> > Today I use VFP to improve my own productivity and distribute my work to a very small community.
> >
> > Foxite is a great resource for keeping me out of trouble, but someday I know I'll need to hire an expert to make my applications more robust and networkable.
> >
> > So I direct my query to you VFP consultants in Foxite land: What are the common coding practices that newbies make that I should avoid to make your consulting life easier?
> >
> > Three things I've heard on Foxite so far
> >
> > 1. Keep public variables to a minimum
> > 2. Use Hungarian notation
> > 3. Create your own subclasses of the VFP base classes
> > 4. . .
> > 5. . .
> >
> > Are there certain coding practices that make you want to tear your hair out?
> >
> > Dan Baker
> > Effort of the Poconos, PA, USA
>
> One more advise: when dealing with tables/cursors - try to use fully qualified fields' names, that is use the alias names with them, i.e.
>
>

m.CustAddr = CUSTOMERS.Address1 + CUSTOMERS.Address2
> && instead of
> SELECT CUSTOMERS
> m.CustAddr = Address1 + Address2

> First off, it would save you a line of code (no need to SELECT CUSTOMERS).
> Second, it makes your code independent of the currently selected work area.
>
> Moreover, I would recommend using the explicit reference to the pertained table's alias every time, everywhere! For instance:
>
>

REPLACE CUSTOMERS.Inception WITH DATE(), ;
>         CUSTOMERS.Category WITH "New" IN CUSTOMERS

> this would save you - and VFP - from a lot of confusions (and therefore - program errors) over what field belong to what table, especially if you have identical field names in different tables (which does happen).
>
> HTH.
>
> Regards,
>
> Ilya

But in the case of queries, please use query aliases.

SELECT C.col1, C.col2, O.col2, O.col3 
 FROM Customers AS c JOIN Orders AS O ON C.key=O.key 

It can make big multi-table queries oh so much easier to read. The View and Query Designers support this when use the Add Table dialog.

Another standard for many SQL publishers is to put SQL keywords in upper case, table names i proper case and column names in lower case. Inceases readability.

Yet another naming standard. Table names are plural, column names singualar. I dislike the VFP convention of prefixing a datatype letter to column names, but I like the advise in the HGelp topic 'Object Naming Conventions" and "Naming Conventions" (except for table column naming).

-Anders

-Anders