Tamar...

I rec'd my April 2000 issue today....

Let's see what we have here...

An introduction to OLE-DB by none other than that expert of experts - Miriam Liskin. Just to show you how much bias there is in the magazine, there are no references to my two previous ADO articles in FPA. In addition, Miriam does not mention the white paper I wrote for MSDN.

Basically, everything in her article is a re-hash of what has already been covered. Again, Miriam glosses over, in a very superficial manner, technical material worthy of better coverage. Then again, it is old territory. After all, I pretty much covered all of this in my prior two articles.

However, I would like to highlight this one statement in the piece:

"OLE-DB also supports client-side cursors and disconnected recordsets - that is, it can create a local copy of remote data..."

A few points need to be made here... First off, OLE-DB by itself knows nothing. Rather, it is the joining of OLE-DB and an OLE-DB provider that determines what can be done. This is an important distinction. In fact, she really does not discuss what OLE-DB Providers are...

The most laughable point occurs at the end of the piece:

"The biggest barrier is the lack of adequate documentation..." and then she goes on to say: 'don’t expect these resources to include VFP-specific material..."

Excuse me; what the hell is the MSDN White Paper "ADO Jumpstart for VFP Developers" supposed to be???

There are many other issues with the piece, but I will refrain from further details...unless of course, I am pressed for a further explanation...

Miriam.... hear this: Your technical and writing abilities regarding the subject matter your profess to know so much about.... is sub par.

Tamar...yet again, your lack of technical ability sheds more light on why FPA is regarded as a sub-par publication. Why don't you do the honorable thing, step down entirely, and give FPA a chance at success? How on earth do you not put in references to my FPA articles in the piece or a reference to my ADO white paper? They are obviously germane to the piece.... Clearly, your bias is showing through. Your objectivity is gone. Then again, the existence of objectivity at any time could be debated...

Of course, you did make sure to place a well-placed free advertising spot in your editorial with respect to your book. Based on your commentary, it sounds as though your book will be nothing more than a re-hash of the help files... Gee, I cannot wait to read that gem... Tell me Tamar, did you spend all of your time in the help files, or did you actually spend time actually seeing how VBA works????

Lets see what else is in the April issue:

MTS - Great article by Rick - as usual...

VFP/Windows CE - A nice surprise. However, the article is too short.

Incremental Search Grids - Are you kidding me??? If anything is has been beaten to death, it is the topic of incremental search grids. In fact, I helped to write the first one with Kim Draeger when we were both at MEI. That was 7, count'em, 7 years ago. And since that time, there have been re-hashes of that material...

Trapping VFP events - Again, you are kidding me. That is really cutting edge, placing code to see when the different events fire? Newsflash, the event logger in the debugger does this. With limited space in the magazine, is this the type of material we need? Perhaps it is suitable as a web article. However, in the printed magazine, no way.

The magazine would have been better served by not publishing these two articles, and instead, expanding the VFP/Windows CE article, which could have been very good.

All of this serves as more evidence of the shabby editorial direction with which you have led, excuse me, misled FPA....