Overview of my first MM project:
The company that I work for has created an application that is used in the Steel Fabrication Industry called MRP. It has over 50+ Man-years of development in it, starting way back in Fox Dos days. Now I am task to learn/evaluate etc. MM for VFP by starting to create an application that has the working name of System Administration (SA).

Certain functionality will be ‘ripped’ from MRP and placed into SA, and additional functionality will be added SA. In general SA is designed to ‘care for’ MRP. For example when table structures need to be update SA will do that.

I have been reading/skimming the DevGuide for MM and up to page 275 ( of 425 ) as I read a section of interest I sometimes attempt to try out what is being discussed. For example I semi-understand how to make new menus, how to create a basic Biz Object, and sub class the framework, but of course with less then 25 hours working with MM I have A LOT to learn. <s>

Note I am using MM 7.0

What I am doing now:
The first ‘trick’ I want SA to do is to run a diagnosis on the health of MRP. Even more focused I want SA to check to make sure that MRP has certain files available. I have created a table of files that are needed and the start of a biz object that works with that table. ( Files_Needed_BizObj ) One piece of information that will need to be given to the Biz Object is the directory where the main MRP exe should exist. I believe that DIR location information should be stored via the System Settings Object, which I see how to do via goApp.SetSettings and goApp.GetSettings.

So my very short-term development plan is to do the following:
1) Figure out what form class to use to base a simple question to the user: Where is the main app?
2) I assume that the CdirectoryPref class will be of some use.
3) Add a call to the form from the menus

Later I will attempt to create a ‘higher’ level ‘BizObj’ (Diagnosis) that does not have any data access that will interact with the Files_Needed_BizObj.

Some questions:
1) Is what I am doing a reasonable approach to learning MM?
2) Is there some sort of MM Read only BizObj? I ask this because in this diagnosis case there is no saving of information just reading. Reports are also like that. Should a BizObj be skipped and the data be accessing via some other process?
3) Is storing the Main MRP Dir in the system prefs table a good idea? ( BTW I am using the INI, not the register )
4) What should I base the “Where is the main app?” question form?