End of the line for Visual FoxPro

There will be no Visual FoxPro version 10, according to the VFP team at Microsoft.

Visual FoxPro — which started out, of course, as plain old FoxPro— has been around for more than 20 years; it was created by Fox Technologies, which Microsoft acquired in 1992. FoxPro came from the era of dBase II and other so-called “xBase” languages, which were extremely popular because they were fast and efficient on inexpensive PCs, and because they were fairly easy to program.

However, at Microsoft VFP has languished, rapidly falling far behind the company’s other databases, SQL Server and Access. So, there’s no surprise that earlier this month, Microsoft said,

“We are announcing today that there will be no VFP 10. VFP9 will continue to be supported according to our existing policy with support through 2015. We will be releasing SP2 for Visual FoxPro 9 this summer as planned, providing fixes and additional support for Windows Vista.”

They also added that additional features under development, which include connectivity to SQL Server and partial integration with .NET, will be released at no charge within the next few months. You can download a Community Technology Preview of these bits, code-named Sedna, today.

Do you still use VFP? Let me know what you think about this — and what your migration plans are (if any).