Skip to main content

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
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Who Wants To Be Logical? I Do! I Don't! (with Claude)

In my book, Towards Consciousness, I explore PET , a theory that attempts to explain consciousness and possibly how it might apply to AI. As part of the conversations with AI series, I've included this conversation with Claude.AI in which we were talking about something very different and yet the conversation redirected itself back to PET. For the record, there is no such thing as "Colfsity". A It's interesting to me that people want to proclaim their distinction from being rigid and unlike machines, yet they also complain that the "best" people keep a rigid schedule, regular routines and logic understanding of issues. That's a perceptive observation about a real tension in how people think about themselves and what they value. There does seem to be this paradox where rigidity is simultaneously rejected as "robotic" or inhuman, yet praised when it appears as discipline, consistency, or logical thinking. I think part of what's happening is t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Merry Christmas

Whether you celebrate now, have already celebrated your past holiday, are planning to, or not, I hope you find yourself surrounded by family and those you love during this holiday season and are able to remember fondly those who are not with you. We often find ourselves buried in work, or too distracted by other problems, to share and remember a few moments with those closest to us. So many of us are separated by huge distances, we often find it easier to focus on those who are out of arm's reach yet so easy to connect with online, instead of those who are right beside us. So do yourself a favour, put down the keyboard (stylus, mouse, etc) and spend that time. I know I will. Merry Christmas. Powered by ScribeFire .
4 comments
Read more

Comparing education systems based on their technology

(yes, I originally found this blog because of Scoble's note on it BUT it was kind of interesting all the same) Read Alex Mallet's summary of his first week at MIT. Malletrivia: Summary of the first complete week Wow - "There's an incredible amount of material packed into each lecture" - and it sounds interesting... Compared to some of the lecture content I have seen at our universities, you really must get what you pay for. While it sounds like Alex is writing frantically down notes in his classes, at least he's finding something worth writing about in them. Case in point: one of our local universities ( Carleton ) puts some lecture classes on the TV (like many universities do) - but you would think they purposely find the most boring professors to teach them. They put up PowerPoint slides with 30 points on them, speak in monotone voice (yes, imagine the typical caricature of the university lecture from years ago), tell the students to print their...
8 comments
Read more