Sunday, April 18, 2010

Foxpro Support - Future of Foxpro

Why should I invest in converting to Visual FoxPro when Microsoft will no longer support foxpro after 2015?
Visual FoxPro with its integrated Database, Object-Oriented Development Environment, SQL Engine and Report Writer delivers more capability, and more real Rapid Application Development potential, in a single, (relatively) lightweight, royalty-free distributable form than any other product on the market.
One of the main reasons for Microsoft stopping foxpro support is that Visual FoxPro does not fit into the Microsoft "vision" for software development where everything generates revenue for Microsoft.
Migrating to .Net with a SQL Server requires an investment in hardware and support capabilities and that is more expensive in both the short term (initial acquisition), and the long term (maintenance and support)
.NET/SQL Server combination falls short as a replacement environment for the type of LAN-Based, Desktop PC, application that is the traditional home of the VFP Application.
The vast majority of small/medium sized businesses run applications that are LAN-based on desktop PCs and have neither the infrastructure, nor the capability (let alone the money) to re-architect their environments to maximize compatibility for .net.
As there will be no new versions, VFP will not be able to take advantage of new operating systems, or hardware, that may come along. But, as long as operating systems continue to support 32-bit applications (all OS existing today support 32 bit) then VFP will continue to work and applications and investment in VFP will continue to be viable.
The increasing reliability and capability of virtual servers that allow different operating systems to run concurrently on the same physical hardware, opens up a whole new future for VFP
Running a VFP application on a virtual server that has Windows XP or other 32-bit OS means that existing foxpro applications continue to work, as they do now, but it is also possible to still take advantage of new hardware and new software for other functions.
Even without the virtual server there are plenty of FoxPro for Dos and FoxPro 2.6 for Windows applications still running today. These were designed for 16 bit environments yet they still work adequately many years after the product in which they were created passed out of existence. So it will be with Visual FoxPro.




Is FoxPro or Visual FoxPro dead? Should I convert my FoxPro / Visual FoxPro application to something else?
Microsoft’s announcement about stopping support to Visual FoxPro just means that Microsoft will not make any more changes to Visual FoxPro. But they do not need to as VFP programs runs fine on today’s computers. As long as a computer with a 32 bit operating system is provided, Visual FoxPro applications can be run on that computer.
Microsoft has not supported FoxPro for DOS for since the late 90s but there are still thousands of such programs in use today.
According to Alan Griver, head of Visual Studio data team at Microsoft, there are more applications running in FoxPro 2.6 than there are in Visual FoxPro and FoxPro 2.6 hasn't been supported since the 90’s. Visual FoxPro 9 will be supported by Microsoft through 2015.
Once the time does come to convert Visual FoxPro applications, which will not be at least until the end of the next decade, there will be technologies available that are vastly superior to the alternatives available today. So, if you go to the enormous expense of converting to say .NET with a SQL backend, you may find yourself converting again in 10 years.
Concerns about the future of Visual Foxpro are not sustainable atleast until the end of the next decade or even further. An investment in either upgrading or enhancing your current Foxpro program now will be secure for the future and until a time when a better technology can be found that would provide the same robustness, effectiveness and cost economy a Foxpro program would. There will be programmers and developers who will keep providing Foxpro support for applications in the forseeable future.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Advantages of Visual Foxpro

The Visual FoxPro software development system is used in designing sophisticated database applications. Visual FoxPro is an optimal software development platform for many situations and work environments. The following are the advantages and disadvantages of using Visual FoxPro for your software development:

Visual FoxPro Advantage - Programming toolsWith Visual FoxPro, procedural Xbase and object-oriented (OOP) programming can be combined to create this planet's most powerful and sophisticated software applications. Xbase and OOP provide the developer with tools to manipulate data, non-visual program objects, and GUI objects with pinpoint control. This allows the design and development of user-friendly applications that can manage highly complex information and business processes. Visual FoxPro is by far the best tool for software development projects and database applications that are central to an organization's information management.

Visual FoxPro Advantage - Flexibility
Visual FoxPro exposes an extremely large quantity of properties, events and methods (PEMs), which can be accessed and manipulated with VFP programming code. By combining Xbase and OOP with PEMs, developers can create applications which provide maximum ease of use and high levels of sophistication at the same time. This type of software development gives Visual FoxPro an unparalleled advantage over most, if not all, competing software development products.

Visual FoxPro Advantage - Data driven applications
Due to it's ability to concurrently open and manipulate an almost unlimited quantity of tables and cursors, Visual FoxPro has become an indispensable software development tool for creating data driven software applications. This kind of flexibility extends data functionality and the types of data that can be utilized within a software application. Data driven functionality can be used to automatically configure an application to individual preferences and configure interfaces according to changing conditional data. In a properly designed Visual FoxPro application, the interaction between "data" and "Interface" is continuous and dynamic.

Visual FoxPro Advantage - Data processing and analysis
Visual FoxPro is a highly efficient and flexible tool for creating data processing routines and analyses for large and dispersed volumes of data records. Visual FoxPro provides the ability to create the same types of standard SQL queries, which are included with most other database development products.

However, the Xbase language allows data processing to go above and beyond the standard SQL query. Xbase is able to process data in ways that traditional SQL statements simply cannot handle. During software development, a programmer can create programs which use only Xbase, or use Xbase and SQL in mutually serving combinations. Regardless of which method is used, the ability to use both Xbase and SQL has made Visual FoxPro the leading software development tool for processing and analyzing large complex volumes of data.

Visual FoxPro Advantage - Supports high volumes of data
Visual FoxPro is the perfect solution for organizations with moderate to high levels of data transactions. Each data table within a Visual FoxPro database can support up to 2 Gigabytes of data or 1 billion records. Keep in mind that this capacity is for "each" table within a database, not the entire database. If software development is done properly, this provides you with an almost unlimited database capacity . With proper database management, Visual FoxPro will easily and efficiently handle "most" user environments and situations.

Visual FoxPro is by far the most cost effective and efficient software development solution for the medium to large size company.

Visual FoxPro Advantage - Web application development
Visual FoxPro is the ultimate software development tool for building Internet applications. VFP is a powerful software development tool for building the next generation of web applications, including web services and desktop software applications that efficiently send and receive data across the Internet. The future of the Web is about using the Internet as a global network, where we can connect our desktop and web site applications to remote database servers/services, which reside on the Internet. Visual FoxPro, along with the new ".Net" technologies, will be a leader in this second wave of the Internet.

Visual FoxPro Advantage - Third party technologies
FoxPro has been around for a very long time. During the past 10+ years, many third party software development companies have created add-on products for FoxPro and Visual FoxPro. This has resulted in Visual FoxPro having access to an extremely wide variety of "add-on" components. This gives software development professionals the tools to build applications which extend beyond the native functionality of Visual FoxPro. When you combine the native power/flexibility of Visual FoxPro with the wide availability of compatible third party components, there is not much that cannot be built using Visual FoxPro.

Visual FoxPro Advantage - Maturity and Stability
After 10+ years of continuous improvements, FoxPro has become the most stable and bug free software development system on the market. The stability of the Xbase foundation has been with FoxPro from the start, with cutting edge technologies being added to this foundation over the years. Each new version of Visual FoxPro has proven it's stability and reliability, with many thousands of high level software development companies and end-user organizations to confirm this reliability.

Visual FoxPro Advantage - A complete development tool
Visual FoxPro is a unique system, in that it combines tight native data integration with high level software development technologies. This takes Visual FoxPro far beyond other products, which are either focused on database management or software development technologies. Visual FoxPro has the best of both worlds, combining both powerful database management capabilities and sophisticated software development technologies.

Disadvantages
As with any software development product, there are environments where Visual FoxPro should not be used as a "complete" solution. However, Visual FoxPro is very often the best tool for creating and managing small databases, moderate size databases, large databases, and highly complex software applications for the desktop and Web.

We would recommend a different product in the following situations

1. Your organization processes "extremely" large quantities of records per hour. A high end database server such as "SQL Server" or "Oracle" would be recommended in this instance. Although, Visual FoxPro software development could be used to build a Front-end to these database servers.
2. Your application will require "extremely" high levels of concurrent usage. A high end database server such as "SQL Server" or "Oracle" would be recommended in this instance. Although, Visual FoxPro software development could be used to build a Front-end to these database servers.
3. High levels of administrative security are required. We would recommend "SQL Server" in this instance. Although, Visual FoxPro could be used as it's Front-end.
4. Your organization requires a software development tool that can be easily used by non-programmers to make modifications. Depending on other circumstances, we may recommend Microsoft Access in this situation. The development and upgrades of a Visual FoxPro application requires the expertise of an experienced software developer. Visual FoxPro is not recommended as a database programming tool or software development tool for users or programmers with little or no programming experience. Microsoft Access provides use-friendly tools for users with little or no database management/programming expertise.
5. The entire database application needs to be extremely portable. Depending on other circumstances, we may recommend Microsoft Access in this situation. The one file system of Microsoft Access facilitates easy migration of data and complete applications between computers.

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Foxpro today & Tomorrow

Welcome To Expert-Foxpro-Advisor

Your Resource For Foxpro Development, Foxpro Programmers And Business Software Development And Implementation


Since you have come to this site, most likely you are either a business owner or business manager, or a software development company that works with Foxpro. And most likely, you have identified a need in your company for a person or persons with skills in Microsoft's Foxpro.

For Business Owners and Managers

For business owners or managers without a technical background in software development and software technologies, a short primer is in order:

History of Foxpro

Microsoft Visual Foxpro is a programming language and database management system. In the early 1980's a company called Ashton Tate developed the original 'Dbase'. Dbase was the first database management system/programming language that was easy to use and reasonably priced. For the first time, 'the masses' were able to harness the power of a database and easily build powerful applications for business purposes. By the mid 1980's use of Dbase had grown in leaps and bounds. Starting around the mid 80's as well, several serious competitors to Dbase came onto the scene. The most significant of these were Foxbase by Fox Software, which was released in 1984, and Clipper by Nantucket Corporation, released in 1985. In 1989 Fox Software released Foxpro, the successor to Foxbase. In 1992, recognizing the powerful technology platform in the Foxpro product, Microsoft aquired Fox Software.


By the early 90's Foxpro had achieved a dominant position in the marketplace for desktop/PC based databases. All the other competitors in the market had become, at best, minor players. It is estimated that at that time there were well over 200,000 Foxpro applications in use worldwide. In 1994 Microsoft released Visual Foxpro 3.0. Although Visual Foxpro 3.0 retained 'backwards compatibility' with even the earliest versions of the original Foxpro/Dbase language, it was radically more powerful; Foxpro had reinvented itself to become and extremely powerful, modern and thoroughly capable tool for modern software development. In subsequent years, Visual Foxpro 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 were released. These releases added even more power and capabilities to an already powerful software and database platform.

Usage Of Foxpro - Declined Starting in The Late 90's, But Still Going Strong...

Although Visual Foxpro had become an extremely powerful software tool, and although it had (and still has) legions of developers who were absolute fanatics about it, starting in approximately the late 1990's, usage of Foxpro began to decline. At about this time, Microsoft began to heavily market the use of the other software development tools in its arsenal. These tools included Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Access and Visual Basic. Beginning in around 2001, Microsoft launched the '.net framework'. The .net platform was Microsoft's response to the ubiquity of the Internet; it signalled the beginning of Microsoft's effort to put Web application development and Web application development strategies at the core of their software development strategy.

Foxpro Today - Still A Superior Platform For Software Development For Business Software Applications

For Foxpro Developers and Programmers, Microsoft's push to have companies use other software tools was very disheartening. Foxpro developers understood that Visual Foxpro was an extremely powerful tool; it was easy to use, yet incorporated the most powerful concepts in modern software development - use of 'Object Orientation', a powerful Visual Forms interface, and, most important of all, true to its origins and history, it was still, by far, the fastest database platform available. Although Microsoft SQL Server had come a long way, Foxpro's underlying database technology made it the platform of choice for applications on a Local Area Network where speed and performance were of the utmost concern. Even today, in many environments, Foxpro's 'local database engine' often outperforms Microsoft SQL Server.

Foxpro's Place In The Software Development World And Business Software

In the past several years, usage of Foxpro has continued to diminish. This is especially true in the larger 'corporate arena', where the software must be 'interoperable' with other web development initiatives. Even more importantly, in the large corporate arena, Microsoft aggressively pushes companies to use it's other tools; the .net framework and others.

However, that said, there are still hundreds of thousands of Foxpro applications in use, worldwide, ranging from very old Foxbase applications to the most modern VFP 9 applications which are being actively developed. And, because the 'Foxpro Community' is still extremely active, and extremely committed to the continued use, and improvement, of Visual Foxpro, new extensions and improvements to the language and system are being aggressively developed. In recent years, due to the activities of numerous committed individuals and companies, extensions and improvements have been made to the Foxpro language that are extending its interoperability with Microsoft's other tools, and expanding it's abilities to be integrated with web applications. In fact, in the past year, usage of Foxpro (Visual Foxpro) has once again seen a resurgence. Microsoft itself has committed to support Visual Foxpro until 2014.

Rewriting or Replacing Existing Foxpro Applications Is Often Unwarranted

Although Microsoft may be aggressively pursuing the use and implementation of it's 'newer tools', many, especially those who are savvy about Microsoft's tactics, recognize that, in many cases, just as the push to get the 'latest operating system upgrade' is often driven by marketing hype, not 'real business need', so too, the need to adopt the latest software development tool or platform is often driven by marketing hype as well. For the thousands upon thousands of businesses, large and small, that have existing Foxpro applications in place, humming away, admirably serving the business purpose for which they were developed; the question becomes, 'what purpose would be served by converting this application? What would the return on investment be for converting such an application? As a business manager, or technology manager, it will be up to you to sort through the marketing hype, the vendor hype, and the functional requirements for your software applications, to make a reasoned decision about whether an application needs to be rewritten, or replaced, by a newer application based upon a different technology platform. In many cases, after a clear and reasoned evaluation of the business requirements, the answer becomes clear: rewriting or converting the application would be time consuming, costly, and, most likely, provide very little, if any, return on investment. In these cases, usually the best solution will be to continue with the existing software infrastructure. In these cases, an existing solution can be enhanced, either with the current Foxpro version, or by upgrading to the latest Foxpro release. In other cases, it may turn out that continued use of Foxpro may not be the right choice for an organization. In this case, other software tools and techniques may be necessary. Please realize, however, that we are also well equipped to help you in making this assessment as well, and further, we are also extremely proficient with other technology tools and platforms, ranging from web development technologies, to Microsoft's .net platform, to Java and others.

We are commited for Long Term Commitment To Provide Quality Foxpro Applications To Business Software Users


we are committed to the continued use of Visual Foxpro as an ideal choice for Business Software Solutions; especially for small to medium sized companies who already have an extensive investment in the Foxpro based solutions. We can help you evaluate your existing software applications, and evaluate your new software development efforts.

We are committed to the idea that Foxpro applications, and Foxpro Development will continue to play a vital role in the software initiatives undertaken by small and medium sized companies around the world. With this idea in mind, to staffing and managing Foxpro Programming and Development projects with top-notch, highly skilled programmers and analysts, with a committment to excellence; a committment to delivering best of breed business software solutions that provide a measurable return on investment for the companies that implement them, and deliver the functionality that a company requires for the solution in question.

Govind Mori
Rajkot

Thursday, April 8, 2010

Foxpro Consultant

We are providing foxpro dos as well as visual custimsed application solutions