

Rene

Hi Rene,

For RightSLE, Willie has long ago created a vulcan version for it, this should compile without trouble in x# as well. Also Fab libraries mostly compile easily in x#, with very few changes.

Yes, it is the "unexpected" things that will take most of the time. Please read the "Migrating apps from VO to X#" section of the x# help to be prepared for some of the possible hurdles you will have. Also please follow the steps described in there to port some of VO's standard samples, so you get familiar with the porting process (this is a MUST for everybody that wants to port their VO code to x#!).

About using VO libraries directly from x# (or any .Net language), the only way I see possible to do it is via COM, to register the VO code as a COM component and use it from x#. I dn't have experience with this, would be interested to know if this works in practice. Another possible option might be to have a VO .exe with the reporting functionality you need and call it "externally".

Chris

Hi Chris,

Years back (so many years....), Ginny published a "Visual Objects and .NET: Better Together". I think your could be inspired by this document with X# in mind. I am following that document in my integration work on VO and C#. However, it is VO apps who will consume the C# assemblies. I have yet to work on something in reverse: C# or X# calling VO DLL. I hope anyone can give me light on this.

Let me know if you want copy of that PDF, I will email it to you.

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Rene

[quote name="Rene J. Pajaron"]Years back (so many years....), Ginny published a "Visual Objects and .NET: Better Together". I think your could be inspired by this document with X# in mind. I am following that document in my integration work on VO and C#. However, it is VO apps who will consume the C# assemblies. I have yet to work on something in reverse: C# or X# calling VO DLL. I hope anyone can give me light on this.
[/quote]

There is the Interoperability section of the Vulcan.NET At Warp Speed guide, that pre-dates Ginny's paper. It has sections "Using COM from .NET" and "Using .NET components via COM" (e.g. from VO). You'd need to use platform invoke (_DLL FUNC) to directly call a VO DLL, although there will be conditions with that.

Paul