The Fox Is Gone
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Or at least going. Foxpro is being discontinued by Microsoft, with Visual Foxpro 9 being the last version. Version 10 has been discontinued and instead a final enhancement, code-named "Sedna", will be released along with SP2 this summer.
That's a bit of a sad news for me. Foxpro was an environment that I enjoyed working in. My first database apps were dBase III and IV, which I migrated to a compiled environment with the Clipper language and a Blinker compiler. From there I made the leap to FoxPro for DOS and the Visual Foxpro. I really enjoyed those early applications, opening each database file and index, managing the maintenance and eventually moving from a procedural to an event driven model. My first Visual Foxpro application was actually against SQL Server and at the time, it was a much better environment than Visual Basic to build applications in.
I haven't written a bit of Visual Foxpro in years, but I thought that it was a great language and environment to work in. I guess that more people are working in VB and C# and those languages make it very easy to build database applications these days, so Foxpro may be a bit redundant.
However it's a niche, and a loyal niche. If I were giving advice to Microsoft, and I am, spin off the FoxPro group. Fund them, give the team a large percentage of ownership, and see if they can continue to build, grow, support, and help Foxpro users everywhere. The revenue from moving Fox users to VB can't be that great and it would give a great piece of software the chance to live on.
Alternatively, release it as open source and let people do with it as they wish.
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I remember reading about this last week. I had never heard of FoxPro until I applied for a Y2K programmer position. I had VB experience and writing interfaces for Access databases, so the company had figured that since I had the basic knowledge and I was a quick learner, they'd bring me on. I only spent a few months in that position, as it was a summer thing between college semesters, but I actually enjoyed learning FoxPro and working with it.
Even where I am now, part of our systems still use FoxPro tables and procedures.
And the fact that its roots are here in Ohio gives me a cozy feeling. It's nice to know that something good can come out of here, technology-wise.
Found a great background on FoxPro here:
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Microsoft have told them VFP will not be continued since 2001 developer's are just not updating their skills. I am assuming most have not changed skills because of cost, but Microsoft in one way or another paid for the early adopters in .NET 1.1 and there are plenty for free video training in 2.0 so all they have to do is make time for study and practice.
Kind regards,
Gift Peddie -
It looks like they are releasing "Sedna" under a "Shared Source Initiative"... That's probably about as close to true "Open Source" as we're likely to see on this one, at least for another 10 years or so...
Who wants to take bets on when MS going to dump Jet? Do I hear 5 years? 7?
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I was disappointed when Microsoft purchased Foxpro because I knew then it would be the end of a great product. Years later, I am again disappointed to see a great product to be discontinued.
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Honestly, I never used FoxPro, but I was nevertheless a little sad to see the news that it's being retired. However, if it will live on as a quasi-open-source project, then maybe some of the FoxPro developers still out there will keep it alive long enough to develop it into some future version.
I'm amazed FoxPro lasted this long given how aggressive Microsoft has been in promoting SQL Server.
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A SQL query walks into a bar and sees two tables. He walks up to them and asks, "Can I join you?"
Ref.: http://tkyte.blogspot.com/2009/02/sql-joke.html -
I'm not a Foxpro developer, yet I must comment on what you said, Steve. If for no other reason than healthy PR, Microsoft should do what you have suggested. Your suggestions are business-sound, PR-savvy and developer-humane. Thanks for your observations.
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That's what is so stupid about Microsoft's move. Foxpro is a superb front end for SQL Server. It's as easy to manipulate SQL Server data in Foxpro as it is to deal with native Foxpro data. And for ETL applications Foxpro is a much better tool than DTS. The real problem is that the average Microsoftie hasn't got a clue when it comes to data management and manipulation.
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I never became a fan of FoxPro but I am a great fan of the people who came to Microsoft when they bought Fox Software. As was their usual practice, Microsoft bought the company because they had really smart people.
Many of these continued to improve FoxPro over the years, and quite a few others used their talents to bring improvements to other Microsoft products.
"Rushmore" indexing technology came from Fox and was implemented in MS Access for version 2.0. Client-side cursors came from the FoxPro team at Microsoft and later made their way into ADO and other data access technologies.
We owe a great debt to the FoxPro team for their contributions to Access and SQL Server over the years!
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I'm disappointed as well, but I can't say I'm surprised. As others have stated it's really amazing that MS supported it as long as they did.
It's a shame, really. I have done a lot of programming in VFP and other database tools over the past twelve years, and I haven't encountered another environment that has as good a balance of ease of development, flexibility, powerful data manipulation commands, native database engine speed, and robustness. The user community for FoxPro (as small as it's become) is more helpful and supportive (and vocal) than any other I've worked with.
I'm sure that, given the Cult of the Fox, that community will continue, especially if VFP is opened up. But it's too bad that MS was never able to find the right niche for this excellent product.
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I saw a few notes that only the add-ins will be Shared Source, meaning you'll need VFP9 to use them. I guess someone could adapt them back to 6, 7, or 8.
I also saw a note from Alan Griver that there was too much Intellectual Property (IP) in the core VFP code. I can understand that, as there's been a great deal of investment over the years in this product. When it came out as the upgrade, it was miles ahead of VB in terms of OOP and the dev environment for writing apps.
What I don't get is what is the value of the IP if they end of life the product? I can understand not doing it now, and maybe even delaying a few years, but I know that once they stop selling it, likely a 2008-2009 time, is there that much IP in there? Even if parts of the code are used in VB, who knows? Or who suffers?
It's not .NET, so this is legacy style coding. I'm not sure there's a lot of IP value when the product is discontinued, even if code is used elsewhere.
At the very least, letting this IP go, even in 2011 or 2015 when support goes away, would provide some interesting teaching code and enable others to extend this platform into the .NET or even *nix platforms. It's not that the code couldn't be duplicated, but the 1,000 people who have skills here don't have the time to develop it from scratch. However they might be interested in enhancing or building on the platform.
I'd even suggest they release it under some Shared Source license and force people to use it for learning and rewrite modules to use them. That way they could do a service for people and even their employees, who may want to leave and support the product themselves. If Microsoft doesn't want to monetize it, then why should they prevent others from doing so? That doesn't really serve their shareholders in a meaningful way. Even forcing conversions to .NET doesn't necessarily generate a ton of revenue. Not nearly what the Goodwill would be.
BTW, I took a VFP class a long time ago from Alan Griver. It was one of the few classroom training events I've been in that I really learned a lot and enjoyed.
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That is not true, VFP even in the current version have primitive data type definition, you just have not been exposed to powerful DTS solutions going back to SQL Server 7.0. I worked for a bank using DTS to move DB2 AS400 deposits to SQL Server four hours a day five days a week. ETL is actually relational calculus VFP is not even algebraic one of the reason ANSI SQL users will not touch it.
Kind regards,
Gift Peddie -
Hehe... I won't miss it, but it does hold a little nostalgia for me. It's what we used in college in my first DB design class
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FoxPro was my first dB experience and was on SCO Xenix!
I still have a current application running on a FoxPro version far older than what is current (but no longer on unix) and it still runs everyday.
Why, I learned to hack my first dB with it when a user totally messed the setup and password file up by typing in gibberish during an add new company procedure. The user totally hosed the whole table to the point nobody could log on to any of the applications.
Yep, those where the good old days...
Wasn't that just last week?
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I thought officially Jet is dumpped just not all support on it yet has been dumpped. No more MDAC updates at all since 2.8a 2 years ago (as I recall).
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