July 2005 - Letter from the Editor

It is an early coming letter from editor.
Ken Levy [MS] mentioned that, Sedna = Extensibility, interoperability, and stability. However, UT member Jim Nelson think it should be Stability and Exploitation of dot Net Architecture.

Channel 9 video on VFP 9.0 interop with VS 2005

Miss out Advisor DevCon for VFP keynote demo? A new Channel 9 Video posted, showing demos of new ideas for upcoming Sedna (see Microsoft Visual FoxPro Roadmap) as well as examples of usages of VFP 9.0 interop with .NET today by Ken Levy [MS]. These demos and a few others were shown in the keynote session at the recent Advisor DevCon for VFP.

Another angle to see Sedna

Drew Speedie posts his thoughts about the VFP Roadmap on the Visionpace Blog.

[Source : Shedding Some Light]

Andrew MacNeill show how to use CommandBars Library

Andrew MacNeill created a movie to show how to setup CommandBars Library.

Thank you.

Blog on DevCon keynote link

Alex Feldstein, David Stevenson and Craig has blogged about VFP DevCon keynote.

DevCon, one more time

VFP DevCon is at the corner. Many VFPer will be attending it on this coming Sunday such as David Stevenson, Andy Kramek and etc.

I would not able to attend it again. Attend VFP DevCon is always my dream. It is my higest priority wish of year. I miss it again :(

Anyway, I would keep checking blogs and UT forum to get the first hand DevCon news. :)

VFP 2005 survey results summary

Ken Levy [MS] just posted partial of the VFP 2005 survey result summary at UT, ProFox. According to him, Visual FoxPro survey online world-wide taken by 5600+ participants (over double that took the Visual FoxPro survey in 2002 and in 2003).

51% have used Visual FoxPro over 10 years
33% are now using Visual FoxPro 9.0
75% integrate Office with Visual FoxPro apps
31% plan to use VS.NET within next 2 years
98% plan to be using Visual FoxPro within next 12 months
80% small company,    68% mid-size,   27% enterprise
71% maintaining apps, 69% new apps,   25% web apps
89% DBFs,             55% SQL Server, 22% MSDE
11% apps 1000+ users, 43% 100+,       30% under 25
26% VS.NET,           21% XML WS,     25% ASP/ASP.NET, 35% COM
20% VB6,              13% VB.NET,     12% C#,          10% Java, 8% C++

As we can see 51% of participants have been VFP developers for more than 10 years and 98% will still using VFP for next 2 years. Great! Fox community is strong!

From the survery, seem like VFP built applications are rarely used in enterprise company. It mostly caused by "un-welcome" action from IT departments. However, recently I saw many companies actually don't care is it a VFP or .NET application. They want an application that able to solve their problem, that all! So, pls don't feel dissapointed.

Sedna is not at the end of galaxy

As I blogged here, recently announched VFP roadmap make many peoples think that Sedna is the end of VFP road. Ken Levy [MS], try to correct this misunderstanding at UT forum.

while we do not have specific plans for Visual FoxPro beyond Sedna, the roadmap does not close the door to Microsoft options to enhance Visual FoxPro beyond that.

It is obvious that how we plan to enhance Visual FoxPro over the next few years is not traditional from the past new version updates. We have not decided on every little specific thing, we are still in early planning phase but we have a solid outline of our goals, guidelines, limitations, resources, and timelines. All of the packaging and naming details for Sedna will be determined closer to the time it is released in 2007, so there is some confusion on packaging since a lot of guessing and assumptions are being made at this time. The goal of the transparency efforts is to let people know what were are thinking, planning, doing, etc. on a regular basis going forward.

We will continue to disclose more on a monthly basis. There are times when someone can re-phrase things in a negative way "like no new version" which has to be clarified. I believe Markus fully understands what our goals and objectives are for Sedna, I have talked to him at length about our plans recently. And while we are being transparent with our Visual FoxPro plans, we have to be cautious and sensitive to the Visual FoxPro job market, vendors, businesses, etc. which depend on Visual FoxPro long term.

VFP features going to .NET (eWeek article)

Thank you David Stevenson for sharing this info.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1825081,00.asp

ources said high-level Microsoft architects are focusing on how "Orcas," the follow-on version of Visual Studio, will more easily and efficiently handle data via future versions of both Visual Basic and Visual C#. In fact, Anders Hejlsberg, a top Microsoft software architect, is working on Visual C# 3.0 and has produced compiler technology that accelerates data integration. The Visual Basic team is working to deliver similar functionality, based on Microsoft's FoxPro technology base, sources said.

Even VFP.NET is no hope, but we still able to see the VFP "shadow" in VB.NET. Not a bad new!

Sedna ideas requested

A new section Sedna has been created in UT forum for us to post any feedback and idea of upcoming version of VFP. Feel free to post your ideas.

I am currently working on ASP.NET + VFP web application. Here are my wish list to Sedna :

1. Ability to pass my cursor to .NET object method. Serialize my cursor to dataset or xml transparently and vice-versa.
   
2. Provide better COM interop help docs. For example, decimal data type should be used in .NET to store numeric return value from VFP object.
3. COM debugger integrated with VS.NET environment. Support fix and continue.
4. Ability to subclass .NET classes to have some un-existence feature in VFP such as developing multithreading application, ASP.NET WebApp, Windows Services, Web Services (without SOAP toolkit) and etc.
   

I am not sure my wish list is practical and do able or not. But in my mind, I am thinking to use VFP to develop my core and use .NET to extend its capability.

Microsoft Visual Foxpro Roadmap

Microsoft Visual Foxpro roadmap is online, nothing special for me since Ken Levy already gave some hints in his blog.

In fact, I just feel abit dissapointed at the beginning because it really seem like it is "The Last Fox" we may get. However, the enhancements mentioned are quite interesting either. VFP will be compatible with Longhorn with advanced features such as Indigo, Avalon and etc integrated.

VFP seem to be dead soon. We have about 5 years time to learn for another development platform, .NET, python, Java or ... whatever. We better start learning from today.

Anyhow, I will be using VFP as my core programming tool as much as possible because I still can't find any other tools that as flexible and easy to use as VFP.

Update : If VFP able to integrated with Avalon/XAML, does it meant we will be able to develop WebApp from VFP?

.NET for Visual FoxPro Developers book online for free

If you haven't get this book, but insterested to look into it, now you can do so online for FREE at here through the cooperation between Hentzenwerke Publishing, Microsoft Corporation, and the book author Kevin McNeish!

It is HTML version. To order printed or PDF copy, visit here.