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Vieira and Koziol: A partnership that gave an UT Award to FRX2Word
Claudio Lassala, February 1, 2002
FoxPro Report Designer has always been a great tool, very easy and efficient. However, developers must very often design reports in a format that can be easily viewed by third parties, specially the ones that must be visualized from a non-VFP application. The only native format the rep...
FoxPro Report Designer has always been a great tool, very easy and efficient.

However, developers must very often design reports in a format that can be easily viewed by third parties, specially the ones that must be visualized from a non-VFP application.

The only native format the report designer offers to visualize a report is its text-file format, which does not give it the appearance of a report. VFP developers have always wanted to bring out a report in a DOC format or an HTML format.

To address this specific problem, john Koziol created a class he named FRX2Word, which exactly converts VFP reports into DOC or HTML files. The FRX2Word has become so successful that Universal Thread site has registered almost 9,000 downloads made to this class to date.

John Koziol is now a member of Microsoft’s Visual FoxPro development team. He appointed Brazilian Fabio Vieira -- at the time responsible for supporting this class -- to fully manage FRX2Word worldwide. Although FRX2Word is an open and free class, Fabio is now its official owner.

Claudio Lassala from Universal Thread/RapoZine had the unique opportunity to interview Fabio in person. The transcript of his interview can be read on this article, with a brief introductory interview with John Koziol.

Hi, John. First of all, thank you for granting us this interview.

You're welcome. I'm always happy to talk to VFP friends worldwide.

How did you first get Fabio Vieira to collaborate with your work?

One day I received an email from Fabio asking me if it was okay to make changes to FRX2Word. Since I publicly post the source code, my response was "sure!". The next thing I know my Inbox is stuffed with a revision. Once I examined the code, I knew Fabio was a special developer and that he was someone who I should pay attention to. After I joined Microsoft, I could think of no other person but Fabio for taking over FRX2Word.

Now, let me guess what you thought: How come, someone from Brazil who is not a soccer player?

LOL....actually, I thought, gee, I hope he has a registered copy of Visual FoxPro. Seriously, I lived in Brazil when I was very young and have always had an affinity for the people and country.

How do you face the fact that Brazil is gradually coming into sight in the worldwide VFP developers’ community?

I think it's great! Brazil is a leader in the South American IT community and I am honored that VFP is popular there! I hope to see more Brazilian developers on the newsgroups and online forums.

Thank you, John. Would you like to leave a special message for Visual FoxPro fans in Brazil?

Thanks for the opportunity, Claudio. I'd like the Brazilian community to know that we are here for them. If there's anyway I or the rest of the Fox Team can help your readers, they are welcome to email me at jkoziol@microsoft.com. I'll make sure that their concerns go to tbe appropriate party.

And now we would like to welcome Fabio Vieira. Hello Fabio. It is a great pleasure to make this interview with you at UTMag/RapoZine.

It is my pleasure to be here, Claudio.

Since when have you been working with Visual FoxPro?

I’ve been working with VFP for almost three years now. It is not a long time, but I figure it is the best tool I have ever worked with.

How did you get to know the FRX2Word class?

Approximately two years ago I was looking for an answer to a VFP-related question, and I browsed the Web in search of a newsgroup. I found an incredible amount of websites, which made me very happy to know that VFP has such a worldwide reach. I sneaked into every single website. My attention was directed to one website in particular, probably because of its visuals, so I went deeper and deeper in its exploration. It was the Universal Thread website. I was amazed by its vast content, and by its great variety of articles. But what surprised me most was the download area. As I kept browsing, I found out that many professionals make their applications and examples available for download on this website. Lots of them are freeware. Being an old BBS-geek, I felt there was a great treasure hidden underneath this website. At the time I was only a beginner in the VFP language, and I thought I discovered a class that, to my inexperienced eyes, promised a miracle: it was a tool that pledged it could convert reports from VFP into Word. That was the most incredible discovery. But my astonishment didn’t end there. I also found out that a certain John Koziol made the source code available on the net. That was really too much for my eyes! As nature has to follow its course, and my course was quite predictable, I downloaded the file and started to test it.

How did you begin to support John Koziol in improving and enhancing the FRX2Word class?

I found out that, as every miracle produced by a human being, this miracle was subject to flaws. Many flaws, as a matter of fact. I thought I should write John and report the failures and incompatibilities I found. But this thought never materialized. Since I was so interested in this class, because it matched perfectly a project I was working on, I started to make some adjustments myself. As results appeared, I got more daring, and included more and more changes, until the product seemed to be quite acceptable for my needs. After 15 days or so, I  sent John an e-mail reporting how grateful I was for him having created this extremely useful class, making it available through the Web. I told him I allowed myself to make some adjustments. I filled myself with courage and I attached a copy of these changes before clicking on the “send” button. Fact is that it seems that John was quite impressed. In no time he added my changes to the Universal Thread Website. That was the beginning of our professional “affair”. Some time and many messages after, I made one specific change in the product that resulted in a speed enhancement of about 40 per cent. This improvement triggered the release of version 1.35. I was getting very close to Word automation, which allowed me to create a Word 97 compatible class. This experience of exchanging ideas with John was truly enlightening. I was very honored when John invited me to be his co-author, assigning me the responsibility of answering user questions and doubts.

What went through your head when John announced on Universal Thread that you would be the person in charge of the worldwide support of this class, responsible for developing future enhancements for FRX2Word?

Actually, as soon as John joined the VFP staff at Microsoft, he appointed me to run the class as its owner. He said that I was the natural choice, since, unlike other professionals who have supported FRX2Word, I was the one who really handled the class with great passion. Of course I was very happy and also extremely proud. The announcement generated great feedback from Universal Thread users, who congratulated me and sent me words of incentive. I am highly motivated to run this job, and I hope to have contributed – and will contribute in the future – to revert the groundless negative image Visual FoxPro may carry in our country.

What motivates you to run a nonprofit job, that is certainly a very time-consuming work?

Well, as John mentioned, I have great passion for my work. In addition, it makes me feel great to know that I am bringing some sort of contribution to people through VFP. Of course, I cannot deny there is some pride involved as well…”

And what is it like to know that many developers around the world develop a class that is now fully under your control?

Since I have mentioned the word pride, I am proud to be a Brazilian professional who plays a direct role on the daily life of many developers around the world. If someone has a prejudice against VFP here, with a few exceptions it harms the whole world. So, if there is anything I can do to revert this situation, you can count on me.

What was your reaction when you were granted an award from Universal Thread?

When this award was launched, it arose some controversy about its creator. I would like to restate that it was John who created the class. It was his idea. All I did was add some improvement, but he was the one who had the great idea. Because of this feeling, I first wanted to refuse the award, but John strongly disagreed. He insisted in my co-authoring his work, which in fact I was doing. John mentioned that due to my work, the class was faster and more consistent. Many of the features I enhanced were attracting new users, or even recovering some users who evaded because of its problems with Word 97. So, finally, I accepted the award.

I am aware that you are involved with another project, somehow similar to FRX2Word. Can you anticipate anything about this project?

Because I am addicted to performance, I have been studying some tools that could be faster than Word in terms of automation. I know it will be difficult to keep pace with the speed of Visual Fox Pro’s report designer, but I want to try to get close to it.

The Brazilian VFP community is gradually coming into sight, and gaining worldwide attention. What do you think about this?

We sure have a huge potential here in Brazil. There are excellent, highly skilled professionals. We leave a good impression everywhere we go and all we have to do is put a lot of effort into our work. I would like to see articles from our community being published here and abroad. I am very happy to see that RapoZine and Universal Thread are joining efforts. RapoZine, accomplishing its media role, will certainly contribute to promote more Brazilian VFP developers in the worldwide scenario.

My other wish, that I already mentioned, is that professionals who develop in other languages should put their prejudice aside, giving Visual FoxPro a chance through studying it in depth. They will be amazed by its resources and by the virtually second to none speed our fox can reach.

It was great to have you here for this interview, Fabio. Thank you from the UTMag/RapoZine group. Congratulations for your great contribution to our community.

I thank you for this opportunity to speak to you and to all our readers. I also thank the Universal Thread users for having participated as beta-testers, and for having sent so many enlightening suggestions. I would like to thank John, in particular, for giving me the honor to carry our work forth. Cheers to John and to Microsoft! My only disappointment is that there is not a single Brazilian collaborator in his team. But I am sure this will change, due to the great work you are developing. Thank you again.

Claudio Lassala, Improving
Claudio Lassala is an independent Software Developer who currently works mostly building Ruby on Rails applications. Previously, he has worked for several years developing .NET applications, presented several lectures at Microsoft events such as PDC Brazil, TechEd Europe, and various other Microsoft seminars, as well as several conferences and user groups across North America, Europe and Brazil. He is a multiple winner of the Microsoft MVP Award since 2001 (for Visual FoxPro in 2001-2002, and for C# ever since). He has articles published on several magazines, such as MSDN Brazil Magazine and CoDe Magazine. He started the Virtual Brown Bag meetings (www.virtualbrownbag.com) in 2009 and have been hosting it weekly since then. When not writing code, Claudio is probably rocking out with his band, Descent Into Madness (http://www.descentintomadness.com). In a previous life, Claudio authored and presented several training videos that can be found on the Universal Thread.

John Koziol, Ultimate Software
John Koziol was an independent consultant and developer off and on for almost 20 years before joining Microsoft in 2001. Since leaving in 2005 he has been involved in several cutting-edge projects using .Net (WPF, C#), SQL Server, and other tools. He is currently a software engineer specializing in model-based testing (MBT) for Ultimate Software in Weston, Florida. He has written numerous articles on VFP related topics for both print and on-line media. He was a Charter Member MCSD and was awarded Microsoft's MVP award from 1998 through 2001. John is married and has three children.
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