Total Visual CodeTools, produced by FMS, Inc., is by far my favorite third-party product. In a nutshell, Total Visual CodeTools automates many of the more mundane development tasks. This helps you to get your job done more quickly and allows you to focus on the fun and exciting aspects of application development. Total Visual CodeTools' features are divided into the following categories:
Code Cleanup
Code Delivery
Code Builders
Coding Tools
Standards Management
My favorite Total Visual CodeTools feature is Code Cleanup. If you've ever inherited a code-intensive database, you'll appreciate this feature. The Code Cleanup feature in Total Visual CodeTools automates the process of adding error handling and comments to the procedures that you build. It helps you to standardize code indentations, apply your variable naming convention, and sort the procedures that you write. All these features help you write code that is more readable, robust, and maintainable.
Figure 31.1 shows the cleanup options available. Notice that you can use Code Cleanup to add module, procedures, and property comments. You can also use Code Cleanup to add Error Handling to your application procedures. Figure 31.2 shows the Standards dialog box. This dialog box allows you to customize the cleanup style, error handling, comments, naming conventions, and other options used when cleaning up your application code.
Total Visual CodeTools also helps you with Code Delivery, which can get your application ready for deployment. The Code Delivery features include the capability to add line numbering to the code that you write, which helps you identify the line on which a runtime error occurred. This significantly simplifies the process of fixing bugs. Total Visual CodeTools allows you to remove comments, blank lines, stop statements, and debug statements from code. The resulting compressed code requires less memory and runs more efficiently.
Figure 31.3 shows the Delivery Options dialog box. This powerful dialog box allows you to designate the specifics of the process. For example, you can specify whether you want the process to remove Debug statements from your code.
The other features included in CodeTools include a procedure builder, property builder, SQL builder, recordset builder, message box builder, and more. The tool is so comprehensive that there are too many options to describe in this chapter. I strongly recommend that you download a demo copy of this very powerful product from http://www.fmsinc.com and try it. I'm sure that you will find it well worth the price of admission!