Developing Applications with the Project Manager

Article
10/23/2006

The Project Manager is the primary organizational tool for working with data and objects in Visual FoxPro. A project is a collection of files, data, documents, and Visual FoxPro objects that is saved as a file with a .pjx extension.

You can use the Project Manager to organize and manage files as you create tables and databases, write queries, set up forms and reports, and build applications.

You can begin creating your own project by adding existing Visual FoxPro .dbf files to a new project, or by using the sample files located in the Visual FoxPro \Samples\Data directory.

Viewing what Is in Your Project

The Project Manager presents an organized, hierarchical view of your data. To focus on a particular type of file or object in your project, choose the appropriate tab.

When you are setting up tables and databases and creating forms, queries, views, and reports, you work primarily with the items shown under the Data and Documents tabs.

Locating Data Files

The Data tab in the Project Manager contains all the data for a project: the databases, free tables, queries, and views.

Databases are sets of tables, usually related to each other through common fields. To support the tables and relationships, you can also include views, connections, stored procedures, business rules, and triggers in your database. You create a database with the Database Designer. Database files have a .dbc extension. For details, see Designing Databases and Creating Databases.

Free tables are tables that are not part of a database and are stored in a file with a .dbf extension. For details, see

Queries are a structured way to request specific information stored in tables. Using the Query Designer, you format a question that extracts records from your tables based on the criteria you enter. Queries are SQL-Select commands saved as text files with a .qpr extension. For details, see Creating Queries.

Views are specialized queries that enable you to access both local and remote data and allows for update of data sources by making changes to the records returned by the query. Views exist only within a database and are not independent files. For more information about views, see Creating Views.

Locating Form and Report Files

The Documents tab contains all the documents you use when working with data: forms for entering and viewing data, and reports and labels for printing tables and query results.

Forms are used to display and edit the contents of tables. Creating Forms with the Form Designer is discussed in Creating Forms.

Reports are files that tell Visual FoxPro how to format and print the results of queries run on tables. Labels are special reports formatted to print on label stock. For details, see Adding Reports and Labels.

The other tabs — Classes, Code, and Other — are primarily used when creating applications for end users.

Viewing File Details

The items in the Project Manager are organized in an outline view that you can expand or collapse to look at different levels of detail.

A plus sign (+) appears next to a symbol if there are one or more items of that type in the project. Click the plus sign (+) to display the names of items of that type in the project.

For example, click the plus sign next to the Free Tables symbol to see the names of free tables in the project.

To collapse a list once it is expanded, click the minus sign that appears next to the list.

Application Development

The Project Manager allows you to compile your completed application, but in the development phase of the application, the Project Manager makes it easy to design, modify, and run the individual components of your application.

When you use the Project Manager, you can:

Modify and run pieces of your application (forms, menus, programs) with just a few clicks.
Drag classes, tables, and fields from the Project Manager to the Form Designer or Class Designer.
Drag classes between class libraries.
View and modify your tables and databases easily.
Add descriptions for the components in your application.
Drag-and-drop elements between projects.

For information about compiling applications, see Compiling an Application.