Microsoft Puts FoxPro Out to Pasture — I’m surprised Microsoft let this live as long as it did. FoxPro stemmed from the Database wars of the late 1980’s and was bought by Microsoft to essentially kill the compatibility competition, namely DBASE and Clipper. Probably the mysterious death of hyper-promoter George Tate of Ashton-Tate had done more to kill the business than Microsoft’s acquisition. I should probably write up a “Whatever Happened to..” for all this someday.
Microsoft will continue to support the Visual FoxPro core until 2015 with standard support through January 2010 and extended support through January 2015 via the developer tools life-cycle support plan, Microsoft officials said.
Meanwhile, some of the FoxPro-related technology can be seen in other Microsoft products such as SQL Server, Team Foundation Server and various portions of the .Net Framework, Griver said. Indeed, some observers have said they could detect a link between FoxPro and Microsoft’s LINQ (Language Integrated Query) technology.
related links:
Link to a great FoxPro Site — a great gateway
It was a great product for a long, long time. I made a living with it for years and years, and believe me, there are still a LOT of apps out there running daily in FoxPro. Whether they should be is another issue, of course, but that’s the fact.
It was a great time, a great community. I’m glad I got to be a part of it.
One of my company’s main applications is written in FoxPro and I write and maintain FoxPro code every day. I will glad to see it go.
Okay.. where are those 5.25″ disks with my copy of FoxPro?….
[shuffle, shuffle, shuffle]
J/P=?
Open FoxPro anyone?
On some level I can see that with .Net and SQL that it isn’t really relevant anymore. On the open-source side, there is the mainstay of PHP and mySQL. I guess I’m bothered by it because both of those technologies, to me, are far more difficult and overly complicated then VFP. It “just works” for me and my mind is much attuned to how it works.
In 1992-1998, our company used FoxPro to write a user interface application to operate a touch screen based Police/Fire/Ambulance radio and telephone dispatch system used in public safety installations. This FoxPro application was written by FoxPro guru Ken Levy. The Los Angeles CHP used one of these systems to dispatch CHP officers for over 12 years. Some of these systems are still in use.
#4
With an EULA that will scare away folks from using it. 😉
Glad to see it go. I have made a living converting users from foxpro and various other flat systems to SQL server for years. This announcement just gives me even more oppurtunities. Now if only M$ would kill of Access.
Ya, Ken is a cool guy, we’ve met a number of times, last time being at Montreal’s http://www.DevTeach.com of which I’m a sponsor of.
I’ve been using Foxpro and Visual Foxpro (now is version 9) since 1989.
Until Dot Net 2.0, and Free MS SQL Express (free under 4gig in size database), never had much reason to use anything else, VFP basically has it all, royalty free.
IOW, I could replicate any 100,000$+ system with VFP, and actually make it better faster in some cases, with a 800$ product.
Comparing licensing, server hardware, for 75 concurrent users.
That is not good news for Microsoft that makes a bundle with licensing, it can’t have all small & medium sized businesses.
Ever since Microsoft acquired Foxpro, it has merged to good stuff like RUSHMORE and LINQ into it’s own competing products.
Open Source ? Never – there’s too much valuable C++ code in there that’s being used in other MS products like Access.
“Foxpro” — 80’s marketing: FOX – sounds sexy, geeks will want to virtually hump it. PRO – sounds powerful, executives wanting their geeks to hum will virtually adopt it. So, it’s more like, the “HUMPSELL” database. 🙂
There are still WONDERFUL STABLE alternatives to Foxpro/Microsoft: the LEADER being PERVASIVE (formerly BTrieve). Runs LOTS of NIFTY, STABLE, HIGHLY USEFUL SOFTWARE such as SAGE BUSINESSWORKS.
Sage software BLOWS AWAY the competition.
@Pervade me
You cant be talking about the same Sage that created TeleTragic errrr I mean TeleMagic? I’ve spent the last several years of my life supporting that steaming mound….
In the hands of the right company Visual FoxPro would have evolve even further and be a killer product to compete heavily with the .NET. Microsoft never promoted Visual FoxPro as one could hope, but it is the fastest database/software engine that ever was created. Usually my clients don’t care what language is used as long as it is cost effective and has powerful features. With Visual FoxPro you can easily develop either web based or desktop application and it is also a royalty free database, which is very affordable to many small shops.
Visual FoxPro will never die and still there are many users out there that are still using FoxPro applications which were developed under the DOS Operating System.
With Visual FoxPro I developed several commercial products and one of them which is sold all over world is a Report and Query Engine found at: http://www.dfarber.com/vRep.htm