In working with all of you here I have discovered that Fox Pro can acomodate-one way or another-anything that one can think of. It is time tested and very powerful. Why has it fallen into disfavor? Or is it in disfavor? Seems that most people I talk too have not heard of it and quickly start talking about Access.
Does anyone know what Microsofts Future plans are for FOX? Is 9 the last release? I hope that it is supported over the years since you can do most anything with it and I am learning it.
D
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According to the article at http://www.eweek.com/c/a/A
The good news is that FoxPro will be supported by MS until 2015, and that portions of the code from the improvements in 9.0 will used for other projects. Finally, as stated in that article, your FoxPro database can be converted to.Net at www.VFPConversion.com.
I realize this isn't the news you were hoping for, but at least this provides you with some information regarding the fate of the good 'ol Fox.
Dave
All you would have to do would be to Google for Foxpro to get LOTS of opinions on this topic.
Foxpro/Visual Foxpro has always been a 'red-headed stepchild' from the Marketing perspective. And with limited marketing effort it was not as well 'recognized' for its advanced attributes by the general programmer audience. The significantly better marketed VB, VC, VC++, etc were considered to be a more 'mainstream' programming approach despite historically fewer capabilities. Therefore a much larger developer audience was created around these so-called 'mainstream' application languages and that larger pool of developers has led some to think of VFP as a 'lesser' or even 'unknown' language.
That misguided perception has lead to many non-technical people having a less-than accurate opinion of the capabilities of FP/VFP.
Regardless of history, Microsoft has indeed decided to not go forward with Visual Foxpro beyond Version 9. They are focusing their foreseeable future on .NET languages.
Support for FP/VFP has always been limited and/or hard to get directly from Microsoft. Instead it has come largely from forums like this one and I believe that this support approach will be an on-going resource for a good while to come.
That having been said, the 'future' of Visual Foxpro is a matter of opinion.
If an application developed in Pascal or COBOL is still working well after 25 years or more, should the language be considered 'dead'?
There are many, many applications that are still working well after 25+ years that were developed in FP/VFP. And there are many, many applications being developed today with VFP.
If you are attempting to make a 'sales' job to your management (a group not always tuned into the technical advantages of languages) about which language to develop a new application in, then you might face a challenge convincing them that VFP is a GOOD and VIABLE language to use as opposed to VB.NET or C++, etc.
If you are considering what development path you might want to take for your own career, then going with some .NET language would put you into a more 'mainstream' marketable position.
However if you are considering converting an old FP application then there is no doubt that the effort to bring it into the 21st Century would be significantly easier if you were to go with VFP9. And, if the application were well written before, it might continue working for many, many years.
In summary the answer to most all of your questions is - "It Depends..."
Good Luck
Microsoft did a great job in marketing VB, C# and .Net stuff and it did a great job in Visual FoxPro. FoxPro was great (the best) even before Microsoft bought it. FoxPro is the most versatile, stable and has everything in one. Visual Studio's stuff is based on millions of components and thus is not very stable.
I personally program in Visual FoxPro only. My team develops in .Net. They suffer from instability in development and deployment on Microsoft platforms. When I compiled my applications for Windows, DOS, Mac using FoxPro, I never had any problems with compatibility.
FoxPro was discontinued for:
1) Non direct Unicode Supper
2) No Security in the DBF structure database
3) Most importantly, Microsoft was losing money not selling enough Access, .Net and SQL.
Access is very easy to learn. Most people can use it.
FoxPro is easy or hard depending on what level you are or what you are trying to achieve. But it is the best. It does everything.
.Net has a high curve to learn. It will get there in another 5 years that we can totally shift from FoxPro.
My 16-bit and 32-bit applications in FoxPro are running perfectly well. Specially the ones I build in DOS. They are running on Vista perfectly fine.
There is an application which I built in one day in FoxPro. It took my .Net certified developer 10 days to build it in .Net.
Two of my multinational clients have asked me personally to develop market research software for them in FoxPro. Both have a Visual Studio team.
If I want to build a small utility that runs on all Microsoft Platforms without any library, I use Real Basic on Mac and Compile for PC. FoxPro has one library file. I am still counting the ones for Visual Studio. :-)
One reason Microsoft killed FoxPro was that its greatest strength was also its guarantee of obsolescence: the FoxPro database engine. The desktop / file-sharing database architecture became a redundant technology as client-server DBMS became far cheaper and easier as well as more powerful, scalable and secure. File based database applications were a technology of the 1980s but are no match for the priorities of most corporate IT departments and network environments of today. Yes Access has survived but only because it appeals to power users and information workers rather than just developors. As a development language Access is certainly eclipsed by .NET, Java, et al.
>> what database language would you learn and hope to
>> continue to use over the next 10 years?
None. I wouldn't bet one cent on any technology lasting 10 years. For sure some technologies will be around that long but why assume you need to limit your options? Most business quite rightly expect a return on IT investments within 3 years anyway. My advice would be to be prudent, keep in touch with what's happening in the market place, keep your skills sharp and up-to-date and don't bet your career or your business on any one technology.
Hi Malibucompany,
It's rather surprising, that it's still a surprise to some people after the announcement to discontinue VFP is already over two years old. Take a look here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/
Looking back we can see the shadows of this were already casted rather early, as VFP was seperated from the Visual Studio Suites with VFP7 in 1999, because mainly it's concept of macro substitution weren't in line with the .NET concept of JIT compilation, neither as managed nor as unmanaged code. I think the dynamic nature of VFP wouldn'T even fit into the new DLR of .NET for dynamic languages like IronPython or IronRuby. On the other side, you might get comfortable with one of these two .NET languages, if not with C# or VB.NET
You might rather migrate to Access with it's similar structure of an incorporated database and it's relatively similar VBA language.
From my personal professional perspective: In the last two years I migrated an enterprise application from VFP9 to VFP9 in the past two years, the migration was not a migration away from VFP, but the backend changed from VFP DBC to SQL Server 2005.
For the hobbyist or freelancer it might be more important to migrate to a newer technology than for programmers working in or for larger companies with less dynamic and flexible IT landscape of applications interacting with each other and each other's data.
In general I see new jobs rather being migration jobs, nevertheless VFP doesn't loses it's advantages of a royalty free database, it's performance on single desktop applications and some more. As long as some of the lacks which were already mentioned with missing Unicode support and it's size limitations are of no interest, VFP is still a good choice for developers very familliar with VFP of course. You can't buy knowlegde in another language with money only, this also is a time investment, which can be a limiting factor even for new projects.
The future surely isn't VFP, but the community is still thriving, see VFPX and VFPY on codeplex.
Bye, Olaf.
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by: Miss_SellaneusPosted on 2009-10-31 at 16:48:54ID: 25712080
As a former Foxpro consultant, I can tell you it is DEAD.