February 1, 2008 at 7:46 am
Everyone,
I've got a vendor that is trying to sell us a new system developed on Visual Fox Pro. Apart from that fact, the system appears to be a quality product and would likely meet our needs from a usability standpoint.
My concern is about the Fox Pro database, and its capabilities, ease of integration, etc. I would like to know about limitations (file size, etc.), performance issues, and any gotchas I should be on the lookout for.
Any and all input is appreciated.
Thanks,
Tim
Tim Mitchell
TimMitchell.net | @tmitch.net | Tyleris.com
ETL Best Practices
February 1, 2008 at 9:29 am
How about that fact that FoxPro is no longer in the development path (although they're supporting it through 2015)?
Sorry, couldn't help it. I really don't know that much about FoxPro.
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February 1, 2008 at 10:05 am
wow - nothing quite like being 5-7 years behind the times....As in - people in 2001 knew VFP was on borrowed time.
As to the limitations - even the last version is built around the DBase/XBase file model, so any of its limitations are still in effect. The executable itself is also COM-based, so its integration into .NET components will be limited to COM integration and/or XML-based services.
It's also an end-user (not client-server) database system.
This has some fairly primer-type info on the data files and their formats.
http://www.clicketyclick.dk/databases/xbase/format/
Data types are worthy to review:
http://www.clicketyclick.dk/databases/xbase/format/data_types.html
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Your lack of planning does not constitute an emergency on my part...unless you're my manager...or a director and above...or a really loud-spoken end-user..All right - what was my emergency again?
February 4, 2008 at 7:44 pm
You can run VFP against SQL. I built an app years ago, 96-97 timeframe, and it was way ahead of VB in it's OOP capabilities.
These days I'd be more concerned over finding people to work on it if you needed it. There are some fox diehards, but fewer and fewer all the time.
February 7, 2008 at 12:03 pm
Hi,
Foxpro was a great package that was bought by MS around ten years ago. It is one of the fastest data bases around and very programmer friendly. The Foxpro community demanded that it not be included in Visual Studio .Net (I actually received email from a Foxpro MVP who was proud of this!) and while MS has been putting out new releases it is drifting. I don't think that Foxpro conforms to the MS CLR which means that it is an order of magnitude more difficult to link Foxpro to other programs.
The number of posted jobs for Foxpro is going down and so are the posted rates. This results in a talent drain from Foxpro to SQL Server/Oracle/C Sharp/Java. Foxpro, despite being a very productive product, is probably in a death spiral. (Please no flame wars). Yes I know any day now the world will realize what a great program it is and everyone will start using it again.
You as a customer should be careful buying a package written in this language. Unless you think that you will not need to update or enhance the product and you plan to stick with whatever OS you are currently on for a long time. While the company selling you the package will assure you they will support it what happens if it goes out of business? Even if you have the source code who will maintain it if the company moves on? Any savings you achieve will go out the window if you have to convert the program/data to another language.
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