Microsoft Visual FoxPro

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Visual FoxPro
Basic data

developer Microsoft Corporation
Current  version 9.0 SP2
(October 11, 2007)
operating system Windows
category IDE
License Proprietary
German speaking No
Visual FoxPro Home

Microsoft Visual FoxPro ( VFP ) is a 2007 discontinued RAD - programming environment from Microsoft for data-centric applications. It is based on an object-oriented programming language (the procedural basis of which is a greatly expanded xBase language) and a relational database system . In addition to classic desktop applications based on the integrated database system, server and web-based solutions are also being developed.

Microsoft has promised product support for this version until January 2015. Further development was ruled out by Microsoft.

history

Visual FoxPro went from the first in 1984 as a competitor to dBASE developed FoxBASE forth. This was later sold under the name FoxPro and had variants for the operating systems DOS , Xenix or SCO- UNIX , Windows and one for the Mac . It could also run under other operating systems for which no specific versions existed, such as OS / 2 or Linux . The product was taken over by Microsoft in 1992 and shipped from 1995 with the version number 3.0 as an object-oriented 32-bit Windows version with the name Visual FoxPro . In the field of PC database systems for .DBF tables, which were very popular in the 1980s and 1990s, it is the last tool that has a noteworthy market share and that Microsoft has been developing over many years.

Visual Foxpro essentially consists of the following components:

  • an object-oriented programming language (which also contains procedural elements)
  • a development environment (with visual tools, editor and debugger )
  • the integrated database system
  • the report generator

Extensions were offered by many manufacturers.

Applications developed with Visual Foxpro can work with the integrated database as well as with SQL databases via ODBC and ADO (e.g. with MS-SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle etc.). The possibility of fast processing of locally stored intermediate results using SQL and xBase commands was generally used intensively. Visual FoxPro supported popular technologies such as SQL , HTML , SOA (Service Oriented Architecture ), ActiveX , COM, XML, and web services. There were no runtime fees for applications.

Within Microsoft, the developers of the Visual Studio Data Group have adopted many technologies from Visual FoxPro to Visual Studio and .NET in order to achieve an improved development of data-centered applications with C # and Visual Basic .NET .

The last additions to VFP by the developer community in 2014 included the Guineu runtime module , which executes the bytecode of compiled VFP programs using the .NET environment.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Message in the VFP Developer Center regarding the discontinuation , accessed June 30, 2012
  2. ↑ Entry in Microsoft Support Lifecycle for Visual FoxPro (English)
  3. ↑ Guinea