Welcome

Welcome to the filePro Full Reference Manual. This resource has been developed to satisfy a wide range of audiences ranging from new filePro users to our loyal filePro programming experts. The How Do I ? and filePro Menu Options topics serve as guides to get you started if you are a beginner and contains links to Advanced Concepts and Expert topics. By focusing on practical usage of the language, these guides are intended to familiarize you with filePro at each level. It is up to you to learn more of the syntax later as you find the need for it. By merely being creative and trying out your ideas with these guides, you will undoubtedly propel yourself into areas that will force you to learn more. It is at these points that you should stop and more thoroughly investigate the reference topics and other sections of the fPmanual.

Disclaimer

This documentation is distributed by fP Technologies Inc of Ohio for your use with licensed copies of filePro and may not be distributed except as covered by the filePro license agreements. In using this documentation, you assume all risks arising from the use of this documentation. fP Technologies Inc or its suppliers are not liable for any damages (including, without limitation, damages for loss of business profits, business interruption, loss of business information, or other loss) arising out of the use of or the inability to use the documentation.

The How Do I ? topic guides you through the design of a typical relational database application. This section is highly recommended if you are new to filePro or if you have a need to refresh your memory on some advanced concepts. Depending on your level of filePro programming experience, you may want to skip some of the sub-topics, but at least give each topic a cursory review to get an idea of what information is presented. The topic order is meant to indicate a structured path of increasing familiarity with the program and not meant to categorize your ability or that of the package at any level of understanding. The most expert filePro programmers may not use or even know about some simple technique that a beginner uses quite productively.

Getting from point A to point B - There are as many different ways to solving a business problem as there are programmers. The wonderful thing about filePro is that it can always start as a blank screen, a blank output format, and a blank processing table. There are some standards, conventions, and ways of thinking that will help you program more quickly and more universally.

The filePro Menu Items topic contains a section for each of the filePro menu items. If you are new to filePro, review the beginning of each section within this topic to become acquainted with the filePro environment and each of the filePro menu options. At the beginning of each section, you will see links to Advanced Concepts, and Expert sections within the section. You can click on these links to quickly move to the more advanced areas within each section.

The fileProODBC topic provides information relative to using ODBC related commands and functions. The feature was separately licensed up until version 5.7 when it was added to the base product as a standard feature.

The Glossary topic provides common computer and filePro terminology.

You will probably use the References topic more than any other once you start designing in filePro. It provides references to all filePro commands, system maintained fields, environment variables, etc. with code examples.

The Revision History topic has been added to provide a complete historical record of things that have been changed in filePro. If you are not running a current release, make sure to check this topic before reporting bugs since you may find that your bug has already been addressed in a later release.

The Technical Notes topic provides information that is important to filePro users depending on platform or the specific version you are using.

This Terminal Guide contains key usage for common terminal types, key label codes and other information related to filePro's termcap for the Unix based operating systems.

The Utilities section describes commonly used filePro Utilities.