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What Do YOU Do With FoxPro?

I recently had a meeting with a client who was looking for training on Visual FoxPro 8 and 9. I used to work for this company so I was fairly familiar with their environment. In the past, when doing FoxPro training, it's typically been a cookie-cutter type course: How To Build An Application With Visual FoxPro. In this case, however, the client was looking for more advanced training so I knew a little bit more investigation was required.
 
This client uses FoxPro almost exclusively as a query and data processing tool. The user interface is very minimal and they aren't dealing with remote data. Their developers have no need for reporting, it is a data manipulation tool specific to their process.
 
So why are they still using FoxPro? The original system was written in the early 90s in FoxPro 2.x. It processed data retrieved from a variety of sources. In the late 90's, when their IT department tried to say "we will only work with VB or Oracle or ______ (fill in your appropriate file)", they did try to rebuild the application using those technologies. The end result? The project was scrapped after a few tests because data processing was too slow and the entire work proceeded in a cumbersome manner. They went back to their 2.x application, converted it to VFP 6 and now are looking for even further enhancements to it.
 
It got me thinking though, because even with VFP 9 (and even older versions), a lot of developers are using FoxPro only for specific tasks. Their needs are different than the people who are building brand new applications.
 
If you're maintaining an existing application,
 
So my question goes out: what are YOU building with Visual FoxPro? Let me know!
 
I've got a little survey (through Zoomerang) and here's the URL:
  http://www.zoomerang.com/survey.zgi?p=WEB2247M9T8QSM
 
This isn't a Microsoft survey - it's just for information sake but I'll be posting the results here. Note: if more than 100 people respond, I'll have to launch a new survey (my basic account with Zoomerang is fairly limited).

Comments

Anonymous said…
I just read this posting of yours today. I am wondering if the survey result is still available?
December 15, 2005 at 7:07 AM
Andrew MacNeill said…
Unfortunately no. Zoomerang has a timeout on its surveys. I'll update the post.

Thanks
December 15, 2005 at 7:40 AM
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